I love holiday-themed adventures, regardless of which holiday, and this was just fun to run during the Christmas season. Players had a lot of fun, and several wanted to adopt Chernok for their own familiar.

Ran this for the holidays; it was short and fun! The players liked the puzzle.

This is an interesting adventure with some unique awards. It is, however, one of the more confusing modules I've run and relies on a handout story, which not all groups are apt to want to engage with. The stat blocks for the suggested monsters to make the last combat more difficult as well as the creatures in the random encounter table are not included, so be prepared (also includes 1 monster from Volos which is not likely encountered)

This is a solid 2-4 hour investigation and social adventure, there is a combat at the end but it is not a main pillar of this adventure. I have never run Dragon Heist but I can see how this could easily fit into the storyline as a prologue or interlude betwen certain chapters. The whodunnit portion of the mystery is fairly easy to solve (by design) but my favorite part of this adventure is usually listening to the players take the clues they find and run rampant with their theories as to why. This also fits the bill nicely for a winter holiday mod with faintly sinister overtones. I usually only use one of the bonus objectives to help with the flow of the game but both can be used if you want to stretch the game or add an extra spooky element. Also this mod is easy to transplant into any large metropolis with a snowy season which is always appreciated.

I DMed and felt many elements were missing (like the list of available toys) or didn't make a lot of sense, but we had fun and that's what matters.

I've run this adventure twice. I used it as the starting point for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist rather than running the book's Chapter 1. I also ran it at my local convention this part spring, we kept the name and the events the same but set it in the early spring. At the table we had young players, new players and older experienced players. Everyone had a great time lots of fun with this one. The adventure provides lots of comedic opportunities as well as suspense and combat. Great mix of all the things that makes D&D fun.

This was an excellent adventure to run as a newer DM. Some nice characters to play and fun little moments with the tricks that can be played. It's a good adventure for new players as well as it shows a couple of different aspects of D&D with roleplay, puzzles and a good decent fight at the end. We played at Xmas time to give that additional seasonal flaire.

Great little adventure. My group had a blast running through it. Make sure to check AL errata for updates on the the awards in this module if that sort of thing is important to you.

Ran this for a group of n00bs (2nd ever AL game, 1st was DDAL00-04) and they had fun with it. None of them being Bard/caster types didn't help any. Bonus A turned out to be more Roll-play than roleplay (because of un-balanced party build). Bonus B required some hand-holding (because they're n00bs), as did the leap from Part 2 to Part 3 (i.e. why would we do this?). I may end up running DH for this group, so if we go with Summer this mod is a nice intro to the larger campaign (and a much better one than DDAL8-00)

This a very fun adventure. My home group wanted to go to a ball in Waterdeep and participate in Waterdeep "high society". This was a fun way to introduce the Cassalanters to my party (and provided a nice reason for the Cassalanters to loan my PCs some funds to finish fixing up Trollskull Manor). I highly suggest it!

Winter's Splendor is a fun little module for the holiday season that has the advantage and disadvantage of being a holiday module and therefore feeling a bit out of place at any other time. However, it is a fun module and one with a few really standout moments, but also some issues that are a bit more difficult and perplexing to deal with.

First, let's talk about the good stuff. The setup has a wonderful mix of playful and sinister that works well together and the 'little child tricked by the devil' plot line is a classic story trope that players can easily lean into. It has great synergy with one season of Dragon Heist, really allowing you to get the players emotionally invested in some highly important NPCs, enough so that I'd be tempted to somehow integrate it into a play through of any Dragon Heist run I did with that season.

The tone here is great. Everything is a mix of creepy and cute, exemplified by the image of an imp in a Nutcracker outfit. Better yet, it builds well. The opening scene is pure holiday cheer. The performance is lovely until it isn't. The children's room is a scene of cuteness mixed with horrifying wrongness. (You can really do a lot with the imps going invisible here; have them manipulate toys and play it like a horror movie.) And then the graveyard scene is pure horror film aesthetic with no holiday spirit at all. Everything is placed well.

Bonus objective 1 is mostly a positive as well. It's a really fun, inventive scenario and certainly original. There is a drawback as well, though, which I'll get to later.

Finally, the puzzles are mostly very clear and well designed.

However, there are enough drawbacks here to cost it a star.

First, while not a huge deal, the first bonus objective is very dependent on a confident and performative DM. Are you prepared to sing at the table? Because while it's great, it only really comes alive if someone is prepared to sing. It can be a player or a DM, but it's really something you want to have happen, and not every table will have that. Bonus objective 2 doesn't have this problem but also feels very much like just a sequence of ability checks.

More of a problem is the ending. The shift to the location for the finale is somewhat poorly telegraphed and can easily slip by a party, requiring a fair amount of nudging from the DM. (Two groups I ran this for both came to the same wrong conclusion of where to go.) And the item required in the ending puzzle isn't in the adventure anywhere, meaning the DM needs to improvise a solution at the end. There's a few ways this could be done (make it easier by creating a quick location to purchase it, or make it hard by forcing the players into multiple fights as the time stretches on) with neither being wrong but both being sub-optimal.

Overall, I really like this module, but can't deny the ending lets it down a lot.

Great adventure. my people had tons of fun and i did too dming it

This was my first time DMing, and this was my first module ever! It was well-written and the information flowed very nicely to where even me, a first-timer, had no trouble finding what I needed. It ran a little shorter time-wise than I would have liked, but my players kept rolling 18s and 20s on their perception/insight/invesigation checks, so I suppose that's just luck of the dice.

My only major fault with this module is that the provided map is not labeled. They tell you instead to refer to W:DH, which has been sold out in my store for a while. I had to borrow another DM's copy to quickly scribble the rooms down before my session.

The combat is very, very easy and light. I had a party of 7 with an APL of 2, but with two level 4 paladins, I made the decision to up it to a "hard" encounter instead of the reccommended average. They still got through the battle in one round, taking no damage. This adventure was obviously meant to be more social/investigative in nature, so that's not a major fault for me.

I went out to the dollar store to pick up some props for creating the summoning circle, which was a hit for my players. They enjoyed being able to assemble the circle as their characters would. Because of the shortened time, I offered them Aria's extra objective at the end as she was thanking the characters. Most of the table got very into trying to finish the song, especially when you dangle that extra treasure checkpoint over their heads.

All in all, easy-to-run, quick, and spirited holiday module that a DM with more experience than me could probably run without any preparation.

I ran this short little 2 hour adventure as a flashback during my Dragon Heist campaign. I wanted to give it an even deeper holiday feel so I changed the final boss to Krampus. Everyone of my players loved the variety in this adventure.

I highly recommend this adventure. It is a great holiday themed module with a dark twist. It is mostly social with some puzzles and a smattering of combat.