Unless you are going to run the majority of the season 4 molues I would stay away from them becuase of the barovia season issues with being stuck and the downtime cost for leaving. easpecially given that you only earn downtime when you level now and so have much less downtime

The highest praise I can give is to report that it kept my group of 12- and 13-thirteen old players riveted, and got them completely invested in what happened to Luca. We just picked this one randomly and started playing it out of sequence but I'll definitely be checking out more from the series.

This stellar mission offers some fantastic roleplay opportunities on a minimal time investment. In addition to all the usual Curse of Strahd whistles, it has a caste of memorable characters, a great boss, and a fantastic item at the end. No complaints here. Its a great one-shot.

One of my favorite of the season 4 adventures. Plenty of "goth" feel and opportunities to role play if the DM so chooses. And the end fight, with the "boss mob's" abilities make it creepy. Highly advise purchasing this adventure if you're running the season 4 DDAL series.

This adventure should run on time with roleplaying the confrontation with the villagers and the only actual combat being the final boss fight. Otherwise, it might go long. In my game, one of the characters had had to accept one of Jenny Greenteeth's missions and had praised the tax collector. I had fun with role playing that Scartia Krutz thougt that he liked her. Otherwise, the 1st part went very quickly. Role playing Luca was fun and the players liked him. The confrontations with the peasants was roleplayed out and definitely had the "Barovia" feel. Definitely good atmosphere through out the adventure. The Boss fight was great. Eugen had some cool powers but not so many that he was difficult to run. All in all, a very good scenario.

fun mondule, there are a moment where the players dont know what to do....... but the flow of the game gets them on track again. love it

regards bager

My favourite character of that adventure is, without hesitation, Luca the simpleton. I used to play a quite similar character in a LARP, so it was nice to DM him. The beginning scene with Eugene's eating was quite fun to narrate -- finishing many of my sentences with a "and Eugene tears a chicken leg" or similar. Nasty, nasty Eugene ! The angry mob concept is always fun to apply, especially to see how characters will manage them (discussion? intimidation? killing?). My group managed to make Luca invisible and convince the crowd that the lad had gone elsewhere -- clever ! The end fight against Eugene was very gloomy -- especially when he ate Luca's face but then Luca raised back as a very angry revenant ! But the group managed to convice Luca that they were still his friend, allowing him to go away in peace... Touching ending. I recommend the purchase of this adventure.

TL;DR: A very solid 2-hour module. Great narrative that is fitting for the Barovia & Ravenloft setting.

A little bit of context. I'm currently running all the Season 4 Tier 2 modules as a series. Since my players entered Barovia in DDAL04-07 The Innocent, this was their first introduction to Orașnou.

The introduction dinner meeting depicted living in Barovia quite well. The options offered from the Burgomaster ranged from helping out the crops to killing civilians, covering most grounds on the moral spectrum. And then the narrative swiftly changed to Luca and the murdered sheep, presenting the characters with two more moral challenges - whether to defend Luca, and how to deal with the mob.

The final fight is more challenging than I thought it would be. The legendary action combined with the recharge ability could make a brutal combo, and if any of the players failed the horror save, they could just be ruled out of the entire combat. It's a hard and fair fight.

(Then again, they need to die to be risen by the Mist, and the Dark Gifts are one of my favourite parts of the Barovia campaign setting, so....)

My group found the story for this module to be pretty confusing. I had to often remind them who was who and what was going on in it, especially once the villain started attacking the village and causing chaos. The poor sod Luca though was a very endearing NPC and the final encounter was challenging and fun.

I thought this module was fantastic. The NPC Luca pulled heartstrings every time I ran this module (which was a lot), and everytime I ran it, the PCs ended up doing something different. I think the plot of it is compelling and did a really good job of making the PCs feel important in what they are doing. In the end, I think the final combat was very challenging (and horrific), and I had some parties struggle with it, but what is Barovia without its suffering?

Recommend Purchase: Yes. XP Range: 1,312-1750

The overall story woven between all fourteen modules is called 'Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts' and is relatively strong overall, but suffers for a couple reasons. The final module probably wasn't written at the time the first was released, so they couldn't or didn't want to spill some of the meta information that DMs would have LOVED to have. In the early modules things would occur 'deus ex machina' and even the DM wouldn't have a clue as to why.

If you're planning on running these, i HIGHLY recommend buying the bundle, reading the DDAL04-14 (The Dark Lord) Adventure Overview on pages 7-8 to see where everthing is heading ... and then reading each module's Overview in turn before running everything. This will help you greatly.

If you start with the first module you'll have enough XP to level up, stay within the module tiers and make it all the way to the 14th module. Afterwards you could always play a few chapters of the Curse of Strahd Harcover and then leave Barovia behind.

Before running any Season 4 module, you should download the following content:

• dndadventurersleague.org/barexit-escaping-the-mists-of-barovia/
• dndadventurersleague.org/curse-of-strahd-backgrounds/
• DMSGUILD: DDAL04 Expanded Dark Gifts Table [OPTIONAL CONTENT]

Season 4 initially couldn't leave the Demiplane of Dread until the very end, but the Admins later introduced the 'Barexit' mechanic.

This adventure has its moments, particularly in the portrayal of the sympathetic NPC Luca Barbu, whom the PCs will likely befriend early and end up defending against an incensed mob of misled villagers.

There are two significant flaws, as I see them. First, the actual plot of the adventure is scattered throughout a number of different pages, so a DM trying to run this adventure without having spent significant prep time will likely lose the thread of the story more than once and may even spoil the ending before the group is even half-way through the module. A good DM who pays attention to module prep should be able to work around this, though.

Second, the choice of the permanent magic item for this adventure is so much more powerful than the other items selected for this season that it opens up the possibility of unscrupulous players simply going into Barovia, playing this one module for the item, then using the 'Barexit' options published after Season Four, escape to abuse the loot in other AL modules.

On the whole, it's a memorable module, though there are moments where it follows the general issue with most Season Four modules and puts a number of events 'on rails' so the PCs can't possibly screw them up.

Out of the NPCs from season 4, few are as Memorable as Luca. Fewer still are the adventures where you can actually avoid most of the fighting... but the broken one stands as one of those few. The final boss is pretty amazingly disturbing and this adventure leads well into the subsequent one, unlike some of the later adventures Cough the raven Cough.

This was a very solid adventure. Luca made for a very memorable NPC that the players were very interested in helping out. The main problem I had with this module is there are several new NPCs that are regulars in Barovia that are introduced just now in this adventure. How have the PCs not met these people? I don't know, but the other NPCs were confusing. The boss fight was a very fun battle.

A very short module, it is one of the only modules the player's might be able to finish without killing anything. It provides an interesting mystery, but can usually be solved extremely fast. If you need a quick game this is a good module, otherwise there are better advuntures.