I ran this module as part of our ongoing campaign and The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford deserves its reputation as one of the best adventures of recent years! Its one of the easiest adventures to run well. The author gives you inspiring details in few enough words that you can quickly scan them. You could run it with very little preparation. If you are going to run it, you would only need to fully read the first few sections. The rest you can scan as you go. It feels like a medieval legend in a way that brings the faerie tale to life. Players have a great deal of freedom but also some direction or directions. Multiple play throughs are likely to be quite different. A small region with a great deal to interact with. Well worth running for groups with many styles of play.

A simple rules system for old school D&D styles of play. My group appreciated the system when I ran it. They had not had retainers made such a core part of the gameplay before.

Some groups may not like the lack of leveling. Characters progress in other ways but far less than in many RPGs. Players like the classless element. Its a great system for a pickup game. I'd be interested to try it with players who are completely new to RPGs, since in many ways that is the audience I have in mind when I think of very rules light games like this.

Printing a copy and stapling it was easy.

Try it out!

I ran the adventure in the book for a group a few weeks ago. None of us had played Troika! before. It was a fun very short whimsical adventure and gave a good feel for the kind of game you might run with Troika! We all had fun. If you run it you may want to think about fleshing out what happens if the players pick up some of the plot hooks at the end. I'd like to play more Troika! It's a good change of pace. I enjoy the character backgrounds. They are all evocative and let your imagination fill in the world building. It could be fun for a group to figure out more about each of the backgrounds and co-create the setting. I'd like to learn more about other peoples' homebrew Troika! games to see what they do with the system and setting.

An especially fun set of intro adventures for 1st level characters. The variety is good. I recommend letting the players be creative in how they deal with the strange places and creatures they encounter. Shawn Merwin is really good at creating short early level adventures.

The Tomb of the Serpent Kings is my current first choice to recommend for a new Dungeon Master and/or group of new Dungeons & Dragons players. We ran it with Old School Essentials and had a great time. Players will get to experience open-ended dungeon exploration and solving problems with their minds rather than rolling. Its dangers are fair and encourage interaction. When you are confronted with a dangerous environment in a roleplaying game you must put yourself in the scene in order to think your way through it. This makes the scene immersive and gets at the heart of roleplaying. Players will need to make decisions, which is a great first experience for a new player of a roleplaying game.

As other reviews have said, it is also a good introduction to open-ended play for experienced players and referees who might be accustomed to campaigns with less player agency, exploration or problem-solving. It's easy to prepare and run and will probably only take two to three sessions. I would recommended the Tomb of the Serpent Kings to most D&D groups. I'd recommend playing it with Basic D&D or other early editions of D&D or retroclones like Old School Essentials (which is what I would recommend if you haven't played any editions from the 1970s or 1980s before, plus you only need the free basic rules available on Necrotic Gnome's website).

A fun short introductory module! It's a relaxing and effective tutorial adventure for 5th edition. We ran it on a day when we had some absences in our group for our ongoing campaign. While the plot has little room for player agency since its so short and relaxing, we didn't mind. We had two players take on the role of the two friends rather than run it solo. It required almost no preparation, at least if you are an experienced referee. I would consider running it again to introduce a player to 5th edition and I am curious about the sequel. If you are brand new to roleplaying games, this could be a fantastic entry point. It is easier for a new DM or referee to run than most modules. Its easier to find a group of 2 people than a group of 4+ and in many ways easier to run a game for a 1 player than 3 or more. And its lower pressure to run something like this than to run something longer, more complex, or open-ended like the Start Set or Starter Kit. I have run the Starter Set, completed a three year published adventure for 5th edition, and run probably over 35 modules over the years. If I was advising a brand new Dungeon Master or referee who wanted to learn 5th edition (the currently most popular edition), I would recommend they begin by preparing and running this short module. Then maybe run its sequel. These making great stepping stones. And then trying to run the Starter Set or Starter Kit. And then after that I would suggest they follow their interests, whether they are homebrewed or published.

Dragon and the Thief is an in-world board game. The game is purely luck based rather than skill based, although players or the referee could come up with ways for characters to cheat. I think the benefit of this time of in-world game is that it provides fodder for the player characters and nonplayer characters to roleplay playing, to gloat or express frustration, to cheer each other. It allows players to portray their characters in a situation with relatively fewer stakes than usual, which is great for character development.

The game's rules are very simple and players will be able to pick it up easily. Its game play is random enough to provide interesting turns of events and fast enough for the characters to play a few rounds quickly. My players said they'd play it again in-game. It allowed a player character to get to know an NPC better.

It does it's job well. I think in my heart of hearts I'd like a game that has more interesting and more skill-based gameplay. Like a real board game! Even one with a very minimal role for skill and a big role for luck as opposed to pure luck. That's why I only gave it 4 stars. I understand why they made the decision to make it purely luck based though. Worth the low price if you like the idea of playing through a tavern game.

The printable game board is attractive. We played online so we didn't use it but you could print it out and use it at the table. That could be fun. You could even color it with crayons or colored pencils.

I ran this at a convention and had a blast with the players. Night of the Masks turns a masquerade ball into a playground or sandbox (in the sense that a sandbox is a limited space for open-ended play) for the players. I told them up front that they can choose their own goal at the ball. Many modules I have run or played struggle with having social situations where players have a great deal of agency but this one succeeds in that regard with flying colors. The players can interact with what they want and ignore what they want. Consequences for their actions are logical.

Slight spoilers for players below:

The map is great and suggests many ways the players can interact with it. Do they want to climb the walls to spy on the meeting? Engage in intrigue and mischief in the hedge maze? Plant something incriminating on a noble? Have a whirlwind fling with a noble? Play matchmaker? My players did all of the above. It may help if the group is OK splitting up in groups of 1s and 2s and taking turns among themselves since many of the things they might want to do are more manageable if a small number of characters pursue them.

Before you run it, make sure to understand how all the characters relate to one another. I mapped it out ahead of time a bit. Lean into the Venetian mask idea. If you are ambitious you could even make masks based on the ones listed in the module, each with a different meaning, and hand them out.

I hope run it again as part of a campaign instead of a one-shot. It made a great one shot but I think it could be adapted for a scene of ballroom intrigue in a longer term campaign. The meeting happening between some of the nobles during the masquerade could be adapted for a campaign plot.

Night of the Masks could be used with any edition of D&D and most other rulesets and it can be adapted for many settings, even nonmedieval ones with a small amount of work. This scenario takes place over a single night in game and should easily fit in one session but you could expand it to two if you desired to spend more time on certain parts of the night.

Great work by Bart Wynants and the team at Raging Swan Press. Well worth the price.

Like the other Uncaged books, Volume 3 has great artwork and feminist themes. I just ran adventure The Night's Watch by Chloe Mashiter from this volume. The adventure is for levels 1 - 3. I thought the players had a great time. It was an evocative, short and compelling scenario. It took us less than 3 hours to finish this particular scenario. Players have enough freedom as long as they agree to the initial premise that I don't think my players felt constrained or railroaded, which is a particular risk in really short adventures. The layout was a highlight. It made it easy to run the module after only reading through it once. The information for each NPC was really well-organized for the DM to quickly find what they need. I look forward to running other adventures by Chloe Mashiter.

I have read through many of the other 24 adventures in the volume and they seem promising. I can say for certain I found this one very worthwhile. If I get to run other adventures from this volume I 'll try to update this review.