This was my first experience DMing, my husband and I play two characters each, he always DMs, I wanted to give him a break.

What I loved was how user friendly the whole thing was, nicely laid out, everything you needed, stats etc. right there, even reminders of rulings in some cases. It was all made beautifully easy.

I had to change the genders of a lot of the PCs - 80% of them were male (not including the accused), and the remaining 20% were wives of other PCs, that was a bit depressing, especially as this meant that the only independant women were the ones who might be evil - its a trope I'd hoped I'd seen the end of - to the same theme, I altered the villain's motive, she was far too intelligent for upkeeping her beauty to be her raison d'etre. I also added some disabilities and LGBTQ+ diversity for believability and my own joy.

My husband, being him, had no interest in hearsay, so we didn't talk to most of the PCs anyway, and I ended up creating a few to deliver the information he needed in another way. One thing that bugged me and I changed on the paper is this - NO ONE puts the catch to a door, even if it's a hidden one, two stories up, who's running up two flights of stairs to pull a catch then back down again? Doesn't happen.

He thoroughly enjoyed the final boss battle but the other two not so much - he felt railroaded into and then cheated into being surprised by the monster (this may be my inexperience, but he insists it's not), and after his main character took 11hp to the crown jewels was very upset he couldn't kill the thugs! We were a level up from the recommended level and I doubled the bad guy's hit points, by the way.

For £2.50 it's definitely worth it. Thank you for the hard work you put in, but may be try to avoid the tropes in future? I think you hit every one.

I loved this one-shot! It was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to re-introduce a player to 5e.

I was looking for a good one shot to re-introduce a friend of mine who, like me, played AD&D back in the day. I had been trying to convince him how much more fun 5e was than AD&D (note, neither of us played any of the versions in between). He had been on the fence, but agreed to play. This one seemed fun, and it had a nice Halloween hook, so he, and two others played it last night. They all loved it!

It's a good module which ballances roll playing, skills checks, and combat, without making any one of those too complex, and with lots of different ways to solve the mystery (this is very necessary when players go off script). There were several people and places they didn't visit, but, they were still able to solve it. Even the two experienced 5e players loved it. All texted me this morning praising the module.

We did (3) 5th level players; it really needs (4). I upped their magical items, but it was not enough. They needed a fourth. The maps are good, though I subbed in with a city map, just to make it easier to navigate, but, that really isn't necessary.

I would recommend this without reservation, and I am going to look for other modules by the author. And yes, the AD&D said, yes, he was hooked and he wanted to keep playing

I ran this as a one-shot for several several different groups of people, and found out that this is great for both begginners and experienced players. Some slight modifications that I did that seemed to make it more enjoyable and seemed useful when running it repeatedly:

• The characters travelling to Westwater have an encounter with direwolf and a pack of competing wolves, before they arrive to Westwater (to give them good reason to not stay in forest).
• Players backstories can be included in the the plan of the witch by creating something that they seek and creating an extra room at her basement and are being used to power her magical spheres.
• This is for level 5 characters, but I run it with smaller but higer leveled groups (3 players, level 6) and buffed up some things accordingly.
• Importance of the ritual and the magic spheres that witch summons in the end also felt a bit lacking and not suspensful enough, so I made it so that as the spheres are used they rapidly age the children they are levitating. If 3 children are sacrificed to a sphere it activates and the witch can throw it to make it obliterate a large section of the village in a giant necrotic explosion (16d6, DC 18 CON halves, felt appropriate), of course hinting about this before. This caused there to be great choices to be made in-character and several heroic deaths, where players had to choose how to deal with activated spheres or wether or not to be evil and kill children that are being used.
• I had to create my own map of Westwater, since that is not included. This helped greatly when playing online or showing players what they have explored or where can they still go. But this was not too much of a hassle to place all the different town locations in some relation to each other using some tool like Inkarnate.

Overall, this was amazing adventure with high replayability, fleshed out characters and great open area to explore and deal with in a tense setting. Would recommend to and play this with every new group I have.

Really nice adventure! The best part is how the various NPCs were already fleshed out in their behaviours, so it was very easy to jump in right away. Very littl prep needed and a very charming story. Too bad my players didn't spend much time in the village but went straight to the houses :) the final fight can easily be levelled up / down, it was one of the most challenging fights for my 6th level party of four.

Highly Recommended!

My 3 player party and I truly enjoyed this one shot! With just one short break we finished just at three hours. The characters were quirky and fun. The encounters were spaced evenly. I really enjoyed when party had the realization that they shouldn't be using magic in front of the townsfolk. Also from a DM perspective it was well written and easy to follow.