Truly a Tier-1 epic battle to defend Salvation!

The Good: This adventure boasts some pretty insane encounters that may or may not have PCs literally catapulting themselves straight into the action as they work to tear down a warforged colossus from the inside. Expect players to be challenged as they must rely on creative interactions to exploit the Oracle of War and win the day. There's a lot of fun to work with here.

The Bad: Some of the encounters are brutal, and surviving these encounters requires that the players really buy into the interaction of attempting to fulfill prophecies for tactical advice. Not only does this assist the encounters, but it's the only source of additional hero points. Unfortunately, this gimmick is largely mechanical to the players but may not be narratively explained well to the characters within the story. Rather than give my players the handout explaining the largely different mechanics of this adventure, I tried to nudge the characters to fulfill the prophecies, and that approach failed spectacularly. Following the campaign adventures in sequence, in which the EB-03 draconic prophecy triggered the deadly EB-04 Third Protocol, my players expressed understandable aversion to ever trust, exploit, or interact with the Oracle absent any assurances such a consequence wasn't going to happen again. The end result was that they played this adventure on Hard Mode and were happy to be done with it by the time we finished.

Advice to future DMs: Be very sure your players understand the mechanics outlined in the handout before proceeding into the encounters. If you want to place better emphasis on it from within the narrative, consider bringing Brackle back from EB-01 to dazzle the PCs with some cryptic hermit guidance and impress upon the party the importance of seeing the Draconic Prophecies to fruition. (Also note that doing so would help spur their motivation to work with Flamewind in future adventures as well!) Also, if your players missed any NPC introductions or rewards from the Salvation townsfolk in EB-04, consider leveraging some of those possibilities in this adventure as ways the townsfolk can further support the party during this siege. And finally, if you're considering running all adventures in the suggested campaign order, please see my review of EB-04 for comments about the rush of consecutive, limited-rest adventures of attrition and the burnout effect it can have on your players. Some of your players may really miss being able to exercise their long rest abilities by this adventure, so be attentive to that concern.

This module was great! Well balanced for time and number of players and with a great theme that lets players tackle a truly epic task. I would worry about running this for 2-3 tables, as the events admins hand down don't account for number of tables after you exceed one and less tables mean each one gets more damaging events. Overall, a great experience running this for my little Discord community, and I hope that we get more publicly available multi-table content that people outside of AL can partake in!

Ring Side Report-RPG Review of Oracle of War- The Iron Titan

Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!

Product- EB-EP-01 The Iron Titan System-DnD 5e Producer- DMs Guild Price- $4.99 here https://www.dmsguild.com/product/308553/EBEP01-The-Iron-Titan?affiliate_id=658618 TL; DR- Something for us all! 95%

Basics- Multi table event? With my home group? OH YES! I’ve been part of lots of multi table events, but never one at home with a solo group. The Iron Titan picks up with the players dealing with the giant they adventured under in the first Oracle of War adventure causing havoc in town. How well does a multi table event translate to home?

Mechanics or Crunch- This adventure is pretty much the same event in both the multi table event and the single table. The multitable event has rules for multiple tables, and it's well written. There are small sections added to this adventure that help you run it as a single table event. The players honestly don’t get a different experience in terms of single table crunch vs a multi table event. That’s quite frankly awesome. 5/5

Theme or Fluff- The story of this one is simple. Zombies come. You kill zombies. Then Big Moe attacks, and you run around Big Moe killing pieces of him till you win. Here is where something strange happens. This is a battle interactive, and I liked it when I ran it with several other tables. But I think I like it MORE as a single table event. My players felt like they were the stars. They blew up both arms then went for the head. In the multitable event, you turn off a hand, but then another group does that as well. That’s kind of strange… It's a fun story where everyone gets to play, but this multitable event actually runs better in single player mode! 4.5/5

Execution- PDF? Yep! Hyperlinked? No, but it doesn’t really matter (I’d still like it though). This is well done. I think the hyperlinks are needed more here than ever as this gets long and finding the sections you need on the fly is pretty important. Overall I like what I see. It reads fast, is well set up, and let’s you go from downloading to playing in about 10 minutes. And you can play well after 10 minutes! Solid execution in this one but I miss my hyperlinks. 4.8/5

Summary- I like this adventure, but this goes beyond me liking the adventure. We’re in the middle of the plague. Some people can’t make it to a regional con. Some people have limitations on where they can play. Some groups can’t travel. Now every group playing the Oracle of War campaign can play this. Of all the things I like about this adventure, that's the best part-accessibility. More groups will have the shared experience of this adventure. You will enjoy this kaiju killing adventure, but the fact that any group anywhere can play this makes this a homerun I hope I keep seeing more of. 95%