Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
The moon rises, and you feel yourself start to change. Fur sprouts from your palms, your fingers turn to claws, and a howl rips from your throat. Your clothes shred and tear as your Other Self breaks free..
Moonlight Madness follows the exploits of six unlucky heroes trying to free themselves of the curse of lycanthropy while evading a full-scale werewolf hunt led by a crusading paladin and his doughty army. Hermits, sphinxes, dinosaurs, pixies, Amazons, bandits, and a friendly game of and quot;Dwarfenball and quot; are only a few of the challenges that stand between the heroes and the cure they seek. Will they reach the Hermitage on the Lake in time, or succumb to Moonlight Madness?
Product History
and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; (1998), by Skip and Penny Williams, is a generic AD and amp;D 2e adventure. It was published in February 1998.
About the Title. The adventure title, and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot;, is pretty generic. In fact, it's the exact same name as an unreleased album by Barry Gibb and a video game for the Spectrum ZX, both of which date to 1986. And, that might not be a coincidence
and hellip;
Origins (I): From the Past. As it happens, 1986 is the same year that and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; first appeared. It debuted as the two-round AD and amp;D Masters Tournament for Gen Con 19 (1986), authored by Skip Williams and Penny Petticord and mdash; with their credits revealing that it was written before their marriage.
The ancient lineage of and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; means that it was written in the same era as much earlier publications like WG9: and quot;Gargoyle and quot; (1989), WG10: and quot;Child's Play and quot; (1989), and WG11: and quot;Puppets and quot; (1989) and mdash; all of which originated as RPGA tournaments in the mid-to-late '80s. This similarity would show up in both the genre tropes and adventure style of and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot;.
Origins (II): From the RPGA. So why was D and amp;D reaching so far back into the past? It appears that Wizards wanted to highlight RPGA adventures in a way that TSR hadn't, because and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; was one of the first adventures that they published that hadn't appeared on TSR's 1997 product schedule. Maybe they just wanted to give wider attention to a book that had originally been intended as an RPGA exclusive, or maybe updating an old RPGA adventure allowed Wizards to quickly bring a new adventure to market. Whatever the reasoning, and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; marked the beginning of a wave of new mass-market RPGA adventures that would extended into 1999.
and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; includes an ad for RPGA membership, which notes that members will receive the previous year's RPGA-exclusive adventure, and quot;The Star of Kolhapur and quot; (1997).
Expanding D and amp;D: Lycanthropy. and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; contains a few pages of alternate rules on lycanthropy: how the disease progresses and how characters and quot;wolf out and quot;.
Genre Trope: Silliness. As was common in RPGA adventures of the '80s, there's a bit of silliness in this one, like a sphinx wearing a girdle of feminity who's awful at telling riddles and a jann with a service contract who's sick of people asking for wishes. These sorts of light jokes were somewhat outside the norm for published D and amp;D adventures in the late '80s, and even moreso by the late '90s.
Adventure Styles: Episodic Encounters. Rather surprisingly, given its era of origin, and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; is largely a game of episodic encounters, with the players moving from one to the next, in order.
Adventure Tropes: To Win You Must Lose. and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; assumes the player characters are all lycanthropes. A typical adventure of the '90s would have included a heavy-handed introductory encounter that forced this upon the characters. Here, and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; benefits from its tournament roots: it just lays this out as part of the starting conditions (and suggests that the GMs include encounters with lots of lycanthropes beforehand, if necessary).
Monsters of Note. and quot;Moonlight Madness and quot; includes a wolfwere and his wolves, but for the most part it's features the sort of mongrelized bestiary that was common in RPGA adventures of the '80s, including sphinxes, dinosaurs, and faerie dragons. There are a surprising number of leveled humans, but the PCs probably won't fight many of them.
About the Creators. Skip Williams is one of D and amp;D's longest-running authors and Sages. Penny Petticord was the fourth Network Coordinator of the RPG, started in 1984.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of and nbsp;Designers and amp; Dragons and nbsp;- a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.