The Rats of Waterdeep is an absolutely fantastic adventure! It develops a rich and slightly silly setting, where characters explore the docks of Waterdeep as the city is beset by plague and literal monster gangsters stalk the streets. It occasionally veers a little too close to self-parody, but is just steeped in such a wonderful film noir flavor that I couldn't help but love it.

The Good:

• Extremely well-developed NPCs help to get the characters invested in the story of the adventure.
• The plot sets up a genuine mystery, and relies more on the players to deduce what's going on than their characters making good Investigation rolls.
• The adventure is chocked-full of handouts for the players to read, interact with and pour over. It's an absolutely fantastic production value.
• There's a really well-done romance subplot, which features some great writing and emotional stakes.

The Bad:

• The scaling in the "Adjusted the Adventure" section leaves a bit to be desired, and is mostly "add more monsters to make it tougher." This can lead to grindy encounters for characters above 1st level. I wound up cutting out a lot of the combat encounters, just to keep things moving quickly.
• During part of the investigation in Part 2: Trail of the Rat, there's a secret room with almost no reasonable way to access it. I needed to make adjustments on the fly to account for how certain NPCs could get in and out of the secret room.
• While the descriptions of areas provided by Watchmen Locks are great as read-alouds, it's very easy to miss certain key details which reveal clues for the players. The adventure really requires a careful read-through in order to make sure you catch all of the details so that the players can then pick up on things.
• The solutions to a few of the puzzle handouts appear not to work. While my players were able to find brute force solutions, it'd be nice to see updates to Security Hint #2 on Handout 5: Security Box Puzzles and Handout 3: Doc Ward's Papers.

The Best Moment:

• The eponymous "Rat Pox" which is afflicting the city may slowly begin turning your PCs into rats, one rodent-like feature at a time. There's nothing quite like seeing someone's face when you explain that they've suddenly developed a tail!

All in all, the Rats of Waterdeep is an exceptional adventure, which my PCs have thoroughly enjoyed and I cannot wait to run again.