I used this module to kick-start Chapter 3 of my current campaign. My players are now based out of Ylarphon and dealing with all sorts of nasties throughout the Flooded Forest. They don't seem to mind.

The adventure was a little long, but nothing teadious or boring. There was a lot of info to cover and my players didn't mind. They quite enjoyed themselves.

We completed this Tier 2 Ylraphon adventure in two sessions totalling 8 hours. We had previously played several adventures located in the Flooded Forest which is located next to Ylraphon (CCC-STORM-02 Swamp of Sorrow: Bloodpurge Village; CCC-BWM-04-02 Thralls of Zuggtmoy: Sanctum of Rot; CCC-BWM-04-01 Thralls of Zuggtmoy: The Myconic Nidus). To connect these stories together, I added an NPC letter courier who engaged the party to assist in the delivery. One of the players with excellent diction read the letter aloud beautifully, giving a lasting impression to the group ("not just another handout").

The adventure provides significant content in the form of handouts, some of which give the players clues to help them unravel the inter-twining stories of competing groups of NPCs, each group with their own objectives and motives. The NPCs in the town are well described, each with an interaction or relationship with one or more of the other NPCs. The politics and intrigue of the town is available within this adventure for you to expand your game to great depths. As DM, you'll need to do a lot of reading to prepare for your game. My favourite NPC was Gwynora Ironheart who holds the heritage of the local Dwarves in her hands.

The second part of the adventure features the dungeon exploration of an intriguing complex, where the adventurers seek to uncover the ancient mysteries held within. As they progress through each stage they explore, more information is revealed. They also encounter fellow explorers in various states, who can respond to the adventurers in different ways. The final encounter is dramatic and exciting, a worthy ending to this adventure.

As a Strategicon adventure, it's perfect timing to enjoy this module as Strategicon's Gateways event is being held this weekend.

The adventure was well written and truly enjoyable. There is a lot of content so pay attention to the time you have. This was well worth the investment!

A favorite as a player and finally got a chance to DM it. It's a labor of love, and I spent a lot of time preparing. To get done in 4 hours, I skipped gambling with Gwynnora (as recommended). Next time I will consider removing the part with Krim Dragul because the whole Elvish chambers over Dwarvish chambers conquered by Orcs was too complicated. In the mortuary fight, I made the monk go out of his way to kill Orrin, which forced the players to save him--always good when players have to think about something other than causing damage. The final fight was really well designed and allows you to run it without a detailed map--just make sure you start the BBEG more than 60' away so the party can't Counterspell. A big hole in the design is that monsters are supposed to drop on the charactes but they are underwater, so most (except the Water Genasi) can't breath!

I absolutely loved this module. I ran it at my local game store, and everyone had a great time. It did unfortunately run very long, almost six hours, but that was really just because there was so much content I wanted to include.

I particularly loved the amount of freedom it left for a DM. I took the opportunity to go hog wild with the full suite of monsters between the vanilla Monster Manual and Mordenkainen to have them fighting dinosaurs, devils, a t-rex, and aberrations. I had my players in the gambling hall actually play blackjack with playing cards I had brought. All of the NPCs were interesting and well fleshed out, and I felt like I had everything I needed to roleplay them well. It really felt like the people were real, they all had their own things going on and were doing things even while the party wasn't around them. The mysteries were engaging, the few players who were taking notes were constantly talking through what was going on and throwing theories out. Everything was foreshadowed well, and they figured everything out right when they were supposed to. I really thought that they'd get stuck on the puzzle with the moon door, but exactly one of my players had a eureka moment right when he saw it, and the whole table thought he was a genius.

My players only had three combats, and they were all challenging without being impossible - nobody in the party died or even went down at any point, but they all thought there was no way they would defeat the final boss, after it opened up with a Chain Lightning and nobody passed their save it really looked hopeless, but they used the portals creatively and were able to win, partially because I thought it would be really fun when the boss was surrounded that they casted Shatter targetting themself to burn the whole party, but they all passed their saves and the boss didn't (woops) and I should've just dimension doored out.

In terms of production, this was by far the best-presented adventure I've ever run in AL, and that's including the DDAL adventures. The other ones often railroad the players pretty hard and leave out important information so the DM has to make something up on the spot - not to mention grammar errors and ambiguous language. This was free of all of that. I always had the information I needed right where I expected to find it, and I didn't notice a single typo.

There was clearly a lot of love put into this adventure, and I heartily recommend it, either for AL or a casual game. The best AL adventure I've ever played.

I have been reviewing and prepping this adventure and though there is a lot to print it is worth it since it provides so much in rich world building which is amazing to see in an AL module. It is well organized, well written, and edited for glaring mistakes which is nice on the DM side. On top of that, the characters are memorable, role-playing abounds, combats are exciting as well. I will update this after I run it, but I think this is a fantastic adventure and easily memorable by players.

Downside: 74 pages of content? Fxxk me.

Upside: Virtually everything else.

Seriously, the only downside I have to mention for the module was the immense amount of information provided in the mod. Albeit I fully understand that it's necessary, because they were provided to give life to Ylraphon as a place. As the first module in the YLRA series, this module did a great job to introduce both the players and the DM to the city of Ylraphon.

The flow of the adventure was also on point. What started as a letter delivery mission eventually led the adventurers to a lot more - got them involved in the city's politics, rumours of the blood crown and the lost Orcish Empire, the Tree of Doors and its amber prison... It's an adventure that keeps giving, providing the players a new challenge every step they take. The final fight was a fitting finale of the adventure, a fight that is hard but fair. (Also, who doesn't like to fight against a dragon?)

All in all, a great dungeon, and a great introduction to Ylraphon. Lots of details that provided a lot of foreshadowing to the future events of the YLRA01 series.

If only the authors can release CCC-YLRA01-04 through CCC-YLRA01-09 on dmsguild ASAP that'd be great. Although I understand that they are busy with premiering the YLRA-02 series at the upcoming Strategicon.

Easily the best edited and most organized adventure I’ve purchased in the DMs Guild.

A complex, multi-layered story with tons of options for roleplaying, exploration and discovery, combat, and more.

The heart of the story—and the climactic end fight—is interesting and at some points downright frightening. The combat encounters were tough enough to challenge a skilled and experienced party without much tinkering.

My sole criticism is that there is NO WAY you can do this adventure justice in a four-hour session. This is more like an eight- or 12-hour adventure, at least. I ran it in a four-hour slot and had to chop so much out of it that it felt like a crime. There’s so much here for the players to do it’s almost like a mini season in a single adventure. At $4.99 that’s a steal.

i liked this trilogy very much, all the detailed informations are something very useful. Thank you

I love this trilogy. It's interesting, it's funny, and it has great combat and roleplaying opportunities. The NPCs are unique and memorable, so as a DM with a background in theater, I really loved getting to sink my teeth into numerous characters.

This trilogy has gotten a lot of play time at my local stores and conventions, and everyone I know who has played just one of these modules has loved them.

There is a lot of information in this adventure, I mean, A LOT. That's a good thing from my perspective as it provides sufficient background detail to enhance the role playing perspective. I have a few nits to pick with some of the technical aspects of the story but the underlying material appeared to be a labor of love. Kudos to the auther Jeremy Forbing for the amount of detail provided.

If you are not careful, this adventure will take a lot longer than four hours. While there is guidance provided on how to manage the session's time, it is still easy to go over.

There are basically three combat encounters that happen in relatively quick succession in the second half of the adventure. In my group, the finale resulted in some controversy from some DMs at our local story. My player group had to abandon the adventure or it would have been a TPK. Some observers believed that the encounters were too difficult and were not appropriatley balanced. In my mind, the players made a number of tactical errors (plus some lousy dice rolls) which put them in their predicament. I had no issue with how it played out and my players, despite the outcome, all told me that they had a lot of fun playing such a challenging adventure. I share this just in case you have a player group that demands an easy outcome. If that is the case, this adventure may not be for you.

I thought the encounters were interesting and created some additional dynamics (e.g. moving slabs that allowed for advantage on some attacks, underwater fighting) that further added to the fund. I recommend the adventure very highly.

This adventure is deeply layered and feels like the opening page of an epic tale of high fantasy. My players enjoyed the investigation! The clues for the puzzle where careful laid out prior, they had to think about the solution but wasnt a game killer. As a DM the creatures were exciting and allowed me to challenge the group, wasn't more of the same. The results of this adventure which the carry through the next mods in sequence. I loved it.

For the DM:

This mission is well laid out, with the structure easy to follow and implement. The background history is interesting, and gives you enough history to understand past actions and current behavior by NPCs. The Story moves along briskly, allowing you to focus on what your players are interested in.

For the Players:

The Author has managed to make this small city a real place, and one where it is easy to become involved with the lore locally and beyond. You have actual things to do, for the adventure, and for the local area. Exciting and worthwhile activities in town allow you to grow with the story line.

For the purchaser:

This mod is stuffed with handouts, maps, activites, and you could easily turn this from a 4 hour mod, into it's own mini-campaign. Combined with the other two in this series, it most assuredly is a worthwhile campaign for any setting.

Rated: Buy it.