I really wish I could give this module a higher rating, but it was abysmal to run.

The entire adventure plays like an extended cutscene. I was basically forced to railroad the players so that they would actually make any progress towards unraveling the mystery, and by the end of it the identity of the attacker was still unknown to them.

The players latched onto random rumors that were given out in the beginning as red herrings, fixating on them almost to the exclusion of the main plot.

The rumor about the Burgomaster's taxes backfired when one player literally said he would stand outside the Burgomaster's mansion for days on end until he decided to engage in discussion.

Avoid this module. It's not good.

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.

Fantastic introduction into the Curse of Strahd season of adventures.

One thing that I had to fight my players really hard on was that despite the imperative from Aya Glenmiir (who they had met in previous adventures!), I had to remind them time and again that the Gur should be kept alive. Fortunately, I think the quest would be fine even if one or more of them died, I do not know if any of them are important later on. Of course, there's always the "The Dark Powers raised them from the dead", but I think leaning on that too hard ruins the verisimilitude.

Three Pillars Breakdown:

Combat: 50%, 4/5: Some of the fights are underwhelming for large parties; despite the adjustment guidance my players stomped a few of the fights

Exploration: 15%, 3/5: Underwhelming at times

Roleplay: 35%, 5/5: The Gur were all very compelling characters, and a certain Hag was creepy as hell. Aya Glenmiir is a fantastic recurring character.

I ran The Rot From Within trilogy when our hardcover adventure made it back to Port Nyanzaru. The hooks into each adventure and the trilogy as a whole were fantastic (though I recommend DDAL07-07 before DDAL07-06), and it served as a great interlude.

Be warned: this is not a 2-hour module.

Our group usually makes it through a 2-hour module in the 3 hours allotted to us. I deliberately slow things down and let them take their time to make for a more fulfilling experience, rather than finishing half an hour early or more.

For this module, I warned my group that it is very long for a 2-hour module, and that I would need them to move more quickly through combat in particular. We started about 10 minutes early, and managed to finish this module in 3.5 hours, going just over our allotted timeslot, despite rushing through it. If you have the appropriate-faction PCs in your group, there are four fights. We skipped the faction-specific fight entirely; I simply estimated how long it would take them to defeat the single enemy (2 rounds), and simulated the effects of it making attacks for those rounds, so that they would be appropriately worn down for the last fight.

Three Pillars breakdown:

Combat: 75%, 5/5: Combat is well-balanced and compelling (my party loved the girallons and giant ape)

Exploration: 15%, 3/5: not much to explore, and what there is is... slightly confusing

Roleplay: 10%, 4/5: Very little roleplay, though it is compelling and feels good for the players

While the hooks into the adventure could use some work (fortunately I've been running my players through the hardcover and just found a way to get them to executioner's run besides the hooks the adventure provides), this module does a good job of making the dungeon-crawl feel dungeon-crawly without actually needing any maps.

The catacombs are sufficiently creepy with a teensy bit of effort on the DM's part.

The provided monsters and encounters (especially the Spawn of Kyuss) are well-balanced for party strength.

The chess section gave my one player with Dragonchess proficiency a time to shine! He rocked it! Huzzah for making use of otherwise-useless proficiencies!

The final fight is a mess. The rules for the mote are scattered across three pages, so make sure you read and reread those three pages and make sure you're intimately familiar with how the encounter is supposed to work. The things I missed in my playthrough:

• The tentacles actually have an AC and HP separate from the Mote -- I used the Mote's AC and just guessed that each tentacle had 1/6 of the Mote's HP
• The captives have 0 HP -- I thought they were at full health, so they immediately joined the fight once freed, which made the escape sequence SUPER easy because they were all conscious and only the PC that died had to be carried out

As written, it does not seem that there is any way for the players to learn Jaru Tasca's name. There also is no explanation of what she is. Undead, certainly, and a spellcaster, but what kind? Is she a lich? There's no mention of a phylactery, so I doubt it, but I floundered for what to call her.

Despite its flaws, though, the module told a fun story, the flameskulls and Spawns of Kyuss provided fantastic challenge (and instilled a new phobia of being in "Fireball Formation" in my playgroup), and it's great fun. My recommendation is actually to run this after DDAL07-07 and before DDAL07-08 -- we ran them in that order due to DM illness, and the story seems to flow better that way. Just don't mention at the end of DDAL07-07 where the masonry came from. Tell them at the start of DDAL07-08!

This pack is fantastic for adding additional flavor to your ToA game. I'm running three simultaneous campaigns that are all taking place in and around Chult, all of them starting in Nyanzaru, and I have used at least one of these encounters for each group, depending on what part of the city the group has shown the most interest in.

An exciting module that has a bit of everything for everyone.

My players had trouble suspending their disbelief for the barrel launching, but eventually went along with it anyway so as to keep the game moving, as none of them wanted to sneak.

The monkeys seem... a bit off-the-wall.

The beholders were less fun than I thought they'd be.

The bridge encounter was hard to do, as my players did not want to risk crossing together but were afraid of staying back. A lot of arguing happened =/

The aarakocra town feels a bit rushed.

The final dungeon makes it hard to give clues without immediately giving it away.

The last encounter was sufficiently epic.

All-in-all, needs a good deal of work from the DM to put some flesh on its bones, but it has good bones.

The adventure, unlike many, has all three pillars of play (Exploration, Roleplay, Combat) which is fantastic, and it's actually done well. So often one or two of those is shoehorned into an adventure that doesn't fit them. Additionally, the final fight doesn't feel shoehorned, and makes this adventure feel VERY well-rounded, and it serves as a fantastic introduction for new players into everything D&D has to offer!

That said, the first part does have a few issues:

1. When I ran this, it dragged on a bit. I did my best to keep it moving, but the players basically only moved onto another location after a sort of awkward silence where everyone tried to think of further questions to ask the NPC and came up blank.
2. Every time I thought my players had a fantastic idea that should lead somewhere in their hunt, the module had nothing to offer them. I did my best to try and reward their out-of-the-box thinking, but it's hard to do without blowing the whole mystery wide open; instead what ended up happening is that they started to go down really awkward side-paths that unsatisfyingly dead-ended.
3. Investigating is not for everyone; one of my players who is less confident basically took a back-seat for over an hour as he had nothing to contribute to the search.

Having run this twice now, for two different groups, I can say with confidence that this is a fantastic module.

There's a lot of choice, the trappings of the Harper raid make for a very interesting way to get your players to move quickly, and the danger really feels ever-present.

There are some typos but they're few and far between, and not at all an issue to speak through while reading the readaloud text.

My chief complaint was honestly how much it relied on information in the ToA hardcover, but that's honestly forgivable considering that it was designed to be a lead-in adventure.

Part 1:

Holy read-aloud text, Batman!

No seriously, the read-aloud boxes were way too long, and I could tell that my players eyes were glazing over at all of the purple prose. They're typically very roleplay-oriented, though, so the games went fantastically. I basically just went counterclockwise around the table, each player playing a game, then moving on to the next player, and kept it moving quick enough that everyone stayed interested. Each round after the third, I asked if they wanted to keep playing games, and decided to just let a majority vote decide if we'd move forward with the rest of the campaign. We have a 3-hour playtime limit at our game night, and they spent half of it just playing games; lots of fun was had!

Part 2:

This fight was really fun. Slab was a terrifying enemy, and the animated lumps of coal made for a very chaotic and dynamic encounter.

Part 3:

I thought this was probably the weakest part of the adventure. There was a lot of read-aloud text (again) for Slab's explanation, and players kept interrupting him and making it awkward for him to continue. About half the details got left out, and I had to have Ouen "guess at" a bunch of them. But the players did manage to make the swap, so it was successful regardless.