This can be a fantastic adventure under the right circumstances, but it'll take a little work to shine without a very specific group.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

The adventure basically falls into three distinct acts. The first is the discovery that multiple tarrasques are about to attack the city, and the players are expected to prepare by calling various factions to arms. The second is a battle against tarrasque, made easier or more difficult by their success in the first part. The third act is a fight against a familiar archnemesis and another tarrasque.

The first act is written with the assumption that you and the group are familiar with Waterdeep and various factions within. There's a great deal written here that will work swimmingly for a group that has finished a Waterdeep campaign, but if the group is familiar with any other big city (and has friends and factions they can call on to defend the city), there's a framework to adapt it. It's a pretty fantastic framework to add as much (or as little) high-stakes rollplaying as your group cares for. Unfortunately, if you're running this as a one shot outside a campaign, most groups will have little direction on what to do in this act.

The second act is going to be a long combat, with a few ideas for complications thrown in. If you're running a high-level campaign, you're probably aware that combat can be a long slow slog, with groups very differently optimized for it; and a tarrasque can absorb a lot of hits. Here's another place you might need to adapt: because of the amount of resistances and immunities a tarrasque has, you might find one or two arcane spellcasters have nothing to do. It's really fun and funny the first time a spell bounces off a tarrasque. By round four or five, you've potentially got someone who has spent an hour feeling useless. Take a look at the combat complications that are suggested, and give them something to do while the physical fighters wail away. (Although a tarrasque is also immune to nonmagic weapons, that shouldn't be an issue at level 20.) On the flip side, a spellcaster witht he right spells prepared could be an annihilation machine. That's just the nature of level 20 adventures though!

The third act is another combat, with another Tarrasque and The Big Bad, and although there are ways to end it other than just killing The Big Bad (assumed to be Halaster Blackcloak but easily replaced with another spellcasting archvillain), rolling initiative again right after another combat started to feel a little one-note to me. I think there was a missed opportunity to add more of an exploration challenge here, to balance the social first act and epic combat second act. Admittedly, that might miss the point of a silly gonzo action adventure, and a bloodthirsty group that is enjoying the handfuls of dice they get at level 20 will probably love it as-is. But I think you could turn a good adventure great, if you put a puzzle or two between the party and the final battle. (Lucky for me, we broke this into two sessions when I ran it, breaking between the second and third acts. This gave me time to embellish the third act, and I'm glad I did.)

Lest this sound overly negative: writing tier 4 adventures is difficult if you know a group, and almost impossible for a general audience. There are fantastic bones here and nobody's going to hand you a level 20 adventure that works for any and every group without a little adaptation. If you're looking for a fun epilogue to a campaign that ended at level 20, this is hard to beat.

I ran this in context of a post-Tomb Of Annihilation home game, with a couple of minor changes to fit our ongoing stoyline.

I can see how this would be polarizing, so although my group LOVED it, I gave it three stars. Your experience will probably vary based on how well you play the NPCs and how much prep you do; this can be somewhat demanding to run effectively, moreso to really make it shine.

Much of the roleplay will be based on two NPC companions. You are given enough information to make them charming, and they're tailor-built to be an indispensible help; but playing two colorful eccentrics with distinct personalities can be a challenge. You want to let the players largely run them, but for sake of the adventure flowing well, should avoid getting them killed. (There are contingencies if they do die, but the story will suffer.) You also get some sadly bland villagers to save (any personality is up to you) and a bad guy who is interestingly kooky and needy and insecure (which is an interesting twist on the crazy evil wizard trope). There is a neat bit where you can play something like "emotion charades" that roleplay groups will love and murderhobo wargamers will hate.

The exploration of the tower is pretty straightforward, and there are a couple of puzzles. (Crazy evil wizards love puzzles.) You are encouraged to semi-arbitrarily damage the party to maintain tension. This is going to seem brilliant to some and maddening/unfair to others. The sages provide a built-in way to drop hints, but still, if your group doesn't like puzzles, they won't like this. On the other hand, if they like puzzles, and you (like me) go all out and create physical representations and improved handouts, they could love it. Note that one puzzle (determining what language various books are likely to be in) leans on a knowledge of D&D lore; I highly suggest allowing some easy History checks or dropping hints on who House Olbadra, the Rayburtons, and Vanrak Moonstar are for parties that don't know Forgotten Realms lore.

There is a tough early combat that is meant to be avoided, with fights otherwise backloaded: one that adds some environmental difficulty, then the module concludes with a battle that can be very tricky to balance and run. As the module itself points out, "Combat at this level can vary greatly depending on party composition, etc. While the fight can be trivial to one group, it can wipe out another group all based on one saving throw." Once again, you need to bring your "A game" to run this module well, possibly adding HP or minions as appropriate for a glass canon boss that might permastun the entire party round one... or can possibly be killed by one round's worth of damage.

There is a weird little tie-in to other tier 3 post-ToA modules (see the Verse vs. Verses story award) that you will want to ignore or possibly present differently. Otherwise, it has very little to do with the storyline.

So... if you're ready to go all in on prep and have a group that likes puzzles, run this. If you don't have a lot of time for prep or your group hates puzzles, you might want to find something else.

I ran this in context of a post-Tomb Of Annihilation home game, with a couple of minor changes to fit our ongoing stoyline.

This is a good module for roleplay, with colorful NPCs and a player character who gets infected with strange visions. Lots of potential for collaborative storytelling if that's your thing. There isn't much in the way of exploration (other than a secondary mystery if you count that) in the fairly linear story. You get some decent combats, with a challenging "boss," but I'm not a fan of the way the latter can use banishment to potentially take two characters completely out of the fight.

As fun as the roleplay can be, the adventure progression does feel a little forced; "I have information you need if you do me the favor of killing this monster" feels a little trite. However, it does feed the tier 3 post-Tomb of Annihilation storyline (which isn't as cohesive as the tier 4 one), it's still a lot of fun, and the prep isn't too demanding.

I ran this in context of a post-Tomb Of Annihilation home game, with a couple of minor changes to fit our ongoing stoyline. As noted in other reviews, this is almost guaranteed to run long; delightfully meaty for our home game, but you'll struggle to cut it to fit into a four-hour slot.

The adventure references Aremag from the Tomb Of Annihilation hardcover. The group doesn't need to have met the dragon turtle, but it is expected that it's still alive. You may need to improvise a little. There is an expectation that you have the hardcover; this is fine and dandy for my situation (running this post-ToA) but this adventure will not easily drop into another setting. Between this and the run time, I highly recommend this for other post-ToA home games, but warn against it for random campaigns or drop-in play.

The module offers a good mix of "the three pillars" (roleplay, exploration, and combat) with a decent amount of choice for how to approach certain situations. My roleplay-heavy group really enjoyed many of the interactions; playing "detective" can be very satisfying for some; and the fights are interesting. A fair amount of the adventure requires water breathing, so you'll want to provide that to the party, or let them buy what they need. (On the flip side, a party well-prepared with magic like Control Water may require some quick thinking to keep it from being TOO easy.)

There are some "fail states" where a careless or bloodthirsty group could miss or kill their lead and dead end the investigation; you'll have to be ready to improvise something or be willing to let them lose for the day. The party will battle multiple spellcasters, which can challenge an unprepared DM, especially since I would HIGHLY recommend adjusting their spell lists. (As much care as we saw in other parts of the module, the poor spell lists for the warlocks especially stand out as a problem.) The conclusion gives the players a choice that could potentially upset the merchant princes, which is interesting if they'd been hailed as heroes until now. (It's clearly the WRONG choice, and the group that would do it are likely to fail to reach it, but... it's a good example of how a short module can still offer some meaningful choices.)

Whatever you have to say about this module mechanically, it deserves high praise for atmosphere and ideas. An interesting mysery builds and unravels over several hours; there is a slow build to claustrophobic terror in exploring a shipwreck infected with a mysterious menace; and the conclusion will require that they fight or outwit an awe-inspiring foe.

I ran the revised version (v1.1 released 2018-05-07) in context of a post-Tomb Of Annihilation home game, with a couple of minor changes to fit our ongoing stoyline.

There arer some valid critiques here. It's great that the author responded to the first round with a nice revision; but, there's still a decent chance some groups will find this a little easy, and it's also pretty likely this will run longer than four hours. I'm comfortable with dynamically balancing encounters (quietly adding HP to a boss so it doesn't go down too fast) and maybe letting them feel badass with easy fights once in a while; and frankly, at tier 3, different party compositions can trivialize different kinds of threats but still hit hard roadblocks in odd places. So, you need to be ready to smartly adjust difficulty at this tier, in my opinion. I was also happy to stretch this into multiple sessions for a home game. So these issues weren't a problem for me, but it's good to be aware of them.

Without loyalty to a faction, you'll have to rely on the party's innate sense of good (closing a hole to the Abyss) or at least "playing along" to hook them.

Among all the Tier 3 modules in this storyline, this is definitely one of the better ones (perhaps the best) for exploration, with a dungeon that is sufficiently complex to allow different approaches. As others have said, the number of combats will satisfy the bloodthirsty. Roleplay is a little lighter; although there are creatures to interact with, they don't have a lot of depth.

Confronting a dragon, fighting a number of demons, and concluding with a battle that invokes the iconic Balrog at the bridge in Khazad Dum, this is a pretty iconic D&D experience. It might not mean much to the jaded DM or player who views everything in terms of wargaming and challenge levels; but if you really play up the atmosphere, many players should enjoy getting swept away in a fun stereotypical adventure.

We finished this yesterday, having split it into two sessions. My group typically runs twice as long as "recommended" times (very heavy RP and tactical planning) so it should be a decent length for most.

I enjoyed running it, and I think it might have been my group's favorite one-shot ever. (Said one player after the climactic conclusion, "I feel like I need a cigarette after that..." She's not a smoker.)

The pacing is great: opening with a bang-up narrative hook, taking you through some oppressive low-profile scenes, offering an optional tension-breaking dream sequence (push your group towards this), climaxing in a difficult moral dilemna (some of us might have gotten a little moist-eyed), and concluding with a high-octane chase that encourages collaborative storytelling. There are many combats, but clever players (and flexible DM) will find ways that characters can avoid many. (It's also easy to cut some for time.) There is a lot of roleplay potential for tables that enjoy that. Overall, it's a great balance of the "three pillars," with parts that appeal to all styles of play, and flexibility to emphasize what you enjoy best.

Of course, an opportunity to visit the Astral Plane and take part in the great Gith conflict is great, and it's hard to believe it can be effectively streamlined into a simple-to-run one-shot that can be dropped into any campaign. (All you need is characters of reknown walking through any city alone.) That does lead into one of my few quibbles, though: if the players aren't familiar with the material about gith in Mordenkainen's Tome Of Foes, you either need a hefty lore dump early on, or they'll need to accept a bit of a whirlwind ride. (I prepared a "handout" for my group and gave it to them the week before.) And if you the DM are't familiar with it, a lot of this might feel arbitrary, with details tougher to fill in or improvise. Not having access to Mordenkainen's Tome Of Foes is one of the only reasons I would not recommend this adventure to you.

A couple other notes: balance gets tough at tier 3, and it's possible that the opening battle can be tougher than it ought to be, while others might be a little easy; although the balance is overall very good (and I appreciate the Adventurer's League-style suggestions on adjusting encounters), the ideal DM will be ready to tweak difficulty slightly. Also, there are no tactical maps; if your group prefers combat on a grid to theater of the mind, you'll have to prepare a few simple maps yourself. (Although the 3D nature of combat in the astral plane means you might still have trouble if you aren't ready to abstract some things.) Finally, there can be a twinge of sci-fi tone, which is a fun change of pace for some but might not work if you are running a gritty low fantasy campaign. I don't think any of these are actual "problems," but they are worth knowing when deciding if this adventure is for you. If you are not put off by any of these, then I can't recommend The Lich-Queen's Begotten more highly.

An incredibly clever conceit, and a few tricks along the way, make this a real gem. For it to really work requires a little railroading, so stay away if you're uncomfortable with that (although you probably wouldn't be looking at one-shot adventures here if that was the case). You need to place it on a road that is a couple days' travel between two towns, and have the players be compelled to travel by land on that road.

Working with a party that tends to overthink things and plan our REALLY elaborate strategies before acting, I did have problems with this dragging in places; I had to nudge the players along to keep them from overthinking things. Once things get rolling, though... I don't think I've seen so much fun and laughter for a while. We actually had to pause play because we were worried one of the players couldn't breathe from laughing so hard.

The rewards for this can be pretty light (not a lot of XP or loot) so munchkins probably won't enjoy it (or at least they'll waste the premise by turning it into a fairly boring bandit camp invasion); but I expect most players will find it a great lighthearted one-shot diversion.

A great "haunted house" one-shot that is fairly easy to place. You really need to put a little effort into it to get the most out of it: but with a bit of personalization, your players should really enjoy unfolding this creepy mystery.

There's an interesting structure with a sort of dual climax: players can reach their goal and hightail it out without meeting the ostensible "boss" monster, or vice versa. (You've got to solve a couple of puzzles to reach this "boss," too, so a party that isn't curious or interestedwill likely make things a little anticlimactic.) There's also one combat encounter that is WAY tougher than the "boss" and can wipe the party if they don't use at least a little cleverness. With brains, though, they'll be in very little danger; most combats will be more for flavor than providing any difficulty.

I don't recommend this for a group that just likes to hack and slash; but a group that likes some thinking and exploring will be thrilled.

SUGGESTIONS: The quest is given by a part-time alchemist, and rather than motivate the party with just gold, I had them get recurring nightmares (making it difficult to get the benefits of a "long rest") until the alchemist could brew them a cure. Nightmares fit right into the adventure's theme! You might consider personalizing this a bit, based on player fears. (One of them hates spiders? Change one of the encounters to a giant spider or two.) On that note, I had the "boss" appear in the form of a clown, because... well, do I need to explain? For some of the provided notes, create a version you can hand to the players, "aging" the paper by soaking it in tea and/or burning the edges with a lighter. Finally, this should be obvious, but put some creepy pictures (a bunch of dolls, etc) on the outside of your DM screen if you use one, and play some good atmospheric music in the background. Enjoy yourself!