My players and I really enjoyed this adventure even though we're not very big on roleplay heavy games. We are however big horror movie buffs, and The Waystop hit all the right notes for us. It highlights some popular tropes, and subverts them later to excellent effect, and we had fun trying to figure out which movies inspired the scenes (we thought of The Sixth Sense and the Shining).

Initially, I had some reservations about how open ended the narrative was, but everything went smoothly once the players and NPCs started actively interacting. My players were pretty suspicious about the NPCs (they thought the NPCs were ghosts), so they stuck with each other the whole time and refused to go to sleep, then started panicking when Part 2 began because they'd used some spell slots earlier and had not recovered them.

This is going to be my go-to horror adventure for Halloween from now on. I'll also be using The Waystop whenever I need to whisk players off to Barovia for Curse of Strahd. The adventure is practically made for it.

This action-packed adventure has the players serving with a group of volunteer firefighters trying to stave off a massive magical blaze.

The adventure moves between exploration and combat at a brisk pace, and the urgency of the players' mission is emphasized by the increasingly hostile environment and its dangers. There are several opportunities for roleplaying with the limited number of NPCs, but due to the situation, interactions are brief. We had the most fun with the final encounter, where you could literally hose down fiery nasties. Two of my players work in the fire department, and that really made their day.

As one of the better written adventures in the bundle, this would be a solid 5 if it also had high quality maps like the rest.

This adventure was a little hard for my players and I to get into, perhaps because we're not anime fans. Despite that, and despite some pacing issues, issues with the adventure length, and a flaw in the boss fight that required some fine tuning, the adventure was overall enjoyable. Some great maps are included, several of which are generic enough to be used outside of this adventure.

In the final encounter, the writer suggests that the villain (an Incubus) will attack the players from afar, but no ranged weapons or spells are listed in their stat block. I got around this by replacing the villain with a Babau, and having the charm on the NPC be a story effect. The Babau's better AC and hit points, as well as its spells and weakening gaze, made it more of a challenge since my players were at a higher APL.

To reduce time wastage, DMs may want to take note of the players' passive ability checks in Part 1. I also skipped to Part 2 immediately after the attack, rather than using the exploration table in Part 1.

This adventure is exactly what it says on the cover - a merchant hires you to help turn the tables on some brigands that kidnapped his son, there's a plan, and you're expected to go along with it. While the players are offered some leeway to come up with their own solutions, the entirety of Part 1 assumes that they follow the merchant's convoluted script. An alternative appears in a sidebar, but I was hoping for more ways players can go offscript and can be rewarded for creativity.

The encounters can be interesting, especially with the recommended changes for higher APL groups. DMs should be reminded that these brigands aren't stupid, and that they can be quite formidable unless the players catch them offguard. I included a mounted chase at the end while the players were making their getaway, which my players loved.

The main NPCs suffer from weak characterization, while the supporting ones felt like they deserved a bigger role and more screentime. My players and I had more fun with the usurer and the gnome than Tanesk, who was just very uninteresting. My players also found the son obnoxious, and they were tempted to leave him behind just so they wouldn't have to deal with his whining.

Though this adventure is probably the weakest link in the second RPSG bundle (despite having three designers), it was the easiest of all of them to run, and the reason why I gave this 4 stars. I ran the adventure blind with just the stat blocks in the appendix and zero prep, and made things up along the way when I needed to. The simple premise also makes this a very suitable adventure for beginner DMs and players who want something generic to play in a few hours.