Reviews of Last Rites really started after the Savage Worlds release. One of the reviews is found at https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10451.phtml. This guys’ review was spot on. We made more than our share of mistakes on our first adventure. It really should have ended with a confrontation with the mummy. At the time we thought we would create a series of adventures about Dr. Heimglimmer. Not a great design idea on my part.
Some of the most pertinent parts of this review:
This is the first release from d20/Savage Worlds creators 12 to Midnight, and they stake out turf that I’m really happy to see someone address in gaming again: supernatural horror built on actual traditions and claims rather than invented universes. I’ve got nothing against invention, and have done my share of it, but there’s all this neat material lying around waiting to be used. I have a long-time fascination with accounts of the paranormal and supernatural – I don’t believe in much of what I read, but even taken purely as an account of what people experienced, even if the truth turns out to be wildly unlike what they think, it’s fascinating stuff. The guys at 12 to Midnight have sunk their mine right in the thick of it all, and brought up gold.
The props are great. There are photos of the family and various supernatural phenomena at work, and nearly all of them are excellent. I don’t know who played the tired mother, scared and worn girl, or detached boy, but they really brought the parts to life. The ghostly manifestation in the bathroom mirror, the mysteriously fogged photos in the Nazi’s house, and a lot else looked great. The revenant guardian didn’t work so well, I’m afraid; sorry, but it just wasn’t impressive. But that makes it the exception. Photo illustration seldom works in gaming, but here it was very much the right thing. The floor plans were also great: the houses felt entirely plausible, and marked out absolutely everything I needed to know in play. Finally, the newspaper article and miscellaneous handouts were great.
I must give special thanks here for a unique set of play aids: a downloadable set of 5-10 second MP3 files, each containing one of the ghostly voices characters might encounter in the course of play. They are creepy. Very well done, and awesomely atmospheric and mood-building. I’ve never encountered anything like it in play, and am completely delighted with them. The photos’ conformity with real-world parapsychological claims moves my production rating from average to good, and the MP3s move it from good to excellent.\
Another review came from https://www.enworld.org/threads/last-rites-of-the-black-guard.118988/#post-2011101
12 to Midnight might be a fairly new and fairly small d20 publisher but there’s no sign of any teething problems or inexperience in this product. It’s a professional PDF; bookmarks, a crisp and clear layout, no bloated images, a thorough table of contents near the start and the important printer friendly version. The colour photographs and the maps from the adventure are missing from the handout section in the printer version. It wouldn’t have been a printer friendly version if they had been there.
Most of the reviews were very positive, though there were some bad ones. At the time, as a new publisher, every review either got us excited to do more, or we took the negatives personal.
But we learned over time that any review, good or bad, was actually good for us. Every time we released something new, our back sales would increase.
So, for my friends out there, if you like a game, give it a review! It’s a great way to support the companies and publishers that you like. Some of the negative reviews actually helped us to get better. The first review that I posted part of here already also said this:
I’m not sure the timing for the final confrontations works as presented. It seems like the characters could end up locked in the Nazi’s basement fighting an undead guardian for a really long time, as measured in d20 combat rounds, until the ex-disciples showed up. I moved the triggering ward further out into the house at large so as to get them on their way more quickly. But this is a relatively straightforward twist. Somewhat more serious, at least for my group, is the fact that, um, when we worked on “paranormal investigator” characters, we spent precious little time on combat ability at all. I was actually running this in Hunter: The Reckoning with imbued PCs, so they had supernatural resources of their own, but typical un-fight-y un-powered characters could be in real trouble. If you run this adventure, encourage your players to think of backgrounds that can provide some combat experience and also a few weapons, or they’re awfully likely to end up dead on the floor themselves.
There’s also what I consider one highly unsatisfying element in the climax, with the Nazi’s soul getting away in mummy form in a way the PCs cannot stop or interfere with at all. There’s mention of later adventures planned for the guy to show up in, but I’d have felt I ripped off my players using this bit as is.
Absolutely true and we learned from the experience. Thanks for supporting us through the years and thanks to those of you have offered reviews and advice. It truly is appreciated.
