I've actually played this adventure twice, but never DM'd it. It's a fun murder mystery style adventure, with a minor combat in the middle and a larger one at the end. But most of this game is social/RP.

The first time I played this was as a play-by-post (PBP) game. Unfortunately, this adventure does not work well in that style of play. This is mainly because of the number of names/people and facts to keep track of while investigating... memories fade over time.

The second time I played was online. As a "4 hour adventure", it took us 4.5 hours. Due to the questioning required, I could see it running long, and would require the DM to keep things moving. Due to time, we missed a whole sub-thread. But I'm glad I was able to play this again "normally" because it was much more fun the second time through.

I'd recommend this to players and DMs.

DMed this adventure many times allready - mostly online - and it was a blast every time. Warn upfront that this adventure is mostly RP; steer a little bit to a diverse, mostly non-human PC party; turnon "dueling banjo's" as background music and go with the flow and enjoy 4 hours of roleplay culminating in an epic end-fight

The adventure was a good attempt at a Agatha Christie adventure. The final chapter comes on suddenly and felt disjointed. It took us nearly 6 hours to play. I did have one question, was the spellbook and irs spells in particualar available for the characters to copy in their own spell book?

This is a fun but complicated adventure. Players all enjoyed it, although some got a little frustrated along the way.

There are over a dozen NPCs in this and being a murder mystery the DM needs to know them all well to have effective interactions. This takes more prep time than the average four hour module, so be prepared.

The setting is quite good as the Hillsfar region has a lot of flavor both before and after Death on the Wall. This module can easily be set on either side of that. I ran it straight after Bane of the Tradeways and didn't have to change much. It does make a good addition to season 3.

I did find the hook a little unclear. When the murder occurs, the party has neither the motivation, nor the authority to investigate until the next morning when Biff speaks to them. There are also two points where you need to get the party to stop investigating so the plot can advance. My party resisted these, so it got a little awkward.

Overall I thought the adventure was ok, not great, not horrible. I ran this for two different tables and both tables had people who got bored about half-way in, but both also had people who really loved it. It's not the traditional action-packed hack and slash. Time was definitely an issue for this one as this type of adventure tends to bring out more RP and table discussion. I think it would be interesting to play this one with an author to see how they intended some of the adventure to flow.

As usual Robert produces a materful adventure. Not your typical hack and slash but a murder mystery that allows for as much or as little exploration as the players and DM want. Also builds in some monsters that you don't normally get to see....which I love. Not heavy on battle but also uses alternate mechanisms for encounter that are more check and save related.

I really feel like this harkens back to the days where the DM was given what they needed to know and then could modify the story as needed. The author shouldn't be expected to script out every interaction, but Robert gives you just enough to make it your own.

I also love the use of characters that we have seen in other advenutres. You should have seen my players cringe when I told them that Dr. Jubal was in town. First questions they had were "where are the fools? and "does he still have the mirror maze?"

I did notice a couple of edit issues....I will post those in the comments when I get a chance.

Thanks again for an incredible story Robert!

The adventure is not without merits, but I'm going to have to do a lot of work and answer a lot of questions for myself before I'll feel like I can use it, and my goal in buying an Adventurers League module was to have something plug-and-play that I could easily run as a pick-up game outside my normal campaign.

Mystery adventures are hard to write well, plot-driven adventures that don't railroad are hard to write well, and it's been a long time since I've bought any adventure module simply because I always find them riddled with elements I find illogical or otherwise unusable. I spend more time revising than I'd have spent creating from scratch. But if I'm going to run pick-up games, I want at least the continuity allowed by Adventurers League, and Adventurers League demands the use of official adventures. Consequently, this feels like a bit of an extortion situation, and I'm not sure I can actually evaluate the adventure well relative to the other offerings currently out there.

That said, I would like any plot-driven adventure to start with an overview of the major players in the scenario, their motivations, and how they relate to each other. This one doesn't. The background material it starts with doesn't really address the elements of the mystery that's about to unfold. I had to wade through the material and a bunch of strange names and details in order to get any idea of what's happening why.

Delivery of the information aside, there's still a problem in that the adventure consists of a handful of inevitable set-pieces surrounding one section that looks like it's the meat of the adventure, where players will get to impact the story -- the investigation. On analysis, the investigation is only there to give role-playing opportunities and to fill them in on the details of the story unfolding around them. Ultimately, an event the players did nothing to trigger serves as the lure into a climactic scene meant to play out the same way regardless of what's gone before.

I've seen worse. I've seen much worse. Still, I was hoping for better.

Well crafted adventure. Kudos to Robert Alaniz, the author, for coming up with adventures that are not typical "hack'n slash" modules. This is an Agatha Christie like mystery that the adventurers must solve amidst all of the turmoil in the Hillsfar region.

I thought the adventure was well put together. Too many AL module writers do not have a good handle on the amount of time each section will take. This one was very well organized and had the appropriated amount of time alloted for each section. It allowed for role play and investigation at a good pace without feeling rushed.

However, I would say that a few additional clues to tie the plot together would have been helpful. Also, some additional background/motivation about the chief antogonist would have also been helpful. Overall, very well done!

I just ran this with a group of 3 last week and it was a very good time. The focus on RP rather than combat was very welcome and did get the group to focus on the mystery of what happened.

The downside though is that there is so much that you want your players to experience that it can run long (yes I know there are mechanics to cut things short).

The final combat, while cool and challenging, does come a bit out of nowhere. While some things were foreshadowed, there was not as clear a plotline that led to the final encounter happening when it did. This undercut the final solution the the mystery such that I still had to explain some things to the players as part of the epilogue.

Overall though, this was a really good module.

P.S. There are a few tiny typos here and there that should be looked at and some of the AL module template might need to also be removed/cleaned a bit.