An average adventure with some dirty tricks. My players enjoyed this one but I did reskin some monsters to make it more swampy. The players think the hook was a little lacking.

Generic and incomplete. If you've played a swamp adventure with lizardfolk and bandits before, you've already played this. Bounty in the Bog is a technically competent module that offers nothing new or memorable to players. Its connection to the Mulmaster season is tenuous at best, and the adventure is disappointingly self-indulgent. It arises out of the adventures of someone else's characters 100 years ago in Raven's Bluff - presumably someone's Living City adventures - and ends with hints of a villain that won't appear anywhere in the core Adventurer's League seasons, leaving your players feeling that they've been drafted to play a supporting role in somebody else's fanfic. A disappointing low point in the Mulmaster AL season.

I ran this as module as my first ever DM session and thoroughly enjoyed it. That said I did run into some problems in each section of the story that I will go to in a little bit of detail. The module says its balanced for a group of six 3rd level characters, I ran this module with four level 1's, one level 2, and one level 4. I found most fights were pretty straight forward and simple, but I didn't feel as if my group was particularly challenged by any of the encounters. For example, when reading the wasp encounter I was worried that this would cause an issue for my players if they couldn't meet the con save required, leading to several PC deaths, but instead my group dispatched with the wasps in one round of combat. But thats how the dice rolls some times I guess haha.

For a first time DM I found the first chapter to be easily the hardest, I only had about half a days prep time to get familiar with the module and the first chapter leads a fair bit to be desired in preparing you for introducing the setting of Mulmaster. There are prompts of rumors and talk that your party can hear as they explore the city, but aside from that there isn't much detail as to what the city is like, what it looks like and how to play out characters within the city. To make it a bit easier on my players I had Captain Holke offer them board at a local Inn, giving them direction in the town and allowing them to overhear rumors in the tavern and interact with a little old lady who was once an adventurer too. This might seem like a minor detail around the lack of description for the town, but for a new DM this was a big point of stress and struggle. If I had more prep time this could have most likely been avoided but I thought I would share my experience and ideas of how to introduce rumors for other would-be DM's.

I was worried about chapter 2 as from reading other reviews people said it could get a bit dry and not very enjoyable. I found this to be the opposite for my group, which I think was more likely to noone having a perception over 12 which made for a much more interesting combat. Worried that the highest level player is going to get away with an easy fight because of high AC? Giving the mage magic missle helps to put him back in his place and teach him that spending his AL DM points to make OP characters will not go unpunished. Traveling on the north road can get pretty boring as its several days travel with no real encounters, a random encounter could be included but this will stretch the time of the module even further. I found throwing in a random woodland creature or farm animal to make the characters keep on their toes while keeping watch at night was a fun way to spice up a few dull and dreary days on the road.

The third chapter was easily the most eventful, having a scroll of comprehend languages included in the second chapter makes interacting with the lizard folk so much easier and enjoyable for the group. To stop my players from being murderhobo's I made sure that as soon as one of them was rude to the first of the lizardfolk that the others made their presence known, just to avoid any shenanigans from the party. Using the comprehend languages spell allowed for an interesting form of communication in the ways of hand signals and noises, making it the perfect time to award players inspiration before entering several fights. The final fights in the module seemed pretty straightforward and easy to fun, I particularly enjoyed my players trying to work out where the purple fungus was attacking them from, assuming it was some massive bog monster only to find it to be a 5ft movement mushroom.

Overall I loved running this module and It pushed me to invent my own characters, settings and scenarios. I think it's always going to be difficult when your players want to pickpocket every NPC, kill every character and want extra gold for every task. Faking love letters, cake recepies and backstories will always be great fun but I hope that my chair dosent collapse on me again before the first round of combat! haha

Likely due to party construction, my players did not like this one at all. However, I thought if the players made some different choices their experience would have been much different. Best part was the lizardfolk interaction, but only one player spoke the required language so the other kind of checked out of the interaction.

Overall, I'd like to run this one again with a group of more expereinced players (most of my group was 1st or 2nd time players).

This adventure was fun from the get-go. I allowed my players to explore around the city gathering information where they could and introduced some interesting NPCs to convey the intel. Once they got on the road, though it started to get a little too linear for my taste. At times I felt the need to direct the players to the rest of the adventure and that is not something I particularly enjoy doing. In the end it was fun to surprise the players with an unexpected turn of events when they thought they had defeated the boss.

Wanna get your clothes dirty in Mulmaster? Yes: Play this and bring a Survivalist perferably. No: Why did you leave the partying? lol

A good solid "get out of the city" adventure module. If your party is weak on outdoor skills (survival, animal handling), then this can get messy. A fairly straight forward adventure, without a lot of potential side tracks for the party. I upped the final fight a bit (average to strong) as the party had not taken much damage up to the boss fight, and I wanted to give them more of a challenge. Good, but not great.

Bounty in the Bog is an Adventure League adventure set around the town of Mulmaster and takes place during the second season of adventures that share the theme of the hardcover adventure Princes of the Apocolypse where elemental chaos is sweeing the lands of Faerun.

Here players are put to task doing what many adventurers often find themselves doing: guarding a caravan from bandit attacks. What makes this more interesting than your basic "guard the caravan job" is that the bandits seem to come and go with a strange fog. In addition to this there are rumors of some fabled treasure that was hidden in a nearby swamp and some shady looking people have been purchasing excavation gear in town. It is up to the players to find out if these things are connected and solve the mystery of Bounty in the Bog.

This is a nice little compact adventure that gives players a small taste of each pillar of play in a tabletop rpg. Role play exists for characters as they meet their intial contract and try to get some information out of them If players hang around in town, DMs have the tools necessary to help them get some more information that may help or hinder them in their investigation. There is some opportunity to roleplay with members of the caravan but it is rather limited. As players near the end of the adventure, they get a chance to possibly make friends with native denizens of the swamp as well.

While not a great deal, there is chance for exploration and puzzle solving in the adventure. Players need to tread carefully here though. An encounter in the swamp could be entirely avoided if players investigate a certain location properly and those not well suited for swamps might find themselves "exhausted". One piece can be particularly dangerous. I almost lost a half-orc barbarian due to a rash decision with a certain altar at the very end of the module. Do not hold back though, let players own their own decisions.

Combat abounds in this module. Bandits, the swamp, and the final location offer plenty of chances for players to flex their character's muscles and magical prowess. Don't be afraid to really challenge the players. Most of the encoutners have intelligent enemies and should be played as such. Why would the bandits focus on the heavily armored fighter first? Espeically when that wizard in the back is pelting them spells.

Fun module. A couple good chances for RPing but they could easily turn into combats. Final combat could be dangerous if desired. Fairly straight forward plot with little chance of the group going off the rails.

Overall, it is a great module. It's nice to get out of Mulmaster for a little bit, and this is one of the modules that is actually easy to run and finish in the time limit. I think that all the parts of the module go together well, it just can feel combat heavy at times, but overall this is a well done module that fits in its time approximation well.

Plot: After all the parties and intrigue of Mulmaster, getting out of town for a "simple" adventure is a breath of fresh air. No sooner do we begin than we're into a combat encounter of sorts. The hooks between encounters can be a little contrived and tenuous, but for an outdoor romp it's all that's needed. Sometimes you just want to track down bad guys, cover yourself in mud, then die horribly in a cave. The simple life.

Pacing: So long as you don't let things get bogged down (sorry) this is one of the 4h adventures that's fairly easy to get through on time. The final battle doesn't need to take a long time.

Difficulty: Pretty linear, pretty easy to run, not too much prep required. Pay attention to that rather scary creature in the final encounter though! Decide how you're going to deal with that if things go pear-shaped for the party.

Rewards: Some people like the ring, some will want to trade it to Fai Chen at the first opportunity. It's good it's an APL 3 module.

Highlights: The lizardfolk, the wasps and the brain sucker!

Problems: The brain sucker can either be trivial or devastating.

Replay: Not much.

Overall: Fun, undemanding adventure you'll enjoy running once.

This is a good and straight forward adventure that is easy to run. The beginning choice on if the party will tell the gnomes of the danger is easy to miss for them, but can be a good oppurtunity to allow inspiration along with the extra reward. The lizardfolk and wasp can be very short if the party is willing to talk. I ran this game where one character was a lizardfolk, making the whole part easy. I recommend removing the fungi in the cave entrance. One the party is told they are purple, they will assume it's suspious and attack them. The gray ooze with the mud mephits is a good encounter as it can emphasis the importance of magical weapons and armor. For the final fight, a large party can wipe them out if given a surpirse round. I recommend having at least the devourer's aware of the party's arrival via mud mephits deaths and the monks spread out to avoid an anti-climatic sleep spell. The devourer is a good addition to the fight as it introduces the possibility of instant death. If someone tries to metagame against it, I suggest having the devourer run away as there is little that can take the excitement out of it. Overall, this is a good adventure and I would run it again.

Recommend Purchase: Yes Playing this adventure counts towards the Season 2 quest: 'Benefits of the Brotherhood of the Cloaks' XP Range: 900-1200 (per FAQ errata)

Note: No Season 1, 2, or 3 module has a digital certificate to print because WotC says they can't accept volunteer help for legal reasons and won't allow their paid employees to create the certificates even though they have the templates.

The DMSGUILD site segregates reviews between people who've purchased it here and everyone else. They do NOT have a robust rating system, relying instead on the 5-star model.

This adventure has some good plot twists. Love to see the incorporation of Lizardfolk. Be on top of your game to set the tone for the lizardfolk and be able to relay the plot twists to the Pc's

Bounty in the Bog is a regular adventure with a hidden backstory. The hook is good where the players would participate thinking it an easy job because there is trouble or news of banditry from the town that needs to be stopped. It's straightforward that the goal is simple: eliminate the bandits. They go into the roads to defeat the bandits and then later on they would encounter lizardmen that they could interact with learning more about the source of the bandits. Then when they fight and defeat the bandit leader a surprise or unexpected event would happen and would tell the characters that the events is just more than just simple banditry. Overall, a straight and simple good adventure for those looking to familiarize themselves with Dungeons & Dragons.