Curse of the Gumdrop Ooze is a short, candy-flavored (wink!) adventure for level 3 – 4 characters. In it, the party comes across a destroyed village and a gumdrop ooze. If they choose to investigate the village, they find a trap door leading into an underground lair occupied by candy monsters called cruls and a mage and his minion. This adventure can be a simple one-shot in which the party rids the area of a cruel mage, or it can be expanded into something longer in which they hunt down the candy hag that cursed the area, restore the blighted crul, and return the candy children to their rightful forms. There is a lot of fun in this game. I love the new monsters, the crul and the gumdrop ooze, and think they’re great fun! I’m excited to look into Matt Butler’s The Hag’s Hexes, and I would really love to play a candy-themed adventure.

While I do think this adventure is well-written and easy-to-follow, I think the best things about it are the candy-themed components. The adventure itself isn’t particularly innovative aside from the candy elements, and I was initially a little confused about whether or not we were even in an adventure. The parts of the map also aren’t labeled so it was a little bit difficult to understand. If this were just a supplement of candy-themed components, I’d probably give it 5 stars, but as an adventure it’s not my favorite.

However, if you want a quick adventure, especially for more inexperienced players, I think this is a good one-shot to start with. Then, if they’re interested, you can get The Hag’s Hexes and lean more into the candy element!

Ran my young adult daughter and her best friend through this encounter. I used the module to give her best friend a first encounter with D&D game-play. They both told me they enjoyed the module, and I enjoyed running the game. Great job!

I had a lot of fun with this adventure. I was glad for the advice on how to adjust the monster levels for lower level characters and how to make the adventure more kid friendly.

I DM at a gaming store and so often don't have a set group of players. Twice there was such a large turn over (new players coming in and old players not showing up) that I reset the adventure to the beginning, but nobody minded because the players who had finished off the ooze before got to see how new players dealt with the delicious smell of the monster. Some enthusicasically ate the goo even after being warned off and others tried to light it on fire, almost burning down the inn. There were other amusing moments, like roll of 1 on an escape attempt of an engulfed character and he ended upside-down and one bard character taunting a crul so successfully, I had the creature cry sprinkles.

The candy theme had people wondering at first, thinking it was too early for Halloween, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed the adventure and the silliness of monsters made of candy. As a piece-de-resistance, I was inspired to create a cavern map out of different types of real candy for the final showdown. (I brought leftovers from building so no one would be tempted to eat the map) I also added other candy themed monsters for the cavern like sugar mephits based on dust mephits, taffy mephits based on smoke mephits, cane corn stalagtite monsters based on piercers, and pixie stix based on quicklings. I also found a gingerbread golem and a gingerbread swarm on this website. The players never went up against the candy hag, unfortunately they were all too low level take her on, but are now chasing down Loquist, thinking that he is really the candy hag hiding his true form.

So after leveling down the monsters (by giving them stats of monsters far less cool) to be lvl 1 friendly monsters for brand new players and making the story abit more kid friendly, I am running tis for a group of kids between the ages of 8-10 years of age and they love it. for every monster they fight i have been useing candy as the mini so when they kill ooozes and cruls (renamed rock candy monsters for the kids) they get to eat the candy. I am also planing to add this into a homebrewed game i run for my friends that a college age lvl and play at lvl 5 to see how they try to solve problems compared to the group of younger kids.

If i was to change anything i would add lower lvl stats for the monsters for any one who is trying to run this for players who are only lvl 1 or lvl 2 and maybe something abit more kid friendly that can be switch out in place of the secret brothel that is aready in the story for anyone who is trying to run this for younger players. Other then that this is amazing fun to run and players should love it.

Short and sweet adventure that offers a fun experience for people looking for something different from normal modules. I loved the inclusion of the section on tactics - it makes life easy for the DM and the game fun for the players. Moreover, this adventure is available at the low, low, price of free.

Who can say no to free candy?