This is a must-have for anyone planning a trip into the Mournland whether it's a one-shot or a full campaign. The descriptions of strange areas, weather, and creature twistings were vital in really selling my players on the weird and dangerous locale!

I will start off with saying that this is quite possibly one of my favorite adventures to run with a group as a reward after playing with them for a while. The atmosphere of the adventure is true to Ravenloft with the gothic horror vibes and the final battle really uses the "futility of struggle" concept from its gothic horror roots. This makes it work well as a one shot if you and your players are okay with characters dying, but the unmodified endings are likely a dead end for any ongoing campaign.

The Good:

• The Twistings are far and away my favorite feature of the module, allowing me the opportunity to give customized modifications to each PC.
• The Carnival is a great place for players to spend time relaxing and enjoying the shows (and possibly participating in them!), and the Pickled Punks make for a superb gold sink for your richer players.
• Several locations such as the Grey Gardens and Barrow Downs have a fascinating history, although this is unfortunately often unavailable to players. Grey Gardens' wild magic zone with custom table is always a group favorite for the extra chaos it brings.
• The Corruption mechanic is a wonderful way of quantifying player deeds and misdeeds, and can provide an in-game opportunity to teach players the problems with the murderhobo lifestyle.

The Bad:

• Monsters are named without giving a reference for where they're from. The adventure pulls from the Monster Manual, Volo's Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, for starters. There are some creatures in there that I am still not sure where they are from, which is highly inconvenient for ease of play.
• Many magic items are missing descriptions. The magic items found in the vampire's tomb appear to be from AD&D, with no easily accessible 5e versions that I could find.
• As mentioned above, the multiple "bad" endings make the adventure unsuitable for an ongoing campaign.
• The banshee in the mountain feels like a dead end for players except to get a corruption point. Unlike most other chapters, there does not appear to be any sort of "win" condition for this.

Personal Fixes:

• The sandbox aspects may be daunting for some newer DMs, but I found that setting everything on a timer based on the time since the last ritual makes things easier for progression.

Conclusion: Despite the flaws mentioned, this adventure is still a great one to run as it can easily have wildly different memorable outcomes throughout it for different parties. While the module seems to indicate a need to address each chapter sequentially, don't be afraid to add or remove stuff to suit your needs.

This adventure was truly fantastic! I ran this with a party of seven 3rd level adventurers as part of a larger campaign, and it fit in quite easily into the larger narrative thanks to the manor's removed location in the forest. Both my players and I enjoyed the small homebrew items like the magical vegetables and the Blessing from the koi.

It can be quite difficult finding adventures for a party of this size, so this story was truly a boon for me! By and large, the encounters felt quite balanced for the party, with the exception of needing to increase the final boss' HP to increase its survivability.

If I had one issue with the adventure, it's the fact that no alternative option is given to the locked door requiring theives' tools to progress. When a party doesn't consist of the traditional composition with a rogue/other theives' tools user, it can pose a problem in a situation like this. I simply allowed the barbarian to break the lock by force, but sometimes more flexibility is appreciated in the module.

All in all, the adventure took the party roughly eight hours to complete, but that time can easily be cut in half for other groups as my party does spend quite a bit of time doing shenanigans and doubles the run time of adventures.