Great module! Ran it for an AL event today and the players really enjoyed it. The first skill check section with the party guests allowed for some really fun roleplay and problem-solving. The first fight was pretty fun, although the fight seemed out of balance for a six person party of mixed levels. The second skill-check section felt a little unintuitive - it was difficult to marry the checks they were making to the information they received. As a consequence of that, I could easily see how the ending boss fight could be extremely punishing, especially if the players didn't do well on their search and didn't have a lot of healing options. Overall, it had great character and an interesting story!

I love this module. All three pillars of play are given equal standing and it creates an unforgetable experience. The only warning to other DMs who run this module is that the combats can be devastating to level 1 & 2 players, especially the final fight. The social interactions at the beginning of the mod are great and listening to players strategize about how they would work the room was my favorite part of running this adventure. This module might present challenges for players who are less comfortable with role playing a social encounter, in that case I would encourage the teamwork mechanic in the module as a way to give players someone for their characters to respond to. If the players choose to not engage in exploration there is a strong possibility of a TPK. But if you can guide them through the exploration they will have a challenging final battle that leaves them with a true feeling of accomplishment.

This is a great adventure though I would peg it at best being run in 4 hours rather than 2. The opening roleplay chapter works pretty well, but takes some understanding to clarify what checks should be made when. The second half is pretty deadly for tier 1 parties and the skill challenge DC perhaps a little too high. Either way an enjoyable adventure and one I bring out often.

Really solid and open to play the NPC's off the players latest adventures. I ran this in the middle of The Black Hand modules as a pallete cleaner and they handled it well. The conversations and boons can transfer over to modules if you have control as a DM, the pacing is abrupt but welcome with the arrival of the main villain. The dungeon delve part was just right in ruining their day and helping build character image. The final fight was a tpk since only 3/7 party wasn't crazy before so. They got saved as usual and received their madnesses. Overall wonderful piece and good for my freer form of DM'ing

This adventure was great, and not stuffed with combat, which is nice occasionally. The players have to convince nobles to part with their gold for charity. The way it's done is quite clever, finding out how to approach then attempting to convince them. Large sections of the adventure are detailing all about the nobles, with 17 in total! The players also get a cut of the donations, so pre-season 8 this was a good way to get some cash!

After that the party is interrupted by monsters. The thing is, these monsters can be a bit difficult to face, so they may have to be toned down a bit.

The fight at the end is also good, although I can see it getting difficult, as with the previous one.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this adventure!

This was a fun little module. Wish the players had failed some of their saving throws, but that's the sadistic DM in me talking. The fight at the end, even nerfed, was a bit difficult for the party, but most of the pulled through and they saved the day.

I'm planning to run this for a group tonight and this PDF has required a lot of rework on my part. I was surprised to see that one of the first things I read had a very obvious omission: "Welcome to Adventure Name, a D&D Adventurers League™ adventure..." Might wanna fix that.

I do like the mechanics of the first part, schmoozing with the nobles. After that the plot kind of goes downhill for me, and I'll be completely reworking it for my group. The whole backstory of Kelkos seems kind of odd. He's a shepherd who was tricked into going insane by an insane cleric in an asylum... he becomes an evil warlock, then conveniently leaves his lair for some far off vacation, then comes back and becomes annoyed that a kindly half-elf has stepped in to renovate?

The mechanics of part 3 seem needlessly complex. Exploring an old decrepit aslyum should be a fun, interesting, scary experience... I don't understand why you'd turn it into a big skill check. I'd rather have a map of this place with some cool rooms, encounters, and objects that allow the players to slowly unravel some of the history of this place.

It's unfortunate I'll have to scrap 3/4 of this adventure because it's just not appealing to me and overly complex.

Everyone loved the initial role-play section, though I found the instructions for DMing it a little ambiguous. It wasn't clear how I should introduce an Approach - I settled on giving an introduction that included hints about what they should do to soften the guest, then more hints in the following conversation (and sometimes just outright had the guest prompt the skill challenge).

The third section with the group skill challenge was also popular. Although ... the players have little influence over the outcome. Mechanically speaking it is a prolonged dice rolling session to figure out how difficult the final confrontation is going to be. I would have liked something similar to what the first section had, with bonuses for role-playing or some kind of clever play.

Overall the narative felt very natural, with each step engaging the players. Although they didn't learn much about the antagonist, what they did learn was sinister and creepy and felt like the tip of the iceberg.

This is a very good module, with a good variety of roleplaying, combat, and something that kind of approximates "exploration". The large number of NPCs and freeform nature of the 1st and 3rd parts lends some variance to keep it interesting to DM.

However, it is drammatically too long. The first section can be highly variant, but the major problem point is that the final encounter is much longer than the 20 minute listed. Due to the positional nature of the battle, you pretty much have to use a miniature map. Kelkos' lair actions inflate the time of the fight by a lot-- being able to just teleport around the map and make 2d4 guys per turn can easily make the fight bloat up in time.

I feel like the entire last encounter needs to be rewritten, and clarified. I feel like the arena needs a proper map, and more deliberately-defined size. The variation based on the results of Part 3 of the adventure kind of make sense, but also seem like this massive jumble, and totally change how Kelkos should be played. Really hard to plan with the way the chapter and variations are formatted.

This takes much, much longer to prep than other "two hour" adventures.

Most fun I have had running a T1 mod! Players had a great time too. I ran this as a two hour adventure in a four hour slot, to give an RP-heavy table time to enjoy the RP in the beginning. I gave players more leeway to RP their way through the great fundraising section instead of relying as much on dice rolls. I feel like this is the rare adventure that gives just about any character type a real chance to contribute, instead of favoring some more than others. The two combats can be very difficult for low level parties. The skill challenge in the second half has great open-ended mechanics, but it's easy to forget how to tell players that their successes are having some tangible effect.

Great fun to run. My players really enjoyed this one. This has plenty of role playing opportunities plus some interesting mechanics for skill checks. The one downside to this module is trying to run it in a 2 hour time slot. I recommend bumping this to a 4 hour slot. There is a lot happening and you want to give the story time to come out. I ran this with a table of 7 and it took a while to get around the table for the benefit part of the module. My recommendation would be to let the characters go form one NPC to the next unless they choose to split up. That way the players feel more involved. For the basement part you may have to work a bit as aGM to get the players going and use their creativity

I was looking for a fun new tier 1 adventure and this looked it could do the job. I was right, Bedlam at the Benefit was a really damn fun module. I played this at home with 3 friends so we didn't have a strong party by default so the first fight was quite challenging (but fun!) and I really liked the choice of monsters. The Gibbering Mouther (cool to use the minis from the new Monster Menagerie series) can be deadly if you approach them.

I think the party liked the social roleplay at the start and the amount of NPCs you can talk to adds a good replayability. The gnome wizard who was on the run was especially funny. It was out of the box writing and a bit hard to DM at first. I missed where the rules for the donations were but that's probably my lack of preparation due to last minute DMing. It's pretty clear.

The exploration of the sanitarium was well done, all with skills instead of your classic dungeon crawling. The base DC of 16 for successes was a bit high for a tier 1 adventure though.

The final boss was hella cool and the lair actions were great but my party managed to destroy him quite easily with a well timed Hold Person from the war cleric. He can be deadly if your players failed the skill challenges beforehand though as he has access to 5th level spell slots as a warlock.

It's a fun adventure that can be either done in 2-3 hours or a bit more if your party wants to take their time with the social aspects of it.

Highly recommended.

VERY VERY MILD SPOILERS. This is an excellent module with some nice variety. Part III is one of the best skill-challenge formats I have seen, and is very conducive to collaborative story-building. Part I is fun and encourages roleplaying. Like other reviewers, though, if I ran the mod again I would cap the number of "touches" at 10 total to keep this section from dragging. If there are more than 5 PCs, the players can strategize about where best to team up to gain advantage. The fights have some threat as well, which is always a plus. Very nice job, writers, designers and editors!

This is a great adventure for a breather in the middle of a more serious campaign and to just have fun with. Yes, it's a pretty cliché, but it embraces that and just lets you have a good time with it. If your players love to roleplay they'll have a blast. Wonderful for charity events!

Even though it's a 2h adventure, we took our time and ran it in about 5h. The players at the table really enjoyed the roleplay from the first part, so I let them have fun with that. It's probably possible to run the adventure in a much shorter time by cutting the time for players' roleplay, but I wouldn't encourage it since that's a big part of the adventure's originality. One of the players commented that the ambiance of the last fight was the darkest one he played in and he really enjoyed that.

Overall, I think it was a really good adventure, with a solid story that sets it apart from others, original mechanics, and a good balance of RP/combat. The adventure requires a significant amount of prep from the DM, though. More than most adventures of same length.

I would recommend it for a party enjoying RP and social interactions.