Well, Project_Lamordia just went live on D&D Beyond, and while I initially thought I'd wait to see some reviews, I decided to be that person who actually checks a thing out and lets others know about it.
First off: what it is:
This is a $15 digital adventure pack with three short adventures that can reasonably be done as one-shots, or strung together as a sort of 1-5 or 6ish campaign (though if you actually string them together, these are going to be some quick levels).
The adventures all take place within the cavernous headquarters of Mordenheim Kinetics, a high-tech, modern facility that reimagines the domain of Viktra Mordenheim as some kind of monstrous Silicon Valley tech company (getting real Ex Machina vibes, honestly).
The booklet suggests various ways that you can place this in relation to the broader Ravenloft setting, or potentially make it a location in a "Gothic Earth" setting, which would be a kind of D&D-horror-themed version of the real world.
Personally, I think the way I would run this is just make it one version of the actual Lamordia setting from Ravenloft. Given that each domain is a nightmare realm unto itself, with differing iterations of it depending on the story that you want to tell, I think a version of instance of Lamordia in which it is this modern hi-tech version of itself doesn't break the overall worldbuilding rules of Ravenloft.
Frankly, this supplement plays into my tendencies when running D&D, where I often incorporate modern technology and genre tropes to exist alongside the dragons and knights. But I think in this case, they actually encourage you to truly commit to a modern aesthetic, with a ton of re-skinning to make things fit with the modern feel. A bullseye lantern is just a flashlight, and a greatclub might be a baseball bat.
If you already own Van Richten's and Horrors Within, there's a bit of overlap here. The Reborn are presented as an option, for example, and there are a number of Dark Gift feats, though there are also some new backgrounds worth considering.
One thing that was left out of Horrors Within that we see here is a revamp of the Survivors mechanic introduced in Van Richten's (which I was just writing about a few posts ago). The Survivors here are built for this modern setting - though I do have a few quibbles, like giving the Lamordian Mercenary a Baseball Bat (greatclub) as a weapon when I feel like if this is meant to be a private security officer, giving them something like a truncheon or nightstick instead (maybe using Mace stats) would be more in keeping with the flavor.
I've read two of the three adventures, and these truly are little 5-room dungeons (I think they have literally five rooms) that represent different floors of the expansive facility. The goal in each adventure is simply to escape the facility, but escape is not so easy given that even if you get out of the building, the fog around it becomes denser as it turns into the Mists of Ravenloft.
Some elements that I really appreciate and give it some of that modern flare: in the first adventure, the party is given a task by Viktra Mordenheim, but they only ever speak with her over a phone. Likewise, there are audio cassettes that provide important information for the quest (there is, though, I think an editing error, as the first adventure I think ought to only have one cassette, but its location is listed in two places. I'd just stick it where the text of the audio on the tape is actually written, though this other cassette could have some other spooky stuff on it.)
Again, re-skinning is the name of the game, and they handle stuff like armor by describing materials like plasteel - something that perhaps gives this a bit more of a near-future sci-fi feeling than a truly modern one (though they still use audio cassettes).
The adventures are quick, with just a couple combat encounters, but as anyone who has tried to run a short adventure intended to be a one-shot can attest, players will absolutely fill in the gaps and make what you thought you could do in a single session into a four-session thing.
While some stat blocks will look familiar if you've got Horrors Within (CEO Viktra Mordenheim, at a glance, looks nearly identical to her HW version, and Adam appears to be a Mordenheim's Monster like the stat block there) there are also some original ones, with the various Echoes and Created, as well as stats for the three von Aubrecker siblings, who are all warped researchers working at the facility.
While this thing is a quick little digital booklet - the kind of thing you'd expect to get staple-bound for AD&D or 2E back in the 80s or 90s - it does present some interesting ideas, including this Gothic Earth setting.
What this isn't really doing is a radical reimagining of the game's systems to change it for a modern setting - it relies a lot more on re-skinning (at one point, the players can find an envelope of cash which is described as 100GP - as 100 dollars.) Still, this feels like a fun experiment from the D&D team. Maybe I'll get a chance to run at least one of these adventures some day.
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