First PS scenario I ran for a group, and my first GM'ing in a few years, so maybe it was me but I found this to take more like 4 hours as opposed to other reviewers who did it in ~2. Maybe if I went back now it'd go by faster.
Do agree it's a good mix of RP, Combat, dungeon-exploration, and puzzles. Something for everyone.
Also agree the hazard is confusing (shockingly common for PS scenarios!) and because of the non-linear options there's not necessarily a climatic combat.
One point I don't think I saw in other reviews- there's a lot of historical details laid out in the descriptions of the dungeon's architecture. Sadly it wasn't clear to me how to really give players that info unless someone specifically had dwarven or architecture-ish lore. It'd have been really helpful if there was a means to give all PC groups the background of what's going on in the dungeon.
For players, I think this is a pretty solid scenario. A quest with a fair amount of combat and a little bit of exploration, world lore, and mystical-whatnots. A great early adventure for a PC. Some people have noted the final encounter as very tough, but when I ran it the party managed to effectively one-shot the main creature. So YMMV.
In agreement with the handful of reviews though that note this is a lot more work to GM than it probably should be. Lots of bits of information spread between punch-out text and “GM-only” text that needs to be consolidated by the GM later, a confusing layout of the ruins, a somewhat confusing skill-challenge-as-trap, and a bit of a headache to manage the early survival/travel mini challenge.
Probably a scenario you’ll appreciate more if you run it 2-3 times and work out the complexities and confusing bits in play.
While prepping for this I was worried this would be a really bad scenario. After running it I was pleasantly surprised. You can give the players some good and open-ended, if low-stakes, RP challenges first, and then 2 pretty solid combats for low level PCs. Also as we played, I realized they did a better job than I’d expected in teasing out Lady Embersplitter and the Peacemakers than I thought during prep.
Complaints- the Bigger Keep map used for most of Act 2 is not great IMO and also the spaces used are definitely too small if you’re running 6-player table. Also the adventure overstays its welcome a bit- the climactic and interesting fights happen in Act 2, and then at least 2 skill challenges and an additional mini-combat follow. I just think players start to check out or wonder what’s going on when you do that.
If I could- let the players do a bit more in the Act-1 “meet the NPCs” part, slightly up-size the spaces in Act 2, and wrap up the post-combat stuff quickly.
