For a game in early beta this is superb. And Darrington are clearly taking player feedback onboard. Significant changes have already been made - most of which have improved the game. The current action economy works brilliantly, ancestries have been improved, the economy is better… it’s all coming together.

There are some areas which need a lot of attention - armour as it stands is an issue, especially at higher levels, and the dice pools at levels 8-10 are just too big, but having said that I’m really enjoying the games I’ve played and I’m already sure I’ll buy the finished product when it comes out.

For reference I’m not a CR fan - I’ve seen a few episodes of Critical role (all in early season 2).

The game, as currently written, is seriously broken.

Its never really clear if the game was written with the intent that the narrative triggers the moves (like most PbtA games) but if this is the case if simply doesnt work due to the absense of trigger conditions on any of the moves. In addition there is a paragraph suggesting that combat occur in turns and that everyone should get a chance to use a move each round. This simply wont work with the freeform narractive structure of PbtA games. What if the narrative they describe doesnt trigger a move. Also there are huge gaps in the moves - so for example there is a move for knowing something, a move for negotiating, a move for assessing things, and it feels like about 30 moves for hitting things with a sword/staff/fist or other weapon. There are no moves for pretty much anything else - for example performing a dangerous arcrobatic feat.

Also there is almost no MC guidance, no MC Principles, no Agenda and no MC Moves. There is a single page Conflict whihc talks about story structure, but nothing as useful as Fronts in Apocalypse world. There appear to be a couple of Blades in the Dark / Forged in Darkness ideas thrown in around position setting... but these arent really developed. I'm going to see if I can find some actual play examples and figure out how this is supposed to be played - because its really not obvious from the rule book.

The layout is very pretty, the history section is great, as is the world section and of course the art is wonderful. Shame about the game.

(And don't get me started on the number of typos)

This isn't 96 dpi (as advertised), which would have been a pretty low resolution, barely suitable for online play and completely unsuited to actually printing. These are approximately 33 dpi (or in other words a pixelated mess) which just looks terrible !!!

Yesterday I ran DDAL08-00 Once in Waterdeep for 6 players, all entirely new to D&DAL. It was also my first time DMing Adventurer's League, although I've been DMing for over 35 years.

These comments are based on version 1.2 (although I see there is already a later version available to download)

The editing and layout its great but it could do with another pass for some minor errors. For example the version number at the bottom varies page to page, and some of the award cards have "Story Award Name" on them. However the layout itself is brilliant. The use of indented paragraphs with check boxes meant I could very quickly mark out the sections I was going to use, and spot what I needed.

The adventurers itself can follow multiple paths based on a discussion of characters, character backgrounds and what would work for these particular heros. This worked surprisingly well. My group picked an 'An Evil Cross-dressing Gnome Illusionist' as their villain (that I marked as a mastermind), "A Dwarven Bard ex-Superstar (Career ended with Scandal)" as their interesting party and "The two half-orcs teach the half-elf student to drink like an Orc" as their roleplaying challenge.

As such any comments below are based on the Mastermind, Victim path.

Act one was great fun. It encouraged roleplaying, with the combination of a great setting, some fun events, and a fight location with plenty of stuff to interact with. It was also highly implausible and raised questions like how could a carriage pulled by horses crash through a wall - surely the horses would shy away, and if they didnt but somehow hit with enough force to pass through the wall, surely it would be very messy. Also the sudden appearance of the laborers from the Carpenters’, Roofers’, & Plasterers’ Guild caused much merriment. I've no idea what things are like in the rest of the world, but in England getting a tradesman to attend in anything less than 3 days is a challenge.

Act two caused more caused a few issues. Its worth noting that there are three entirely seperate act twos and the one you encounter will be based on the players choice of villain. Our act three was basically a treasure hunt followed by a fight. The treasure hunt clues completely flumoxed the players, who ended up going off on a tangent searching the bathrooms of the bar for something that wasnt there. Once I'd got them back on track (by hinting heavily about the solution, and then having them stumble into the solution), they ended up in two successive fights both against invisble opponents. The first of these wasnt really a challenge. The second (against a 9th level wizard) was incredibly deadly and should have resulted in a TPK. I fudged things a little to allow one PC to rejoin the party in the 2nd round (realistically they should all have been dead before he got back), and had the wizard make a few unwise decisions. Even then when he eventually went down three of the party had failed two survival rolls and were on the verge of death.

After Act two, the PCs had little will to face another PC - buit they had of course chosen an illusionist as their villain. They were beaten mentally, low on resources and didn’t have time for a long rest, so act 3 turned into a con job, with one of the characters pretending to be the masterminds lackey from the previous act.

So what are my thoughts on the adventure? It was utterly bonkers, but great fun. This is an adventure where you could have PCs on stage improving a full caberet act, kenku assassins hiding in a very large pie or PCs getting into a fight whilst in a Two-person pantomime centaur costume. There are also large chunks which make no sense - like how do city watch and repair people arrive so quickly, why would a performance be allowed to continue after several patreons have died, or why would anyone spend 1000GP on spell components to perform a task they could easily do themselves in 5 minutes. Perhaps the biggest question is how come in an inn filled with high level NPCs all the fighting and cleanup work falls to the six or so 1st level PCs.

Would I recommend the adventure? Yes. It's brilliant. Don't try to apply logic to the plot (especially the mastermind plot) because it makes absolutely no sense, but if played in the way I suspect the designers intended, as a light, fast, funny romp, with bucket loads of amusing roleplaying moments, chances for the players to get themselves into awkword positions and a setting perfect for swashbucling moments, then you'll love it.

I would also keep a careful eye on the fight with the wizard (Trapp) - its deadly.

A well written invetigative adventure, somewhat light in action for a pulp adventure, and all the action is end loaded (ie. at the end of the adventure). As a change in pace in a traditional pulp campaign this would serve really well. If run as a one off, or as an introduction to a campiagn I would suggest adding an action scene of some sort before the main adventure.

The handouts are really well written, the adventure makes good sense and the NPCs are interesting.

Best of all the adventure is written with two alternative explanations for the events - a supernatural explanation and a mundane one. Throughout the adventure guidance is given for each stream. This works really well.

Not quite what I expected, but a very welcome addition to my little pulp collection

Very very disappointing, especially since it was written by Steve Long, for whom I've always had great respect.

This isn't a pulp adventure - it’s a dungeon crawl with a thin 'pulp' veneer. Worse still it suffers from the cardinal sin of asking the players to make skill rolls to discover clues which are absolutely necessary for the game to continue, and it railroads the game from beginning to end - which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn't so obvious.

The layout and production values are good, as are the maps. The Spirit of the Century stating is okay - but it doesn't feel remotely suitable for use with SotC. If I was rating it as a Dungeon Crawl if would do a lot better. If you are looking for a pulp adventure though, as opposed to a D&D adventure clothed in a pulpy setting look elsewhere.

I have to say I am very very impressed with this product.

In the pdf you get a page of suggested rules on how to use the cards. 7 pages of 8 cards each (although two are blank cards so you actually only get 54 cards), and five pages of possible backs to use with them. The first four of these appear to be targetted at 1920s Pulp, High Fantasy, Modern, and Futuristic respectively. The last backing is a skeletal joker surrounded by a cloud of cards, and is fairly generic.

The quality of the pdfs is very high. The artwork whilst slightly cartoonish fits the descriptions on the cards well. The cards are generic enough that they fit almost any setting.

In play the cards gave the PCs a significant benefit, sufficient that I considered treating them as one CR higher, but I discovered a more interesting solution was to deal myself a hand of cards too, and allow the NPCs to play those cards.

Printing proved slightly difficult. The pdf is formatted for US letter (11" x 8.5"). Getting it to print on A4 (the common paper type in Europe) proved difficult since either the top and bottom of the image were cropped or backs didn't line up with the cards. Printing the pdf at 94% size and ignoring the warning that part of the page would be cropped resolved this issue.

The other minor issue is that although two blank cards are provided they are part of a part filled sheet. It would have been nice to have had a full sheet of blanks for those who wanted to make their own cards, and to have had all the others full of images.

Overall though, I have to say this product has added a fun element to my games, and made the players more adventurous. I'm very pleased with it.

Lame Mage Productions is one of a very small group of Superlink producers whos work is consistantly of very high quality. Its even more imprssive when you realise that its all done by one guy (Ben Robbins). I have purchased all the Lame Mage products to date and each one has been better than the previous one.

Evil Genius is however a significant departure from Ben's previous work. Rather than presenting us with a single fully fleshed out adventure Ben presents us with five clever plots each involving a different Mastermind out to dominate the world. In actual fact this isn't quite true - one mastermind (Dr. Null) makes two appearance and the goal isn't always world domination, world destruction features too.

There isn't much artwork, but what there is is of very high quality. I was a little disappointed to see the same image used for Dr. Null as in his previous three appearances. Null has now appeared in five adventures by Lame Mage - he really does deserve a new picture. On the bright side all the other Masterminds get new full colour images, and the supplement ends with a useful set of player handout images.

Before he gets into the adventures Ben provides a short introduction to the role of the Mastermind, the fact that its the Mastermind's plot the players oppose, and not the mastermind himself, and the importance of the ?Dum Dum Dum!? moment. This section made me smile. Ben has a great turn of phrase and makes you realise just how important pacing is. I'll let you discover the sectrets of the ?Dum Dum Dum!? moment for yourselves.

Then, each adventure starts with a quick description of the Mastermind, his goals, methods and the scope of his agenda. Surprisingly each Mastermind manages to feel like an individual even though the majority of them are scientists bent on world domination. In is followed with a couple of pages giving a synopses of the plot, and then two or three pages the key events of the plot, how to fit it into a campaign etc. Finally each adventure has a varient or two. The adventures are between five and seven pages long, and are followed by a very high quality GM hint sheet which you can use when running the scenarios.

In my opinion the strongest and most innovative of the plots is 'Luck Be A Lady' which deals with the attempts by the infamous Fu-shien Lo (a.k.a. the Crimson Claw) to steal luck from gamblers. The adventure is made by the setting (the wonderfully described kish oriental Lucky Dragon Casino) and the character of the Lama of Shang-gong who serves as a wonderful counterpoint to the Claw's character.

Each adventure looks like it will require surprisingly little work to integrate into a campaign. Whilst Evil Genius has no maps the key settings are fairly well described and the lack of maps has so far caused me no difficulties. The whole supplement is well written and much of it feels very original. Best of all it has a great four colour feel to it. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Concise well written plots, strong characters and very well written GM hint sheets which prove invaluable in the game. Even though each adventure is only 5-7 pages long they are well presented and very playable.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It seems a shame that whilst the other masterminds have great full colour art, Dr. Null has the same greyscale image he had when he attacked Somerset Bridge in Lame Mages second release. Infact you can see the bridge in the picture.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>