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Blood in the Chocolate
 

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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Thilo G. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 11/29/2021 12:12:29

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module covers 54 pages, already not including front/back cover, etc.

This review was requested by my supporters to be covered as a priority review alongside “The Idea from Space” (SPOILER: Idea is better); usually, I go for a chronological sequence, but this time around, the module will cease being available at the start of December, and for all the completionists, I wanted to have this review ready before the module vanishes.

Triggerwarning: The module is obsessed with rape, getting the party to participate in rape, or the adventurers being raped. Plus: Good chance of witnessing children (regular ones, not alien things masquerading as them) dying when running this.

My review is based on both the hardcover and the pdf-versions. “Blood in the Chocolate” is billed as a low-level (as in level 1–4) psycho-sexual romp in the vein of a messed up version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, and as you probably are aware of, it won some awards. Now, on the plus-side of things, the module does several things right when it comes to presentation: The interior of the front cover/first page spread contain quick reference information and a b/w-overview map (not to scale) of the environments, making quick reference simple. Base stats for creatures encountered and random chocolate effects are in the back cover/last-page spread; additionally, these last pages have a visual representation of the number of adversaries, so you can just cross them off if you can bear actually writing in your gaming books. I can’t. But I can see this being helpful. The full-color maps are decent, if not spectacular, and feature 10-ft. squares. Like in Kelvin Green’s neat “Forgive Us”, each room’s write-up contains an extract of the map, showing the respective room.

Alas, not all is well in the formal department: For one, there is no player-friendly version of the maps included; secondly, the pdf features no bookmarks, making that version next to useless when running it. Do you remember when LotFP used to have layered pdfs, where you could turn off annoying numbers and secret doors, etc.? Yeah, don’t expect that here. The artwork you can see on the cover is also the style you can expect to find inside. Personally, I’m not fond of it, but art is a matter of taste and is not something I’ll penalize the module for.

Okay, this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

..

.

Okay, only referees around? Great.

So, this time around, I’ll start with my thesis: I can’t fathom how this managed to win any prize, and I’m pretty positive that the people who awarded the prize or voted for the module never bothered actually playing it.

Because there is a lot to be criticized about this adventure.

Don’t get me wrong: The elevator pitch of “What if Charlie with eldritch horror” is pure awesome and had me super stoked to run this module, but this excitement went down the tubes, and like a waterfall of chocolate sludge, it never ceased going downhill.

Let’s start with the premise: It’s 1617, Friesland in the Netherlands, and rich widow Lucia de Castillo’s chocolates are taking Europe by storm; they are positively addictive and threaten to destabilize an already extremely unstable Europe further. Lucia is the villain; daughter of an Incan lady and a Spanish conquistador, who married a Spanish Comde and, surprise, surprise, the entire family of the Comde died, leaving Lucia everything. Now, on the plus-side, Lucia is NOT a victim; she’s not traumatized or anything; she’s just a ridiculously evil businesswoman; she’s pretty “thicc”, I guess, and that all would be neat, but the book focuses its ostensible “psychosexual” angle primarily on her, coaching the referee regarding her sexual preferences (prefers women and effeminate men), etc. – which would be fine if that sort of thing was in any way actually relevant to the module, which it’s not. Lucia is essentially a powerful brawler/boss encounter, and the chances to even encounter her in a non-hostile manner are pretty much zero. This generates the weird impression of there being some sort of kinkiness/fetish going on, but I’m only mentioning this because some people are bothered by that sort of thing. I won’t kinkshame anyone.

Anyhow, my issue with Lucia boils down to another factor: She makes no sense and has no real plan. She just goes about her being evil and considering that the module spends several pages driving home how important she is, she remains, ironically, paler than most evil tower-dwelling cliché-mages. Considering that “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” has plenty of interesting and horrifying angles, that is a gigantic lost chance. It’s the least of the module’s issues, though.

On the plus-side, the module has proper rules for the magical chocolate (mostly cosmetic d12 table) and comes with 8 diseases/poisons based on sweets and the Charlie source material. The good thing about them would be that they are genuinely interesting and tend to feature more than one stage: From vocal cords encased in nut brittle to vomiting chocolate to getting taffy skin, these do evoke body horror (GOOD!), though the rules aren’t always sensible: Taffy Skin Disease can be slowed by “freezing your body and keeping it cold”; okay, doesn’t that kill you? What constitutes freezing? No clue. The star here is the noxious berry curse, which requires juicing to prevent being fatal. Okay, you’ll be blue like a smurf anyway afterwards, but…yeah. As a whole, this section could have been improved with more nonmagical ways of treating the diseases (some do have that!), because frankly, these effects and the adventurers trying to deal with them are the single most (to me, the only) fun component of this adventure. And they will have to deal with them, because pretty much anything is infectious. Also: There are two children to be “rescued”, but of course they are super-infectious (no save) carriers of the diseases that penalize showing compassion/being decent people. Yep, misery/nihilism quote fulfilled in the cheapest way possible.

So, how do these effects manage to remain contained? The chocolates contain effects like mania, gas, and addiction, so how is there not a lynch mob at the factory gates? I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, how does Lucia create her chocolate? Well, her Wonka-inspired factory includes essentially an eldritch coca tree, including mutated mosquitoes, and a tribe of pygmies she enslaved; these were, according to the lore of the module, Inca precursors, tainted by a cocoa tree (said eldritch tree), which itself resulted from a massacre committed by some Maya magic-users. Today, they are essentially super-degenerate, and they primarily engage in blood orgies and berry orgies when not doing their oompa loompa chores. That obsession with rape is the only other part of the module that could be considered to be “psychosexual.” I’m leaving this information without a further comment here.

If you expected the chocolate factory that the party is supposed to infiltrate to feature genuine wonders, creative environments, etc., I am afraid I have to disappoint you; the aforementioned diseases/hazards are as weird as the module gets. If you expected some creative uses of the themes, unique combats on boats, perhaps a take on the insane sequence of the first movie…you won’t get that here.

Furthermore, there are two factors that we really need to talk about. As in the bad “We need to talk” kind of way.

The first is the implicit setting. I’m totally on board with the general assumption of Lamentations of the Flame Princess’ default assumption of a weird 17th century setting; the huge benefit is that you have sheer endless lore to fall back on and using the weird in subtle and less subtle ways in that context makes it more plausible and effective.

In this module, that premise falls apart ridiculously fast. It makes zero sense that the chocolates even make their way across Europe without melting and spoiling, considering the lack of modern refrigeration options and preservatives. Granted, logistics were better than most people are aware of, but not that good. Secondly, the Netherlands were not a lawless murderhobo-wasteland.

No, when the adventurers kill off Lucia, they can’t just run her factory (using the property rules, and don’t really contribute anything substantial to the module); it’s not how things worked. This lack of care and consideration also shows in the details: One artwork, for example, features the equivalent of “Help yourself!”-signs for chocolate, and the art direction couldn’t be bothered to check that the non-English languages were correct. For example, the German “Bedienen Sie Dich” is incorrect in that it mixes formal and informal, and the incorrect reflexive pronoun; that should be “sich”; also: lower case. Okay, that admittedly was a nitpick.

Killing Lucia would be illegal; selling addictive substances would be illegal. The whole premise of the module DOES NOT WORK. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Either you have an intricate multipage backstory contextualized in history, or you can have a nonsense funhouse dungeon. Not both. And don’t get me wrong, this module takes itself, its villain, and its encounters 100% SERIOUS. This is NOT supposed to be funny. This is supposed to be serious business. Oh, and kidnapped children. Yeah…

It gets worse. The factory is steam-powered and FAR, FAR beyond ANYTHING that existed at the time; the tech there? Would have sufficed to revolutionized European warfare, industry, etc. – and Lucia makes dumb magic chocolate?? It makes no frickin’ sense. Even if you use the “she just wants to earn money”-angle, the premise makes no sense, as her tech would seriously make her the richest woman in Europe. The module, the villain, nothing makes sense whatsoever. Oh, and to completely dispel the entire “but this is supposed to be funny”-argument: If Lucia betas (no, not a typo) the party, she’s likely to turn some of them into sex slaves. Yep, that’d be rape.

Think this is funny yet?

Okay, so perhaps you don’t care about the glaring historic and cultural analphabetism breaking any form of suspension of disbelief. Perhaps you don’t care about the villain making no sense. Does the module still have something to offer to you?

Well, if you’re one of the people who purchase modules for the writing and/or to reminisce, let me come out and say that the prose is not exactly good. Now, I do like the bullet-point-y presentation, and I’m aware that, particularly in OSR-circles, there are plenty of people who do not want any purple prose. I get that. But there’s a difference between bullet points that inspire, and ones that don’t. At least in readaloud text (provided for ONE of the social interactions the module has planned, but not for any of the others), some flavor would have been nice. To give you an impression, here are two texts from the same NPC, when asked about guards or Lucia:

“Most of ‘em are friendly enough, but some are right queer. Jittery, shaky, always licking their lips. They don’t blink either. Whatever you do, don’t cross them. They’ll shoot you dead!”

“She’s an incredible woman. Bit frightening, to be honest. I’ve never met a more driven person. She’s a tad eccentric though. Armed to the teeth, too. No one dares cross her. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I’ve heard rumour that she prefers the company of women. How un-Catholic of her, but it’s not my place to judge.” (Blood in the Chocolate, pg. 26)

…yeah, the remainder isn’t too great either. I rest my case. It’s also inconsistent, as none of the other NPCs get that sort of treatment.

Now, ALL of that, the misery, the logic bugs, the shortcomings in the prose—all of that could still be remedied by the module actually playing well.

It doesn’t.

At all.

The module is a badly-crafted slogfest that absolutely astonished me. Let’s start with the human guards: They are 2nd level, and Lucia is a 28 hp, AC 16 boss; I’m cool with a tough boss, but I do not recommend this for first level.

Oh, and there are a few pygmies.

150 of them.

Now, granted, the adventurers can theoretically befriend the pygmies. To do so, you must fulfill two of the following prerequisites: Giving them food from outside is one; instantly learning their language with the skill is another…kinda logic buggy, but okay. Third would be eating cocoa (bad idea); fourth would be participating in a berry orgy. To the climax. Yes, the module specifies this, of all things. Sacrifice blood orgy participation does not suffice.

But even if you do befriend a pygmy, as soon as one of the mutated mosquitoes attacks and is killed, or once the adventurers try to deal with the tainted tree, the pygmies become hostile. Yeah, there is a good chance that this devolves into an atrocious hackfest that the party is very likely to lose in a slow, slooow, s-l-o-o-o-o-w and drawn out and bland way.

Beyond that, the most likely goal/hook for the party is to steal the recipe of Lucia’s chocolate for her competitors. There also is the issue of a musical door leading to Lucia’s room. If you thought that playing any Charlie-theme would work…WRONG. You have to play Greensleeves. Now, how do the adventurers find out about that? One half-mad, raped, berry-cursed female burglar is trapped in one room. Only…her section/write-up does NOT mention that she knows the melody. So, what if she died? If the party doesn’t find her? Tough luck. There are no clues, there is no note of Lucia singing the tune anymore. And even if the prisoner mentions it, the leap of logic is worthy of old Sierra games. This is not a well-designed module, and it does not play well if run as written. Can you try to salvage it? Yes. But why bother?

For the treasure? There is not a single piece of cool magical treasure. For the locales? You can probably improvise a cooler factory after watching the movies. For the aftermath/consequences? The adventurers can turn smurf-blue, become incredibly fat due to the diseases, etc., and get some mundane treasure. But not magic, not even one of LotFP’s usual high-risk/cursed ones. There is a surprising dearth of stuff do and interact with throughout the module, from rooms to NPCs to everything, and engaging with the dungeon actually is pretty consistently penalized, because pretty much everything is infectious.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are per se okay on a formal and rules-language level, but the text would have been sent back for revision from me. Layout adheres to a two-column full-color standard; artworks are full-color and a matter of taste. I disliked the full-color cartography and was disappointed by the lack of player-friendly maps. The pdf has no bookmarks, which renders using that version inconvenient and grating. The hardcover is formally well-made, as usual for LotFP.

I wanted to like this module so much. It could have gone in several cool ways:

Funhouse whimsy punctuated by grotesque horror. Genuinely realistic and gritty horror; a grounded what-if scenario. A political intrigue, set against the dynamics of competing patricians… Religious conflict (much more relevant than color of skin back then…) ...and so on.

Kiel Chenier’s module fails, no matter what measure I apply to it; as a historic module, it is a total mess and makes no sense; as a funhouse dungeon, it’s dreary, depressing, and not just grimdark fantasy/horror (which I like), but ventures into misery-porn (which I despise). As a psychosexual romp, it fails to do anything except the lazy cheapshots of rape and dead kids.

This module is pure misery, and it doesn’t even do that right.

For contrast: “Death Love Doom” does abject, nihilist misery right, and I respect it for that.

“Fuck for Satan” is a meta-troll and does the super-lethal dungeon in a rewarding way, and one of its angles is more psychosexual than anything herein.

“The Doom-Cave of Crystal-Headed Children” can be grim and is essentially a troll…but at least it is funny in a very bleak and dark way in its outrageous ideas.

I managed to get something out of all of the aforementioned books. I’m neither a prude, nor a reactionary, nor am I offended by “Blood in the Chocolate”’s blunt-force fetishism and edgelordism.

I am offended by it being the most egregious waste of a genuinely cool elevator pitch that I have seen in my entire reviewer career; I am offended that, thanks to this module, we won’t be getting any actually GOOD (or even mediocre) “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” horror module in the foreseeable future.

Final verdict? This gets +0.5 stars for the basic idea behind the multistage disease/poison effects, resulting in a final verdict of 1.5 stars, rounded up due to in dubio pro reo.

For non-collectors who are intrigued by weird premises and otherwise enjoy LotFP offerings: Get literally anything else in their catalogue; I’m pretty positive that you’ll have a better time with anything else you choose to get.

If you are a completionist collector and don’t have the book yet but want it for completion’s sake then act now, for its license runs out in December, which’ll make this book vanish.

As far as I’m concerned, I genuinely don’t know what to do with my hardcover. It’s the first LotFP-book I don’t want on my bookshelf. Any takers? My final note to this one going away would be “…and nothing of value was lost.”

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Ryan K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/03/2020 20:06:52

This is how adventure module books should be made. Playable as you read it and the adventure makes it so the system only matters if you want to go Rambo on everyone. While it's great as a stand alone game, it can also be introduced into a larger campaign, via the chocolate being available in stores as cheap rations.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Meagan W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/26/2019 10:07:40

I had played in this adventure online. I thought it would be fun to run myself. After reading the entire adventure, I was suprised to see so much unconsentual sex. The DM who I played this game with left out that aspect, and I will be leaving that aspect out. It seems like it was just thrown in for the horror factor, and that's not ok. Which is too bad because it's otherwise very interesting, scary, and I loved the adaption of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Yami B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/30/2017 12:41:49

Blood in the Chocolate is a very, you get what you pay for sort of affair. It's described as a violent, psycho-sexual romp through a magical chocolate factory inhabited by tiny, monstrous men and a psychopathic career woman. It's well written, quite creative, gruesome, gory, and quite spectacular in its skin-crawling horror. Which is exactly why I don't like it.

Now don't get me wrong, I like horror in my games. But Blood in the Chocolate is skin-crawling. For me, the fear of mutation, of degeneration and my own body crumbling around me but leaving me trapped inside is enough to make me want to run for the exit. And that's not a good headspace to be in when running a game.

So if you don't mind things getting a little screwed up, Blood in the Chocolate is great. It's well-made, well-designed, and springs from a place of legitimate love. I bought it, and was not disappointed. I just don't think I could ever run this. So go ahead and buy this if you have a strong stomach.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Michael G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/07/2017 16:54:45

The product description describes Blood in the Chocolate as "A psycho-sexual romp that pits characters not just against their enemies, but against their own twisting, melting, inflating, or poisoned bodies." It is also, obviously, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory turned into a crazy colonial-era dungeon crawl. And, moreso than any other adventure I've read, you get what it says on the tin. The dungeon hews to the plot of the 1979 film pretty closely. The Oompah-Loompahs have been reimagined as mutated cocoa-bean pygmies and the enigmatic (trademarked) Willy Wonka has been swapped out with a more sinister capitalist conquistadora, but by and large, if it's a scene in the movie, it receives a DnD-ification in Blood in the Chocolate. The result is a very recognizable factory, if less suitable for children. Blood In The Chocolate delights in turning your childhood nostalgia into twisty horror.

Most indie RPG authors seem content to rehash and emulate corporate products. But Blood In The Chocolate is unabashedly weird, and passionate, and kinky, and gruesome. If you follow Kiel Chenier's blog, you might correctly conclude that some of the horrors about to befall your adventurers are author appeal, but they are presented in a very clinical, body-horror sort of fashion, and mostly arise from the source material.

The editing is, unsurprisingly, better than any corporate product's. This is especially true of the PDF, which is clean and well-organized and well-hyperlinked. There's no filler: every line of text is useful to the adventure and Chenier never waxes purple. Just concise, vivid description. The illustrations are also marvellous-- beyond what you'd generally even see in a corporate retail book.

Lucia de Castillo is a singular villainess: ruthless but intelligent, stylish but irredeemable. Like the hit film was driven almost entirely by Gene Wilder's performance, I think that the success of the adventure very much depends on the DM's ability to portray her. Luckily, there's a full two-page psychological profile outlining her personality, desires and weaknesses, as well as a section explaining, quite neatly, how she managed to open a crazed chocolate factory long before chocolate should rightly have been discovered. Still, my sole negative note for this adventure is that it is an intimidating role for a novice DM-- but those with a few good adventures under their belts should have no trouble.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Raven S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/07/2017 08:18:36

Blood in the Chocolate, is a well written and well thought out adventure that can be used as part of a campaign or a one shot.

I read one review calling this adventure racist and that his players would walk away from the table instead of playing it, because of the use of the word Pygmy, we must remember we are dealing with the 17th Century and like almost every European back then they would call a people something they were familar with, anyone who knows thier history well recall that Native Americans were call Indians and that was only because they thought they had reached India.

Pygmy definition. A member of any ethnic group in which the average height of the adult male is less than four feet, eleven inches. There are Pygmy tribes in dense rain-forest areas of central Africa, southern India, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Clearly the reviewer did not actually read the description of why they were called Pygmies in the game or he would have not have written so harsh of a review and only gave it one star.

When we start calling a fictional adventure, with a fictional race racist, then something is very wrong, that means the person or persons walking away from a game that is set in the 17th Century where the majority of people were racist, that does not mean we should hide from it, it should be taken as a learning experience not to make those type of mistakes ever again.

There are movies and tv shows set in the 19th Century that do show racism, for example the TV show Underground and the movie Django, do people boycott those tv shows or movies? I think not! If we are to think this way then why do we play games such as D&D, Pathfinder or any other Fantasy RPG where there are races such as Dwarves, Elves and Orcs which show very much racism towards one another, I do not see anyone wanting to get up from the table and not play those adventures, so the same thing holds true with fine adventures such as this one.

Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/06/2017 20:03:15
I pride myself on running adventures in game stores and bars for my local rpg meetup group. I have probably run over 100 different sessions for the meetup and usually with strangers. I have never had as much fun running a game for strangers as I did Blood in the Chocolate. My players were laughing and crying with horror, I played up the Wily Wonka creepiness and wtf factor of the module and I have never had so much fun with a group. What Mr Chenier has done is create one of the funniest, strangest, and most outrageous adventures I have ever come across. Other reviews have focused on the content of the adventure so I will not retell it. But I want to focus on a few critiques I have read about the adventure First off anyone complaining about the Pygmies must have not read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book has the Oompa Loompas as nothing more then thinly veiled racist caricatures of aborigines or Africans. Mr Chenier has obviously not only read the novel but incorporated the original Oompa Loompas for his adventure but is doing it all in good fun and jest. He shows a great love and respect for not only the book but the wonderful 1970’s movie. Since this a LOTFP product it is not offensive as it is tongue in cheek, anyone offended by this really didn't understand what they were buying. And as a personal note, Political Correctness has no place at a game table. If we as Game Masters are afraid to run games for fear of offending people we are doing nothing but censoring ourselves and I game to push boundaries and challenge people not to just kill kobolds and orcs. Anyone looking for treasure or a traditional dungeon crawl style game in a LOTFP adventure needs to reassess their priorities, James Raggi chooses adventures that provoke strong and visceral emotions in gamers but also subverts most standard D&D style tropes and Blood in the Chocolate does this in a spectacular fashion. This is also one of the better organized adventures I have come across, layout, usability at the table and ease of use are all spectacular and more designers could learn from his style. I read the adventure once before I ran it with little prep and was very satified at how easy it was run. And the Villain is just plain awesome I feel people who don't like her simply couldn't roleplay her well and need box text to be able to get across her subtleties. Sometimes there are just evil people who you want to take out in a game and do not need a reason or tortured back story to explain it. My players played the adventure ran into her right at the end in her Master bedroom and escaped to a different LOTFP setting that I won't spoil here. If you like LOTFP, grindhouse horror, satire, Willy Wonka and can realize that this adventure is trying to not only be funny and memorable but also subversive you will end up having one of the best adventures you can buy today. I for one will buy anything Mr. Chenier publishes in the future. This is a new classic that I will be running for years and can't wait to GM again. My only complaint is that I didn’t get to experience it as a player. I have never laughed as hard running this game and it has created memories I'll cherish for years.

Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Mark G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/06/2017 13:07:07

This adventure is essentially the 1971 musical film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory written up as a dungeon crawl, except with some seriously unpleasant content added. The adventure's actual goal is to have all your PCs inflating like Violet Beauregarde because someone apparently has a thing about this. Pretty much all the hazards in the adventure have either a chance or a certainty of creating this effect.

Let's have an overview of some of the other delightful things in this adventure:

  • "Pygmies" who worshipped the master villain as a goddess because she was white, work as slaves in the factory, and attack the PCs with blowpipes. Now, ok, the Oompa-Loompas in the original Willy Wonka were pretty bad to start with, but it could have been improved a bit..
  • A scene where an NPC who is inflated like a blueberry is fastened to an altar being gang raped by 2d6 pygmies.
  • Two innocent children that the PCs can rescue from prison. A little while afterwards the PCs are asked to make a save and if they fail, there's a probability they'll be compelled to eat the kids. And yes, they're 100% real flesh-and-blood children, not made of chocolate or something like that.
  • Outside of the first 3-4 rooms, no treasure at all. Many of the rooms just have nothing in them that would be of interest to the PCs and there is no reason why they'd stick around.
  • A factory that makes chocolate which is incredibly popular all over the world and has been for years, even though it has a 10% chance of causing permanant and obvious debilitating side effects every time it is eaten. The adventure tries to hedge this by saying that it applies only to "chocolate eaten inside the factory" but nothing changes it when it leaves. On top of this, the reason it's so successful is because the factory is making chocolate bars 2 centuries earlier than they were invented in real life, but it turns out that the weird poisons and corrupted cocoa have absolutely nothing to do with this, and the factory would work perfectly well with ordinary stuff and presumably be just as successful.
  • Based on the above, a master villain who's described as being hideously evil even though she has no motivation to be nor any sense in being, and a quest that has the PCs trying to murder her and take over her factory because some other traders would like to own it instead. Oh, and the possibility that they'll meet her in the first room of the adventure and - since there is nothing in the adventure that powers up the PCs or weakens her, and a lot that harms the PCs - that's actually the best place to fight her.

The sad thing is that the layout of the adventure is great, the cheat sheets are useful, and the walkthrough comic is an excellent idea. So full marks for editing, but none at all for content.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Shane M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/22/2017 04:00:16

I know the reputation LotFP has so I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised, but reading Kiel's blog he seems pretty progressive. This adventure features some really glaring racist stereotypes - the 'pygmies'. The text weirdly emphasises they are not, in fact, pygmies, but they are short, brown-skinned, violently primitive foreigners. If I tried to run this as written at my table, half my players would walk out and not come back. Very disappointed.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
For anyone else reading, the description of what the pygmies are, and how they came to be that way, is covered in the preview pages. Judge the matter for yourself.
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Chelsea K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/31/2016 15:57:31

Best Lamentations adventure for beginners and new players!

I found this adventure via Tumblr and loved the premise. It's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but for fantasy roleplaying games.

This adventure is so much easier to read and use than most other adventure books. All the chapters are color coded, and every dungeon room entry has a miniature map of the room, so it's easy to describe at the table. It also comes with cheat sheets in the back of the PDF, which need to become a default feature in all adventure books!

The art is a perfect mix of colorful, cute, and gruesome that fits the adventure text so well. The cover is just the beginning. There's also a huge walkthrough map in the back of the book. It's worth the price of the book alone!

I haven't played many other Lamentations adventures, but I know they have a reputation for being really deadly and difficult. Blood in the Chocolate is definitely NOT deadly if the players are smart and careful. Almost none of the eight poisons and curses in the adventure kill characters outright (except the blueberry one, which can be deadly). Instead, they slow the characters down and turn their bodies against them, making combat and escape tougher, but more interesting. Suddenly normal activities like climbing up a wall or fitting through a doorway become puzzles to be solved. This is seriously the best part of the adventure. We ended up using one character, who was inflated like a balloon, to float across a chocolate river and carry us away. Another character, who was melting into taffy and was covered in sugar crystals, used her stretched out limbs to hold onto the rest of us. It was a blast!

5/5 Stars! This has quickly become one of my favorite adventure books!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Sean P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/08/2016 10:39:46

So good. The information is clearly laid out and easy to read. A wonderfully creative adventure that I cannot wait to run. Jason Thompson's art 100% sold it for me on this one, and been a fan of Kiel Chenier's blog for a while too. This was an instant buy.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by David W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/08/2016 02:20:14

Another high-quality nightmare from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

As a Referee, you'll enjoy running this. This is a very well designed module, on all fronts: the presentation & layout are excellent information design, the story itself has great historical-fantasy verisimilitude, and it's filled to the brim with some highly creative weirdness from the mind of Kiel Chenier. I felt ready to run it after only a quick skim, something I can't say about most modules at all.

There's minimal prep needed, if any is needed at all. There's a solid and simple "hook" to get a party involved, and although it takes place in a "real enough" historical Europe you could drop this into any Fantasy campaign just by changing a few names. There's even a thoughtful "Conclusions" portion, in case anyone survives. The superb "cheat sheet" style reference pages in the back of this should also become an industry standard.

It all involves exploring one fully-mapped and very well described location, and interacting with the people and things inside: an infamous chocolate factory. The factory itself is a funhouse of horrors, with plenty of opportunites for unforgettable death, destruction, and mayhem throughout. The fact that players will catch that this is all a riff on Charlie and the Choclate Factory right from the start means that the ensuing madness will be even more memorable, and a few elements of the adventure very directly play with this.

The bonus "illustration map" is wonderful, and depicts a step by step journey through the factory by a group of Adventuers, along with the numerous misfortunes that befall them. They have a 25% survival rate (give or take, depending on how you look at it). If your group is comfortable with grotesque candy-infused violence and hideous character death they'll have a great time playing this, and if you're looking for a one-shot that players will never forget this is absolutely a must-buy.

The rampant body horror and morbid black comedy is clearly the main attraction here, so make sure you're interested in that sort of thing before you dive in. There's a couple bits sexual content as well, but if you think you or your players might find that too objectionable it's all easily modified into something else, or simply left out entirely (You could actually replace all the "orgy" stuff with some kind of variation on a performance of the oompa loompa song, come to think of it. You'll see what I mean.)

Overall, a great module. If it's your kind of thing it simply begs to be played.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Zedeck S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/08/2016 00:21:06

Would be fun to play this with a bowl of Cherry Ripes on the table. A big, never-ending bowl.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Blood in the Chocolate
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/07/2016 20:55:00

This module not only is fun and clever, but easy to use. Seriously, there are some really nice reference bits in the back.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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