The Steamy Shores of Danger is a 2 – 4 hour Adventurers League-compatible adventure for level 1 – 4 characters. In it, the party finds themselves at the tiny coastal village of Jarko’tu’ta shortly after a shark attack has upset their trade mission to a local island. The villagers, the Whanau, beg the party to go and find out what happened and help maintain their trade agreement with the Big Folk Island. The party then discovers that the sharks in the area are being especially aggressive and that a fiendish pact between a sea hag and the sahaugin are behind the attacks.

I really liked this adventure! It was well written and simply laid out, helping even the most inexperienced DM figure out how to run the adventure. There were also some neat mechanics like navigating the fog, fighting the sharks, scaling the adventure, and succeeding on the social challenge with the Big Folk. I thought this was a really cool adventure and one that I would be excited to play with my own AL – I’ll have to bring it next time we play!

The combat in canoes with sharks around added to the dread of the scene. I thought it was very clever. My players mostly weren't strength based so most of them ended up in the water, but they could handle everything. Challenging combat and some nice roleplay opportunties. Highly recommended.

Exploration 4/5 Combat 3/5 Social 5/5 Puzzle NA (Unless you count the social encounter to be a puzzle)

• The canoe skill check system is bad, which is a shame because thematically the island is really cool. The skill check guantlet is confusing but can be overcome if you can ad lib the environmental descriptions. Personally I described the three landmarks they had to identify in order to find their way to the island. However I would definitely find some other penalty than the canoes getting lost from each other, this was really unfun for the players.

• I think it's just somehow impossible to impress on the players hard enough that you CANNOT LASH THE CANOES TOGETHER, that you SHOULDN'T WEAR HEAVY ARMOUR WHILE ON A BOAT, and how important it is to distribute the players around the canoes intelligently. This was probably my fault, but I included it here so other DMs here can figure out what to do about it.

• I had a bunch of players who were just bad with tactics so I had to tame down the first combat a lot, however, I think even if they weren't, the encounter has the potential to be chaotic and dangerous. If the enemies gang up on a single player, as their combat abilities promote doing, I think a couple of bad rolls can be an easy player death unless you use your DM mercy.

• The big folk social encounter is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. I printed the text from that section and gave them writing space and five minutes so they could plan their responses, since I did not expect any of them to be able to improvise that quickly. However, my plan backfired slightly- they really overcompensated and came up with the most verbose things you can imagine (yes, even more than necessary), only one of them actually gave the "correct" answer. However, I still consider this section one of the highlights of this module.

• Final boss is absolutely lame at lower difficulties. The main boss becomes worthless if the players all pass a single save. Then again, I suppose that's suppose to be the benefit of having good saves.