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There was a moment during one of my earliest Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, The Curse of Strahd, that remains one of my all-time favorite experiences in horror media. As we approached Castle Ravenloft, on our way to the climactic battle, the background music playing and our GM's narration synced up perfectly, as though it had been edited together in post. It sent a chill down the spines of myself, my adventuring party, and probably our GM even as he spoke it.

Since then, I've had such a special place in my heart for horror as a TTRPG experience, how that medium can twist and turn a story for special, spectral narrative creativity. So, you can imagine my excitement when I got an invitation to a folk horror one-shot from the good folks at Legends of Avantris. If you already follow LoA, you probably already know that that invitation was to take part in The Crooked Moon, the custom 5E campaign designed by the folks behind the sensational liveplay webseries (and Critical Role partner). 

Naturally, I said yes.

What follows is a bit of my experience, which was GM'd (exquisitely) by Crooked Moon co-creator Derek Hudson, and for which I was joined by fellow TTRPG journalists Mollie Russell and Andrew Stretch. I won't stray too much into exact details here - partly because we at Popverse try to avoid spoilers (despite what Stephen King thinks). But most importantly, because if there's anything I want you to get from my time in the game, it's that you and your adventuring party should be trying it out yourselves.

Kickstarter's One-Minute Wonder

Before we talk about my adventure, a little background - The Crooked Moon crept into the depths of the shared TTRPG subconscious as a Kickstarter campaign, run by the good folks of Legends of Avantris themselves. And what a Kickstarter campaign it was. The custom 5E folk horror book was funded within the first minute of its time on the crowdfunding platform, and even more impressive, that eldritch energy never waned.

Over the course of one month, The Crooked Moon earned a whopping $4,020,234 from 21,793 backers, unlocking seventeen stretch goals as it went along its way. To put this in perspective, Tolkien-inspired One Ring TTRPG from ubiquitous publisher Free League raised a little less than half of that amount of cash in the same amount of time, and not for nothing, it took One Ring four minutes to be completely funded (I know, right? Might as well be centuries).

All this to say, I knew coming into this liveplay that I was in for something that had already snatched up the interest of many a grim-and-grinning TTRPG fan. And as I got my dice together and created my character (a threadborn ventriloquist dummy named Mr. Squeaks, if you're curious), I learned why.

From Fantasy to Folk Horror, via The Ghostlight Express

To begin our Crooked Moon adventure, we players were welcomed onto a misty and mysterious train platform, where we awaited the spirit-powered Ghostlight Express, a locomotive that brought souls from the land of the living to... well, to other places. Once we met our conductor (a helpful frogman called The Vagrant) and boarded, we were ushered through the length pf the train, each car of which held either fright, fight, or occasionally, delight.

As a semi-experienced D&D player myself, I felt perfectly at home on the Ghostlight. Combat, investigation, and NPC interaction were all important parts of moving from car to car, reminding me of more traditional 5E campaigns before getting into the weird, folklorey stuff waiting at the end of the track. And according to our GM, that's exactly the purpose that the first chapter of the Crooked Moon was intended for. 

"This initial adventure," Hudson explained, "Is intended to be something of a bridge from your classic heroic fantasy to the folk horror that we want to deliver. It's an essential narrative beat that you have a moment of being in a car, having luxuries, enjoying more traditional fodder. That's what this adventure is designed to do... until you [enter] the dark wood and fill the unease and dread start to creep in before reaching this isolated community, the Wickermoor Village. That is the objective of the main adventure, and why this welcome mat is designed the way it is."

Hudson isn't exaggerating here - the last couple of moments in our virtual Crooked Moon one shot were exactly as chilling as any horror fan reading this might hope them to be. And while a lot of that can be chalked up to Hudson as a (very accommodating) GM, there was one last element of this whole affair that made for an even more haunted evening, and for your purposes, makes this the campaign for All Hallow's Eve.

The music that took you Over the Garden Wall

From when we first stepped onto the Ghostlight Express to the moment we met the couple in the most extravagant train car (again, no spoilers here, players), our journey through the shadows of Druskenvald was accompanied by a stellar and spine-tingling soundtrack. Written specifically for The Crooked Moon adventures, the custom music felt like the kind of playlist Fall herself would listen to if it had Spotify, and as our adventure was wrapping up, we discovered the reason.

The Crooked Moon music is written by The Blasting Company, known for composing the themes to autumnal favorite Over the Garden Wall. That show, as any Halloweener out there who's seen it is likely to agree, could very well be to Samhain what A Christmas Carol is to its Yuletide sister, and so it only makes sense that some of the same creatives behind it would be working on this exemplar of tabletop roleplaying. 

What the Legends of Avantris have achieved isn't just a place to experience horror in the safety of a TTRPG; it's a place to feel the magic of an ancient, pagan season. To walk that line (helpfully laid out as traintracks) between the living and dead, past and future, the world we see and the one just behind. And one of the best parts of it being a TTRPG (just like my game of Strahd a few years back), is that that line doesn't have to be walked as straight as in other media. It's a line that, no matter who travels it, will always remain...

Well, crooked.

The Crooked Moon is available to purchase on D&D Beyond now.

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