I am in the process of running all of DDAL09 as a campaign, so will be reviewing each adventure as I run them. For context, I ran 5 adventures in this campaign already, a homebrew one where the party needs to get out of Elturel with as many civilians as possible as the city is being sucked into hell, and then Baldur's Gate: Fall of Elturel, also on DM's Guild for a different group of adventurers, finally I have run DDAL09-01 through DDAL09-04.

What I liked: This is a fun adventure! Mahadi's Wandering Emporium is a GREAT central location to venture out from in Avernus. There are a bunch of great characters you meet and if you are a savvy DM you can look ahead and grab the NPCs from DDAL09-06 to fill it out even more. The adventure structure is a nice reason to tour through Mahadi's and the optional quests in the module add some fun combat. Overall just a solid adventure design in a memorable location that helps establish the tone of the rest of Avernus.

What I didn't like:

Starting in media res with a chase. The chase itself isn't great (infernal vehicles aren't statted, discouraging combat, but the chase mechanics aren't particularly interesting) and it takes too long. It's neat that it introduces the rust razors, but if I ran things again, I'd try and shorten it, adding more complications and not worrying about closing in for melee combat.

A great way to end the player character's time at Baldur's Gate, a very solid recommendation to anyone to run!

One of the funner modules for the Avernus Rising series. An exciting vehicle chase scene. Be warned that the players may initiate their own boarding action and attempt to take over the Infernal War Machines. This is followed by an investigative segment which is also one of the more well done invesgation quests in the Avernus Rising module.

4 out 5 stars.My players enjoyed but gave feedback. On page 4 add "Boarder needs Athletics or Acrobatics 10 to leap on Fai Chen's wagon. If it misses it can not rejion the monsters". Change the number of chase rounds to 4. The complications should only effect the PCs. Add two more clues to the spy in the module. The group was not sure on where they should be. Add common to the languages to the Salamadars in A5. Note to other DMs. All my players thought having to choose between one of the three jobs a better idea than just the spy job. They also suggest a reduce feast if they didn't want to give up their soul.

DM'd this at a weekly public event in 3.5 hours. We completed one bonus objective.

The Mad Max fight was fun but long--about an hour for my table of 5. I used old iPhone boxes for the war machines. I only allowed my players to target enemies but not their cars.

Mahadi offers objectives in two places in the module, Story Objective A and Bonus Objective B. With substantial effort, I combined the requirements for both into a draft contract that describes both objectives (find the spy & scatter the Rusty Razors). I added some statements to the contract to try to trick the players into losing their rewards: "Mahadi will generously waive fees for dining in his restaurant, which may or may not have happened..." I also made the contract lax on the requirement for anyone to hear the spy's confession so the characters can cite it to ensure they get their reward. This provides two good lessons in the extreme lawfulness of devils. I printed out several copies and it worked well; my players said they enjoyed it. (I will e-mail it to anyone interested: nado.hopsong@gmail.com.)

Meeting various recurring NPCs in the Wandering Emporium is fun, but the clues to solve the mystery are really weak. Think about how you will present evidence towards finding the spy because, as written, it's the barest of suspicians then "If confronted..."

Concerning the chest, I made it a "story item" that can't be opened until DDAL9-06.

The fight with Ar'ath the Butcher was OK but I had to rush it. I allowed the party to devise a plan resulting in the ol' Invisible-Character-with-Spirit-Guardians trick--books from the cleric of Oghma really beat the crap out of those gansters! Don't forget to describe the strange physiology of a Dhergoloth--3-legged, 5-armed insectoid whirling dervish.

While this adventure has some nicely thematic encounters (more as bonus material) and you do learn a bit about the ubiquitous Adventurer’s League magic item merchant Fai Chen, the structural flaws imposed by DDAL Season 9 formatting and some other matters make me unable to recommend this adventure enthusiastically.

I was excited to finally get to read and dm this adventure as I’d been running the Baldur’s Gate portions of the season 9 content, and this is the first adventure where you get to go to Hell. Right away you have an exciting chase with some war machines (and later chances to defeat the war machine gang outright and get revenge, if you have time for the bonus material). But there are problems. One is that the chase is supposed to fit in one hour of time but it will almost certainly take about 2 hours unless you rush and cut corners. Secondly is the war machines are given no statistics (from the hardcover or otherwise) which is good because the statted war machines from the hardcover are probably too powerful, but bad because the players will definitely want to attack the war machines themselves but it will require improvisation for any game effect that would have. Thirdly there isn’t really a way to outrun the war machines at all. They WILL catch the party by round 2 under typical circumstances. That’s ok, but I was surprised it was such an uneven chase situation.

The investigation part of the adventure introduces you to a location in the Avernus hardcover that is interesting and thematic, but it's of note that there are some alterations made to some of the specified individuals encountered there, and that some of the individuals only make sense if you know what is true of them from the hardcover: for one the location has a rule against spellcasting, but one of the NPCs can cast spells on behalf of PCs. It's only later I’ve realized that this is not an exception to the rule of the location, but that NPC has a particular reason they are allowed to get away with this. But if you are explaining to players why there is a rule against something and you can’t explain why the rules are violated by NPCs, it takes you out of the adventure.

The investigation is ok IF you use the bonus material. Otherwise it seems to come down to a simple Insight check and is more difficult to see how its resolvable without success on the check.

The Adventurer League formatting is a problem. I thought I was getting used to the Dramatis Personae containing background information about the NPCs and while flipping back and forth was annoying I can see some advantages to this method of presentation. But only after actually running this adventure twice I noticed that some information about how to present one of the encounters is actually only in the Dramatis Personae and i missed it twice because of the formatting even though I thought I was being thorough. This is frustrating when GMing.

There is a stash of soul coins mentioned in the adventure, but it doesn’t seem to actually be recoverable and is not specified as to quantity. I actually think this SHOULD be a place where players can all received a Soul Coin each if they wish, because having a good quantity of soul coins is useful for many other encounters in the location and in subsequent adventures in season 9.