One of my go to adventures for a fun, crazy time. For those looking to run it for the first time, its best to read the mechanic for the final scene and plan on how youre going to represent it to the players, especially if you are using a battle map.

Suffers from the railroad of being captured and bad maps. First time I DM this the players asked me if this was a rail road to capture. At least triple the number for Red Plumes in the capture encounter and make sure they are doing subdual damage. The arena map needs to have the distance from the center increased. One of my groups finished it in 3 rounds.

Ran this last night, party were quick to find info and surrendered pretty quickly after 2 of their number got knocked out in first round. The battle against the 'Dark Alliance' didn't seem to go anywhere for this party (Druid hangs back and supports with ranged attacks but only really has produce flame?) The Quippers were savage though, so much damage and they even got a crit on one of the halflings. The last fight was rough on everyone, between the guards and the bbeg bonking people on the head with a greatsword. Pretty good, will have a better opinion of it when I run it a second time I feel.

Really interesting module. I loved the role play of an encounter they are not meant to win. Some really great NPC's with some debth. The way that this is built to a climax where my players actually cared about the last battle, it was personal for them.

Great module for DM's who like a bit of role play as well as combat.

The first combat in this module can take several hours if your players drag it out. There have been some cases where they have actually won and I've had to interject some alternative method of getting them to the next section. I really enjoy running and playing this module, being put up against a challenge you're not intended to win is something I like.

I really enjoyed the modules of this season, my only issue is that the APL of the modules seem very low for the encounters listed. If not for a juducious application of "DM descretion", I would have continously had multiple TPKs on my hand.

It was hard for my players to engage much with it, no mayter how hard I tried. My players have been railroaded before, so they weren't too bothered by me trying to focus and push them.

So, some railroad is required for this module.

The investigation the players will do will not be relevant enough to the next chapters in the game (unless you run Option C - without them being captured), so do hurry through these, as the fights further ahead may take up significant amounts of time.

By the end of 1 hour, you should try to get the PC's into the ambush battle, and move on with the rest, as there are still 2 significantly large fights aside from it. Pacing is key, but it can be a fun module on the combat side of things.

Do get creative about the Bell platform, as most STR characters may be able to jump from their initial platform to the center platform.

My players did not enjoy this adventure at all. As other reviewers have noted, there's a hard railroad in this adventure. I had the quest-giver foreshadow this, and the players immediately recognized that the ambush was overwhelming in an attempt to railroad, but they insisted on fighting through it anyway. They were so annoyed that I felt like I had to skip over most of the middle part to just get to the action of the arena and finish up the adventure. Even then, one of the players sat out the fight because they were so annoyed by the railroad.

Redeeming features:

• If you're going to do any follow-ups that involve the Red Plumes, this will make sure the players hate them with a burning passion.
• The arena set-up was cool (but the map was extremely hard to read when printed out, and I missed some of the important arena features).

So this one. I would recommed informing the party as to what is supposed to happen. Let them know that they need to be captured. Otherwise, they will fight to the death and either kill themselves or the ambush. If they do wipe out the ambus, get creative. The goal is to make it to the pits. I have found that giving clues in the begining of the module as to where the halflings are helps

Not the easiest module to run, you will need to railroad your players into getting captured and if you have some above APL with a suite of spells at their disposal it isn't too difficult for them to escape the ambush. The combats are tough, challenging and outside of the initial ambush are fun. The descriptions of Hilsfar and the Red Plumes are well done and by the end of the adventure your party should bear a significant amount of ill will towards the antagonist factions involved.

Proceed with caution:

• hard railroad - the characters need to be captured (and you can't let them escape) - players hate this
• a memorable last fight in a gladiator arena with super cool mechanics - takes a lot of time to prepare and play it through mentally, be ready to fudge dice to make it interesting (and to avoid slaughtering lvl1-2 characters); the arena fight might get rather trivial if characters have exceptional mobility or teleportation spells such as misty step - best to run this for characters without these abilities
• few roleplaying opportunities
• the adventure is tweakable to fix some of the railroading issues, but requires a lot of work and soliciting ideas from the internet - one should not need to do this in a paid modue
• I would advise against running this as a novice DM

Fun module to run. Combat-heavy, and that first major encounter is a doozy. Definitely NOT for level 1 characters, especially with the way the last encounter goes. Overall, it had good pacing, though it has the potential to run faster than the 4 hours.

Rather fun module to run although it gets pretty linear on some parts. Definitely not for 5 Level 1 PCs though. Encounters are tough (intentionally so for the early encounters) and might be difficult for the party to overcome. The scenarios were intriguing but my players felt as if they were pulled along a one-way road. The conclusion of the module felt lacking and abrupt but ties in with the rest of Season 3 nicely.

This is a nasty adventure (subject matter wise), and it is a great intro to Season 3 - Hillsfar. If your players do not absolutely despise the Red Plumes by the end of the adventure, then you have not done your job. I played up the nastiness to set the tone for the rest of Season 3. A simple investigation turns into much more, and the final fight in the Hillsfar Arena is truly epic. The players think they've got it made from the start of the arena, but wait there's more! And then there's even more! Plus the NPCs set up the rest of Season 3 nicely.