I ran this game for my brother and his childhood friend along with their now pre-teen sons. When asked to do so I was a little nervous because my own campaign takes up so much of my time so I plunged onto the DM's guild website and, after reading many reviews, settled on "Tower of the Mad Mage."
The adventure is a very easy read and doesn't take long to prepare. It's well laid out and a DM can easily skip over some parts if they wish for time or simplicities sake without losing much. The theme is classic D&D - goblins, magic, fighting and decision making. If you're looking to run something dark or heavy on roleplaying and intrigue, then this may not be your best bet. If, however, you want to start a standard campaign or wish for a way to introduce players to the game in a single night, then this is a great choice.
The players I had were a mixed bag of experience; my brother and his friend had played together in the 80's and I even found a couple of their Red Box dice to put out on the table. My brother has been teaching his son 5th edition, so that was easy. The final two players were new to the game entirely but had a good understanding of it by the end of the night.
"Tower of the Mad Mage" set things up nicely in that during the first day of adventuring you have several encounters which can be used to teach novice or rusty players most of what they'll need to know to play the game. One encounter requires a bit of roleplaying against authorities. The second, against wild animals, is an easy combat encounter which you can use to teach new players the basics of fighting. The third encounter is a bit of fun with a shapechanger which can teach players to expect the wierd; how they react is up to them but the DM is given an easy out to preserve the party. If the DM feels that the players already have a good understanding of the game's mechanics they can easily skip over any of these encounters and get to the meat of the adventure which is a nice dungeon crawl through a wizard tower. The difficulty of the tower is easily adjustable through the addition or subtraction of another creature, trap, or puzzle, but a DM rushed for time can feel comfortable that what's been laid out should be adequate for an average sized party. I thought the conclusion of the adventure would prove a bit much for the players, especially when they did something I didn't expect, but the old players reacted delightfully when I gave a description of a taloned paw piercing through the roof and did an excellent impression of King Arthur's knights fleeing the field in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
One note for DM's interested in using this as a start to a campaign is that there is a decent amount of magical loot in the tower. There is nothing game breaking or campaign derailing, but players may expect a similar stream of rewarads infuture adventures. Again, this is something that any DM can easily adjust to their liking. For a one-shot adventure it was great as I have yet to meet a player who doesn't get giddy over loot.
I'm afraid I have to end this on a sad note as my brother's friend passed away two nights ago. Though feared, it was not unexpected. I would be lying if I didn't say that this gave our session a somber feeling, or that I didn't have to sit by myself for a while and collect myself after the session ended. It was, though, an excellent experience as, for one night, they got to be teenagers again throwing dice at imaginary monsters. So I wish to give my thanks to the author for creating something well put together and helping me give them one last adventure.
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