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Death in the Wood Pay What You Want
Average Rating:4.5 / 5
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Death in the Wood
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Mungo F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/12/2020 19:11:03

I'm a pretty new Dm that ran this for some inexperienced players. I really liked it. Good amount of social interaction and combat. The murder mystery aspect is great. If the players ever got stuck I used a couple NPC's to help a little. I was able to easily use this as a one off and plug it into our world. Thanks!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Zeke G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/01/2019 15:09:19

Jonathan Garland's "Death in the Wood" is a good example of a fun, straightforward mystery adventure and a good pick-up for a first-time DM or an experienced DM. The encounters, both roleplay and combat, add engaging elements to the story and the author provides lists of potential clues for the PCs to find in each scene, allowing for flexibility in how those clues are discovered by the PCs. Additionally, the mystery is an engaging one which involves a reprehensible villain (accomplished well without crossing potentially triggering boundaries for players) and several sympathetic NPCs for the party to interact with. However, I do have one issue with the adventure's structure: a great deal of the box text reads like cutscenes, rather than setting a scene for the players to engage in. How many parties are going to simply sit back and watch fights break out, a lumberjack bully a woman, or the sheriff talk at them for a minute or more? I feel that this design greatly limits player agency, especially for DMs who feel that they need to read the box text word-for-word.

Overall, if you're looking for the framework & encounters for a tier 1 mystery adventure that could easily be dropped into any campaign, Death in the Wood can certainly provide. However, its design can hamper player agency if the DM isn't comfortable breaking away from the extensive box text.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Jay G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/01/2019 09:54:30

Death In The Wood is a great introductory adventure or a potential side-quest for Level 1 PCs.

The things that I think make this a really good adventure are the fact that the adventure balances problem solving and investigation with combat, as well as allowing for a lot of oppotunities for role-playing. Even though they are fairly basic I also appreciate the author including maps of the two key encounter areas.

The opportunities for improvement in this adventure are fairly minor and can be addressed by individual DMs rather than needing to be edits to the core text. The main issue like many short murder mystery scenarios is that the encounter includes no red-herrings. Once the PCs have met the principal characters in the story it seems really obvious who the villain will be, DMs will want to populate the adventure with a few more noteworthy NPCs (probably either at the logging camp or in the bar) so that things don't feel quite so linear. My only other critique would be that its very likely that the longest and most complex combat encounter will be the actual barfight and that is not a location that a combat map is provided for.

Those issues aside I really enjoyed reading Death In The Wood think it will drop into my next game nicely. I would definitely recommend this adventure and just encourage DMs to put in a bit of prep to fill it out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Joshua M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/18/2018 20:46:18

I ran this with a 3-person group of level 2 PCs, and they really enjoyed it, as did I as the DM. It was very easy to modify small parts of it to fit in my own setting.

(Spoiler Warning)

In terms of in-depth review, the one complaint my players had was that the combat was wanting for variety: The first combat is a swarm of twig blights, which I admit I inflated the difficulty of by giving each twig blight 11 HP instead of 4 HP, when I mixed up HP and Initiative. That said, they managed to survive the battle with a satisfying challenge, although it was lengthy. The reaction my players had was that the subsequent battle with the Gulthias Tree does not offer a suitably varied experience compared to the first battle with the Twig Blights. Another concern they had was that the encounter with Hunter the Sprite was not as productive or 'vital' as they had hoped (the party's Shadow Monk instantly killed Hunter with a counterattack after dodging the poison arrow, so I believe that's more the party's fault than anything).

As the DM, I had a lot of fun managing this adventure, and seeing the player's reactions to the different NPCs. A personal highlight was that the moment Manfred uttered "You belong to me, Erin," the entire party visibly recoiled with disgust. Not that I like making my party feel squeamish or outraged, but it's great to be able to present a morally repugnant villain that elicits such a strong, unified response from my players without going overboard on repugnant or 'shocking' material: All it took was five words, and Manfred became a more memorable villain than the necromancer those same players had defeated in a previous session: If that isn't a testament to your skills as an author, I don't know what is.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Chris M. I. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/23/2017 20:32:01

I used this to introduce my friends to D&D, and it went great! The module included everything I needed to run a successful adventure, and the story was realy compelling!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/19/2017 23:37:22

A short, tight, little adventure! Easy to add details to or apply to an existing setting. I actually ran this prior to starting CoS, which is cool 'cause they actually kind of blend pretty well.

Thanks!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Death in the Wood
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Sean F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/23/2016 15:10:20

Short, but detailed and scalable with a coherent and compelling story. I'm looking forward to more in this vein.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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