poorly written and nonsensical adventure. with way too many combats.

structuring was terrible.

bonus objectives were really poorly constructed.

a truly barebone experience.

Good dungeon crawl, and the characters of Suri and Perdita have had lasting impacts on our Dragon Heist campaign! I wish the encounter with the Baron was more fleshed out in characterizing him.

Dungeon Crawl My players loved going through Map With No Name leading up to this. They flexed their stealth and social interaction RP skills. This chapter in the triilogy is more a room by room dungeon crawl. It felt more board game than rpg (on your turn move, attack, roll dice, next). By the last fight before meeting the BBEG, I think combat fatigue set in and I probably could have had them just skip one of the encounters to keep the pace moving. Still, players had fun, enjoyed meeting some challenging foes, solved a puzzle (the statues and baton turned into more challenge than I expected!), and were completely surprised by the twist ending. Good fun dungeon grinding.

Another decent module. One of the bonus objectives is probably the most compelling part of the story, but the bonus objectives feel almost taped on to extend the play time.

seconds poart of the first trilagy for season 8. carries a lot of the baggage of the season 8 rules changes. map is not labelled which could cause a lot of issues the bonus missions are not dificult to add in and at least seem to fit in better than the ones in 8-1

Overall an enjoyable dungeon crawler. The combat is not that challenging if players act strategically. Even the last part that is supposed to be very hard just takes forever if a character with high AC blocks the way. The BBEG had to step in or it would have taken forever. It is very unclear how to convince a party, that slew a bunch of monsters along the way, to let their obvious master live. I suggest having the BBEG mention that he is a citizen of Waterdeep and protected by the law.

Fairly enjoyable module. Good item with good flavor. The nature of the location makes it a more streamlined kind of quest and felt easier to prepare, but I found also reduces the opportunities to leverage the “social” pillar here (at least, in the 2 ACP version). I’d put some additional time into sorting out the narrative of the final areas/encounters if I ran it again – I found it shifted pretty abruptly from dungeon crawl to [the next part], and could have benefited from more context on my part. Editing/writing is overall good, but I felt it could be a bit clearer in some parts – one encounter can easily be located in either of 2 adjacent rooms at first glance, and if you don’t look at the optional encounters (if you aren’t running them), then there’s a hidden door that seems to lead to nowhere – there’s nothing about it in the main text.

This is the strongest module of the trilogy, but I suspect thats a side effect of it being in a single enclosed location unlike the other two. This means the storyline doesnt suffer from as much of the disconnect as the others. Being that a certain very important NPC is introduced in this module, more guidance was needed on how to RP them, to keep consistency across the season.

Players had fun playing this but with inaccurate directions and a map that isnt labled, you will need to either chat to someone to to figure out where the players need to go.

Some great roleplay options but deffinately feels lack luster and that the story should have more to it, reccomend running it as a 2 hour adventure and then going inro the 3rd part of the story.

Another Season 8 adventure that took an inordinate amount of preparation: 3 pages of single-space, 2-column notes on dialoge, room descriptions and some key modifications. Being ready with this level of detail is important because, for example, when I played this before DMing it, I didn't understand that we were supposed to conceal our searching from the guards in the City of the Dead. Still, it was marginally better than other Season 8 material because the party did have a mission and a reason to go forward. Here is how I did it: --Had the guards signal "I'm watching you" when the characters came in. Also made the searching damage obvious on the Gost mausoleum. Still, the party I DM'd refused to give up and search the statue so I defaulted to Bonus Objective A. --Having 4 horses & riders in the middle of the room doesn't make much sense so I have them ride out of a magical picture. 3 of them rode back and forth attacking characters and #4 parked in front of the door to prevent escape. --I didn't have time for Bonus Objective B, but I think it would have been fun. I wrote a bunch of dialog for this. --I re-designed the Noble's Tomb with the Armor standing next to baton with a readied attack if it was taken. Also the picture had a readies action: Crown of Madness. --I skipped the last fight but did made the door guards into gangsters named Vinny & Dom. They made small talk with the party including trying to get them to become lycans ("The pay's pretty good") and offerred to trade TPs for Goggles of the Night. Eventually Artor comes and that dialog was really good, too. --If you're interested in my notes, e-mail me at nado.hopsong@gmail.com.

One of my favorite Modules of this season! Unlike some of the others it reads very easily when reading it for the first time and the flexibility of the bonus objectives gives groups that prefer heavier RP more of those opertunities without forcing groups that just want to fight and hack their way to the end forced talking.

This adventure is a pretty straightforward crypt robbing. I enjoyed it thoroughly, there's some challenging combats and some good roleplay options available. I enjoy the new 2 hour with 2 bonus objectives format.

The story isn't bad, but it's very poorly written. I'd be embarrassed to charge people for it when there are so many mistakes. The discussion is literally full of lists of mistakes and they haven't bothered to go back and fix any of it. Oh and the map is soooo bad. It's not labeled and doesn't match up with descriptions in the text. Passages turn in different directions than described. Rooms are different sizes than described. I literally had to sit down and make 4 pages of notes with everything corrected before running it today. I was looking forward to running AL, so it would cut down on my usual prep time. I guess that won't be the case with the current material though.

The second installment of a trilogy, this adventure is a surprisingly good middle. It suffers in the intro from the cliffhanger of the first installment, which left the adventurers hanging before the treasure hunt had concluded. But it's manageable with some good old fashioned DM license. But once things get going, this is a well-crafted module that makes good use of the optional content. It flows well-enough into the main narrative that you don't miss it if it's left out but does not feel tacked on when included. This module is a mini-dungeon crawl in a crypt, and it's a solid challenge, bordering on deadly if they murder hobo it, for a Tier 1 party. A creative DM and party will be able to work social interactions into this adventure, giving the PCs plenty of chances to roleplay. Like the first adventure in this trilogy, it suffers from a rough ending that is a mini-cliffhanger. All said, it's a very solid effort and worth playing as a four-hour module.

Currently, I'm running some neighborhood kids (ages 14 and under) through the tier one Waterdeep adventures. We started with Once in Waterdeep and have worked our way through Dock Ward Double Cross. Only one of the kids (my daughter) has played D&D before. I was very happy with Beneath the City of the Dead. This was the adventure where they really "got it." It can be tricky to find that perfect adventure that introduces the tabletop RPG concept to a new player. But sometimes? A tiny dungeon crawl is exactly what is needed. This is a dungeon that can be easily run in two hours. The encounters and traps were interesting enough that the players were enthusiastic about the whole process. The encounters were well balanced. It won't destroy a tier one party, with or without a short rest. The decision making was easy enough that they weren't staring at me dumbfounded. ("Do you want to go during the day or wait until night?") That was sufficient to get them talking and figuring out what was best to do.

This adventure doesn't really work without also playing 08-03 soon after. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. However, the two adventures fit together nicely. I'll admit DDAL08-00 and DDAL08-01 don't feel as essential. If you have to choose, I'd just start with this one. And it saves time because the end of 02 is essentially the call to adventure for 03.

One of my players had lost a grandparent the day before, so I reworked it as Beneath the "City Garden," instead of it being a cemetery. I ran it as if it were more akin to Central Park—which worked fine. If you have young players who are sensitive to death, to me, this was an easy switch.

It was an easy adventure to run (always a plus for a busy DM). I was able to sufficiently prep in only 30 minutes. The players had a good time with it. What's not to love?