Running it this Sunday. Was easy to get ready. Just wish I has a printable map of the area so can could see where there at and where they was going.

This is simply a great introductory adventure to a setting that's not known by as many. It provides a clear pathway for the GM to introduce some lore to the players, while also keeping the information overload from happening. The adventure itself feels like a great challenge for heroes that are starting out on their journey, and it does what it's supposed to brilliantly. We had a blast navigating a building on fire, and the care that was given to creating maps for each phase and describing the state of important things and people in correlation to time was super useful. This is a definite recommendation from me!

The Scarred Lands is an awesome setting, and with A Mishap of Ill Portent, players who are new to the world begin in the little sleepy village of Durgan's Rest and from there the adventure ezplodes. With plenty of roleplaying and combat, Travis did an excellent job of designing a wonderful multi-module campaign.One of the other things that Travis did excellently well was to create a setting, NPCs, and a conflict that will truly draw in the players and make them get invested a) in Scarred Lands and b) in the game. Too often do I run into an issue of players not giving two hoots about the place they are playing in.

On top of that, I really like the new monster addition in the appendix of the scorch zombie - because there are many things that can instill fear into players and NPCS, with fire and undeath being two of them. Overall, A Mishap of Ill Portent is an excellent and marvelous entry in the new Scarred Lands line-up, but also offers DMs a chance to run their players in a game that truly will make them need to understand and invest in the world around them.

Comics, Clerics, & Controllers d20 Score: Nat 20

My group and I were on the brink of starting a new campaign in the deep jungle of Gamulganjus but decided to instead give this new campaign a try. We played A Mishap of Ill Portent this evening and it was a mixed experience.

Generally, the adventure is straight forward with a McGuffin, a few enemies and a setting to make it interesting. I found the adventure to require some adaptation from the gamemaster in order to work smoothly. My review will start from the beginning of the adventure and work its way though, so it might contain spoilers.

• The adventure starts with an introduction including an adventure synopsis, background for the adventure, and the seemingly mandatory small parapraph on how to read he various boxes and understand the references that appears in the adventure. All great. Then comes the "involving the PCs". This is not a section on suggestions for why the PCs are in the village or what could motivate them to begin this perilous adventure. This is instead where the adventure starts as opposed to the first chapter where I might have expected the beginning to be.

• Next is a table for Mesos' Bane which is triggered by an epic event in the story (and I like epic events so that's great). However, I am unsure if I should treat this table as a handout to my players who play arcane casters or if the table will be present in the next installments of the campaign. Also, if it is supposed to be information revealed to the players, is it then a spoiler that the name of the table is Mesos' Bane?

• Durgan's Rest. Small village with a population of 220. 10 of which work as guards not including the sheriff. That's a lot of guards.

Chapter one

• The last paragraph in the first plain text section seems like something that should not be read out to the players.

• The burning house and the zombies. My players' characters were absolutely decimated by this encounter. The adventure introduces a new type of zombies that are very offensive. While their hitpoints are greatly reduced, their offensive capabilities have compensated for this. A normal Zombie deals 4 damage on a hit. These zombies deal 6 damage on a hit and a melee attacker takes 2 damage when hitting a zombie. That is the recipe for a dangerous encounter for level 1 characters. The 3 zombies constitute a hard encounter for 4 level 1 PCs if we accept the assumption that these altered zombies are challenge rating 1/4 each. Add to this the initial roll for a level of exhaustion (and every 6th round thereafter - does a second fail apply a second level of exhaustion, and so on?), the burning surroundings which easily adds 3 more damage to a character and steals an action from either the character on fire or one of the allies (and with the possibility of snowballing), and add the damage (10-15% of the spellcasters maximum hit points) that Mesos' Bane inflicts on arcane spellcasters. Oh, and there's two of these encounters. And some environmental hazards. And no time for short rests.

• The encounter was also a strain on both the players and me as the gamemaster. For the players it was the amount of saves, damage and conditions that was inflicted on them without any chance of effecting the outcome. For me, it was all the bookkeeping on squares that was on fire, rounds before the mage dies, saves for the zombies when they caught fire, informing the players of all their saves and the consequences of failed saves, and running the combat. I understand that the adventure wants to make the encounter interesting, but it was too deadly and needed some steamlining.

• Area A4 states that the stairs require a succesful dexterity check to navigate safely. It says nothing about what happens if that check is failed.

• I had one character death from the first encounter (he was on fire so the death saves were rapidly building up) and the group had to retreat and let the building burn down. Upon investigating the smoldering remains they failed their DC 15 intellligence (investigation) or DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check to find the McGuffin. Without succeeding one of these checks, it looks like the campaign ends here.

Chapter two

• My group were able to get the information from the townsfolk about the female elf which is something I guess. Other than that, the mage's body was lost to the flames and I presume that goes for his spellbook as well. As such, judging from the adventure alone, my group shouldn't have any clue on where to go next.

I really think that this adventure could benefit from some more playtesting and then a revision to streamline it. The encounters are too deadly for a 1st level group, a skillcheck decides if the McGuffin is found or not, and if the place burns down then there's no clue on where to go next. All these things need to be handled by the gamemaster, and quite frankly, this level of meddling is not what I expect when I pay for an adventure for low level characters.

3 of 5 stars. One of them just because it's Scarred Lands. Looking forward to the next part of the campaign.

This is a fantastic adventure. One thing about it without playing it, that it seems REALLY easy for PC deaths to snowball. There are a few mechanics that combine together with dexterity saving throws where a small amount of damage can add up to drop PCs fairly easily. Scorch zombies are a great monster that this adventure features well. As the opening for this adventure I might swap out the reward that the sheriff offers with a healing potion for each PC rather than the gp. Regardless I am super excited for the future of this series. I plan to run this module quickly but will only update this review if something really odd happens.

The adventure is about eight pages long and encompasses two chapters. There are two pages with four stat blocks and two new magic items.

One thing that I want to really highlight about this module is that the way the map works. There are files for using the module with a virtual table top, but they also include eighteen different versions of the map where the first encounter takes place because of the flexible nature of this encounter. It really is a very high level of customizability that I have never seen in a D&D adventure before.