I ran the SKT campaign in an AL group over the course of a number of fortnights from pretty much start to finish. I'm rating the mods from a DM perspective for how they were to run and how my players seemed to enjoy the experience.
These mini-adventures are fairly fun to run, but I do feel that the overall cumulative experience doesn't work. This one is structured a little bit better than some of the other ones that I've run, but still doesn't fully add up to the kind of session experience that you usually look for in DND.
Mini-Adventure 1 - Beneath the Hills: There is an amazing story reward where you get to keep a tiny-sized bear named Blooddrinker, but the player who received it didn't actually come back for any other sessions which was a massive bummer. This was probably a little too straightforward, but the novelty was fun.
Mini-Adventure 2 - Upon the Stones: The second mini-story has some giant badgers, which for us lead to a hilarious in-joke after one of our players vaporised the poor thing on sight. The Galeb Duhr's make for a fun RP opportunity, and the way that the adventure is written gives some fun little turns of expectations throughout. The riddle towards the end of the mini was good, one of our players was a fiend for riddles so they got through it fairly quick, but it gave everyone a bit of pause before getting there.
Mini-Adventure 3 - Against the Frost: This was pretty fun, the AoE stuff with the motes was a good way to make the combat more interesting than it would have been, and the terrain was great. Fun dungeon crawl with a twist.
Mini-Adventure 4 - Through the Fires: This was an interesting one, with a lot of damage coming from environmental causes rather than combat, which made it a bit more interesting. The kobolds in our run-through ended up mostly helpful especially against the magmins, and the death bursts brought another great element to the combat.
Mini-Adventure 5 - Above the Clouds: This was stressful, most of my players were sweating by the end of this one, and when they finally solved the riddle there were quite a few sighs of relief. The fights themselves were fairly lacklustre and the ending isn't very satisfying.
Overall this adventure was a fun start, but the way that the multiple minis are structures never really work all that well for me in practice. I'm glad we got through all of the adventures but it's very much a take it or leave it.
I didn't mind this adventure as a set-up for the rest of the campaign, but I feel that too much is left up to the events of this mod to effect the later events of the Parnast sections of this campaign, although the future mods just assume that the statue has been delivered, which means that it eventually doesn't really matter what happens in this mod.
Hsing's character is through every mod in this campaign except for 05-01 which is great, he's a fun character and has a lot of influence on later events. If you're running this campaign, make sure that he makes an impression early so that they're excited to see him every time.
There's an initial combat around the caravan with a few goblins, and it's clearly designed for just giving the players a fun little combat at the start of the mod. It works fairly well, and it's good to keep reminding the players about keeping the caravan safe and reinforcing the objective.
Whether you run optional encounter B will depend on how long the players have spent on the first chunk of the adventure, but it's a decent little piece of combat and chase, I'd recommend it.
The storm sucks. It's not a mechanic that you want your T1 players going through, because even though the lesson of "can't save everyone" is good, it's too much for such an early adventure. The fact that it doesn't change the actual outcome of the game means that you have to retcon stuff later on anyway, so why bother? After having read ahead, I gave them a win by allowing them to save everything, which was far more rewarding.
The Toll is probably the best part, with the hobgoblin's tactics being hilariously stupid and getting a decent laugh from the party once they realised. The map allows for some decent splitting and some one-on-ones which make it interesting, although I think there's some missed opportunities for combat here, which might be more of a product of the T1 of it all.
The conclusion is fine, but again, I really don't like the fac that the ending is supposed to be dictated by the actions of the adventure, only for them to be ignored later on in the campaign.
It's a good introduction to Parnast, and I like the way that the characters are brought into the city as adventurers, it makes it seem clear that they should be given higher responsibility later in the campaign.
I also ran DDAL05-03 in the same session, which I thought worked really well as a double-bill. I'd recommend this approach because they are both 2 hour runtimes, and they can lead almost immediately into one another.
I enjoyed running this one, as there's a few more opportunities for RP from both NPCs and players, with a few memorable and interesting NPCs to work with. Raggnar is a fun character, and all of the pixies were fun to play as well. The way that the adventure runs you have some fun combats, and few choices which can have some big impacts later on in the series which I really appreciated. These decisions are also clearly much more thought out than the effects from the previous adventure which is great, and the final fight works really well. The way that it's written does occasionally give some confusion, especially with the background characters, but they don't factor in too much anyway.
The environmental stuff in Weathercote Woods was good and added an interesting wrinkle to the goings on, but it didn't end up amounting to much.
I think this one probably could have been stretched over a bigger runtime with a few more encounters, but as it ran I think it went well. The final fight can be very lethal, so just be careful if you're running at a merciless pace, you could absolutely kill some players accidentally.
I liked running this one, running this combined with The Black Road worked quite well but I would've preferred for the adventure to have been a bit longer and more consequential.
This was a really fun mod, there were lots of opportunities for roleplay from a DM perspective, and the players seemed to have a good time with Feetor. I played him as "hard to wrangle into one train of thought" and there was a great deal of discussion from the players around murdering him which is always fun. The combats were good too, the inital fight had a small element of surprise which worked well, and the big fight at the end of the mod was able to incorporate a good amount of strategy which is often missing from AL. The reward isn't Earth-shaking but it's a good prize, and the swimming speed certainly came in handy throughout the rest of the campaign. The big bad managed to do the thing that they're meant to do which was great when one of our party immediately dropped to 0 HP, much to the instant panic of the rest of the party. Overall, really fun with a big hook for the following session.
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I ran the SKT campaign in an AL group over the course of a number of fortnights from pretty much start to finish. I'm rating the mods from a DM perspective for how they were to run and how my players seemed to enjoy the experience.
DDAL05-01 - Treasure of the Broken Hoard
Rating: 3/5
These mini-adventures are fairly fun to run, but I do feel that the overall cumulative experience doesn't work. This one is structured a little bit better than some of the other ones that I've run, but still doesn't fully add up to the kind of session experience that you usually look for in DND.
Mini-Adventure 1 - Beneath the Hills: There is an amazing story reward where you get to keep a tiny-sized bear named Blooddrinker, but the player who received it didn't actually come back for any other sessions which was a massive bummer. This was probably a little too straightforward, but the novelty was fun.
Mini-Adventure 2 - Upon the Stones: The second mini-story has some giant badgers, which for us lead to a hilarious in-joke after one of our players vaporised the poor thing on sight. The Galeb Duhr's make for a fun RP opportunity, and the way that the adventure is written gives some fun little turns of expectations throughout. The riddle towards the end of the mini was good, one of our players was a fiend for riddles so they got through it fairly quick, but it gave everyone a bit of pause before getting there.
Mini-Adventure 3 - Against the Frost: This was pretty fun, the AoE stuff with the motes was a good way to make the combat more interesting than it would have been, and the terrain was great. Fun dungeon crawl with a twist.
Mini-Adventure 4 - Through the Fires: This was an interesting one, with a lot of damage coming from environmental causes rather than combat, which made it a bit more interesting. The kobolds in our run-through ended up mostly helpful especially against the magmins, and the death bursts brought another great element to the combat.
Mini-Adventure 5 - Above the Clouds: This was stressful, most of my players were sweating by the end of this one, and when they finally solved the riddle there were quite a few sighs of relief. The fights themselves were fairly lacklustre and the ending isn't very satisfying.
Overall this adventure was a fun start, but the way that the multiple minis are structures never really work all that well for me in practice. I'm glad we got through all of the adventures but it's very much a take it or leave it.
DDAL05-02 - The Black Road
Rating: 2/5
I didn't mind this adventure as a set-up for the rest of the campaign, but I feel that too much is left up to the events of this mod to effect the later events of the Parnast sections of this campaign, although the future mods just assume that the statue has been delivered, which means that it eventually doesn't really matter what happens in this mod.
Hsing's character is through every mod in this campaign except for 05-01 which is great, he's a fun character and has a lot of influence on later events. If you're running this campaign, make sure that he makes an impression early so that they're excited to see him every time.
There's an initial combat around the caravan with a few goblins, and it's clearly designed for just giving the players a fun little combat at the start of the mod. It works fairly well, and it's good to keep reminding the players about keeping the caravan safe and reinforcing the objective.
Whether you run optional encounter B will depend on how long the players have spent on the first chunk of the adventure, but it's a decent little piece of combat and chase, I'd recommend it.
The storm sucks. It's not a mechanic that you want your T1 players going through, because even though the lesson of "can't save everyone" is good, it's too much for such an early adventure. The fact that it doesn't change the actual outcome of the game means that you have to retcon stuff later on anyway, so why bother? After having read ahead, I gave them a win by allowing them to save everything, which was far more rewarding.
The Toll is probably the best part, with the hobgoblin's tactics being hilariously stupid and getting a decent laugh from the party once they realised. The map allows for some decent splitting and some one-on-ones which make it interesting, although I think there's some missed opportunities for combat here, which might be more of a product of the T1 of it all.
The conclusion is fine, but again, I really don't like the fac that the ending is supposed to be dictated by the actions of the adventure, only for them to be ignored later on in the campaign.
It's a good introduction to Parnast, and I like the way that the characters are brought into the city as adventurers, it makes it seem clear that they should be given higher responsibility later in the campaign.
I also ran DDAL05-03 in the same session, which I thought worked really well as a double-bill. I'd recommend this approach because they are both 2 hour runtimes, and they can lead almost immediately into one another.
DDAL05-03 - Uninvited Guests
Rating: 3.5/5
I enjoyed running this one, as there's a few more opportunities for RP from both NPCs and players, with a few memorable and interesting NPCs to work with. Raggnar is a fun character, and all of the pixies were fun to play as well. The way that the adventure runs you have some fun combats, and few choices which can have some big impacts later on in the series which I really appreciated. These decisions are also clearly much more thought out than the effects from the previous adventure which is great, and the final fight works really well. The way that it's written does occasionally give some confusion, especially with the background characters, but they don't factor in too much anyway.
The environmental stuff in Weathercote Woods was good and added an interesting wrinkle to the goings on, but it didn't end up amounting to much.
I think this one probably could have been stretched over a bigger runtime with a few more encounters, but as it ran I think it went well. The final fight can be very lethal, so just be careful if you're running at a merciless pace, you could absolutely kill some players accidentally.
I liked running this one, running this combined with The Black Road worked quite well but I would've preferred for the adventure to have been a bit longer and more consequential.
If you bought the modules, stick the reviews on DMs Guild.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
DDAL05-06 - Beneath the Fetid Chelimber
Rating: 4/5
This was a really fun mod, there were lots of opportunities for roleplay from a DM perspective, and the players seemed to have a good time with Feetor. I played him as "hard to wrangle into one train of thought" and there was a great deal of discussion from the players around murdering him which is always fun. The combats were good too, the inital fight had a small element of surprise which worked well, and the big fight at the end of the mod was able to incorporate a good amount of strategy which is often missing from AL. The reward isn't Earth-shaking but it's a good prize, and the swimming speed certainly came in handy throughout the rest of the campaign. The big bad managed to do the thing that they're meant to do which was great when one of our party immediately dropped to 0 HP, much to the instant panic of the rest of the party. Overall, really fun with a big hook for the following session.