The Butcher of Alcross is a short adventure for 4th level characters by Joseph Crawford of Goblin Stone.

This is pretty much a ghost story, the players find an isolated house inhabited by a family – and then weird stuff starts to happen and they must find out what the matter is. This particular adventure can be played as a 1-shot right after The Chapel on the Cliffs, since it takes place in the same area, but of course you can also have it in pretty much any somewhat remote location. Perhaps i should have saved this review for Halloween, but it’s not like there’s an embargo on horror until October anyway.

The adventure begins with the party finding shelter from a storm in a farmhouse, where the Williams family resides. Immediately, things begin to get weird – the family ignores certain topics of conversation, things in the house flicker or change, et cetera, all the hallmarks of spooky ghostly stuff. This is supplemented by an “Illusion Breakdown” random table, that I really like as a concept, making sure that each player sees a different thing and making things all the more confusing for them. Things begin to escalate after that and since i don’t want to spoil the adventure, I’ll just say that the players have a variety of ways to resolve the situation, especially depending on how thorough they were in investigating.

The adventure includes a map of the farm (by Benoit de Bernady), which can also be used as a generic location in other circumstances as well (you might not think much of this, but i always like having more resources available to me). There’s also some very nice art here and there, including of course the cover page, by Raluca Marinescu.

Overall, The Butcher of Alcross is an excellent one-shot horror adventure which i wholeheartedly recommend – it’s not an action-packed roller coaster, but it’s atmospheric and can have some intense roleplaying moments.