DMs, this adventure is a great straight-forward "hunt-the-beastie" adventure with just the right mix of social, exploration and of course beastie. Going on a hunt to gain renown in the Border Kingdoms, while potentially bringing closure to a regional legend brings about great opportunities for enjoyment. My players were concerned when they finally saw the 'prize'. One actually looked at me and said, "You know we are a tier one party, right?". Not surprisingly, Alan Patrick seems to be able to wrtie adventures that make players look at their DMs in concern or in excitement. that goes for DM's too! I'm a little late to the game with this review, but I just ran this adventure a few weeks ago. Add it to your collections if you haven't yet!

DM Marcello De Velazquez

A competition to hunt the largest beastie - what's not to like? Size and feriocity aside, however, the alpha peryton isn't any tougher than a normal peryton, stats wise, which may lead to an anticlimatic fight against a high-damage party. DMs might consider giving the alpha peryton maximum HP, and/or implementing the Strong Winds/Gusting Winds effects in the sidebar regardless of party strength based on the party composition - if the party has a large number of Sharpshooter archers, they will be able to lay on a lot of hurt even without magic weaponry.

The second bonus objective at the end rather diminishes the result of this module. The betrayal and assault seem to abruptly come out of nowhere, and the aftermath of it also invalidates the results that the party got for the peryton hunt proper (winning by default so long as they caught a peryton), which might leave a bad taste in the players' mouths.

The formatting of the module itself is also atrocious. The Season 8 format does the document no favors (dumping the two meaty bonus objectives as appendices after all the maps and creature stats), and there are several extraneous bookmarks that do nothing except frustrate.

A module that has potential, but definitely needs tidying up before it can shine.

Ran this at RPR June 2019. It's OK.

The Good - How often have you actually used or fought a peryton? The big showdown was a neat, unusual tactical encounter. There are some cool NPCs in this one as well, and there's a sidequest to a haunted tower that you could seamlessly drop into a home game. Super handy, that.

The Bad - The call to action is clunky and unappealing, especially under AL Season 8 "gold isn't a thing" rules. There's really no incentive for a party to engage with the adventure other than "well, I signed up to play so..." A lot of shrugs at my table.

The Ugly - The maps would be beautiful for playing online with Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, except you just get a pdf with them embedded. No image files. Boo. And they're dang near unprintable. The layout and organization of the pdf requires lots of flipping back and forth, or dissasembling and reorganizing it, meaning some fairly heavy prep for 2-4 hours of play. I never had everything I needed in one place. Annoying.

For $5 you get some decent stuff you can mine for a homebrew game, and you could modify the adventure to work around its failings. I don't regret the purchase. But I wouldn't run this as is for AL again. In that arena, it's ... meh.

Creative/tactical players have an opportunity to shine here. The module let the party aumbush a Huge bird, that led to some interesting shenanigans when I ran it !

Well written and could serve as an introduction to the Border Kingdoms if you don't want to run 01-01. A straight-forward hook in a hunting competition, but with multiple hunting parties available, the plot doesn't have to run the same way twice. The bonus objective isn't always easy to work into the narrative, but it has some fantastic content and is a lot of fun. If I had any complaint, it's that the magic item included feels a bit like "Oh, and now that you're successful, you trip over this thing that's here for no particular reason."