Very straightforward adventure, which is ideal for many DMs, but not quite my cup of tea.

The boss fight could use some additional difficulty, but otherwise the mechanics of the adventure are pretty sensible and solid.

Pros: Hilarious final combat with a few twists and turns Call to action is unique and

Cons: Combat scaling is meant for unoptimised players First section seems a bit disconnected from the second

The adventure has "middle-module" syndrome. What's more, as with RMH-03 and RMH-04, this module feels like it's actually part of a longer module sawn in two. This was clearly done to fit to the module run-time, and being completable in 3-hours is certainly a bonus, but it does feel like something's missing.

The module itself is solidly written. Nearly half of it is meant to establish the setting of Barovia and covers interactions in one of its settlements, this may feel slow-paced for your players. It's best to brief them on this during the pre-module discussion, so that they don't feel like they're going nowhere. If players are prepared for it, the first half should be a fun RP/exploration experience. The adventure also segues into a cute mid-adventure twist- some unexpected hospitality you might say. This should entertain characters who are into the setting of the domains of dread and its mythos. Players expecting meaty combat may feel disappointed- but this is a horror setting, and the monsters are used more to intimidate than provide something to punch. All in all, not a "traditional" AL module, but if your characters broaden their horizons, an interesting leg on their journey through the Mist Hunters storyline.

If the module's description didn't clue you off, 75% of this module consists of two combats. The combat takes place simultaneously over the entire town of Lonelywood, and provides a humongous scale of combat using rather unique siege rules. Combat is a tad on the easy side, so you could probably get away with upping the Ogre count a tad.

One issue is the sheer complexity of a combat- players and DMs alike may find it hard to process the new rules systems, and I had to flip back and forth a lot while prepping for the module. This stretches to the "social" section, which seems to have an unnecessarily complex set of rules- this one I found less annoying and more amusing.

All in all, so long as you and your players know what you're getting into when you start playing a module called OGRE KRUSH, it's a good experience. It delievers upon both OGRES and KRUSHING excellently (although, I was disappointed that none of the ogres could develop crushes on the PCs

An entertaining module whose encounters support multiple solutions. Combats are generally well-balanced for my meta, and I wish my players were more imaginative as to try the non-combat approach successfully.

I enjoyed that it features a higher level of magic than most adventures in this setting. The tone is on the sillier side. Whether this is a good thing is probably subjective to you, but I enjoyed it.

This is a combat heavy module, with some elements of exploration, but mostly as an excuse to string the combats together; there's a minimum of two combats and a maximum of four in the two hours. There is a SCP-esque vibe to the adventure, which I appreciate, but it extends mostly to the set dressing- it is possible to run this as a horror module, but the DM would have to fill in the blanks themselves.

One major issue is the combat adjustment advice is poorly written, sometimes the adjustments for weaker parties are too dramatic, sometimes not significant enough. The final boss goes from zero spell slots at Weak to THREE level five spell slots at Normal. I recommend that you do not trust the difficulty adjustment sidebars, and instead spend some time adjusting it to your party yourself.

I had a good game running this. We had only three players, which made combat really difficult, but also made the rest of the sections really smooth.

This is a light-hearted adventure with low-stakes and many opportunities for evocative or amusing situations. I found a lot of comedic potential in playing up of playing up one of the NPC's focus on safety- after all, adventurers are prone to a lot more risk-taking than regular civilians. I also had the amusing experience of having to explain what ambergris was to my players.

One pain point is that the module is 90% ideal for running the skill-checks and exploration using only theatre of the mind, but there's a mechanic regarding thin ice that seems to assume that I am using a large battlemap where characters physically move through eaach space. I think that I was intended to randomly ask characters to roll against the thin ice, but I was thankful when the scouting session gave me an excuse to forget the mechanic entirely.

Combat is challenging, perhaps too challenging for a very weak party. The included combat adjustments are not sufficient for very weak parties, if you run it you'll probably need to reduce the difficulty further.

Overall, an evocative module that fits right into the setting, with the many twists and turns that you might expect from harvesting a whale. It's a light-hearted in a way that's a reprieve from the doom and gloom in the hardcover, while still feeling like it belongs there.

This module is a "shenanigans" module- it puts the party into amusing situations and the fun of the module is in giving the players time to interact. This may not be to everyone's liking, but my table certainly seemed to have fun. If you enjoy improvising NPC interactions, there's plenty of amusing NPCs to work with in here, although I do feel that the NPCs you interact with the most could do with further fleshing out. If you run this module, be sure to give the players time and space to interact; in this module, it's the journey, not the destination, that is worth it.

It is worth noting that the module is aimed at level one characters, so if you have higher level characters you will need to do some adjustments; Combat is not one of this modules' strong suits. This is meant to be a series, and leaves a lot of unanswered questions, presumably to be answered later.

• Overall a well fleshed-out module. Some might say it is too fleshed out, as it is NINETY-FIVE pages long (with the appendices).
• The encounters are refreshingly appropriate and challenging.
• The setting is evocative (it's in Thay).
• It would be nice if modules like these, which clearly reference older edition adventures, novels, etc. would mention where to read for more information. I should note that at no point does this or the previous DRW modules has anyone really explained what the throne and the Sceptre are, even though the information should be readily revealed by several NPCs. (The info can be found in The Wyrmskull Throne)

Specific Comments: Spoilers:

• The Puzzle in Part 3 appears to have a "typo". It seems some similar looking symbols are actually meant to be the same symbol. I imagine the author is using a font and did not realize the capital and lowercase version of the font have slightly different symbols. This could be explained in-universe by having the NPC explain this quirk of linguistics, or having a knowledge check for the same.

• Reminder that the national language of Thay is Thayan, not common. The module acknowledges this in certain places, so I assume the module is meant to be played with language barriers in play, however, the chapter 1 social encounters are made significantly harder if the characters are not able to speak Thayan.

Theme: Good - the environments are sufficiently metal. Unfortunately time constraints make spending some time on the namesake of the module a bit awkward. It's not fun for PCs to repeat the same saves 10 times in a row, so it's a challenge for the DM to make hellrocks falling on the party be exciting that many times.

Narrative: Average - The selling point of this module is that it's part of a series. It's definitely setting up a cool storyline, but it seems like the authors of the three modules (15/16/17) did not communicate with each other. Story details in the three modules do not match up.

There are also many many things which could have done with more explaining. The existence of the dungeon in the module does not make much sense, or at least, it needs more explaining by the module as I spent quite a bit of time puzzling it out so I could justify it to the players. Why did the devils only decide to attack the dungeon now? Did the Bloody Hooves freeze time inside or did Zariel? If it's the former why are they so powerful and if it's the latter how can there still be Demons inside? Why does it say that Dara needs to rest for 2 weeks if she has to go into the next two modules immediately?

No information on the arc's BBEG is provided in this module or the next two modules, it only says that he is loyal to Zariel (who is no longer an Archduke during the time of this module, so that just invites more questions), it does not state the type of devil they are, what powers he has, or his motivations.

Combat: Terrible - The module sends approximately 10 extremely weak combats at the PCs. That's not exciting, and it's definitely not doable in 4-6 hours unless the DM is handwaving combats away. There is a "mandatory" encounter table filled with under CR'd AND boring combats like "one madcap per PC, more if the party is too strong". The story significant encounters are also too weak, with the failstate of the final encounter being nearly impossible to trigger. Safe to say if you DM this you should be adjusting EVERY SINGLE COMBAT in the module significantly as the DM has no idea of the capabilities of a T3 party nor any idea of how long a single combat takes.

Editing: Terrible - Dara is supposed to be kept alive in this module, which has her statblock, but not the story award that you're supposed to give the players if she dies. Ironically the next adventure has the story award but not her statblock. The author also forgets the Levels of Madness mechanic comes from Rage of Demons storyline, not the DMG, so the mechanics of this special madness effect is not printed in the module. In general the module is also plagued with the S8/S9 module writing guidelines which are terrible for DM readability, and the author did not mitigate this at all.

Overall, this module's main selling point is that it's the setup to the first part of the trilogy- the next two modules do not provide a good recap. The skeleton of the plot is also usable, but you will need to provide the meat of every encounter yourself. The time pacing of this module is abysmal- if this is meant to be an atmospheric module, why are there so many combats taking up all of the time budget? If this is supposed to be a hellish combat-focused module, why are the encounters so weak?

This is a heavy Roleplay and Exploration module. I personally loved it, sailor superstitions and the whole man-vs-nature of nautical themed adventures are all present in the first half of the module, a theme I think deserves more attention. The second section of the module is a mysterious and definitely hostile island environment, and contains most of the encounters.

The module does not quite feel like a 4+2 hour module, but this is probably because the author is generous with the time assigned to pure roleplaying sections. Bonus Objective A, for example, is more or less purely a roleplaying section with no real mechanical impact, but it has a powerful effect on the tone of the module. The call to action, too, is overly detailed, perfect for a slow-paced party, and perhaps not quite meant for the adventurers league.

The main issue with this module is the encounters. Every encounter in this module is simply too easy for an average party. I maximized all the monsters' hit points and it was still too easy for an average party. I recommend adding in more monsters as there are major action economy issues, with three single-enemy encounters. (Granted, two of these encounters can summon, but taking turns off to do this means they're half dead before then). You're going to have to do some work to make the encounters challenging. The final boss needs to be in a room with mostly water but with some above-ground sections (elements of the room are described as being above-water), this is to make sure enough of the players' actions are spent dealing with the environment and the various abilities of the final enemy.

• This module is 3/4s combat, with half of it being a three-stage boss fight. Needless to say, this review assumes that you're running it for players who all enjoy the occasional heavy combat module.
• All in all, the combats are decently thought out. They are certainly much better designed than the average module, yet for the sake of making DM adjustments, I will list my nitpicks below (vague spoilers!).
• The module does not include the two "global" effects which happen during the red war. Although there is a random "war events" table to be used during the one above-ground encounter, it's not quite the same, this may be a disappointment to some of you who enjoy chaos. Nevertheless, this is a pretty intense module so adding more things to keep track of may not be wise.
• Stage 1 of the boss fight is simply not threatening. I had the side-monsters try to grapple enemies into lava, and I had the fire-immune boss himself simply wade into lava at one point to throw a wrench into the enemy plans. Even then, the fight seemed to have too little damage but too much hit points. The legendary actions are a little too boring.
• Stage 2 of the boss fight is where your party may start to find problems. My party had spell selection and mobility/ranged problems, so they were already starting to find problems with this boss who had suddenly become more mobile. Were this the end of it, I think it would be sufficient to say that this is simply a learning experience for the players that they need to pack some ranged capability.
• I completely missed that the magic item in the second stage of the boss fight has two abilities (the module reminds you of one, not that they are to blame) and let him fall off the mount, this is a horribly awkward waste of actions that probably defused the tension. Mea culpa.
• Stage 3 of the boss fight is an incredibly over-CR'd monster that the author seems to have balanced by providing several NPC-buffs. What it doesn't quite adjust for is just how ridiculously mobile stage 3 is. Some parties will have no trouble with this, but it's quite possible your party will. There's really nothing stopping the enemy from damaging players without really giving the average much chance to damage it.
• It is completely probably for the DM to play the monster "stupidly" by occasionally ending in range of the party's attacks if this fight is to be balanced.

If I were to do it again, I would shorten stage 1 and lengthen stage 2 somehow.

• This is a Combat and Puzzle focused mod (although all the puzzles are optional objectives)
• Combats were a little too easy, I upped all of them by one challenge tier, I also used all the for added challege adjustments without issue. I swapped the boss encounter's spells so they would have shield so they would not fold to a single ranged DPS character.
• Puzzles were not as good as the previous mod, Palace of the Efreeti, but Palace was the gold standard, and this puzzle is still pretty great.
• A lot of rewards require the players to meet certain prerequisites such as playing previous modules, which is a little annoying when you have random tables which haven't played any of them before.
• My players cared not for any of the lore in the module, and did not even ask who Branislav and Dmitra were. I wonder if I should have dispensed the information anyway.

Combat 4/5 Exploration 5/5 Social 3/5 Puzzles NA

• The combat encounters are designed to be a little too hard to take on directly, intentionally so I believe.
• I feel like DMs are expected to let some of the monsters help the players if they play their cards right, but there's not much guidance for it.
• There are supposedly four possible solutions, two of them, however, seem unsatisying to me. I can't say i've actually run them, but given that it takes away the final encounter, my impression is that if your players are in any way combat-minded I would stick with the fourth option.
• Isometric map looks really cool, would still have preferred a grid-based map for ease of quick conversion to a player map.
• The social encounter is entertaining, it would probably have been a bit more interesting if I had picked the other paths for my players. However, some of the monsters could easily become social encounters instead. Note that social encounter does not mean persuasion checks- there's not much opportunity for those here. It was just fun social interaction is what I mean.

Exploration 4/5 Combat 3/5 Social 5/5 Puzzle NA (Unless you count the social encounter to be a puzzle)

• The canoe skill check system is bad, which is a shame because thematically the island is really cool. The skill check guantlet is confusing but can be overcome if you can ad lib the environmental descriptions. Personally I described the three landmarks they had to identify in order to find their way to the island. However I would definitely find some other penalty than the canoes getting lost from each other, this was really unfun for the players.

• I think it's just somehow impossible to impress on the players hard enough that you CANNOT LASH THE CANOES TOGETHER, that you SHOULDN'T WEAR HEAVY ARMOUR WHILE ON A BOAT, and how important it is to distribute the players around the canoes intelligently. This was probably my fault, but I included it here so other DMs here can figure out what to do about it.

• I had a bunch of players who were just bad with tactics so I had to tame down the first combat a lot, however, I think even if they weren't, the encounter has the potential to be chaotic and dangerous. If the enemies gang up on a single player, as their combat abilities promote doing, I think a couple of bad rolls can be an easy player death unless you use your DM mercy.

• The big folk social encounter is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. I printed the text from that section and gave them writing space and five minutes so they could plan their responses, since I did not expect any of them to be able to improvise that quickly. However, my plan backfired slightly- they really overcompensated and came up with the most verbose things you can imagine (yes, even more than necessary), only one of them actually gave the "correct" answer. However, I still consider this section one of the highlights of this module.

• Final boss is absolutely lame at lower difficulties. The main boss becomes worthless if the players all pass a single save. Then again, I suppose that's suppose to be the benefit of having good saves.