Secrets of Sokol Keep is overall a solid adventure in the AL Tyranny of Dragons questline. Played as part of a series, It wonderfully interweaves plot threads and interactions which hint at future scenarios, such as The Scroll Thief. While those hints risk weakening the plot when played on it's own, Secrets at Sokol Keep frames those foreshadowing clues in the present context, which can help keep the players engaged with the immediate problems coming from Sokol Keep.

Spoilers ahead By far, the weakest part of the adventure is the initial hook. The adventure presumes that the party already has an interest in Sokol Keep by beginning with the prompts which the players can receive by asking Markoth about Sokol Keep. The opening scene concludes after a bar fight between some sailors and a couple of mercenaries. The hook would be far better framed by beginning with the altercstion that leads to the bar fight. The party then has the information needed naturally to ask the local gossip about Sokol Keep if they so choose.

The ghost story aspects of the dead priestess are a charming addition, but the adventure refers to a tracker without giving much direction on the weight that certain actions should have on that tracker, leaving it up to the DM to create. This is not a bad thing on its own, but it would be useful to reference the DMG for recommendations on how to create said tracker.

That is the negative critiques out of the way. The story and NPCs are delightfully interesting, from the crotchety old sea biscuit ferryman to the well-meaning Keep servants. Attention to detail was given when leaving clues behind to show the story of Igan's expedition under the keep. The adventure's climax ends with a reasonable morale dilema, even if it is a little basic. At the end of the day, my group enjoyed this adventure almost as much as I enjoyed reading it.

Picked up this module during the AL sale, and ran it at an AL event! My players really loved the setting and hook, and found several creative ways to get around the opening bar brawl. (Fog cloud, anybody?) Characters were well written, and they got invested in finding out what happened to the main character and the source of the lighthouse's problems. Great adventure, fun loot, easy to prep, and very polished formatting. No complaints whatsoever!

I've run this twice, and it was a good beginning for new players. A part of an extended storyline that gets better as it goes. This is just Chapter 1, really.

A nice adventure for beginners and old fadison you met in the tavern. My players enjoy this but did want a little more maps. The run time is nearly spot on.

Hello!

Secrets of Sokol Keep is a fun adventure, and it works well with novice players as it does with veteran players.

First, a fault, is the call to action is poor. Basically, there might be an issue and the PCs might care, but they have to go take the initiative to get the ball rolling. One rework I have used was to have the PCs get caught in a tavern brawl and whether they are the culprits or not, the Black Fist Sergeant 'suggests' that they investigate the lighthouse issue on Thorn Island.

Next, the RP and Exploration pillars can be strongly represented on Thorn Island. The caretakers and the grounds they are responsible for being a tight but rich environment - the folks are easy enough to bring to life (even for novice DMs!) and the 'mystery' has enough points of interest to be, well, interesting.

And the 'dungeon' can be dicey if the players are not careful. Some dangerous mobs are here, especially for smaller parties. But, of course, DM empowerment means that maybe they aren't so bad.

This module adds to its season because it foreshadows another module, and helps build Phlan's lore in the minds of the players.

See discussion thread. Excellent adventure for new players, and can be easily adapted for weak parties.

Perfect blend of NPC interaction, mystery and puzzle solving, and dungeon crawling.

Many different "types" of players... mine tend toward "acting" and like being in role when they play, so NPC interaction and gaining information to solve problems / puzzles are important to them.

The dungeon below Sokol Keep was just the right size and "feel" for such an adventure. Many of the elements were there for the DM to add some sinister drama and sensory cues that the part was walking toward something that wasn't quite right.

My players loved this, and we took our time with this adventure - six hours of play, and it was satisfying.

This is my first foray to AL modules, so I won't include the AL mechanics in my review, just the module, and oh boy, this module has a lot of issues. Minor spoilers ahead. First, its very linear, without any meaningful choices but to funnel through the adventure as it is. It starts in a tavern (where else), then the party goes to a keep with a lighthouse where the light has gone off, then a small dungeon crawl below the fort and that's it. It probably has the right amount of content for one or two sessions, but the execution is horrible.

First of all, the module has way too much unnecessary text. For example, the tavern scene is your dime a dozen tavern scene with a bar fight. Yawn. The inn and the NPCs present are very vanilla, but they get one and a half pages of text for some reason. Fortunately we get a rumour section, which is always big plus, but basically this is the only redeeming quality of this scene and it is embedded in a wall of text but at least the designer used bullet points to present them. Another example, it takes more than a half page to describe an empty living quarter.The last scene is a linear dungeon crawl with 7 rooms, that also take up 3 pages for some reason.

So to sum it up, the module is quite a linear crawl with very limited interactivity other than fights, and the word count is very high. The module itself (not counting the references and the AL stuff) takes up 13 pages. I get that lot of these are readouts and aids for beginner DMs, but it is way too much clutter text. The whole adventure could probably have been condensed to 4-5 pages (not including handout and map), and it would have been easier for the DM to run it. If I were to run it, I'd have to cut a lot of unnecessary content or have to use a highlighter to highlight the important bits. The handout is OK, the map is functional, although it is strange that there isn't any map of the keep itself, only the dungeon.

So, final conclusion, this is not a good module, the encounters seem forced and provides very limited interactivity to the party. But if your group only want to smack some heads, it is as good as any adventure, I guess.

Before Season 8, I found that the lack of any particular reason to pursue the primary objective of this module made it a bit weak. With the Season 8 rule changes, though, it fairs a bit better as the "why would anyone take this job" issue is sidestepped (since you could apply it to any module).

The brawl in part 1 is largely pointless and should probably be skipped or cut-scened to make time for the much larger exploration/puzzle section in part 2 as it is the real stand-out in the module.

This was a fun module to play and run. One caveat on my review: I had to "wing it" with this one, as I had very little prep time (I confess I screwed up one whose day it was to DM, lol...). The beginning is a bit slow, and some of the investigation parts seem a bit shoehorned in. My players zoomed in immediately on what they needed to do, and it seemed that there was some "but wait, before you go to the island, don't you want to talk to anyone else?" So, when prepping this module, pay special attention to the first section and see if you can't smooth out some of the poking around town, the tavern, and the docks. Simplify and let the PCs find out what they need to know a little more organically.

Once on the island, the game picks up a little steam. More so once the PCs go into the temple. Of note, do make sure to a) take care with balancing the last couple encounters, as they can wipe a party, and b) pay special attention to the sinkhole. As a DM who does homebrew games and adventures, I give kudos for a well designed trap room. This one might not wipe a whole party (unless they're all careless) but it can kill off one or two with very little chance for the character to fight back. You might want to emphasize that the sides of the sinkhole are very slick.

Anyway, in the end, we all had lots of fun and I continue to be impressed with the quality of these adventures.

-Brian

My group loved this adventure! I used this with short notice to run a game when the DM could not make it.

This is a well written story that moves along quickly and here are two of the aspects that we found worked well; not a ton of DC checks our group finds that too many DC checks slows the game down especially in situations where only one or two players can really participate, the story allowed good interaction between the characters and the NPC's especially with the brawl at the Laughing Goblin. We used this module to introduce a new player to the AL system as it did not overwhelm them with too much technical details and the monters encountered were tier appropriate yet still challenging. The only bad thing, which could not be avoided, is this module has good drops as far as magic and gold that for the former is now unlocked but as the latter goes a ton of useless words.

I ran this at a store a while ago. The exploration focus in the beginning is a nice break from adventures where every other scene is given a combat encounter. The ghost was a fun way to point the players in the right direction, although I may have been slightly heavy-handed with her at times. My main complaint is just the lack of any sort of map for the island and keep. I don't need a detailed, gridded battlemap or anything, but just a rough-sketched layout of the keep, and possibly some of the surroundings, would have made exploration much smoother.

For new DM's this is 5 start stuff. Fairly simple, can run a bit long but nothing too bad if you keep player's focused. There's a few mechanics for offering hints to players. It has cats. The setting is great in my opinion, it's limited in scope but is developed.

Spoilers included in this review.

Sokol Keep is one of the first adventures for the AL line, and it features some issues that will crop up for many of these modules. While it has a solid story, it lacks a good hook to involve the PCs, and there's no good way for the players to learn the complex backstory and events that are driving the plot.

The lighthouse in a busy harbor being dark for a couple of nights seems like a big problem for a lot of people. The island is only 300 feet from the docks. PCs may ask why nobody has taken the 5 minute boat ride over there to just ask what's wrong. It makes little sense.

The module assumes the characters are so interested in the lighthouse (for no reason), that they will go to the Sokol family's rep and ask her permission to go out to the lighthouse island to investigate/fix it. "Please may we go investigate why your lighthouse is broken? No charge, of course."

My recommendation is to say the Sokol family rep has specifically called together and hired the characters to go investigate the trouble at the keep. She visited herself the previous day and talked with the groundskeeper, to discover that both the young noble and all of the guards are missing, which is of course concerning. She's keeping the trouble quiet for now (the Sokol family doesn't want anyone questioning their ability to take care of the lighthouse), and has told the local government it's a minor problem that will be repaired soon. She wants the characters to go over there and get things straightened out. This gives them a reason to go, and also lends some urgency to getting it fixed quickly.

Secondly, I'd give the spirit on the island a scene where she's able to fully manifest and talk with the characters, giving them the full backstory about the young noble, the corrupt guard captain, etc., at some point near the end.

I'm giving this module 4 stars, because it has its heart in the right place, and the issues above can be changed and worked around, but they really should have been caught before publication.

This was a fun little module. It was hard figuring out a good was to bring in the ghost as they never found anything that would have made her angry while simultaneously finding everything that they needed to solve the quest, but the story itself was intriguing.