Thanks for the details. I agree it is quite random. My desire for the game was to be pretty low-effort on the player side. I came at this game from the perspective of a player that is short on time and just wants to roll some dice one night they have some free time (aka pretty much me at the time). That being said, I have learned alot from this community as a result and think that some of the other adventures scratch that story itch a little bit. Red Death is pretty free form until you get to different parts where you can choose to utilize the dungeon generation mechanics from HQ. By no means are any of my games perfect and will always result from tweaks. One of my goals for 2022 is to issue a new version that refines from lessons learned that feedback.
The persistent money/items is good idea and I was trying to use the heirlooms to accomplish that, but those only work if you fail, and so I see what you mean about that.
The encounter tracker is basically boxes to write in AC and HP for your enemy then as HP goes down you write the next value below. Thanks again for your comments.