An excellent adventure, this is what Adventurer's League modules should aspire to be.

There is a nice setup, a great dive into the town of Orasnou, and then exploration and different encounters in the Svalich Woods, culminating in the encouner with Alina.

What I liked: The encounters are difficult, adding to the horror of the Barovian setting. The scenario (discover what happened to missing hunters, help the town, reveal the mystery) works out very well. I like the added material provided in the module to expand on Orasnou.

What I didn't like: Not much, I am not running this as part of adventurer's league so I'm using the extra time to flesh out Orasnou and foreshadow some upcoming modules. I guess it would have been nice to have exploration navigate a node path with options between encounters instead of just rolling, but the encounters are still flavorful and add to the horror.

Overall: Wonderful adventure, after DDAL04-01 this is a strong start to season 4!

An excellent adventure but requires some DM flexibility and can be a very challenging combat for low-level (<3) characters Pros: Strong story-based narrative, set in one of the best campaign settings (Ravenloft), poses alignment and motivation based challenges to the party Cons: Some challenging combat encouters, some railroading, time tracking required of GM, potentially disempowering ending, runs "long" (about 3-4 hours) Challenging themes: Violence against women, Relationship breakdown, Lynching/Violent "justice"

I found two things were quite important to set the tone 1) Build up the raveloft Aesthetic; everything is grim, "good" is relative, survival is not guarenteed. Flavour things like spell effectys, the Mists, and you can sell the tone better. This setting is a prison of the dark powers and will toy with the characters 2) Ensure you include the building storm. The party should not have time to get to the ïnvetigatio"and back to town before it hits

How you deliver the denoument is also important. As a DM, you may want to over- or under-sell "the Beast's"situation; I chose to play it more as an inevitability and forced upon them, and also tried to introduce more narrative / motivation to the other victim NPC. Importantly, you will need to think about how the characters would react to this, and seperately ensure you have appropriate safeguards around the players to allow them to explore this.

For adventurer's league, it is now spun off into it's own campaign setting (As of AL PLayer Guide 13), but at least briefly you could get back with 20 downtime days (perhaps run "the Seer"as well)

This was without a doubt the worst experience I had in D&D, and it was with a party and DM I have played for a long time. Here is where everything went to garbage bin.

Our party is at the campsite with Laslov's corpse. An elf approaches us (as in the module). Our party has been warned of the blizzard, and things will get nasty. The elf implies that she might have seen something, and we get a nat 20 persuasion roll. The elf tells what she witnessed, and our party gets verification to their suspicions that the kill was made by a werewolf. And that the man had attacked the woman, who turned at in self defense killed it.

Now we are a level 2 party (as suggested by module) and we have 0 silvered weapons. DM threw us a dagger from the bonfire when we figured this out. For our party, we share one dagger that is the only way we can deal damage to the werewolf (this would not have been the case anymore at level 3, or had we been encourage to silver weapons. Alas, not enough gold, nor indications given we should use all our gold to seek a blacksmith and pool it for silvered weapon to one person. Assuming there even is a blacksmith who can silver weapons.)

Now a party with more anti-werewolf built composition might have found a way to deal with this. But now the party possesses information; A woman was attacked and she killed her attacker in self-defense. Also, she is going to be extremely difficult. Even if we did kill her, it is hinted we'd be stuck in blizzard which might or might not be lethal. Why on earth would the party go out to seek near unkillable foe, especially when the case is closed, and the party is given no indication the werewolf might even be of danger to anyone else since she only killed in self defence. We even got the furs here so the innkeep can be saved from the Vistani problem. Like all our party just emphatized with her. Maybe we could talk to her to return peacefully, but if we wanted to side with her there would be no reason to encourage her to go to back to the village. But if she wanted to kill us, we'd die for certain since we had no ways of fighting back. Unless DM removed her silver immunity. Which would break all the laws of how werewolfs work.

Since there was neither motivation nor means to go after the werewolf, our party returned to the village and spent rest of the session twindling thumbs, and called the adventure there. The session laster for a bit over an hour. Unfortunately I bought out this thing in the bundle since it was hinted the adventures are connected, but this turn of events basically got our characters stuck at 2 and without whatever imaginary plot hook there would have been to stay in the village.

SO FUN! High sense of mystery and horror. A quick adventure to run that doesn't feel like it has no substance.

Run this quite a few times now. Was a good one for my son to start DMing at the local store. It's quite straight forward, but has some interesting elements to it that can throw the players in a loop.

This adventure almost always runs long. The adventurers are new to Barovia in this module. The RP in the village will take more than the 15 min allowed if you don't totally railroad it. It's fun to play up the cuteness of the wolf pup to make the characters want to take him. Part 2a has what will feel like random encounters so you'll want to go thru them quickly. Encounters 3 & 5 are probably the most fun. At the campsight, you might consider roleplaying out the investigation rather than doing the skill checks because it's more fun if the players have all the clues. The same applies to the interaction with the elves. In part 2c I enjoyed running the fight with the Elk and zombies but you might not have time so you should emphasize that they don't notice the adventurers so the party could by-pass this encounter or at least speed it up with a surprise round. The encounter with the old woman was a lot of fun especially since the characters suspected her of being a hag. In the final boss fight you should emphasize the pathos of Alina's situation and encourage the characters to capture rather than kill Alina. This makes the conclusion more perfectly Barovian.

good story, the players are with horror in the first encounter hehe, maybe longer i think....

regards bager

I ran this at a convention and we had fun with it, although I definitely recommend running this when you aren't on a time crunch. I had to cut short the roleplay opportunities in Orașnou and with the elves, which was disappointing because RP is my favorite part of gameplay.

Pro

• Having choices for the encounters in part 2 allows tailoring the module to the group you're running for and the time you have available.
• Great atmosphere throughout. Players who were unfamiliar with Barovia got caught up in the ominous weather / unsettling landscape.
• The adjustments for a very strong party in the final encounter work well. Having to save against exhaustion every round made the situation much more dire once half the party took a level or three. If you want to challenge your players, I suggest leaving Alina's stats alone and just inserting the creeping and exhausting fog.

Con

• Module is difficult to run within a 2-hour time frame. It's doable, but it's tough.
• Although the handwritten appearance of the player handout is nice, it's difficult to read.
• Maps for the encounters in part 2 would have been helpful.

This adventure was fun. It wasn't the greatest one I've ever run, but I enjoyed the players' confusion about the events until the last minute when they found the journal in the cave.

Part 2 was weird. Having a bunch of different encounters seemed really weird. Additionally, the timeline on the blizzard was really confusing, and I basically ruled that the players made it to the cave just in time, and then spent the night there to wait out the blizzard.

Three Pillars breakdown:

Hard to do, honestly. It depends heavily on what you choose/roll for Part 2, so you have great latitude in controlling your ratio. Here's what my group ended up with:

Combat: 40%, 3/5: I picked "Bad Dogs" for Part 2c, and the fight was... balanced, but uninteresting. The last fight was very underwhelming, despite using the Very Strong adjustment

Exploration: 20%, 5/5: Very little in the way of exploration. Basically the only thing the players have to explore is the campsite, which is written fantastically. I enjoyed asking each player how they want to look around, and using their description to pick a skill and give them information. I also used "This Does Not Belong Here" for Part 2a, so there was a bit more exploration/investigation. My players enjoyed the tambourine

Roleplay: 40%, 4/5: The roleplay with the elves and in the final encounter were compelling and set the theme for Barovian adventures. Death, starvation, cold, pain, sorrow, regret, etc. Fantastic themes.

Quite a nice module to DM.

The roleplay portion is quite interesting (introducing characters to the village of Orasnou for the first time), the forest exploration really sets up the tone of that season, and the final battle puts a good horror ambiance to the session.

It ties in pretty well with the other adventures of this season, which is especially great if the following adventure, DDAL04-03, is ran right afterward.

This is a fun adventure but it is very easy to TPK. The story can be a little confusing to the party and I have had to pause the game to give follow ups/clues in order to make it understandable.

Overall, this is an enjoyable adventure with a few tough fights.

This is one of my more enjoyable adventures to DM. The patron’s request to search for a couple truly pulls at good characters since one is close to giving birth and with the knowledge of time being against the party, they have a sense of urgency to hustle. During the first encounter, all but the bandit one seems relevant to the story, due to the furs that they have with them. A combat is better here than exploration since it makes the party nervous, if not paranoid, during the encounter after the campsite. At the campsite, the elves are slightly out of place. It is possible to ignore them, if the party find enough clues, especially the wolf tooth and dagger. For the second encounter, either combat or exploration is good. If short on time, exploration is definitely better. My favorite was the old woman, as the party will likely expect a combat due to paranoia, even with high insight rolls. The final encounter is good. Since the Dark Gift is present, you don’t need to pull punches with rolls. If a character becomes infected, the Dark Powers are a great way to get rid of that if they die, making the encounter flexible. The epilogue is excellent, especially due to the moral dilemma give to Lawful Good characters. The grimness of the ending truly makes this world feel different. Overall, I find this an excellent linear adventure.

The Beast was a good adventure to run, and fun for the players. It is scheduled to only be two hours long, and unlike some "two hour" adventures, this one can be fit in a two hour session, with advice on how to expand it timewise by roleplaying the creepiness in the forest. I really like the potential to weaken the final encounter by using possible lore from the beginning of the adventure (even if my PCs did not do that). I also like the replayability by having semi-random encounters in the forest. The ending is sad no matter what the players do, but with an adventure in Barovia that is to be expected.

If there is any problem with this scenario, it is the fact that this adventure effectively traps the character in Barovia until they can escape. So if you have a character you want to play in other adventures, make sure you have enough downtime to exit the Mists.

This adventure is great fun to run. the orginization is quite good, and the story is a heart wrencher.

This was the first AL that I have choose to do as a DM. The tail was one of plesently unpleasent misfortune. The is multiple ways this story can unfold and many hidden mechanics that influence the battles. There are a few opertunities for roleplaying, even more depending on encounters one chooses.