A forgotten oddity, poorly presented (As of 6 Feb 2018)

Note: I do not have direct experience with the original publication of this module to compare with.

About the PDF: The PDF product contains one file, being a reasonably faithful scan of the original contents of the DLE1 module. It is NOT text-searchable, but it does have PDF-format bookmarks for each chapter. As with many of the Wizards Of The Coast scans of classic modules on DriveThru, the scan is quite low resolution - it looks fine on a screen but quality degrades sharply if you zoom or print it. Text is readable but quite faint. Interior pages are black and white only, with the exception of the maps and token pages, which are in full colour. Unfortunately the large colour hex map that is central to the adventure is reduced to a series of unconnected A4 pages with substantial white gutters and is completely unusable in the digital format. Customers will have to print their own copy and then stitch it together with scissors and sticky tape to make it work out of this release. The DM's copy, in black and white, is confined to a single A4 page and may be enough to run the adventure.

About the Print On Demand: The Softcover Color Book (Standard Heavyweight) is outwardly a gorgeous product that will look good on a shelf, with a disappointing interior. The physical object is the same width along the bottom edge as the original module but is about a centimetre taller. (In my printing that additional centimetre appears to be distributed evenly across the top and bottom of the printing.) This makes it a comparable size to the 1E/2E core books and will fit flush on the same shelf. The cover is a beautiful full-colour glossy print on thin card that feels very faithful to the quality and texture of the original book. The perfect binding creates a thin true spine (unlike the original module which merely came to a point) but there is no printing or book name on the spine, just a continuation of the cover colouring.

This is a 78-page perfect bound single volume. (I.e., the interior portion is NOT detachable the way the original module was.) The change in format means that the interior table of contents is no longer accurate. Maps are included in colour at the rear of the book but are again NOT detachable. The problems of the PDF version continue here, so again the large colour map is completely unusable. Interior text quality is good, and adequately readable, but it suffers from the original scan being low resolution, and from the generally cheap and unpleasant feel of this printing process generally. In one benefit that's nice but unlikely to be used, the front and back of the token pages are aligned perfectly, so if you're inclined to cut up your book to use the included tokens, it will at least work properly.

Overall it's adequate to run the adventure from, and a little easier to safely store than the original module, but collectors will still probably want to get their hands on the original

About the module content: In Search of Dragons is an unfortunate adventure, in that the adventure itself is actually quite well designed, mechanically, guiding the players through an interesting and varied series of encounters while feeling like an explorable sandbox - and yet, it doesn't feel right. Nothing about it feels like Dragonlance - the whole thing gives the air of fanfiction written by someone who's not quite read all the original material. There's a missing air of authenticity that makes the whole experience feel a bit dirty and shallow. Plus it ends with the unfortunate trope of having two NPCs punch each other to death while players watch and wish that anything they'd done actually mattered.

Maybe that's just me. If that doesn't bother you, and you're either okay with the ending or willing to fix it, there's hours of solid adventuring included here, supporting a lot of different styles of play and featuring tons of imagination and creativity. The relative obscurity of the module is actually a plus, in a way - unlike the Chronicles adventures, or other core Dragonlance supplements, which players who've read the novels may already feel they know the plot of, this is all virgin territory, and a great surprise for the Dragonlance player who thinks they already know their way around Krynn. The story takes place in Northern Estewilde, an area otherwise largely ignored in Dragonlance canon.

The module claims to support both AD&D 1E and 2E play, although the included statblocks are closer to 1E format than 2E. As with most D&D modules, you will need a copy of the core books to play. Most combats have statblocks but a copy of the Monstrous Manual for the relevant edition and some Krynn supplements and sourcebooks would not hurt. As far as I can tell the module (fairly unusually) does not specify what level range of characters it supports, but it appears to cover Levels 1 to 4 of 1E, or 1 to 5 of 2E. The story is continued in DLE2 and DLE3.