Bleeding Gate: Amalgamation is a strong sequel to Bleeding Gate: Pandemonium. Having run this for both a seasoned party and a relatively inexperienced party I highly recommend it.
Pros:
- Following the successful format of the original, the adventure is well-written and easy for the DM to understand. The author presented an excellent summary of the whole module before launching into the detailed narrative of the adventure.
- Strong narrative with good role-playing opportunities and an interesting backstory.
- The players are repeatedly challenged to distinguish friend from foe.
- The combats are really good and feature some distinctive monsters.
- The author's voice seems to have matured since he wrote the first episode. The underlying ideas are presented in a subtler way.
Cons:
- The third episode of this trilogy is on Tier 2. Stepping up in the middle of a trilogy is very awkward.
- Between my two parties there was only one player who had run the first module. The "Previously on Bleeding Gate" part of the adventure took a lot of time to narrate and even after I invested that effort I still needed to make another significant effort later on. All the critical characters from Pandemonium suddenly show up in the grand finale of Amalgamation and a lot of people were a little lost.
But that's AL in a game store for you. If you can run both episodes for the same party it will be amazing as this weakness becomes a great strength when it all ties together. Otherwise just make sure that you know Pandemonium. Be prepared to spend some time catching people up and it will be fine.
Conclusion: A well-written module with an excellent story and enjoyable combats.
PS: With regard to a previous review, both my parties resolved the final conflict without battling the Villain. Thus they avoided an extremely dangerous encounter that could easily have led to fatalities. I believe it is the author's clear intent that this outcome is possible and desirable. He goes to a lot of trouble to outline the persuasion and intimidation tools at the adventurers' disposal.
Where the author failed is in defining what success looks like. It was completely up to me to decide what combination of strong words, good rolls, and blown up zombies would force the Villain to capitulate.
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