I'm a big van of investiagtive adevntures for D&D but I genuinely haven't found a ton of great ones out there, this is one of those rare great ones!
Murder At The Old Wolf Inn combines the great tradition of Agatha Christie mysteries (fixed location, cast of dubious characters, red herrings that feel established and not bolted on) with the style and backdrop of a classic fantasy setting.
It's difficult to get into reviewing a mystery adventure without spoilers so I'll call out the adveture's strongest elements:
- Cast of characters. The NPCs in this adventure are really well fleshed out and have motivations and back stories both sinister and banal. In short EVERY character in the adventure feels like they live in the grey like a real person rather than being a good or evil trope.
- The environment. The Inn itself is very well detailed and defined with every room having lots of details and full dscriptions. This avoids one of the classic problems in published D&D adventures of overdescribing key areas and underdescribing unimportant areas such that players can use that meta to decide where to focus their attention.
- The physical layout. I found the way the adventure separated; characters, events, and locations made it extremely easy to read and follow as well as making it easy to find what you were looking for as a DM during actual gameplay.
- The flexibility. The adventure is formatted to be a bridge between two other Midnight Tower adventures but could easily fit into any existing campaign or setting, could work as a one-off, or could be the starting point for a new campaign (after all we all meet in a tavern anyway).
I shouldn't be surprised at this point how much I liked this, I've bought most of what Midnight Tower has produced and my groups have really enjoyed all of their adventures that we have played.
I would highly recommend this to every DM. It's a perfect drop in while travelling from one location to another, it makes a great one-shot if your whole group can't attend a session, and also gives you a great fleshed out inn to populate your own campaign with.
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