Despite the mediocre reviews, I picked up this pdf mostly because it was free and it seemed like a nice short adventure. As I read through it, though, I realized that it is an excellent starting-off point for a new campaign.

With a decent amount of roleplaying and backstory, this mini-adventure can take up a full gaming session and can lead to further adventures.

I particularly like how the author scales it for three different party levels, as well as includes NPC information at three levels (common knowledge, personal, and secret info).

This adventure is a bit too micro. I find it hard to believe there will be a party out there that will take an hour to run through the adventure, as the cover states "Hour or less Micro adventure." My current party would be done with it in 15 minutes, and that's on a bad day.

The plot is a bit too obvious (ie, well there are no foot prints, so either magic is involved or something large is coming in and taking off with the cattle). Speaking with animals is a moot point and doesn't really help the party, and it's a waste of a spell.

I also noticed there were a few typos (writing"it" instead of "he" in the dm text, and typing he instead of the).

The NPC background being already fleshed out is great, but too bad most of it is not being adequately used during this particular adventure (most of the backgrounds assume that the party will visit the NPCs more often and will get to see more of their quirks, etc).

In the end a creative DM would have to flesh out the adventure some, to make it fulfilling to the party.

I thought this micro-adventure was a bit too micro. The opening scene and NPC information was good and I liked some of the descriptive text about the environment, the manor, etc. Some of the NPC speeches were competently written. I liked the artwork.

However, I think there are a few problems.

(1) The plot is very, very simple. Someone is stealing the lord's cattle, there is one obvious place to look for the guilty party, sure enough he's there, confrontation, and the adventure is over. I realize it's a "micro" adventure but it really should have another beat or a twist somewhere.

(2) Of the six pages, two are taken up on NPC background material. It's nice to have them fleshed out a little, but for a quick micro adventure, everything should be relevant to the story and a lot of the material isn't. It provides hints and ideas but in this very space-constrained format, I think they should have built the main plot out a bit more.

Not bad but not great.