I ran this adventure for my sister, wife, and 10 year old son as a family Halloween activity. My wife has never played D&D before and went into it rather pessimistically, having been more or less strong-armed into playing. The characters were a human barbarian, human cleric, and human ranger -- all Level 3. My premise was that they fell asleep on Halloween's Eve after eating too much candy and were transported to another realm wherein they had to unravel the mystery of the Haunting of Owlbear Lodge in order to be returned to their Earthly realm.

Everyone had a great time - even my wife! The maps are excellent and I pre-printed everything and then cut them apart room by room. As the players explored they were given each piece of the map thereby creating a lot of mystery and Fog of War. The adventure allows for diplomatic/non-violent solutions to almost every encounter, which really appealed to my players. They only ended up in combat a few times.

The PDF layout is easy to read and well-written. There are a few typos throughout but nothing too irrititating.

Overall I highly recommend this little adventure as a one-shot or as an "adventure of the week" woven into a larger campaign. It took us about 4.5 hours, but a more experienced and focused party could do it in 3 or perhaps even 2 depending on the choices made and paths taken.

My thanks to the author!

This is a great adventure and my players are really having fun with it. However. There are so many pieces of this adventure that needs to be fleshed out. There are too many holes and my murder hobos are finding them all. Too many questions that I can't answer so I'm basically just winging it. I guess that's what D&D is all about, but I was kind of hoping that if/ when I purchase an adventure, that I could just run the game without having to figure so many things out.

Clever little entry-level wilderness/small dungeon crawl.

I ran this adventure for two different parties, both had 4 lvl 3 PCs. The first group had a lot more healing, and I ran the adventure at the maximum scaling. They managed to complete it just fine. My other group only had a cleric, and so they struggled a little more. I ended up having to scale down a lot of the monsters, but I was also just rolling well against them. Both groups found the holly and stuff in the celler, but both had no idea what to do with them. This could be an interesting thing if you are going for a longer story aspect, them returning at one point and the spores still there, but this was purley just for a one shot with some players in town for a weekend, so I knew they would be disappointed with that kind of ending, but that is unique to my situation. I had little stones that were two colors to try and throw my players off when gaining spores. They didn't know what they were rolling, but knew it had something to do with the spores. Even if they succeeded on the rolls, I gave them a different colored stone, and that really ampted up the worry and suspicion cause they didn't know fully what each stone represented. Overall a fun adventure that my groups both enjoyed!

Haunting of Owlbear Lodge is a really enjoyable adventure. I enjoyed the art and while the story is relatively straightforward it is a satisfying mix of light horror and light hearted moments.

I ran this adventure for a group of 3 level 3 players with no adjustments to any of the creatures or save DCs, taking around 3 - 4 hours to complete. The layout of the product is clean and easy to follow and the roll20 maps were good quality and easy to import, reducing preparation time to a minimum.

There are a couple of gags here and there which my players liked and helped break up the tension from the constant threat of the spores. I found the spores mechanic to be simple yet very effective, having the players keep track of their failures with the included handout really put them on edge seeing exactly how close they were to succumbing while not being sure what would happen.

My only critsism(and this is nitpicking) would be that I had to remake one of the handouts because it included the word "Neverwinter" and I ran this in my own setting.

Overall a really fun adventure suitable for players and DMs of all experience levels.

A great one-shot adventure primarily composed of a light-horror exploration/dungeon-crawl through the titular lodge. The document is laid out cleanly and clearly, with excellent illustrations that add production value to the more visual aspects of the adventure. Printing off a copy of the DM's map for the players also made for effortlessly clear communication: they could refer to the next room they wanted to explore by the number that refers to said room in the DM's document.

The adventure itself is straightforward, lending itself to organic PC interactions, while the looming threat of disease taking over the players providing a mild ticking clock. There's a lot of fun to be had by playing up the taxidermied nature of the undead creatures that stomp and slither around the lodge. There's also a lot of "aha!" moments for the players: every room has environmental clues that tell a little story. There aren't a lot of roleplay opportunities with NPCs, though a DM could emphasize the pre-adventure prep and during-adventure rescues to mitigate this.

I can't speak to the level scaling: I ran the adventure for a group of 4, 5th level characters, with nearly every monster modified (as is my wont). The PCs thought of tying silk around their faces to make masks and prevent breathing in the diseased spores (ADV on the CON saves against disease), which also means I can't speak to how balanced the progression of the disease is. I ended up modifying the disease so that it imparts temporary madnesses and longer-term madnesses (from the DMG) rather than levels of exhaustion before the final zombie transformation (which, if it had happened, I would've simply changed the PC's race to "Undead", and let that serve as a seed for the story of the next adventure).

I don't have anything negative to say about this adventure: it offers a solid frame from which you can modify or add on in order to make adventure more to your tastes. Looking for a more satisfying conclusion, I added a subplot wherein the owner (Tabor) had returned to the lodge earlier that day, with the adventure ending in a standoff between him and the druid responsible for the haunting (Juniper), during which the PCs can try to intervene.

Easy to run, fun to play. Recommended.