A solid but scattered adventure
Outlaws of the Iron Route has many great moments, including some that are relatively creative by Adventurer's League standards. The highlight is probably a trip to a private prison, the jailers therein, and a minotaur prisoner.
However, it never really comes together into a coherent story. Act I in the jail and Act II at the meeting site feel oddly joined, and quite different in tone. None of the backstory makes a lot of sense - Krulek got kicked out of the Black Fist for not being corrupt enough, but now he's a common bandit? The sorcerer is just pretending to be part of the Cult of the Dragon to be scary - but her logic for how she'll get away with it is that nobody's really heard of the Cult of the Dragon on the Moonsea? The Cult cares enough to infiltrate her operation, but they only send a winged kobold? The Cult has access to an orc tribe that fights at their command, and this is how and when they use it? Plus none of this ties in well with the overall story of Adventurer's League Season 1, in fact actively subverting plotlines about the Cult and the Black Fist.
Still, with fairly heavy plot alterations, it worked overall. Mechanically speaking, the biggest weakness is the encounter composition at the meeting site. Assuming the players approach through the kobold side of the camp, none of the individual kobold fights are really likely to challenge the players, especially if the players have surprise on their side - but there's a lot of them, and it can be tedious to actually run them all. The module works best with a GM who's prepared to handwave or narrate the players stealthing or ambushing through the kobold horde.
|