I bought each of these two vintage V&V adventures from FGU a couple of months ago or so. 

I had wanted to buy "Tackle the Totem" as a kid but only saw it in a store once back 30+ years ago, and then it was gone forever.

I had the chance to read "Tackle The Totem" this morning, during the pre-dawn Saturday morning dark.  I loved it!  I had no idea that it had an 'Island of Dr. Moreau' angle, as well a sort of neo-Nazi evil organization at its heart. I loved the art by Don Heck, too.   This instantly vaulted to one of my top 5 (or so) favorite V&V adventures. I wish I would've had the chance to play this as a kid.

It would seem like the weekend before Halloween would be the ideal time to read over "Terror By Night" as well.

Does anyone have any thoughts about either or these vintage adventures, and./or interesting anecdotes from playing through them.  Since I'll never personally play either one, I'd really enjoy reading any such feedback.

THE ONI wrote on Oct 29^th, 2016 at 11:16am:


Thank you.  I did get a chance to read "Terror By Night" today quickly.  I liked the core idea of a vampire and a traveling circus, and really liked the interior artwork by a young Pat Zircher.  But from the start I found myself wondering, "What's the point?" The author states explicitly in the Introduction that the vampire won't be captured/killed.  The text later also notes that the adventure does not contemplate the vampire turning the PCs into vampires, even temporarily.  And the whole thing seems to be the vampire manipulating/leading the PCs into a little 'dog and pony show' from a distance so he can learn more about super heroes in general, without any real malintent toward the PCs or anyone else. Maybe I missed something critical because I read it so quickly today, and thereby formed a mis-impression?

dan2448 wrote on Oct 29^th, 2016 at 6:34pm:


I never read the adventure but I did have a PC play in it. I do not honestly remember much about it but I do remember that we did have a PC turn in to a Vampire.

Wally Spec, The Dark Warrior lost his powers for a while and became a Vampire instead. Fighting Crime and living off Rat Blood for a while was interesting

First up, "Terror by Night".  I remember picking this one up off the spinner rack at a new game store I'd discovered in Seattle, back in the mid 80s.  I'm pretty sure I ran it for my Sentinels campaign, but I don't have all of my records from that time, and I don't recall any details.

The second time I ran it was for Justice Force, the initial group in my long-running Guardians campaign.  They were headquartered in Miami, so I brought the circus to Florida, and used an NPC (a romantic interest of one of the PCs) as the foil.  One small change I made to the adventure was to replace the creepy Tim Vanesk with the character Batwing (who looked just like him).  Batwing was a really weak PC that I occasionally played.

#19 – The Big Show – Vampire Victor Von Heinrich, using the alias of Thomas Prest, brings his circus to Miami to win the heart of television reporter Jessica Tory, as well as to study and test the local superhero team, Justice Force.  Mirage, Sinder, Scorpio, Panther, Tempest, and Spectre attend the show and enjoy a variety of entertainment.  Along with the routine clowns, acrobats, and exotic animals, they observe a number of unusual performers: voodoo master 'Zuvembie Lord', strongman Albert, and albino Batwing with an act of flying bats; Prest himself serves as the charismatic ringleader for the main event.  That night, Tory awakens to an unidentified dark-clad intruder in her home who knocks an intervening policeman into a coma.  The heroes investigate and find a ticket to the circus and bat hairs.  The following day the circus proceeds normally, but in the evening a movie shoot at a nearby cemetery is thrown into chaos when real zombies begin emerging from the earth and attacking extras made up as the undead!  The group is called in and swiftly stops the paranormal threat, but the obvious suspect ('Zuvembie Lord' Billy Jimson) confesses to being a fraud and has a solid alibi.  Prest is unavailable for questioning, sleeping in a coffin inside a funhouse complex beneath the circus grounds.

#20 – Terror by Night – After the third and final night of the circus, Prest meets with Tory and takes her to dinner.  Much later, at her home afterwards, she screams and faints.  Prest/Heinrich materializes from a mist on her front lawn and challenges the vigilantes.  Justice Force confronts the villain and skirmishes with him briefly.  Heinrich then turns into a mist, defies them mockingly, and flies away as a bat.  They follow him to the entrance for the Hall of Mirrors on the circus grounds, where he disappears inside.  The vampire exits via a secret hatchway, and the entering heroes are magically transported through enchanted mirrors to the mastermind's funhouse deep underground.  The adventurers journey through traps, puzzles, and mazes, and battle robotic versions of a Minotaur, gargoyles, and Heinrich himself.  Near the end they are separated into individual rooms with holographic environments and robot monsters.  Mirage squares off with the Creature from the Black Lagoon in a watery marsh; Tempest confronts Frankenstein's monster in a mad scientist's laboratory; Panther engages a werewolf on foggy moors; Sinder is attacked by a beautiful female vampire in a coffin-filled crypt; Scorpio tackles a clay golem in a dank cavern; Spectre battles Zuvembie Lord and actual zombies in a jungle clearing.  After defeating their adversaries, the team confronts Baron Heinrich again in a large chamber.  As their host turns into a mist, the group is engulfed by a cube-shaped room.  It deposits them on the surface where the circus is being taken down.  Batwing chooses to abandon his act and adventure alongside the others.  Epilogue: One week later Tory receives a letter in the mail from Heinrich.

Later on, on numerous occasions, I (and, later, another GM) did a few ongoing storyarcs with vampires, using the statistics and rules provided in this module to create them.

Then I ran it again, just a few years ago, for my son's Vindicators campaign.  The circus came to his alternate version of San Francisco in that one; IIRC they made their way through the "monsters" without too much trouble, and I think the main vampire eluded capture (as usual).

Fantastic summaries of prior game action, Doug!  I really enjoyed reading how these published adventures 'played' in reality.

Reading the "Terror By Night" game summary caused me to reflect that, to be fair, my somewhat harsh assessment of the adventure after merely reading it over once should've been tempered by an added note that, as a kid in the 1980s, I doubtlessly would've gotten good use out of it as a 'monster manual' of V&V stats (with Zircher illustrations) for the Universal Monsters (maybe omitting only the Mummy among the most famous).

I also really enjoyed the cynicism of the note about the Congressman/Purple Mask being acquitted, in the end.