While I do love high drama, I'm a sucker for silly, thematic adventures, so I was super excited for Serving the Squash. Not only was the art on the cover gorgeous, but it promised puns, pumpkin-based monsters, and a fun, good time. And it delivered.

The basic premise is that the party has arrived at the town of Kukurbi in time for their annual Highharvestide festival. However, instead of revering the goddess of agriculture Chauntea, the townsfolk seem to be celebrating the harvest itself. The mayor is especially manic, singlehandedly going around and decorating the town and guarding the harvest. However, as the players will learn, not all is well in the town of Kukurbi.

The backstory for the adventure is that the town has had several really bad years of harvests. In desperation, the mayor made a semi-fiendish pact with a creature called Gourdkin. Gourdkin promised to give the town a harvest the likes of which it had never seen -- as long as they thanked him by named at the Highharvestide festival. However, Gourdkin is just using the festival to sow chaos, which will likely devastate the town (and even kill a few people) if he's not stopped.

The bulk of the adventure involves investigating various parts of town, learning that there is something weird about the harvest, and generally being suspicious. In the meantime, the group can drink and party with the townsfolk. Then they get into a huge battle with Gourdkin and his gourdlings.

However, there isn't really a lot to convince a party to investigate prior to the massive attack. The party would need to know that the town should be worshipping Chauntea and that the bounty they have received isn't likely. It means everyone needs to be suspicious and do a lot of breaking and entering for almost no reason. For a lot of parties, it could be difficult to get them to investigate prior to the big battle.

It is possible to circumvent this situation. For example, the party could have visited the town beforehand; the DM could make things seem a lot more ominous; gourdlings could creep around the festival beforehand, raising the party's suspicious; etc. It's also not the end of the world if the party doesn't investigate before the fight. After all, investigating doesn't help them in the fight nor does it necessarily prevent the fight -- the mayor can simply confess to his ill-conceived plan afterwards. However, I would have preferred a little more work going into that particular part of the adventure, but, honestly, it's not terribly difficult to solve yourself.

Motivation to investigate notwithstanding, I do think this is an excellent little adventure. It was well-written and had overall decent editing. The art was gorgeous, the maps were helpful and pretty, and the layout was eminently readable. The monsters were fun and interesting, and the whole premise was enticing. If you'd like a fun little adventure that dovetails into the haunted/harvest season, I think this is a great adventure to pick up and play.