solid adventure. very straight forward but with enough odds and ends to keep it interesting. great one shoot

A good adventure, messy around the edges

MT Black's more recent work - such as House of Dagon - is generally stronger than his earlier releases, and the trend continues here. Horror at the House of Dagon offers a traditional Lovecraft-inspired seaside horror story, built on the traditional 5E investigate / explore / fight structure, with just enough unique to keep it feeling like an original adventure rather than yet another trip to Innsmouth. It's theoretically balanced for four characters of level 3, but as with most of MT Black's work, you'll need to fairly ruthlessly optimise to beat the combats at the intended level.

The strengths here include: (a) a wide cast of characters, many of whom have detailed roleplaying hints, offering players multiple paths to find the information they need in the investigation phase; (b) combats featuring rare and unusual monsters, who make sense in context, so that your players won't just be fighting their five hundredth kobold; and (c) an attractive and concise presentation, inlcuding a full-colour default PDF with eye-pleasing maps, and a greyscale printer-friendly version.

It's a good module - despite having a fairly linear spine, players are unlikely to feel railroaded, and there's plenty of capacity in each encounter to engaged with in it a variety of ways to suit a range of playing styles.

But it's not without its flaws. First and most noticeably, the final encounter is not remotely balanced for a level 3 group, and can result in upwards of 12 monsters on the board - maybe many more - none of them trivial. Options exist - and appear to be intended - to use stealth or other tricks to mitigate the difficulty, but they require being willing to leave multiple innocents to ongoing pain and imminent death while the party plays it safe. Even with these, it can be a tough fight if the party haven't long rested immediately prior (and the adventure's urgency encourages them not to) or if they get bad luck in the opening turns. DMs of roleplaying-oriented parties will need to tune the climax down a little.

Secondly, the adventure leans heavily into the irritating trope of having a complicated backstory that the party has no way to learn about. No NPC the players encounter is able to tell them what is actually happening in the story, and for it to not simply be a bunch of strange random happenings it requires a little work from the DM to insert that exposition. Even so, there are a number of random coincidences that players will need to be reassured genuinely are coincidences.

Thirdly, the adventure actively advertises that it leaves loose ends, and it certainly does. They're intended as a feature, not a bug, and they can be - House of Dagon offers an undefeated mastermind and a home-base village to fight her from if players want to extend the adventure into a campaign. However, GMs will need to clearly flag at an early stage which enemies will and will not actually turn up in the module, to stop players hoarding resources for an encounter that never eventuates and to allow them to prepare properly for the difficult one that actually does.

All that said, this is a solid and recommendable module, and a good buy at a very reasonable price point.

Superb! I ran this adventure last night for a group of 4, 4th level characters. We were engrossed in the story and the action for 5 straight hours! The NPC's were colorfull, the plot smooth and well written. There is still plenty of opportunity for an enthusiastic DM to stretch his acting/improvisational muscles to add to the "Creep Factor". The combat encounters make sense within the context of the story, with the final blowout providing a tense "do or die" rhythm. I have to take my hat off to Mr. M.T. Black for this one; as my cynical 18 year old son was visibly shaken by the introduction of "the Red Tree". Atmosphere and detail provide the icing to this delicious tale of horror. Take the time to add both, your players deserve it. Thank you once again Mr. Black.

This was a really great adventure.

It has a great hook at the beginning to draw the adventurers into the story, great NPC's to interact with, and challenging yet rewarding combat encounters.

Perfect for new and experienced DM's.

I'll be looking for more of M.T. Black's work soon.

(my first language isn't English, so prepare for mistakes)

I ran this adventure in 2 sessions, both roughly around 6 hours, for 6 lvl 2 players. It was a blast.

Presentation: lovely presentation, I appreciate when there's an attempt to make the module look good, and they sure delivered. My only complaint is a lack of artwork, specially of the final encounter.
There's no map of the town of Midcliffe, which I thought was a real shame, but there was no real need for it either. Also, note that you really need the MM, since no stats are provided besides the final boss.

Adventure: From the investigation in town, to the hellish trek accross the swamp, to the final encounter, it was pure fun. I found most of the encounters appropriate with a little tinkering for the lower levels and big number of players, but some of them are downright deadly. The final one in particular, while very different, engaging and tense, had to be modified or the result was a guaranteed TPK.

There's a lot of potential plot hooks too, with possible saved villagers, the Green Lady, the whole cult of Dagon.

In short, it's a great little module I used to kickstart my own campaign and thankfully, it was perfect for that.

Full disclosure: I was one of the DMs who playtested this material.

This is definitely one of the adventures that showcases the creator's level of ingenuity. The final battle is really engaging and there's a lot of roleplay opportunities in the given town. The encounters are well designed and go beyond the simple "boo! now kill me" situations.

Another main strength is the writing, which promotes taking things a little slow and to encourage a dark and gloomy atmosphere.

Definitely one worth checking out!