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Hello all,
I wanted to leave this review here as I have now played through this adventure twice now, both in the 2 player mode. I'm not big on playing D&D really by myself so I dragged two separate friends along on the adventure with me. All players are experienced players of 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, and now 5e and I picked this up as a nice game to play with a buddy on an off week when we can't get everyone together for our normally weekly D&D game. That said lets get into my thoughts of the adventure.
Pros:
This solo adventure has a lot going for it. When it comes to replayability so long as you manage to make your Wisdom saving throws and avoid the compulsion to read through the PDF's entirety you will have the adventure go pretty differently for you each time you play. After a second run through of the adventure there were things that we repeated as was expected, but on the other side of things we took a completely different approach to the dungeon a second time and encountered a different set of options, hazards, and encounters. This is one of those great aspects to the "Choose your own adventure" style games where the game is designed to make you think on your following playthroughs "Okay we went that way last time, lets go this way!"
The games duration is limited by a feature created for these adventures called "progress points." These points effectively track "time." Traveling from one portion of the city to another, expect to take a progress point. Went down the wrong path and forced to return to where you came, take a progress point. Want to take a short rest after getting beat on? Take some progress points. Attuning to a magic item? Take some progress points. There is a limit to how many you can take before you lose the game, so you do have a timer over your head to complete things. The other aspect of how long this game may take is how quickly you can read or narrate. In the case of my two player sessions I would narrate and give voices to my fellow player. Sometimes we'd switch off in some cases. This pace roughly left the game lasting about 4 hours in total each time.
On the topic of two players, the rules for increases difficulty for two players is really well thought out and the combat is aptly increased in difficulty without being unreasonable. The rules in the multiclass section could be just a smidge clearer on the basic enemies (if you play two players you double the # of total enemies in the battle). It went pretty good and we didn't even encounter all of the enemies the game had to offer in the two run throughs I played. I was able to tell this as when you go to the enemies section you sometimes have to scroll past other enemies and their images. Either way the combats are done really well for a singular dungeon.
On the topic of scrolling the designer did put in some forethought there and made sure that as you are moving from entry to entry "choose your own adventure" style, they provided links to the entry in question. There are a few in there that did not have links, but that said they are few and far between so it doesn't slow down play much.
Now if you wanted to run this adventure more conventionally with a DM and a player there are a whole set of rules for playing this adventure more conventionally. Really this is the best way to provide a more Role Playing experience where the base game provides all of the dialogue for both Player and NPCs. In a solo game it provides that dialogue, as unless you are praticing your Ettin impersonation, you are going to be talking to yourself back and forth if you want more role playing. So for that more role play, conventional RPG, experience you will probably want to play DM+1 or DM+2
Also take the advise of the creator, play this with the Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron, there are things in the adventure that key off of the material found in there. Do you need it to play this adventure? No, but there is benefits for taking some of the options in there.
Cons:
The adventure does have a few unnecessary Progress points in the beginning. One of my friends pointed out as we played that the first few progress points could have just been used to remove the total points you needed before you lost. For example in the second or third entry, before you get to even make any decision at all, you have to take a progress point. That point could have been removed and you just reduce the top end by one. In future editions it'd be nice that only once you get to actually choose an option of any kind that you start to take progress points, other wise just remove it from the top end. I understand its probably there to help you understand how the mechanic works, but it feels a little like you are being punished without having the ability to do anything yet.
Conclusion:
It was well done. The dialogue is fun and easy going, while the flavor of Eberron is STRONG. I am running a game in Eberron right now and the two friends I played this with are my players in that game and the flavor in this narrative did help them visual things even more for our campaign. The adventure was a lot of fun and my buddies and I look forward to playing it another couple times to see all of the options and paths. We also look forward to trying other classes as this is a nice playground for such things.
If you are looking to play a game of D&D by yourself in a "choose your own adventure" style game or maybe just play a 2 player game of D&D, then this is definitely an adventure for you. With rules for running it more conventionally as a normal D&D session this PDF provides so much. I strongly suggest supporting the creators and adding this to your collection as you won't be disappointed.
Designers, thank you for a great time in your adventure. My friends and I had a blast.
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