The premise of The Carnival of the Damned is fantastic. The characters are a band of villagers trapped in a mist shrouded carnival searching for the children of the village.
Unlike most funnels, this adventure has an elaborate back story, that the party will discover as they move through the dark carnival. It's a tragic tale of a jester finding and losing love, a unicorn, and the dark bargain he made to a mad clown god to save his life. There are several items found throughout the adventure to relay this story.
The carnival includes 28 twisted encounter locations. My favorite locations are the Petting Zoo (which includes killer bunnies and transparent cow) and The Tattoo Parlor (where you can get some magical ink). In addition there are 12 random carnival encounters. There are multiple paths to take and to finish the adventure (including built-in justified railroading), so this can be played with the same group multiple times and the experience will be different.
I would be doing the book a disservice if I didn't mention the art. It's thoroughly creepy and fitting. I love every piece. It's menacing, but often humorous, which is a great coTo folks that like horror adventures I highly recommend this one. It contains excellent writing, cool art, and a great story. You can run it multiple times and it will still feel fresh. There are so many unique monsters and magic items, you can pull from this for a long time. Finally, DCC is very rules lite (when you look past the charts), so this one wouldn't be hard to convert to your favorite variation of D&D.
You can grab print copies of The Carnival of the Damned here.
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