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I'd promised my players something fun and potentially Halloween themed for our campaign. Things have slowed down a bit with TwitchCon around the corner, and my wife (who streams our games) and a few of my players (mods in her channel) will be there, so we'll be taking some time off. I didn't have any ideas and was just going to run some generic homebrew content when I came across The Madhouse of Tasha's Kiss. I figured I didn't have anything left to lose, and for just a few bucks, it was worth taking the chance. With less than an hour before the session was supposed to kick off, I purchased the PDF, which came with separate map files and a printer friendly version of the module, and read through it.
The layout of the module is pretty simple and the plot hooks to get the adventurers brought in were easy enough to manage. Once the players progress far enough and enter the madhouse itself, the atmosphere changes from weird to just plain disturbing, and then to frankly a little nauseating, but in the best way possible. The Halloween theme is all over this module.
From the DM's side of the screen, it was really easy for me to read through the module and get an idea of what was going on. My only criticism would be of the map included in the PDF. The multiple rooms, linked by portals, aren't laid out in a very intuitive way. I ended up bringing the map into MSPaint and rearranging them myself, which made things a lot easier. The monsters in the module aren't your generic goblins and bandits, and the various rooms of Tasha's Madhouse are all very unique and engaging when they aren't being flat out disturbing in their content. Again, in a positive way. As a DM, I found the advice in the module very helpful when it came to scaling monsters for my party's level. Any DM would have an easy time adjusting it for a party of level 4 to level 12.
From the players' side of the screen, it was one horror after another, a ceaseless barrage of some of the weirdest shit imaginable. The encounter with Chimera Chron, who is all of the party members simultaneously, and the reflections in the maze of mirrors, both made for some really interesting character building moments after a bit of DM inspiration struck me.
The players found the module to be an absolute blast and we managed to finish a truncated version (skipping a few of the rooms in the module) to fit in with our time constraints. The projected "clear times" in the module are, in my opinion, a little bit optimistic, but your mileage may vary depending on your party and DM.
All in all, I'd suggest this module to anyone looking for a creepy Halloween themed one-shot for a party of almost any level. It can be fit in seamlessly with an ongoing campaign with minimal effort and it can really get inside the heads of the players and their characters with a little bit of work on the DM's part. An exciting and positive experience throughout at a reasonable price.
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