A Mysterious Message Brings Adventurers Through the Mists to the House of Lament from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft

Salutations, nerds! We’ve got one more bit of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft to cover before moving on to other fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons things and that is the House of Lament. For most of the rest of this book, the name of the game has been picking through each individual section for a detailed preview. Since House of Lament is an adventure it’s not possible to do this without huge spoilers so instead I’ll deep dive without being too explicit.

5E D&D hauntings manifest catastrophic horror

I imagine some of you still want to play this 5E D&D adventure and if that’s the case I advise caution going forward because I am going to be talking about some of the NPCs and specifics of the adventure.

I am not going to be talking about every single thing that happens. I’m going to do my best not to reveal anything that would actively ruin a playthrough. But if you are the kind of person who doesn’t want any information — well, what are you still doing here? Scoot!

All right, just those of us who have already read it or don’t mind the spoilers left? Good, let’s get to it.

House of Lament as a gateway

This adventure is intended as a way to get a party of four to six 1st level characters from their ordinary world and into the Mists for a horror campaign. The text suggests creating characters without strong ties to home because there’s a good chance they’re never going to get back but honestly I’d be highly interested in playing a character with this kind of doomed motive as long as I knew the situation was bound to end in tragedy in advance.

House of Lament starts pretty normally and escalates from there.

Exploring the House of Lament

When I read this section of the adventure all I could think was it reminds me so much of Betrayal at House on the Hill. There’s a section where characters are exploring and everything is pretty chill then something happens to trigger the haunt and suddenly all the rooms become dark and twisty and dangerous.

I love how this adventure gives players the opportunity to explore everything in relative peace before exploding into action after they’ve already familiarized themselves with the backdrop. It’s brilliant. It gives players a chance to familiarize themselves with the people who once lived in the House of Lament and who might still be lingering around.

Seances

While characters explore there are NPCs around to sort of help guide the plot and one of them leads adventurers through several seances involving a Spirit Board over the course of the adventure. There are three different ghosts who characters can talk to and each one leads to a very different flavored adventure.

Unfortunately they don’t add a lot of replayability because there’s overlap. Whichever ghost characters choose they’ll learn so much about the others that a second time around they’ll basically going to know what’s going on although this might add something to the experience for some people who like to see the situation from every possible angle just because it’s fun. (I’m one of these people.)

Because of this the adventure can actually play differently in tone from a very hostile ending to one that almost reads as happy if you do it right. I’m obviously not going to go into detail here but I like how House of Lament gives a Dungeon Master room to make choices for what’s going to make the rest of the players the happiest.

After the haunt is triggered

Again, it’s very Betrayal at House on the Hill. Things are going wrong all over the place, there’s a lot that can mess with characters and it ramps up the cadence of the adventure from leisurely exploration to, “Oh gods, we’re going to die.”

And also much like Betrayal, what adventurers are trying to do in this phase of House of Lament very much depends on the spirit they’ve been talking to, ergo which haunt gets triggered. The rooms are more or less going to do the same things but with different motives.

Either way it closes out on something absolutely worthy of the climax of an adventure like this one. It is very much like playing a horror movie.

Closing thoughts

I had a lot of issues with Curse of Strahd because it was so long and relentlessly oppressive. Rime of the Frost Maiden (I’m playing through it right now so don’t quote me on this, it might get better) feels a lot like a comedy campaign with a horror paint job. It is very hard to make an entire campaign feel like horror because pacing horror is hard in the long term. Strahd didn’t have enough levity in it to make the horrific moments feel like much. After a while the gloom started feeling like a homeostasis and it just didn’t matter anymore.

House of Lament is good because it’s a bite sized chunk of this. Players don’t have time to start feeling like it’s too much or stop caring. It’s also not full of gags to completely undercut the tension of the narrative.

If I were running this I’d probably follow it up with a moment for the characters to breathe. Let them meet some friendly travelers in the Mists, let them recuperate and let them talk about what just happened before moving on to the next heavy thing.

It’s like how a horror movie is going to be pretty constantly dark and oppressive and that’s fine because you’re giving it two hours of your time, max. But a horror series like the Haunting of Bly Manor needs moments of softness to break up the creepiness so when it starts to happen again you still have something left to feel.

That said, this is an excellent way to set the tone for the horror game to follow.

This was a lot to unpack. Have you played House of Lament from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft? Enjoyed it? Love or hate the horror genre as a 5E D&D thing and want to fight me about it? Leave a comment below or tweet me @Pyrosynthesis and of course, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — The characters arrive at the House of Lament after a mysterious message leads them into the Mists. At the door, they meet investigators who invite them to participate in an exploration of the building. As the party initially surveys the house, it manifests subtle hauntings. The characters are then invited to participate in the first of several séances, allowing them to commune with the spirits of the house. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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