Full disclosure, I LOVE Jeff’s work. I have not read one of his modules yet that I have not fully enjoyed and wanted to run right away.
This module was no different. I read through it and knew I had to run it. I liked the seemingly simple hook (just go get one fruit please!) that obviously turns out to be harder than just that. The intro is set up nicely to get the characters invested in the quest and should be a hook that is easily picked up by nearly any party.
This module has plenty of opportunities for combat but just as many opportunities for a party to use social interaction in lieu of combat (which is part of what my group did).
The entire module can be read through and prepped for pretty quickly (I think I spent about an hour reading it) and the story is very easy to follow for both the DM and the players. The layout is great of course and the NPC’s all have their intentions very clearly laid out to make it easy to RP.
All of that being said, I’m sad to report that we had a bad snowstorm on the night that we played/recorded this session so I had to trim out a lot of the early parts of the module for time. This paired with my group finding a way into the top of the tower quickly led to a very quick truncated run of the module. In hindsight I could have definitely come up with ways to have the group go back down into the tower (have them not have seen the activation word on the portal and had them go down searching for clues for example) but at the time I didn’t think quick enough. All said these issues were completely my fault and the module is still a 5/5! I would only suggest that you prepare for your group to make it straight into the top floor of the tower and perhaps come up with a reason for them to go back down because there is a ton of cool stuff in this tower that my group missed!
I'm the DM of a podcast that plays one shots from dmsguild so if you want to listen to our playthrough of this module you can find it at the links below or by searching for "One-shot Onslaught" wherever you download shows. Look for more of Jeff's adventures from us in the future!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgF5Entt564
Podcast ep 1: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/8594165
Podcast ep 2: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/8671283
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