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The College of Pining
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/06/2020 20:10:15

This subclass has given me so much joy. The first and third features are great, and the second feature is useless but something that every bard, no, every person needs.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The College of Pining
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DDEX3-05 Bane of the Tradeways (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/19/2018 13:54:14

4/5. Ran at my FLGS. This adventure is fun for everyone, but a few warnings: the chase is fun, but it is VERY easy to get bogged down in precise details. I ran almost all of it theater of the mind and tried to focus on the story over the exact mechanics. It's also quite difficult to motivate players to do anything if they don't already know what's going on in Hillsfar, and my players personally weren't too motivated by "a shipment" that racists were sending. I almost had to call the module there, as they basically were uninterested in following the rebels. Also, this module comfortably runs in about 2.5 hours, not 2.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
DDEX3-05 Bane of the Tradeways (5e)
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DDEX1-06 The Scroll Thief (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/19/2018 13:53:27

Ran at my FLGS, and it's a blast. I have a bit of a soft spot for this module, but it's a wonderful way to get new players interested in D&D, and it's a great three-pillar adventure. There's plenty of RP, and a bit of exploration in the library, and my newer players lit up and shouted in joy when they realized they were going to fight a dragon in D&D after exploring a dungeon. It does require a bit of a mixed party, and some of the plot transitions (Why are adventurers looking for missing books anyway? Why isn't "2 missing librarians" the more important thing to investigate?) are a bit ill-conceived, but for the most part it's a blast. My only word of warning is that it really needs more like 2.5/3 hours to be run comfortably. I had to hand-wave a lot of stuff after my players spent too much time investigating early on.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
DDEX1-06 The Scroll Thief (5e)
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DDAL05-07 Chelimber's Descent (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/19/2018 13:52:47

One of my favorite AL modules, both to play and to DM. My biggest comment is that you should be open to a non-combat solution to it. If someone speaks Primordial, the gargoyles are perfectly willing to help them. And as for the wight at the end, as far as I can tell, he seems far more interested in maintaining the library than anything else. Given that the hobgoblins sent by Bad Fruul are dead, they don't need to actually steal all the books, or fight the librarian. If they have a clever solution, like trading knowledge (suggested by Oghma's shrine upstairs), leaving a party member as collateral, copying the information there, or working to establish a policy for borrowing books from the library, I say let them. It's a far more interesting endgame than just "hack and slash".



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL05-07 Chelimber's Descent (5e)
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DDAL05-06 Beneath the Fetid Chelimber (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/19/2018 13:51:33

Not the best, and it seems more like a slog through the marsh for the sake of a slog through the marsh. The final fight seemed a bit overwhelming for T1, but my players managed. Not the best AL I've seen, but not the worst either. I like this much more as a DM than a player.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL05-06 Beneath the Fetid Chelimber (5e)
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DDAL07-08 Putting the Dead to Rest (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/08/2018 22:18:54

It's very much classic undead-slaying, as another reviewer pointed out. There are also a couple of RAW violations with the awakened creatures, which the party's druid who likes to awaken things pointed out. It's really nothing special, and my party seemed to want to just slog through it as quickly as possible. That desire wasn't helped by the four combats in two hours---this did fill up a 4 hour slot and then some.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-08 Putting the Dead to Rest (5e)
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DDAL07-07 Rotting Roots (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/08/2018 22:05:26

This module is pretty lack-luster in the middle, but the bookends are some of the most fun I've had this season. Starting out with the... bold plan to get the party out of Port Nyanzaru was one of the funniest situations I've ever put the party in, and the final boss was absolutely amazing. In my eyes, it doesn't even matter what happens in between those two events, because those two make it worth it for nearly any party.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-07 Rotting Roots (5e)
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DDAL00-04 Winter's Flame (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/08/2018 21:41:11

A beautiful little Christmas/Winter/Candlenight module, very different from the normal "hack-and-slash". The module perfectly sets up the winter festival beautifully, and I'm always a fan of modules where pacifism is an option and doesn't get immediately squashed.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL00-04 Winter's Flame (5e)
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DDAL07-18 Turn Back the Endless Night
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/08/2018 12:13:52

An amazing conclusion to the Broken Chains storyline, that actually made sense, and felt like a proper conclusion to Chult. The maze itself is great, especially with the variety allowed by picking different rooms and letting them go through. I highly reccomend letting them roll all their checks at once, then picking the rooms necessary to weave a nicer story out of it.

As for the final battle, well... It's certainly something. The Thayan contingent is not a major threat to them as written, and can mostly be ignored by anyone who can fly right up to the Iron Doors. That being said, my party vastly overestimated the time they had to finish their task, and, after the assistance provided in the module, was in a truly massive battle that needs to be prepped. I made Dendar 40x40, basically able to hit whatever she wanted, which certainly terrified everyone. It's definitely a potential TPK scenario, as it should be when the gods get involved. The magic item is well... it's not great. The story award is similarly not good as a "you got used as a pawn by a lich, and now a much more powerful one hates you!". I would've liked for the players to get something nice for their troubles of, y'know, saving Realmspace, but I suppose this follows in the Rise of Tiamat AL tradition of "defeating gods gets you little-to-nothing".

There is an error in Dendar's stat block, which is a relic from Tiamat: "Innate Spellcasting (3/Day). Dendar can innately cast dream, hypnotic pattern and dissonant whispers (spell save DC 26)." First: her multiattack action includes casting of dissonant whispers, so that should be at will. Second: it's not clear why hypnotic pattern should be limited, as she uses it pre-combat and has a legendary action to use it as well. Finally, and this is a personal issue: dream is utterly useless here, as no characters are asleep, and it isn't really something Dendar would use normally anyway. I made the edit that dissonant whispers and hypnotic pattern can be cast at will, and added phantasmal killer 3/Day in place of dream 3/Day.

One other modification was to how the teleportation worked: it didn't seem very "otherworldly maze designed to keep people trapped forever" to have the teleportation symbols linked one-to-one, so I took a cue from WWII and labed the symbols A-Z on the map and set up a simulation of an enigma machine on my laptop to generate where they come out. Enigma machines never encipher a letter to itself, so teleportation always worked, and the players were always unsure of what was going to happen next, which I think helps the tone of the final battle. Highly recommend this.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-18 Turn Back the Endless Night
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DDAL07-13 Old Bones and Older Tomes
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/08/2018 11:41:29

A good T3, with a fun concept and interesting tower mechanics, but not a 4 hour module. When it say that it's not an adventure that can be run with little prep, it's not kidding. The inter-related complex puzzles are interesting and a nice break from the normal slog of combat, but the puzzles are genuinely puzzles for the players, not the PCs. Especially when half the group isn't great at solving puzzles, it quickly turns into two people sitting there and solving it while the others sit on their phones for a while, and there's no way for the PCs to help out as PCs, which isn't fantastic writing. It took about 9 hours to run at a relaxed pace, so be prepared to streamline things. I'd also say that only during the corrupted emotions bit the players should control the sages; I had a hard time with them trying to manage multiple people and not just having them be "escort mission" as if I were controlling them anyway. The lich's modification makes for a great surprise for the party, who never expect that. Solid adventure overall, just watch the pacing, and be prepared to handwave puzzle solutions if they get too bogged down in it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-13 Old Bones and Older Tomes
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DDAL07-09 Unusual Opposition (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/14/2018 23:11:39

Overall, a fairly fun adventure. The combat with the rocs can easily eat up large portions of time, so watch out for that. Requiring the characters to "play nice" with hags is always fun, and a very good change of pace from normal "infomation fetch" missions. The Ramshackle King is a good RP opportunity for characters, and one wanted to stay with his ... not quite cult, but was barely talked out of it. I only mention this to give a sense of how effective he can be. The final death knight combat is exciting, but if you don't have anyone good at searching it's hard to find the bodaks, unless I drastically misread the module. My party just retreated afterwards, which fixed the problem.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-09 Unusual Opposition (5e)
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DDAL07-06 Fester and Burn (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Brian V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/14/2018 23:00:29

My players called this "Two Combats for Which We Are Underleveled and Ill-Prepared, with Occasional Plot", and I think that's accurate. The initial plot hook is very compelling, and everyone got into it very quickly. Poe is fun to roleplay, as is Crackle, so everyone had a good time with those interactions. The issue is really that the combats are incredibly drawn out. This module ran 4.5 hours when I ran it, and all but maybe 45 minutes of that was one of the two combats. None of my players were able to guess that the undead either needed fire or were immune to it, so everything took a lot longer than it maybe should've. The final battle is very easily a TPK, and for my table it wasn't by only one roll on my part. Note that Spawn of Kyuss are exceedingly powerful this season, so if you take those options, be careful unless you're ready to kill T2 characters.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-06 Fester and Burn (5e)
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DDAL07-02 Over the Edge (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/03/2018 10:09:14

General Comments: Overall, nothing too special. These adventures aren't 1 hour adventures, it's remarkably hard to get T2 characters to work that fast. The rewards from the factions are very unmotivating as well. I ran this in two ways: as one shots and integrated with ToA (sending: "oh, you're nearby this thing we need you to check out"). The latter was far easier for them to accept than just "you're level 8 adventurers, have 200 gp and go do this". Maybe it'd work for people very devoted to their faction, but it's not great motivation. As other reviewers mentioned, the maps are unlabeled, which is very frustrating. Five hours of modules for no permanent magic items is fine at T1, when the goal is to not die, but it's more than a little dissapointing for T2. This was more pronounced when I did them independently, rather than as part of ToA.

The first mission has a nice puzzle, but it's very easy for players to miss the entrance to the shrine entirely and wander around aimlessly. The second mission is fine, nothing too special, but really needs around 2 hours to really work. The third mission has amazing RP opportunities, and was the most fun I had with this module. The fourth mission is once again fine, but a warning against running theater of the mind like I did. The magical squares are very important to making this combat work well against T2 characters, and otherwise it can get very one-sided. The fifth mission is once again, fine. The combat isn't that impressive, and the link to Ubtao is nice, but not really capitalized on.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-02 Over the Edge (5e)
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DDAL07-01 A City on the Edge (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/03/2018 09:56:47

The first mission is fine, nothing special here. The second mission is probably the most fun, with the dinosaur race. I'd do what 07-03 reccomends and really play up the race. The third mission is a bit more difficult to motivate, but works fine. It's a little unclear to the players (or was to my players) that the people can't be saved. The fourth mission is a good mini-boss fight. The fifth mission is a very good boss fight for low level characters. These missions really need over an hour to play, which is my only other real criticism.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-01 A City on the Edge (5e)
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DDAL07-12 In Search of Secrets (5e)
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Diana V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/27/2018 15:08:42

Overall a good module, with a few issues. Mostly a "traps" module, the issue is that the traps really have no clues around of what to do. A lot of them are either unintuitive or just impossible to figure out. For instance, while the "skull room" does have a clue, five consecutive DC 19 Medicine checks is a bit high, especially if you don't have someone proficient. Similarly, there's no way for the party to know that reciting the prayer over the entrance is the solution to not getting sprayed with acid. They spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out how the eggs fit into the puzzle, which I think was because there are four statues and four eggs.

Also, if there are any yuan-ti in the party, all of the traps are basically trivial, because they basically all do poison damage.

The encounter with Satszehsu is odd, to say the least. It's not clear what the party's supposed to ask them, or what helpful information they can give. I will say that I really appreciate the they/them NPC!

While it was a fun mechanic to have people running back and forth through the trapped hallway, ferrying talismans and trying to avoid being hit, I don't think it was intended, but there are only four talismans, so it was basically unavoidable.

Ihl and Nozhi are incredibly weak. They didn't even last one round. I do like the tie-in of Rhaugilath, but to my players it was just very odd. Overall, a strong module with a lot of story tie-in.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
DDAL07-12 In Search of Secrets (5e)
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