Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Unholy Night

An adventure by Grant J. Fleming, levels?
Written for Mork Borg
  This is probably my least-favorite Crapshoot Monday tradition…the Monday before Christmas, I look to review Christmas-themed adventures. They’ve typically been rather abysmal, obsessed with fighting Santa and subverting expectations. Joy. So what do I do to myself? I find a ten-page MÖrk BÖrg horror adventure so I can just smush together all my least favorite things at once. Ho. Ho. Ho. At least its written in normal single-column prose and there’s a lack of the usual yellow vomit and terribly ugly art. We’ll call that progress?
   The story, and OH BOY are we going to railroad you onto this story, is that the PCs get caught in a blizzard after chasing promised treasures rumored by a trader named Mr. Finch. They find refuge and are welcomed into the home of an old couple, Carol and Klaus, with their children Rudy, Donner, and Wilhelmina. They’re cannibal serial killers who work for a nightmare meat trader who sells tainted meat that turns people who eat it into ghouls. Carol’s an antlered demon. The little girl is also a demon but supposed to be played cute and adorable? Warning the town does…something maybe? Its all extremely vague. Also if you TPK then everyone wakes up cold and serving the trader guy as ghouls. Mostly, I think the adventure was written to riff off standard Christmas song titles, like:
OH COME, YE UNFAITHFUL
LADY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE
SLAY RIDE
HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING
DO YOU FEAR WHAT I FEAR
CAROL OF THE HELLS
YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MR. FINCH
And, of course, SILENT NIGHT
   Charming. Clever. If you like this kind of content, you’ll love this module. Also, if you like this kind of content, please leave.
   Yeah what I liked will be sparse but I did appreciate the TPK outcome with dawning horror, that’s good for a one-shot. Not sure if “liked” is the correct word, maybe grudgingly admired.
   What can be improved besides not embarking on this terrible venture in the first place? First, this is a Murgle Blork adventure, so of course the players will assume the older couple and the rest of the family are murderous serial killers. Advice to distract players if they’re growing suspicious is ridiculous, everyone knows this is the trope. The agency-stealing crap like drugged schnaps coupled with a “try not to TPK the party while attacking them out of a deep sleep” is completely unneeded. Blurk Meegles are playing this for gore-drenched death metal horror vibes, they’re going to be all on board getting ganked. There’s a potential investigative story here if presented a different way, but as it is the players are just expected to sit around for magical storytime.
   Okay, I took a break and hammered my frontal lobe multiple times with a claw hammer while listening to screamo at max volume. Having now gotten myself into the headspace to mentally model the average Mook Booger, I’ll say the best use case is to strap your party onto this railroad and choo-choo them all the way. Trust me, they deserve worse even than this.
   Final Rating? */***** because this lump of coal in my stocking is black and crumbly and completely without value. Piffle and humbug.