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 have run87 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 DDAL09-07.
What I liked: Within this module is the idea of a solid adventure. Player Characters hear about a Unicorn in a forest in Hell, seek to help her or receive her aid, and learn about a horrifying deal it has made and must either destroy the corrupted creature or find a way to cure her. But boy is both the adventure structure and "twist" not doing it any favors.
The individual encounters are good, I ended up running those as is and that worked for the party. The optional encounters are fun and add both some roleplay and combat into the adventure. The flora and fauna table of the forest and corrupting effects were great thematic additions!
What I didn't like:
There are a table of encounters here, don't just roll randomly on a list and have the PC's wander into each one! I had my group way more engaged because I turned it into a 3x3 Point crawl. The party sees the dead hellrider body, goes on to the plants, then after each encounter I gave hints about what was coming next down the road and let the PLAYERS decide which sounded better to them. This gave the players agency and had them discussing the hints based on perception/nature/survival/investigation checks to try and forge their path forward.
Also! The information about Zalhruban comes way to late in the adventure! I seeded forshadowing throughout their time in the forest so that the party was slowly uncovering the mystery of what happend, that way they had more information when they reached the Devils in the Great Tree other than just asking "where is the Unicorn?" This plus the flora and their previous knowledge allowed them to try and help the Unicorn in a more intelligent way.
BUT! The big thing wrong with the adventure, the contract at the center of it is DUMB! How would Zalrubhan not figure out over 200 years her rider was dead this whole time? That is a LONG ASS TIME! This was actually a simple fix. Keeping the spirit of the contract and changing the wording, I had it so that Shalrel was mortally wounded, unable to be saved by Unicorn healing due to the infernal nature. The devils promised to keep Shalrel from dying like they do in the module BUT! Their attempt to do this involved a modified Time Stop spell, essentially trapping the Unicorn and rider in a weird time bubble that prevented Shalrel from dying but also prevented her from getting better. The party was able to destroy the plant heart and stop the time bubble, at which point 200 years of delayed healing from the Unicorn (plus the parties own magic and arcana/medicine checks) allowed enough healing energy to build up to heal Shalrel. This was way more satisfying than just pointing out. "Yeah she's been dead this whole time except this patch of skin."
What I'm saying at the end of it all is my party DID have a great time with the adventure, but I didn't run it as is from the module, I did change a lot in structure and narrative to make it fun and satisfying. I'm glad I did, but you may not want to put that work in. If that is the case, I recommend another adventure.
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