The Good The flavour is spot on - there are fewer desert adventures out there than I would like, and the writer does a good job of getting across the right atmosphere. There's a few clever setpieces, which are interesting without being opaque. The map is nice and simple, no issues there.

The Bad I have some issues with the balance. This adventure could turn lethal very quickly, and you could have a nasty TPK on your hands before you know it. I suggest adjusting the threat of encounters down. The author notes the severity of the encounters in some places, but for a module not focused on horror, it seems like they could have just tuned down the numbers themselves before release.

The Quibbles The product description calls this 'professionally formatted', when this looks a lot like something thrown together on Homebrewery. Not bad looking, but it's not a custom Indesign job or anything unusual. Images are blurry in some places etc. It's a dungeon crawl, not a high roleplay adventure. Perhaps I've been spoiled recently with high-standard adventures, but I'd have liked to have seen a little more personality imbued into the creatures, particularly with the final villain. There's a peculiar amount of space devoted to backgrounds, bonds and so on that doesn't seem very necessary for such a small adventure. Don't think you're getting a full 19 pages of adventure.

The Good This is a classic 'hunt the bad wizard' adventure with a solid hook, and easily dropped into any game. The backstory is easy to understand, and the prose is engaging. The art is charming, all the more so for clearly being a labour of love. The adventure is bursting with flavour, right down to a cupboard packed full of wizardy ingredients. There are some great ideas here, one of which gave me a good chuckle.

The Bad A few of the skill checks are a little off-base for the level (a DC28 Arcana check springs to mind), and there's more than one rather clumsy "if you touch X, it zaps you" railroad mechanic. The maps are scrawled and scanned, which can make them a little hard to interpret. The second half of the adventure is hard to follow, depending on how long you want to spend preparing.

Overall, however, a really promising adventure. Much more to like here than to dislike. I look forward to seeing more from the authors.

The Good There's a lot of material here, and if you're looking for more words for your dollars, this is it. The concept of the Crucible is fun, and some of the encounters are inspired. A solid adventure (in theory) for an under-explored location (the astral plane) A likeable/solid adventure hook

The Bad The material is spread a little too thin for my taste. There's a lot of redundant content here, too. I feel like the important information could be summed up in 20 pages, not 40. The encounters that aren't inspired feel pretty laborious, or like things I could work out myself with a random monster table. The 'shock' ending is also rather trite. There are lots of copied statblocks straight from the monster manual - I'm not sure if this is strictly legal under the license. The maps are a little basic, but more than that I got a headache making sense of it all. A few layout errors like badly proportioned images squeezed into spaces that don't fit, and a pretty basic aesthetic.

The Good This is a solid mystery adventure. Reading through it was a pleasure, and the writer clearly knows how to layout a whodunnit in a way that won't leave you scratching your head for a week. The text is divided clearly and consistently into descriptions, DM information and so on. It's all relevant and useful information. The maps are beautiful.
I wish all the adventures I read were this competently put together

The Bad As a whole, it's not a pretty looking adventure, even if it is functional. I can see some players getting bored with the snooping, and the fairly linear plot structure, but then maybe this isn't an adventure those groups should be playing. It's not particularly original

The Good The premise is great. Creepy house? Madness? Curses? Count me in. The choice of illustrations is cute, and the map (whilst hand-drawn) is actually sort of charming. It's clever, with a nice twist at the end. Good riddles (if your players are into that)

The Bad The adventure itself is likely confusing to run, despite the author's best efforts to explain. There are some instances of terminology that might be confusing to anyone not frequently immersed in D&D context. Proof reading. Simple things like the difference between it's and its can make a big difference in how professional your adventure looks. The layout could do with some serious work, but I suspect this is to do with the program used to put it all together. The spacing between images, sidebars and text is all off. Not much content for the price compared to other content available at the same level

Ok, so this is a D&D dungeon in the Classic sense, by which I mean a bunch of rooms with random monsters, traps and treasure thrown in. Personally, that kind of dungeon is not for me, as the game has evolved since the days when you could get away with ignoring the practicalities of "why" something is in place. Even dungeons which are removed from the context of a particular world or setting need to make internal sense, or all but the most understanding players are going to ask "Ok, but WHY does the Cabal own a gunpowder storage unit, and isn't that a weird place to put within reach of all your needlessly aggressive guardian monsters" etc etc. The maps are pencil drawn, which honestly shows a patience and talent I admire, but they could do with being inked and scanned for clarity, as well as a few editing passes. It takes a genuinely talented logistician to design a dungeon this complex, I just don't feel the average person would have a use for it unless it is revised to be internally consistent, with some suggestions for fitting it into a home game.

"Your day begins in the aptly named Tavern" - I don't know whether this is just a joke, or whether the author really is that apathetic about worldbuilding. but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I'll be honest, the first two pages describing the adventure hook are laid out in a narrative style that makes it hard to grasp the bare bones of the module. A proper Overview or Adventure Structure section would do wonders. The writing was good quality, so I didn't mind too much, but don't expect to pick this up and run it without giving it few read-throughs first. The second half of this adventure is a cardboard cutout classic D&D tomb crawl which you could honestly probably make up without too much effort. There's nothing wrong with it in the same way that there's nothing wrong with sliced bread, but neither get my pulse racing.

All in all, it's a nice little adventure strongly which the author strongly intimates works better as just one in the chain of their ongoing releases. This may well be true. As a standalone piece, it's perfectly serviceable, but given the availability of good adventures out there at this level range, I'd be inclined to look elsewhere if you're after something dazzling.

Also the title is clever, and that always makes me happy.

This product is an adventure module intended to slide into the Tyranny of Dragons storyline. Now, we all know that module could do with some work. so seeing more modules to tack onto it is never a bad thing. The hooks presented to tie into that campaign are solid and practical, which is a good start.

Layout/Appearance

It's not the prettiest module in the world, but it's not the ugliest. It's laid out in a familiar (if cramped) style, which is perfectly serviceable. The font is sort of small, which has the unfortunate effect of making the walls of text even more intimidating. It's nicely illustrated in places, and the maps are elegantly unassuming.

Mechanics There are some interesting (and timely) uses of variants from the Dungeon Master's guide, such as the rules for handling large mobs of creatures in combat. I can't necessarily credit these to the author, but they make good use of existing structures, which is honestly something we could do more of as creators. I have some balance issues with the magical items and spells included in the appendices, but I'm often overly cautious on that front. There's some good sidebars on how to handle monster tactics, and anyone running a dragon for the first time would probably find them useful.

Content

The opening to Part 2 begins with an unnecessarily long history lesson - there's a habit of giving way too much context that sort of runs through this module. I need to be able to run this adventure, not cite over 1000 years of oddly specific faerunian history. This can be pretty obstructive to working out what on earth is going on. On the flipside, the knowledge and creativity displayed in placing all this lore is impressive, and if you have players that adore really digging into lore, then you've hit a home run here.

What I don't understand is the thrust of the adventure, which pits the adventurers against a powerful lich seeking godhood by acquiring three magical something-or-others. Reading through, this seems like something of a broader threat than the one presented by the overall narrative of Tyranny of Dragons, and doesn't seem right for what's being sold as a sidequest. Equally, the final chapter, focusing on the twin black dragons who supposedly form the purpose of the module, fall rather flat as antagonists after the encounter with the evil moustache-twirling-god-killer in his tower of evil.

The worst part about all this is that fighting a wizard-ghost-thing and preventing his ascent to evil dominion should really be its own arc. It feels forced and strange to have a powerful villain of his magnitude shoehorned into a Tyranny of Dragons module. If it's a dragon module, make the dragons more than an afterthought. If it's a wizard module, lose the dragons.

OVERVIEW

Too many historical notes and unhelpful layout choices make this adventure confusing and hard to run. Two conflicting plot threads clash rather than aid enough other, and don't help this adventure fit into the Tyranny of Dragons module. There are much better adventures out there at this price point, though if you're doing a PhD in faerunian dragon/scary wizard history, or are up for a challenge, then this might be right up your street. Not recommended for beginners.

The Good This is a straightforward linear quest. Go kill a medusa, and stay on the magical path. New DMs, or DMs who have trouble improvising, will really benefit from the assistance the author gives them. Skill checks are laid out in high detail, mechanics like surprise are lampshaded, suggestions for increasing or decreasing difficulty are in sidebars and so on. A new DM could take this file and run a competent game with it, without too much trouble. Players who like a simple and accessible narrative with a clear goal will likely enjoy this.

The Bad The adventure's main strength is its key weakness. An experienced DM will likely find little use for most of the carefully detailed over-explanation of basic mechanics. Experienced players will likely chafe at the rather ham-fisted use of enchantment and literal deus-ex-machina used to keep the story on the straight and narrow. Provided you can keep everyone on the same page, you won't have any trouble running it, but it's a little restrictive for my taste. The story exposition is mostly forced into the last chapter, and is likely to feel rushed at the table.

Content We need to talk a little about the premise, in which a snake god spends an unnecessary amount of time "squeezing" and "grooming" a vulnerable women before throwing her in his hard stone garden for 50 years. I felt a little uncomfortable reading it, personally, and I think there's room for us to move on as a community in how we approach rather trite tropes of gods kidnapping vulnerable women. It wasn't entertaining when Poseidon did it back in classical mythology, and it feel a bit gratuitous now that we have so many other options. I'd argue the story would stand on its own merit without mention of squeezing or grooming. But that's just me.

Summary This isn't winning any awards for originality, but it's a decent and complete adventure for beginners or someone who wants something they can run without any work at

If the intention is to provide players with an easy way to glance and understand the council, then this is really a product that should shine on aesthetics. After all, it doesn't tell me anything I already know. Sadly, the font makes it hard to read, and the layout is quite jarring. The flavour text is a nice touch, but nothing you couldn't do yourself in a few minutes. The pictures aren't in the least uniform in style, which ordinarily wouldn't bother me, but once again this is a product selling you an aesthetic experience.

This is actually a well thought through and concise adventure with an entertaining conceit. It's quite short, and I don't think it's likely to tax an experienced group of players, but there's one or two colourful encounters, and the core concept is more than enough to make up for any minor plot holes. The author has a witty and likeable turn of phrase, and any small problems with formatting or proof reading will likely be sorted out in a future update. This is a really promising venture and would set the tone well for a horror or mystery campaign. Recommended.