Attempted brevity leaves little actual content.

Dark Rites at Fort Dalton is written to be played in two hours or less. That's a tough goal for a 5E adventure, and the module suffers for it at every turn. There's barely a complete adventure here, and what little you do get is generic, linear and stale.

"As all good adventurers do, the party has accepted the role of bandit hunter." That's a direct quote, and it sets the tone for what follows. If you've played a Season 2 AL module, you've seen all this before, most specifically in The Drowned Tower. There's an isolated location, water cultists, water-themed monsters. Everything is by the numbers. There's "exploration", but it's meaningless. There's a quick social chat before each fight, but they're mostly just to set the tactical position that each fight starts in.

For a module that's effectively just three boring combats, it's worth mentioning that no maps are included in the module. There's no battlemaps or exploration maps, despite some of the locations in the module being keyed to numbers. The locations are small and generic enough that it really doesn't matter, but it's another sign of a module that ends up feeling rushed and incomplete. An included Fantasy Grounds conversion presumably has some maps, but as I don't use FG I can't comment on that aspect.

If you're playing through all of Season 2 Adventurer's League, this adventure just begs to be skipped. There's nothing here you haven't done before, and better, and nothing that happens here matters to the overall season plot.

I can't recommend it.

Note: If you're an actual Adventurer's League player, this adventure has a nice item - the Sentinel Shield - but if you're playing crappy adventures just to power up your AL character then I have to say that you're doing Dungeons and Dragons wrong. (Opinions! I've got lots of them!)

One of my favorite modules not just of season 2 but all seasons Season 2 module. fairly good module. i wish the older season would get played more than they are. it would be interesting to see previous season played with the new season 9 rules

One of my favorite low-level adventures. Heavy on combat but stays interesting and feels like very high stakes. It is on the long side though for something that's marked as a two-hour.

This is a fairly straightforward combat-focused adventure, exploring a fort of "treasure hunters". In this regard, the module is perfectly fine.

The implied story behind the module is strange: players can choose one of five reasons to be at Fort Dalton, but four of them do absolutely nothing (the fort is too collapsed and the players can't reach their goals), and the fifth one has a chance for bonus xp (which presumably doesn't work under season 8 rules?). The actual fortress has several "locations of interest" for the characters to explore, but there's nothing in any of the areas (the skill checks to find treasure now find nothing).

The pseudo-gambling on the treasure hunt at the end can be fun, especially with players so gold-deprived in season 8 treasure rules. (The other downtime activity options all seem quite questionable; even if characters were expecting more run-ins with the cult, 10 downtime days is a heavy cost.)

I really enjoy this for new players, even though its dangeous the npc support provides a nice backstop when running for low level players. I often have too much fun with the treasure seekers and they end up being like doofy pirates. The final encounter has a bit of an odd setting but if you just go for it and allow for a bit of wierdness it works out fine.

Enjoyable Tier 1 module that can run a bit long. The two stage final encounter is fun and can be done from more than one angle. The earlier encounters have options as well which help replayability. This is one of the first adventures I've seen with special downtime activities related specifically to the site which my players jumped on. In retrospect I'm not sure if the downtime use was worth it, but no one really complained.

This is a relatively good mod for first time players. It does have a mix of elements and RP, but DM care is needed to push things along.

this was the first adventure i was the DM for in Adventurer's League, and i almost killed the whole party, but i was merciful and threw them a bone in the final encounter. very fun.

This module is a popular module at our tables because many people like the item it provides. I find it can also be fun to play, but it has some weaknesses for the DM who has to run it. There just aren't any maps, not even of the weird extra-dimensional (or semi-extra-dimensional) space where the final encounter happens, which leaves the DM to fill in a lot. As a result, I've seen a lot of table to table variance on how the encounters run.

Interestingly, while the first time we ran this the party made it through without any serious difficultly, many of the subsequent runs proved much more dangerous for those players / parties. In that regard, it seems somewhat sensitive to party composition and, like many spellcaster-heavy modules, to how initiative goes.

I'll also call out that, as written, the most powerful caster only knows a single 3rd level spell and it's very thematically appropriate, but also problematic to use unless the DM has carefully arranged the terrain (and also has thought about how to use it tactically). I've seen DMs resort to just upcasting Magic Missile (which is a very effective tactic against APL-appropriate parties, but not nearly so thematic).

I am not a huge fan of the Downtime activity that comes at the end of this module. Most of the activities are pretty much worthless because they're tied to the Cult of the Crushing Wave (which makes them useless in nearly all other modules) and the treasure hunting tends to be a let down for players.

I really wanted to like this adventure...but I just couldn't bring myself to. The reward is great...but the adventure itself is quite lacking. It is supposed to be written in a manner that allows the party to go any way they want, but unless you have an extremely thorough reading of the module and are extremely creative, your players will end up confused as to why things are happening. Exploring the fort was also pretty boring and humdrum...there wasn't anything interesting or standout about each of the locations except "oh here is some random loot you found..."

I could see how someone could make this work, but in comparison to many of the CCC or other season adventures, this one does not stand out.

DDEX 2-12 Dark Rites at Fort Dalton is an Adventure League adventure for levels 1-4 that should take about two hours to play. It is written for 5 characters of 2nd level. This adventure contains a .mod file for use in Fantasy Grounds Virtual Table Top

Part One starts with a prologue that the players can choose so that they have a reason to be at Fort Dalton. It's an interesting way to tie players to the adventure when you aren't building towards that story. Most of this adventure is searching the ruins which can lead you over the time limit and xp budget if you focus on them, but could be interesting if you have the time.

Part Two Is still in the ruins but focus on one building with cult members trying to perform a Dark Ritual, or Rite. It's extremely straight forward and the completion of the combat encounter leads into the next part.

Part Three So the players could have arrived here from the last encounter, or by random luck while searching the ruins, leads to a semi-interesting fight and the finish of the scenario. It's ok.

Overall this is a straight forward scenario with a pretty bland story that can go over the xp budget depending on how the players search around. It does have some cool downtime options at the end for players to use, which lifts it a star for me and it has a .mod file for use with Fantasy Grounds which is always a plus for those using that Virtual Table Top. The maps are extremely below par even for AL standards as the adventure has no maps, which drops it a star for me but for Theater of the mind in might not matter as much.

Much like the previous module, the adventure was good abet very straightforward. A few cans of Flavorade would spruce thins thing right up!

I liked the opening choice of encounters, which allowed the players some agency despite the short running time and makes the mod more open-ended in the sense that even the order of the encounters could shift. The options for secondary character motivations leading into optional downtime activites was a nice idea but I wish offered a little something more substantial. Some players liked their activity while others immediately stated they were saving their DT for something better. The combat was fun and has the potential to introduce Tier 1 characters to water combat which can be a shock. Lastly, it was nice that the mod plans for scavenging attempts and optional RP'ing investigating of the ruins of Fort Dalton, but I found with the running time of 2 hrs most parties won't have time to delve into those ideas. Overall I would say that this is fun 2 hour romp, but it felt like it needed a little streamlining to keep the pace. 3.75/5

A 2 hour module, that will be challenging to run in 2 hours. The first time I ran it, I had 7 4th level characters, and I had to up every fight to keep it challenging. We ran just over 3 hours due to combat. The encounters are interesting, and the chance to dig for buried treasure at the end was a neat use of downtime activities. I enjoyed the final combat scenario and the map was different enough to be interesting.

This module will stay within the 2 hour runtime, which is very nice. It can be somewhat forgettable, which is unfortunate, but also provides opportunities for the DM to weave it into a grander story with other modules by making the connections more obvious. Other than that, it is very straight forward and serves as a great intro module for D&D and D&D AL play, being easy to both run and play.