This was a fun, short campaign that took my players about 3 hours. I only had two players, so one of the NPCs helped in the combat and I had some of the gourdlings chasing other NPCs out of the area to lessen the total number. I set it up in Foundry and added the sound effect of people screaming and running. The players had a blast.

Serving the Squash is a fun 10 page Halloween themed adventure for Fifth Edition D&D, but I wanted to try a system that I had not used yet. So, I used Beasts & Barrows (free/pay what you want at itch.io/games, 15 pages). To solo this, I used The Ultimate Toolbox (402 pages at DriveThruRPG). This is a part two adventure. Part one was The Spookiest Night Ever (free/pay what you want at Dungeon Masters Guild). During part one they were forced to look for a magic pumpkin head. This led them to the Serving the Squash adventure. The two connected perfectly.

This time they explored a town and it had a festival too. After investigating a farm and some town buildings, they took some time to enjoy the festival. Ambrosia performed on stage, Cinna and Scarlett danced, and the others played dice and card games. They even won some prizes. When the Mayor made his speech, Gourdkin arrived and the gourdlings appeared. Yep, a big battle. The six characters kill three gourdlings, but take some heavy damage. So, they sneak off to camp. The next morning they discovered that all of the town has been destroyed except the Mayor’s house. They killed Gourdkin, broke into the Mayor’s house and killed him (he is the one that summoned Gourdkin). The next day the characters help the homeless town folk.

The following day they make an attempt to take out the Big Bad back at the village (after turning in the magic pumpkin head). It did not work at all. So, the characters help evacuate the villagers and the village gets destroyed. So, even though they failed this part of the adventure, the exit from this land finally appeared and they were quick to get the heck out of there. Maybe you will have better luck with these two adventures. Good luck!

While I do love high drama, I'm a sucker for silly, thematic adventures, so I was super excited for Serving the Squash. Not only was the art on the cover gorgeous, but it promised puns, pumpkin-based monsters, and a fun, good time. And it delivered.

The basic premise is that the party has arrived at the town of Kukurbi in time for their annual Highharvestide festival. However, instead of revering the goddess of agriculture Chauntea, the townsfolk seem to be celebrating the harvest itself. The mayor is especially manic, singlehandedly going around and decorating the town and guarding the harvest. However, as the players will learn, not all is well in the town of Kukurbi.

The backstory for the adventure is that the town has had several really bad years of harvests. In desperation, the mayor made a semi-fiendish pact with a creature called Gourdkin. Gourdkin promised to give the town a harvest the likes of which it had never seen -- as long as they thanked him by named at the Highharvestide festival. However, Gourdkin is just using the festival to sow chaos, which will likely devastate the town (and even kill a few people) if he's not stopped.

The bulk of the adventure involves investigating various parts of town, learning that there is something weird about the harvest, and generally being suspicious. In the meantime, the group can drink and party with the townsfolk. Then they get into a huge battle with Gourdkin and his gourdlings.

However, there isn't really a lot to convince a party to investigate prior to the massive attack. The party would need to know that the town should be worshipping Chauntea and that the bounty they have received isn't likely. It means everyone needs to be suspicious and do a lot of breaking and entering for almost no reason. For a lot of parties, it could be difficult to get them to investigate prior to the big battle.

It is possible to circumvent this situation. For example, the party could have visited the town beforehand; the DM could make things seem a lot more ominous; gourdlings could creep around the festival beforehand, raising the party's suspicious; etc. It's also not the end of the world if the party doesn't investigate before the fight. After all, investigating doesn't help them in the fight nor does it necessarily prevent the fight -- the mayor can simply confess to his ill-conceived plan afterwards. However, I would have preferred a little more work going into that particular part of the adventure, but, honestly, it's not terribly difficult to solve yourself.

Motivation to investigate notwithstanding, I do think this is an excellent little adventure. It was well-written and had overall decent editing. The art was gorgeous, the maps were helpful and pretty, and the layout was eminently readable. The monsters were fun and interesting, and the whole premise was enticing. If you'd like a fun little adventure that dovetails into the haunted/harvest season, I think this is a great adventure to pick up and play.

I got this game for a quick one shot for my brother and his friends a few years ago so my memory about the playthrough is a bit foggy. I do intend to run it again because I feel that it is a good entry level module. I do plan on running it again this year and have started to look back through the module which is why I am now writing this review. As for the last group I ran it for, the majority of them had little to no experiance playing D&D while I have been playing and DMing for a few years. The players were all level one, rolled for stats, and experianced a boss fight that I felt was perfect for level one characters. As I don't' fudge dice rolls I was concerned that maybe one would go down, as there was no healer in the group, but they managed just fine. They had a lot of fun rollplaying and spent a lot of time interacting with the scenes and NPCs. They took particular intrest in rading/exploring key locations. As they weren't familiar with the lore D&D deities they had a lot of fun trying to figure out what to do at the shrine and what they should take, if they should take anything from the shrine. The players enjoyed the festive feeling as I ran this mod in October but most importently they played off eachother's actions while investigating the town.

Just for reference, I have purchased and ran Poison Potion Press modules in the past, and was lucky enough to be able to run this adventure before release back in 2018!

My group and I had a great time with this nice one-shot adventure! Without spoiling anything, I'd say being able to explore Kukurbi Village and talk with the villagers and the mayor was nice and helped add to both the merriment and to the suspense for what happens next!

As always, the artwork is always a nice additional scoop of whip-cream on top of the slice of pumpkin pie that is Serving the Squash. Marinescu outdid themselves for as brief as this module is!

I highly suggest running this at least once if you have any love for the autumn holidays of harvest and Halloween! I mean, you get a cool new Find Familiar option at the end, so what's not to love?

I chose this as a one-shot introductory adventure for a 9yo birthday party. It was fun for the two experienced kids, and the two newcomers had a good time too. We squashed it in one hour.

This was a fun little adventure. As my first shot at being a DM, I found it simple and gave me room to adapt. My Group siderailed it almost right out the gate, so I had to improvise to get them back. Adding a Gaurdhouse location and description would be helpful. Just in case. Thank you.

Our whole group had a lot of fun with this module. It's easy to run, easy to drop into any campaign and easy to prep.

It is a great module to get into the Halloween spirit. There is a ton of Halloween atmosphere and the final boss is fantastic! It has tons of really cool abilities including some great buffs that are possible for the players!

This module has a lot of roleplay opportunities and also a great combat encounter. There is also a good mystery to be unfolded but my players didn't really get to the bottom of that on their own before things popped off (they wanted to party too bad lol).

I DM'd this for my podcast and YouTube series so if you want to watch or listen to a playthrough you can check it out below or just search "One-shot Onslaught" wherever you download podcasts:

• Podcast first half: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/7263893
• Podcast second half: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/7348169
• YouTube:https://youtu.be/VpUUWpziWyE

Ran this a couple of months ago as a "Halloween Special" for my group. I wanted something fun, lighthearted, and dripping with Halloween kitsch. The result was wonderful. If you want a fun Halloween one-shot, look no further.

I ran this tonight, as a brand new DM (my second session ever) with a brand new group of players with ages 10-50. We had a blast! It's fun, funny and was a joy play. Thanks!