I loved the feel of the adventure. After a quick on screen read from my download, I had to print out to curl up with a cup of hot chocolate to get a better depth read.
My question contains some spoilers, so if you're going to be playing, now is a good time to stop reading
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I'm assuming:
1 - individual events don't take a significant amount of time (20 rounds, tops)
2 - transition between events doesn't take a significant amount of time (1-2 minutes, tops)
3 - resting takes 8 hours (in almost any case, this results in a total loss if the PCs haven't already beaten enough events to have won anyway)
4 - I give some high level hints as to which events seem to have the most people going into them (for those the characters can see)
I may have missed something, but it doesn't seem as if there are too many tactical options that consume medium-scale time (10's of minutes or low number of hours). I didn't see any strategic options presented in the adventure for players that would consume medium-scale time either.
My concern is that the adventure seems to be either "the players win" (defeat everything before 60 minutes elapse) or lose (because they have to rest). I'm not sure how the intermediate solutions would ever really occur in play.
Don't get me wrong, I like this adventure - 'A' for evocative writing, great encounters, reusable material (the fair before the change is great source/inspiration material for home brewing). For me, the dark fey encounters are great, because I'm not good at creating that type of material.
My concern is that the adventure seems to be either "the players win" (defeat everything before 60 minutes elapse) or lose (because they have to rest). I'm not sure how the intermediate solutions would ever really occur in play.
You are quite correct, and if everything plays out the way it "should," there won't be very many casualties and the PCs will win (unless they are defeated by the monsters of course).
But, things don't always go as planned, and the reason why that table is in there is that there are a lot of groups that will either ignore the warning they are given, or will never get any warning at all, and for them, timely discovery of the dire situation they are in is unlikely.
Just how quickly they realize things are going wrong will be the difference in how much of the town is left when the dust settles.
Also there's an outside chance that the PCs will spend a lot of time working on some sort of alternate road to victory (like hunting the woods for the cold rider, for example), and the table will help DMs adjudicate the results of taking too long.
Boo, no E1 in my downloads yet! But I'll take this as a sign it will be coming soon!
We will finish D1 this weekend, and that means E1, here we come!
:)