As a new DM (this was only the second campaign I've run), this was great. My wife and kids had so much fun playing it, and my job was made easy by the detailed story and super helpful character stats. The printables were also fantastic; being able to put an actual Gingerbread Golem on the table was great! Lots of fun, and highly recommended.

I have used this with two different groups they both loved it. It can take a bit longer than it states, but otherwise an awesome one-shot.

I ran this over the holidays for my 6th-level group of 5 and it was a riot. We play remotely so I converted it to a Fantasy Grounds module, which was easy as everything was organized and well presented. The maps and tokens imported well and the monsters were easy to adapt.

I decided to run this as a complete 1 shot adventure. We had 4, 10th level characters, as I wanted this to be a fun, silly, and relaxing adventure for my group that they could have fun roleplaying new characters. I gave them each around 400-500 gp on arrival, as I wanted them to have a magical drink or two, and take a spin at the mimic gift game. Lots of fun was had by all. We skipped them getting abducted, and instead had them find the trail to the den of the druid for time's sake. Due to removing the sneaking through the den, it took us about 5 ish hours: gingerbread combat was about an hour, the snowball fight took about 40 mins, the mimic gift game took about an hour as my players went 1 at a time, and them speaking with Jack at the beginning was about 30ish mins, final combat and wrap up was the remaining time.

I would recommend this as a silly one-off for a group of people looking to have fun for an afternoon or evening.

I ran this for my players over Christmas. It was a lot of fun.

My only quibble is that it is not at all a 5 hour module if your players are like mine, completing every side quest possible. This was closer to a 12 hour module with them. I even cut out the entire trek through the caverns to help get through it quicker.

This isn't a bad thing. I would totally recomend this module. Just be ready to have it go more than a single session.

This is awesome Yuletide season fun for everyone. Plus it can easily be inserted into any ongoing campaign (they just wake up after a long rest wherever they may be). For parties of a different level than the one's it was written for (6th to 10th level, I think), there's excellent scaling advice for all the encounters.

Had fun running this for my party of 5 Level 5 PCs (a human eldritch knight Fighter, a water genasi order of the moon druid, an aarakocra warlock, a half-even bard, and a ghostwise halfling monk of the long death) over the course of two sessions.

1. The snowball battle excited them so much because it was their first intra-party battle royale. While the ground rules made it a bit fairer, monks still got their awesome AC as well as their ability to deflect missiles. The monk's player agreed not to deflect missiles, but we let him keep the AC. It's still an overwhelming advantage though and noone was surprised when the monk won the game. The prize (wand of snowballs) was re-assigned to someone who could use it though (the eldritch knight).
2. The Game of Gifts did not really sell well with them, after they tried it once each.
3. The Solstice Treant was a great set piece, especially when it animated two other trees. The party made short work of it once they understood that it was weak to fire.
4. The ambush only downed one of them (the eldritch knight couldn't tank all four, but the player did forget his Shield spell with which he could have avoided much harm).
5. The boss battle delivered awesome clutch suspense and even I also thought the party would be TPK'ed.

The bard and druid were both down and the fighter and the monk soon to follow, with both of them burning from attacks by Chestnuts. Eluyeta was safe within his spike growth field and stoneskin protection, and leveled moonbeam at the party's warlock (Moonbeam has been used to devastating effect in past encounters by the party druid that the warlock used his counterspell on the first time Eluyeta tried to cast it; Eluyeta just recently cast moonbeam again this time with a Level 3 spell slot since he was out of Level 2 slots). It was then that the monk ran around the edge of the spike growth towards the rear where Eluyeta stood and flung a dart at him, causing only half damage (which was 3) total but forcing a Concentration check. Which I rolled with advantage and still got only an 8 total! And with that, Eluyeta's defenses were down. The monk then closed in and proceeded to stun Eluyeta until he was slain.

At this point, the rest of the party made their comeback as well, as the warlock used his healing light to revive the druid and the eldritch used his Aid spell (from the Game of Gifts!) to revive the bard and heal himself and the monk.

Without that turn of luck, they probably would never have made it successfully to the end.

This capped out holiday break quite nicely and I would like to thank the author from the bottom of our groups' collective hearts for this module.

Solstice Shenanigans: A Wintry One-Shot was my first experience as a DM. I enjoyed the simplicity of the storyline with adjustments made due to unexpected time constraints. The players LOVED the first half of the story. Instead of following particular events, Jack informed the group of activities on offer, and here the players chose (relatively quickly) their adventure. I added the additional game of Caroling competition. However, it wasn't called carolling (as one of my players, named Carol, later invented carolling through a NAT20 performance check and adoring fans naming themselves Carolers).

The adventure is super easy and fun that I plan on running this for my younger siblings in a few weeks, minus the BBEG and instead allowing them to explore the fantastical world of Winter Wonderland in a fun, engaging experience aimed to mimic an IRL carnival!

I ran this one shot today (my 4th game as a DM) and it was really fun, everyone enjoyed it very much and had a good time. Of course we ate gingerbread and drank mulled wine ;D

I made some adjustements to make the plot more cohesive:

• I let Jack talk about the different games outside and that the snowball battle is the biggest event, only the best can join in and succeed. They didnt feel pressured to do it, they really wanted to win and show what they are made of. I let the whole town gather and watch, they cheered them on, they laughed, they threw popcorn and shouted their names, it was awesome!
• As a prize, I also gave the first and second one gift certificates to pick a gift from the field, as an incentive to go there next and test it out. This went really well and they enjoyed it. Everyone tried their luck and they really needed those scrolls to not die later on.
• To join the gingerbread and tree event smoother together, i let the adventurers eat the meal at the bakers house after they dealt with the gingerbread. In this house, a tree escaped thru the window just before the heroes arrive. The wife describes this during the meal so the heroes can start following the trail.

This way, it felt like a bigger whole and not just "random events" I look forward to your next adventure, keep writing, such a blast!

As a DM, this had everything I needed in one place, and easily found. I gave it a single read through then ran it, which is exactly what I wanted from a one-shot. The only tweaks I made on the way through were shortening some of the read-aloud text, but that's probably just personal preference. I did appreciate that the descriptions were more than just "You see an X", bringing other senses into it.

The party level adjustments were easy to do, though with four 3rd level characters they were severely underpowered to take on some of the bigger monsters. That said, the setting makes it really easy to have them wake up in a friendly NPC's house if anything bad happens, and it did.

In summary, I ran this for a group of friends, two first-timers, and two second-timers. We all had an absolute blast!

Played this with a large group of 8 with several DnD newbies. It was exhilarating chaos all around! The 'minigames' gave me all the freedom I needed to improvise and keep on schedule. The setting is fun and creates a clear theme with great atmosphere. Extra love for the pun menu!

This was a fun adventure. My group enjoyed playing the games so much that we spent way too long on it.

Solstice Shenanigans has a lot of content for it's price. It has several mini game type events that you could pop in to any Christmas sessions you play even if you didn't run the entire adventure. That being said, the adventure is really unique and super fun and should for sure be played! It is not the usual run-of-the-mill Christmas/Holiday one shot where you have to save Santa/Kill Krampus. It is a really fun adventure with a bunch of bonus content also thrown in.

When I ran this I was on a bit of a time crunch so I had to change some tiny things and also give my players an option of bonus events which unfortunately meant I had to miss the field of gifts (I think this would be fun).

Whether you need a full adventure to run or just a few mini game type encounters to run for your winter game session you should grab this module.

I'm the DM for a podcast/Twitch/YouTube series that plays modules from dmsguild and I ran this module for our Twitch stream. You can find the video here https://youtu.be/V35sDJ4Mu30

We played all the games, and even though I had a relatively low level group I really did not have to scale it down too far. They really enjoyed playing, and even did some of the games multiple times. All in all a good time was had by all. Thank you for the good time!

Second one-shot I ever ran, and I had a blast with it! Easy to run even for novice DM's, richly steeped in the holidays atmosphere, and one year later the players I ran this for still talk about it from time to time!

I've enjoyed this one-shot since it came out, and run it for multiple groups of players every holiday season. The enemies are fun and creative, the games are engaging (so much so that I've seen friends that DM use them in their own campaign festivals), and the whole wraps up cleanly as a one-shot from a campaign or even standalone. Highly recommend!