I ran this last week (online, thanks COVID...) and it was great for both myself as DM and fun for the whole party as well.

The puzzles went over very well as did the exploration. I particularly enjoyed playing the NPCs in this one and the final battle went very well for our adventure.

In order to make it more exciting I started by maxing out Bootblack's HP as I have a couple of party members who could have downed her in one round easy. Next she cast seeming on one of the Champions and made them look like her since she knew the party was coming. so she could hide and manipulate the battle for a couple of rounds. The next part surprised me big time as before the fight started the party spent 45 minutes arguing about which one of them would sacrifice themselves to save Fulton Stormweather, It came down to 3 party members who wanted to give up, but eventually the Barbarian got tied of the bickering and just attacked. Before the combat started though they grappled with some tough moral conditions and it payed off big time for role play and I could not have been happier with the result.

This mod could go a bunch of different ways by the end and that is part of what made it so much fun for us. Top marks!

Another creepy fey adventure from Alan Patrick that is fun. The adventure having different encounters helps with replayability, which I always appreciate in AL mods, since I often run mods multiple times. My one complaint is that the troll fight is neat on paper, but in practice it tends to turn into a bit of a slog. And there's some editing issues with the final boss, who also often dies on the first turn of combat.

A challenging Tier 3 adventure both to run and to play. The adventure consists of three parts. The first part is the call to action, and involves several NPCs and plot hooks. The players need to establish exactly what is involved in this adventure. By now, a player of a Tier 3 character should be able to think for themselves, and work out the nature of the problem for themselves. No more spoonfeeding from the DM! Should you just let them proceed without understanding the situation fully, they probably won't be able to process what comes later. So it is important to get the players involved in the story at this point. The second part is four combats (choose from 6) and four puzzles or riddles. In Roll20 you don't need to prepare all six combats. Make sure you use the maps provided with this adventure, they are well designed to fit the details of each encounter. The central four puzzles and riddles must be overcome before the players can progress to the last stage. I particularly enjoyed the wizard's casket puzzle. It's the kind of thing that the players can engage with and spend some time exchanging ideas about before they decide on a solution. Once they have grappled with the concept, it's ok to give them a clue. The final encounter provides the opportunity for the players to engage with a mystical character and to find a solution that achieves all the goals that they were aiming for. The writing in the boxed text in the form of rhymes is really well done, and sets out the boundaries of the negotiation. In one game, the party simply decided to launch an assault at this stage. In this case be prepared not to let the party steamroll the encounter, it needs to be set up to get the creatures the chance to act with a home ground advantage. In another game, the party decided to enter into a debate, and involve some trickery of their own. That was by far the more satisfying outcome for the DM, and I believe more enjoyable for the players as well. One thing to note is that since the adventure was published in 2017, and it contains many references to previous published adventures, the players may not understand all these connections to previous adventures. So I would suggest that the DM downplay these references for the most part.

DM'd this in a 4-hour slot at a small convention. I generally don't enjoy DMing T3 but key features mitigated a lot of the usual problems and was especially easy to run: --Designed to be played by theater-of-the-mind with memorable set-ups that are describeable and well described. --Short fights designed to let the monsters hit hard in the first round before they inevitably get steamrolled.
--Some good role playing and a plot that is understandable, even without the artwork of a map through a swamp that generally gets hand-waived anyway.

I can't stress enough that you should take advantage with the set-ups to give the monsters a surprise round with advantage. I really regret I couldn't figure out how to do that in the final fight and it was one of the less memorable, unfortunately. On the other hand, with a 60' diameter clearing and a monster that could do drive-bys on one character at a time--only 1 OA!--I figured out how to make an earlier low CR fight challenging.

BL: This will be my go-to T3 adventure from now on.

An excellent mixture of riddles and creative combat with really powerful enemies. The various characters (including some of the monsters) gave me plenty of oppurtinity for quirky interactions. Even has excellent written in elements that forces expedience without feeling railroaded.

SPOILERS BELOW

The ending barganing with Bootblack really made my players suffer. They ended up trading away several magical items, and taking a Diamond even though they knew the repurcussions due to a NAT 20 religion check, to Save F. S. The players were very impressed with a feeling of real pearl.

PSA: THE STAT BLOCKS FOR THE GOLEMS (EITHER CLAY OR STONE) IS CURRENTLY MISSING FROM THE MODULE.

I actually slightly regret running this module as a DM, because it meant I’ll never get to enjoy the module fully as a player, knowing the module inside and out as well as the answers to all the puzzles. Yes, it was this good.

A swamp with increasing fey activities reported? Now that’s just the perfect recipe for the mysterious atmosphere that runs through the entire story. The hook to investigating the swamp is fairly standard, talking to Regis’ “sisters” was interesting, but in no way were the players expecting to be solving puzzles in the game. Riddles make for a breath of fresh air from the usual DDAL stuff, where your combat prowess and your skill proficiency does not guarantee you a success in the adventure. Eventually you found your way to a different dimension, went to see Bootblack, and could choose to just murdering her or bravely sacrifice yourself, depending on where the RP of the table led you.

I made a few tiny changes to spice up the riddles a little. For instance, only the person who touches the fey sigil stones can hear the riddle in their heads (until someone in my party casted telepathic bond, which was clever). The “Elven Secret” riddle was worded fairly clumsily, worst offender being not explicitly stating the casket has to be locked while being transported (because I can just send a lockless casket and call it a day). And unlike the previous module of CCC-LINKS-01 Champion of the People, the monsters in this module felt underpowered. (Quicklings no bonus action disengage WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY).

I guess what I’m trying to say is, take some liberty while you’re DM-ing the module. Otherwise, this module is amazing.

As expected from Alan, the adventure really shines. Would highly recommend this if your group if looking for some stellar Tier 3 content (Levels 11-16) and especially so if you're needing filler for an Adventurer's League group.

This is a fun adventure and a welcome addition to tier 3 content.

You get lots of opportunity for combat and roleplay, the flow of the adventure is well thought out, and it gives a challenge to the group based on the actions they take, and how they address each potential encounter.

I enjoy that it adds on to the lore of Phlan, and I have no doubt that players will look forward to additional missions in the city.

I rate this as : Yes, buy this please.