We’ve played the first seven books (adventures) of the D&D adventure anthology Candlekeep Mysteries. This is how I feel about them as adventures, and my recommendations, should you think about running them.
While I’ve steered clear of details, obviously spoilers for Candlekeep Mysteries follow.
Book One: The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces
A very simple, straightforward mini dungeon with a simple puzzle at its core. Scholars disappear while reading a book, and the party needs to find them. They discover a portal to an extradimensional mansion, but have a hard time getting out.
Based on this adventure I thought I would be able to get through all the adventures in a single sitting each. How wrong I was.
Good for a night’s gaming, and we do have this adventure to thank for our longest running gag in the campaign, the human monk who is suspicious of all books attacking them. (For good reason!) This is disposable content with very little to take with you in a campaign.
Book Two: Mazfroth’s Mighty Digressions
On the surface this is a very simple adventure, but it has surprising scope, depending on how you run it. A book is attacking scholars in the library, and the party needs to find out where it came from.
The adventure takes the party from Candlekeep to Baldur’s Gate, with time and space to wander both on the way and in the big city. Facing down the assumed bad guys, my party surprised me by not turning to violence, and indeed gained themselves a group of misunderstood allies, which is how the adventure is supposed to turn out. The baddies were just trying to get by in a cruel world where they face prejudice, and didn’t realize what was happening as a result. But there’s plenty of room to devolve into violence instead. Which is fine, this is D&D!
Seeing the sights, gaining new allies (or enemies) – this adventure is a fine intro to Sword Coast.
Book Three: Book of the Raven
Speaking of seeing the sights, the third book takes the party on a trip to follow a treasure map, running into a group of wereravens whose motivations are not at first clear.
I had a lot of fun with this, making the map for the players as a handout, and having them decipher its clues. This also took a while, as there can be plenty of travel, downtime, and encounters, on top of what the adventure proper requires. Same deal as the second book: the supposed bad guys are likely allies, in the end, and even more telegraphed in this case. Two of my player characters are now wereravens, and belong to an organization that could be used as an adventure seed anytime.
Wonderfully atmospheric, but takes a fair amount of work due to the amount of content that is glossed over. I discovered that I don’t feel comfortable cutting that much travel and adventure to get to the adventure proper – you might be different, in which case this could be a lot shorter than my version. I like this, and could see it as a standalone adventure in any campaign, really.
The instigating incident requires a lot of willingness from your players to play along; it’s easy to question their motivation to go on this merry chase.
Book Four: A Deep And Creeping Darkness
Continuing from the last adventure’s gothic stylings, this one goes for a straight up horror approach. My least favorite so far, it’s a simple haunted village and almost empty dungeon (mine), flavored with terrifying enemies capable of isolating your players.
Most of the weight in the adventure came from figuring out what had happened in the village, and interacting with the NPCs who give the party a simple side quest to return a locket and place flowers on a grave.
Book Five: Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme
I like this one as all the previous adventures have taken us all over Sword Coast, and here we’re not only staying within Candlekeep, we’re going under it.
The firefly lit cellar is a wonderfully atmospheric location that I would definitely have as a central location in any campaign featuring Candlekeep. The adventure continues with a horror adjacent theme, with mind control in play. Scholars discover a book that makes them sing a song, over and over again – and it’s contagious. The party is locked in with the scholars until they can find a way to stop the curse.
The central puzzle with a bedtime rhyme and a broken music box is satisfying. It’s a small enclosed space with a colorful, limited cast that is used effectively. I like this a lot, but it requires your game to be at Candlekeep to work as written, and thus might be difficult to just drop in wherever.
Book Six: The Price of Beauty
Best of the bunch so far, this adventure is set in a cursed spa, deep within elven woods. Characters could end up here from anywhere. The antagonists promise life-altering treatments to fix misguided egos, which means great roleplaying opportunities for a party.
The spa/temple is a great environment with just the right amount of NPCs and room for interesting play. Lots of non-combat encounters, and plenty of space for PCs to figure out what they want to do. You could easily expand the temple for a more Spirited Away type experience.
Book Seven: The Book of Cylinders
This is a very straightforward case of go liberate an old temple from evil snakes. The hook is that the heroes are doing this to ensure the delivery of seafood to Candlekeep’s kitchens, which is pretty great, as adventure motivations go.
There is a friendly yuan-ti faction in play, which opens up some options for the players. Otherwise this is a one-way street to a very predictable outcome. This could easily be dropped in anywhere, but I can see little reason to do so. Book seven is even more linear than book four.
This is the first adventure where I got a pretty serious case of lack of motivation to keep going. The next one, Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor, looks like a welcome change of pace, with a focus on social play and investigation. Let’s see how it goes down in a couple of weeks!
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