Ran this as DM for an Adventurer's League open table.

Overview: This is a compelling, story-driven module with a good adventure hook, compelling main NPC, and resolution. It uses the mechanics of DnD to tell a story, and encounters to build a sense of location and purpose better than most Tier 1 content. The story is good enough, that when played / DMd well, I was actualy able to bring some of my players to the point of tears. It features roleplay, exploration and combat, and can be flexed between about 3 hours to 6 hours of runtime (mostly by expanding or contracting the "duneon crawl" component).

Three Pillars

• Combat: Reasonable variation. One epic set piece, several smaller encounters which are less meaningful but at least show a variety of interesting creatures. Objectively one of the weaker parts in terms of players but completely forgiven becuase the combat feels like it makes a difference rather than exhaustes the resources
• Roleplay: Both NPC interaction and player interaction is encouraged, but not challenging. More "If they think like a character, how would they act" than "Mercer-level voice acting and character performance". Assisted through combat and exploration
• Exploration: A good dungeon (forest setting) that rewards exploration by exposition. Other "exploration" pillar pieces tie into the roleplay (NPC interaction / challenges).

Why to buy: One of the best executed stories in a module I've seen, making use of all three pillars to build a concise but moving narrative

Why to avoid: Combat-centric players will not find as much to do here (except prompt anihillation by an NPC if they're a bit too stabby). Also slightly more complex player actions, so although well-rounded I wouldn't use as an "intro to DND" session.

Overall 5/5 definetly buy; consider getting the other modules (which 've yet to run) to support the Author's team

An excellent adventure but requires some DM flexibility and can be a very challenging combat for low-level (<3) characters Pros: Strong story-based narrative, set in one of the best campaign settings (Ravenloft), poses alignment and motivation based challenges to the party Cons: Some challenging combat encouters, some railroading, time tracking required of GM, potentially disempowering ending, runs "long" (about 3-4 hours) Challenging themes: Violence against women, Relationship breakdown, Lynching/Violent "justice"

I found two things were quite important to set the tone 1) Build up the raveloft Aesthetic; everything is grim, "good" is relative, survival is not guarenteed. Flavour things like spell effectys, the Mists, and you can sell the tone better. This setting is a prison of the dark powers and will toy with the characters 2) Ensure you include the building storm. The party should not have time to get to the ïnvetigatio"and back to town before it hits

How you deliver the denoument is also important. As a DM, you may want to over- or under-sell "the Beast's"situation; I chose to play it more as an inevitability and forced upon them, and also tried to introduce more narrative / motivation to the other victim NPC. Importantly, you will need to think about how the characters would react to this, and seperately ensure you have appropriate safeguards around the players to allow them to explore this.

For adventurer's league, it is now spun off into it's own campaign setting (As of AL PLayer Guide 13), but at least briefly you could get back with 20 downtime days (perhaps run "the Seer"as well)

This is an excellent and rounded adventure, involving mostly combat and exploration, with an opurtunity to introduce players to good dungeoneering, ability checks, and roleplaying including outside combat or NPC interaction. The module is structuredd to limit player resources by omiting long rests (but just enough to stave off exhaustion), make decisions about their priorities, and allows utility spells to shine. The combats are interesting, although a "Strong"or "Very Strong"group may be able to overcome them quite easily. Player choices have impact on the story (although you can choose to run an additional/the alternate combat, there are no additional rewards for th eplayers) With a 7-pplayer group wewith a junior DM (Me) managed to play this in 3 1/2 hours