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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e) $3.99
Average Rating:4.1 / 5
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Cameron E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/13/2023 12:29:07

I've been running and remixing the DDAL04 Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts adventure series of modules as a single campaign for a group of players via play by post, so certain things don't translate fully. The big thing being I forshadow the hooks for the modules ahead of time as I built the village of Orasnou for the players and the runtimes of the modules don't matter as much in PbP.

What I liked: This has been my favorite adventure of the series so far! Very thematic and evocative! Glovia is a great vilian with a tragedy surrounding her evil. Her husband as well as their daughter are great set pieces inside their haunted manor. The use of horror in the adventure is fantastic and everything is nice and creepy. The vision ahead of time is great, as is the the undead attack. This adventure isn't perfect, but it's truly excellent and the multiple paths through the manor and ability to explore it are great.

The challenge is dialed in to, I had a player die after some very poor in character choices and unlucky dice, and that helped amped the horror up to.

What I didn't like: Again this is MINOR stuff.

  1. Glovia would have been nice to get fleshed out and some attachment to her earlier in the adventure, maybe if she helped go follow the wagon.
  2. Some copy editing errors, the harpies have been cut but are still referenced here and there (I ended up running them).
  3. Laszlo just disappears? That's it! Again overall really fun!

Some very minor alterations I recommend:

  1. I introduced Glovia way earlier in the campaign, during DDAL04-03 to build a relatinoship with the party.
  2. I included the harpies to drain more resources of the party and make things more challenging.
  3. I added Stress from Van Richten's Guide along with the Horror elements
  4. Here's the big one. Add another Ghoul/Ghast as Glovia's bodyguard, and a couple rounds in the encounter with her, have Laszlo and some Zombies/Skeletons come breaking through the lab window. Make it a 3 way fight for more tension and opportunity to bring his journey to an end as well as hers!


Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Brian C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/26/2018 18:08:16

So much fun! Great for a Holloween game. The constitution based investigation checks are a nice touch.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by William F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/07/2018 02:56:52

This adventure runs long. In Part 1, I think that there should have been some harpies near Vasile. I don't know why they were removed from the module, but storywise, you might want to return them. There is some great role playing in the early parts of the adventure. It wasn't mentioned in the text, but I think that Sybil should be the same Sybil from the Suits of the Mist. It's always fun to reference characters from earlier modules. The Vision was a lot of fun and was great role playing. During Laszlo's attack my players wanted to split up to take on all the missions. You might want to introduce them one at a time to avoid a party split. The Manor had great exploration and role playing. My players enjoyed the toy soldiers. But the interactions with Isabella were the best part of the adventure. It might have been more fun if there had been a longer villain speach when the party finally finds Glovia but still the whole thing was great.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Gael L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/30/2018 16:50:32

My memory of this adventure is not perfect, as I DMed it a year and a half ago, but I keep a good impression of it.

The introduction of the Horror mechanic was a very good touch to this season. I don't yet know whether it's reused in later adventures, but I would suppose (and hope) so.

The character development of Lazlo is pretty enjoyable as well, coming all the way from a simple hunter to an evil hunchman.

The manor was well detailed and makes for very tasty exploration, and the final encounter is particularly interesting (especially since one of my characters ended up throwing the boss in the hole for her to be eaten by her own minion!).

Overall, a thematically powerful adventure, which I would recommend the purchase of.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/14/2018 15:12:41

Bottom Line Up Front: A very good adventure with spooky atmosphere. A few challenges in the writing mean the DM needs to read the whole thing and make some decisions before game time.

This adventure has a lot going on, and will push your time management skills to the limit if your players are interested in any extended conversations with...well, just about anyone. When I ran it, I skipped the initial foray into the woods to find the missing villager, and we still took 4.5 hours to finish.

One continuity issue jumped out at me [SPOILER ALERT].

After Laszlo snatches the powderbox while in the dream sequence, he can then be seen shouting his defiance to Glovina in the square, and then he...just kind of vanishes. I recommend letting your players take a couple of potshots at him in the dream (they are unarmed, but that hardly matters to the spellcasters), and let that be motivation enough for him to flee. The PCs will then be occupied with the burning village.

[END SPOILERS]

There is also one content warning - I have a couple of players who are highly uncomfortable with violence towards children, and there’s some evidence of that in this book (though there’s only one seen of sort-of violence to a child, there’s plenty of evidence that terrible things have happened in the past). As ever, know your party’s limits, and, if you’re playing AL, maybe talk about it before you dive in.

The final encounter was one of the best I’ve had for AL in my short DMing career there, giving new players a taste of how legendary and lair actions can make an enemy a more serious threat than they might otherwise appear.

If you’re playing through a Ravenloft arc, or you’ve got players willing to burn the 20 downtime days to get out of Barovia after, this would make a great spooky break from AL’s more run-of-the-mill monster beatdowns.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/25/2017 01:34:20

This is a very fun, but long adventure. The hook can be pretty weak, especially if player’s haggle. This free gold adventure is good since they meet with the medicine woman before their vision quest. The vision quest is really fun since you can play with the variant skill rules and are in a powerless possible surrounded by horror. The simultaneous encounters immediately after the vision is difficult and interesting if the party splits up, even more so, if they are under madness, such as a spellcastering being unable to speak can’t perform spells with verbal components. The mansion is interesting and ghost girl is a great guide. The most exciting encounters before the last two encounters are the little girls on the ground and the theater on the second floor. Both provide a creepy atmosphere that makes you either feel sorry for the victims or uncomfortably waiting for the dolls to attack due to the hostage. Due to time restraints, I was unable to use the basement. The encounter with the robo-zombie is awesome as it brings a Frankenstein feeling. For the final encounter, I couldn’t find anything bad to say about the final boss. She was prepared and calm. If you play here like a smart villain, beating her is very difficult since she can teleport from the second floor to ground floor outside. The ghost possession also helps here, especially if you use it on their tank, who the party will typically put at the front of the door entering the room. Overall, this is a good adventure with a likable villain and would run this again.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Mike O. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/10/2017 20:54:03

A fun romp through a haunted-ish house with some creepy puppets. One of the best Tier 1 adventures in season 4.

Pros: The fight/fire-fighting in Orasnou is well-designed and tense. Sandboxy "manor crawl" gives players plenty of meaningful choices without requiring them to explore EVERYthing.' Isabella is a fun NPC to roleplay. That final fight really feels like a thing. If you aren't coming to this adventure directly from The Executioner, it's pretty easy to get into (unlike some other season 4 adventures, which really feel like they need to follow on the heels of the previous adventure).

Cons: Too much set-up on the front end -- the best part of the adventure is Falinescu Manor, but it could easily take two hours just to get there. Laszlo is a pretty uninispiring NPC. If they haven't played The Beast (and sometimes, even if they have!), his presence here is unlikely to spur the players into action. That final fight is definitely a thing, but there's suddenly a LOT to keep track of. DM beware.

My Experiences: I made real fancy-like maps for this one, so I made sure to run it more than once. I skipped the go-find-Vasile bit entirely, and replaced it with a scene of some villagers bringing Vasile into the Seven Tables. Sorina is dispatched to get Glovia, and the adventure proceeds from there. So yes, no harpy fight, but the pacing felt much better to me. And there's a LOT of adventure after that, between the fight in town and the entire manor house, so cutting a little potential fat of the front helped.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Blake J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/28/2017 18:04:54

This module was by far one of my favorite to run and it was incredibly fun to play in. Each section of the module did a good job relating to the whole plot but also having it's own section which is really fun. I think the mechanics with choosing who or what to rescue when the town is in flames are fun to run, and I think the story elements of everything leading up to the last part are really well done in tying the story to everything and leading the party to the end goal.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Joshua N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/19/2017 15:49:33

Recommend Purchase: Yes. XP Range: 900-1,200

The overall story woven between all fourteen modules is called 'Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts' and is relatively strong overall, but suffers for a couple reasons. The final module probably wasn't written at the time the first was released, so they couldn't or didn't want to spill some of the meta information that DMs would have LOVED to have. In the early modules things would occur 'deus ex machina' and even the DM wouldn't have a clue as to why.

If you're planning on running these, i HIGHLY recommend buying the bundle, reading the DDAL04-14 (The Dark Lord) Adventure Overview on pages 7-8 to see where everthing is heading ... and then reading each module's Overview in turn before running everything. This will help you greatly.

If you start with the first module you'll have enough XP to level up, stay within the module tiers and make it all the way to the 14th module. Afterwards you could always play a few chapters of the Curse of Strahd Harcover and then leave Barovia behind.

Before running any Season 4 module, you should download the following content:

  • dndadventurersleague.org/barexit-escaping-the-mists-of-barovia/
  • dndadventurersleague.org/curse-of-strahd-backgrounds/
  • DMSGUILD: DDAL04 Expanded Dark Gifts Table [OPTIONAL CONTENT]

Season 4 initially couldn't leave the Demiplane of Dread until the very end, but the Admins later introduced the 'Barexit' mechanic.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by david w. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/09/2017 13:21:19

Probably my favorite tier 1 Barovia adventure. I felt this had a lot of role-play opportunity, soem difficult but manageable encounters, and was overall well written. It was a bit on the long side, it took my party just at 5 hours to make it through, and that was with me speeding up the basement encounters.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Christopher C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/28/2017 01:10:24

Good adventure, but it took 6 hours, not four. Had a 4 player 3rd level balanced group, should be normal strength, but they had a very tough time with combat, I needed to change to very weak and allow short rests. Even then the final two combats would be a TPK without many fudged dice.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Benjamin C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/12/2017 02:19:43

I really enjoyed the this module as it was easy to separate into to halfs. The ended up taking me 2 4 hour sessions as my players were role-playing so much very enjoyable



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jose S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/25/2017 08:53:20

I ran this cold. It read well enough, and the quick back to back little side adventures were a nice touch. The table I ran enjoyed the quick thinking requried to get it done. I ran a table of three players of level 3-4. They handled the encounters well enough without modificiation.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Ri G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/09/2017 18:11:29

I loved this adventure.

There are lots of little details here, from the gothic setting to the creepy toy soldiers. This is a fantastic adventure to both play in and run as a DM. I do believe this adventure is AL's answer to Death House. It was thoroughly enjoyable!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL04-04 The Marionette (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Alexander W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/08/2017 12:10:31

This adventure was fun to DM. The players enjoyed it too.

Part One starts the game by moving the characters away from Orasnou and to help with some errands for local families. (Although there is an editing issue with Harpies being mentioned but not actually in an encounter/confused me/however I think its safe to add or ommit them) Unfortunately this error sort of ruined the first part which isn't good.

Part two of the game is fortunately well written and quite interesting, with some practical and involved roleplaying being developed. Well the part I like about this roleplaying encounter is that it gives the characters a good chance at using their flaws and personalities. (I've noticed many AL games to skim over roleplay scenarios with "good cop" "bad cop" scenarios)

Part three is cool. It would have been cooler had the previous module DDAL04-03 not been pretty much the same scenario with Lazso get some payback on Orasnou. This encounter however is probably better than the whole of DDAL04-03.

Part four is great as it portrays a pretty good set up for the rest of the season. It would in practicality however make the whole module a lot longer than 4 hours. If a DM ran this whole module in 4 hours for their players, I would feel bad for those playing that game.

Overall I enjoyed the game, however its slightly let down by the error at the beginning and the misadvertising of the length of the module. Really good season four module!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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