Things I liked
-Linen closet made me laugh
- upfront summary for GM
- the travel portion and its encounter table has good ties to the adventure's backstory and factions to recruit
- noting the presence of hardwood floors, rugs, etc is great for stealth gameplay (very Thief)
- good guidance on locked doors
- I appreciate bolding NPCs in the location keys! And telling the reader that GM info is in italic.
- hedge maze gargoyles are great
- adventure-specific tools (apple, fountain controls) serve as exploration rewards
- lots of potential for NPC faction play
- some lol moments that are funny without pulling you out of the mood
- good danger signaling throughout (scorch marks, NPC call outs, blood stains, "weird" shimmers on illusions)
- a fair mix of unprepared and ambush-ready hostile NPCs
- some good, unique magic items (I especially like the umbrella-sword) that are useful but not over powered
- nice terse NPC stats. Love the thematic special damage for the pig demons. If PCs try to fight every hostile NPC, they'll get steamrolled (as they should)
- map layout makes sense for a manor house, plenty of exploration choices and some verticality which is great!
Random Nitpicks
- I could do with a general sketch of the travel area to the dungeon
- I wish some of the area descriptions were split into two paragraphs (one for initial impressions and one for details that require investigation
- I would love some more roleplay guidance on the pig army camp. Just a short example what the soldiers might say to the party vs the officers (as there is potential conflict between them)
- the dungeons random encounter table uses a d8 but only shows 6 entries. Did i miss something?
- I prefer geographic information to stay out of room keys (trust the GM to look at the map). Having said that, this kind of info only clogs up the foyer description (and a couple of other rooms). Smallest of nitpicks, truthfully.
Overall, this is a great adventure! It could be a base assault or stealth mission with lots of player choices (it reminds of the Thief games a lot). Good writing, good flavor for creatures, magic items, etc. This adventure really shines from a gameplay perspective. The layout is decent and charming and I appreciate the mini maps, though I would be tempted to mock-up digital maps for this in deungeonscrawl to enhance legibility. Excellent stuff!
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