This was a fun adventure. The main objective of the adventure can be achieved through either stealth (although its hard) or force and so it had good versatility. However, while the site to be explored has a lot to offer, it was quite possible to achieve the job they were hired for without completing a full exploration. This has two issues: 1. the concluding encounter for the mod specifically states a trigger should happen after the characters find certain info on the site....but they dont know they are after this info and may well not look for it, so I had to work a bit to lead in to that and 2. there's a chance they would never find one of the bonus objectives. This didnt sit well with me - I think an adventure should offer access to the objective no matter what, and then the players pass or fail - not "gosh, you just never found the lead".
That said, the bonus objectives were fine from a story perspective. The easier to find objective though relies on players being willing to be quite lawless to complete it (I gave it to the players anyway after they fended off a retaliatory attack for not agreeing to break the law) and this is a bit of an issue with many players choosing to play quite moral characters - and they should be able to without being ruled out of achieving objectives. Finally, the criticism of many a review has been that the information the characters gain they mostly already knew. Well, that is true although there was one snippet that was new to them. Having said that, if the players / characters didnt play every prior adventure in tier 1, this adventure will make sure they've got the gist of it before heading into Tier 2, so I think a little doubling up of info is quite forgiveable and probably better overall for an drop in / drop out adventurers league setting. So, in summary, despite a few suggestions for tweaks I thought this was a good adventure with variety. But I would recommend the GM think about back up plans to trigger some of the objectives if the players dont quite operate the way the mod thinks they will. If you do this, then your players should be able to experience what the adventure has to offer fully, and then its well worth the time.

This was great fun, and has the honour of being a rare mod that is actually designed for level 1 (and has the challenge to match). The format of being detectives following a trail of clues was quite novel (and even my puzzle challenged group seemed to get there), the storyline was engaging, it ran at a good pace (about 3 and a bit hours) and there were alternatives to combat at least some of the time as a way to deal with encounters. A great lead in to season 8.

I would highly recommend this mod for Tier 1. What I found really enjoyable about it was the mixture of investigating / skill use combined with some combat. The series of different preparatory challenges in the lead up to the contest meant the party could really mix it up, and one stage in particular finally made all those tool proficiencies that never get used mean something!

As an epic conclusion to the Against the Giants section of TFTYP, and some nice forays into understanding giant lore this mod was certainly interesting and I looked forward to running it. However, some cautionary notes: if your party isnt good at puzzles, the areas regarding giant lore will just baffle them - my group struggled badly. The final battle was by comparison more their style although it was still quite drawn out - I did appreciate the mechanics of it though and the time based effects made it a bit more unique. Despite being a "2 hour" mod i think the run time was more than 4. Not one for when you are short on time.

A thoroughly interesting mod, with a very fun variety of encounters and an interesting storyline to go along with it. There is opportunity to roleplay, puzzle solve and of course combat. The temporary tranformation introduced mid mod also adds a fun variety and sets the scene for some life altering choices for the players at the end of the mod. A few things that might need tweaking: there is one encounter that has the potential to suck an immense amount of time - if time constrained, adjust sensibly. Also, the final boss isnt overly challenging for a halfway decent party. After GMing it (and seeing the party manage it fine) I played it once as a 3 person party and that was certainly challenging, but obviously we were a fairly weak group. Consider scaling - there are resources on the internet suggesting creature substitutions / scaling. Finally, there is one puzzle where the room is slowly filling with lava. I have witnessed even people with the solution struggle to figure out what the trick is so make sure you really take the time to understand it as a GM, and be prepared to just punish the players for not solving and move on (I made my table take lava damage before the walls are caved in and they can go).

From the minute I downloaded this mod, I was super excited aboout running it. The mechanic of running the entire mod in initiative order is not one Ive seen in another mod, and the "puzzle solving" element of having to find various items to slowly unravel the different rooms (which can be placed in any order for replayability) was something I couldnt wait to try. It wasnt going to work in my usual element of theatre of the mind by skype though - so I had to wait til my gaming group were together in person - because the maps are very key. But I amused myself in advance by scaling the maps and printing them so i had maps ready to go and re-arrange, and I did all my pre-rolling of the random locations of things.....I didnt mind the prep because I quite like to prepare. Finally the day came. And was it fun? - yes, absolutely. Probably two main things made it not quite as euphoric as I expected. 1. ironically, the everything in initiative order to show limited time, actually makes the mod take more time. Took us 6 hours. 2. By the time they'd tackled one third of the rooms the group was low on resources and once theyd done the minimum necessary to get to the final area they got out of there and left some of it unexplored. So only partly unravelled. In summary, I give this 5 stars because for me this mod stands out as having a vision I have not seen anywhere else. But despite having a lot of replay potential, the long running time will likely mean I will settle for my one glorious run.

I had played this before deciding to run it, which certainly helped when it came time to run. I should also add that as a player I thought trying this "Eberron thing" would be a one time event, but the combined efforts of a skilled GM and this mod convinced me to explore more play opportunities in this setting. So thats definitely in the mods favour. The good thing about this mod is that it has a lot of different avenues of investigation so the players have some freedom to decide how they investigate. The different scenarios of interview, examining a scene etc etc provided for a good mix of player experience. The scenes themselves are also quite straightforward and easy to run, so from a preparation perspective the mod works well. The scenes also state very clearly the location for ease of reference as the characters wander around Sharn. GM tips: However, the bonus objectives are not as easy to incorporate as they first appear. Bonus Objective B is a bit off track and can be easily ignored by players, and it requires a bit of pre planning from the GM as to how that particular investigation could occur. The timing of Bonus Objective A can be awkward – in short, make sure you throw it at the players before they go to Scene "E" (not described further to avoid spoilers). Even if they’ve just had a very similar encounter, if it happens after E it just makes the storyline confusing, but both when I played and ran it happened after because its very easy for the players to end up at E without having had time to squeeze in the bonus objectives. Also, if I ran it again I’d probably spend more time going over the intended timing and what is realistic. The mod suggests that if the players spend more than 7 hours scene time investigating then they don’t get as much time to prepare for the final encounter. But its too easy to exceed that time based on the stated scene times and the minimum amount needed to find the final encounter, so I’d suggest a better rule of thumb is to adjust the time such that if they’ve exceeded the time they still can fit in a short rest if they havent had one. The lack of rest ended up being tough for my group.

I wasn't sure what to think about a level 0 adventure, but ran it as the intended intro to an AL Eberron campaign. It was more fun than I expected (because I wasnt sure of how level 0 would go), and the sheer frailty and at times ineffectiveness of the level 0 characters was quite humourous in itself. I was grateful to commentary from people online who gave me advance warning that the fights would need scaling down to make it survivable, and found if I stuck to bandits it went ok, but don’t try a tougher foe unless they’ve made friends with a stronger NPC. In fact, keeping the mechanics light in general with easy DCs and more emphasis on the description of how is the better way to go. I'd also echo what other reviewers have suggested that the section on getting the ship back in shape was quite fun and a good challenge for level 0s since it didnt rely on lucky rolls or other things that were too overwhelming. GM tips: Perhaps the main drawback to the adventure is that it doesn’t give much guidance if the players aren’t keen on the linear track the adventure takes. The linearity makes it easy to run, unless your characters want to return their "acquisition" (trying to avoid spoilers) to the rightful owners or make a deal rather than fight at the end. These can be worked through but it’s a good idea for the former option in particular to think about how the characters might contact the house in question, what the reaction from the house might be etc etc. The mod doesn’t give a lot of background on this but I assumed the "acquisition" was an ‘off the books’ operation – although my players abandoned the plan of finding the owners anyway.