According to Michael Sayre over in the product thread:
Chronologically it's Scourge of the Farheavens > Breath of the Dragonskull > The Blooming Catastrophe. Of course, you don't actually need to play all/more than one of those to get a complete story and adventure, but if you've played the first two you'll bump into some old friends and familiar locales.
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The humor and horror elements of this scenario are excellent! GMs may want to mention the Brothers Grimm vibe ahead of time so players can get in the right headspace and accept all the wonderful little monsters running amok.
I ran this with a 4-player, 14-challenge point table and the combats felt absolutely trivial (that's low tier with adjustments, but maybe I made a mistake); it ran under three hours.
Jaldan was a fun NPC to roleplay and really stood out; we also had some moments with Urwal taking comically long, mystical, pauses.
At the end, I had a stone-fruit leshy walk into camp with the "legendary sword" stuck into its own head. Thus, we closed with the "good monsters" pulling the sword from the stone.
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I very much had Beetlejuice: The Musical and The Nightmare Before Christmas in mind during this adventure.
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Ran this earlier today for a table of 6, CP 18 (one level 4).
With the adjustment for six players we played low, with 5 extra mooks in fight A, and B. Some unlucky rolls could really do a party in with the mooks exploding on death. Several level 1's were very low on health, so be awares of that. I had to remind the dwarf he probably took the poison resistance ancestral feat. Otherwise combat was a breeze, they took out the scarecrow in a single round. I'm noticing a trend where AoE spells are super useful in low tier 16-18 CPs. With all the very weak mooks they go down quick and easy to a burning hands/fireball. I expect players will pickup on this.
The players enjoyed the roleplay immensely. The druid felt extra special as several creatures spoke to him in druidic, and treated him not so much as an outsider but as a trusted friend.
Ultimately it was a very easy prep, my only quibble was in the end after the party had convinced the Crafter to let them remove the eye. The text was a little vauge if you had to take care of the monolith still as there wasn't a description that the leshy's lose the demonic energy, or that the monolith stops glowing.
Given the background from part B it really felt to both the players and myself that the monolith was driving things, not the shard in the leshy's eye. Future games I run, I'll try to emphasize the connection between the eye and the monolith and simply modify the denouement to state the monolith is deactivated if they take the mote out of his eye.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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If the PCs freed the leshy crafter but killed two or more
of the leshys in area C, the leshys’ thanks is decidedly
cool, and the PCs are swiftly hustled out of their territory.
The leshy crafter becomes Thorn, and while the leshys do
much to restore Finadar Forest, they do so on their own.
When I ran it tonight, the party used calm emotions to keep the other leshys out of the fight, and specifically avoided targeting them.
They then used a mix of nonlethal and lethal to bring him down. (Not everyone was able to do nonlethal, and it quickly became clear that if they tried with only the people who could do nonlethal, they would lose.
Unfortunately, the Leshy Crafter used Vitality Transfer, twice, both when taking very big hits. Killing both lesser lethys.
Does that count as the PCs killing the leshys? Because I feel really bad when they were really trying very hard not to hurt the other leshys, and they were not the ones who chose to kill them.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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It literally says "if the PCs ... killed two or more of the leshys". They didn't kill any themselves, and made a clear effort not to. When the Crafter comes to their senses they can realize that.
I'd give players the happy ending.
Organized Play Associate
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Is this scenario supposed to give one or two points of reputation with the Verdant Wheel faction? The scenario and the reporting page are kind of add odds here.
All scenarios are meant to/now/will in the future/ give 2 extra reputation with a faction if that faction is called out in the scenario tags.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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Is this scenario supposed to give one or two points of reputation with the Verdant Wheel faction? The scenario and the reporting page are kind of add odds here.All scenarios are meant to/now/will in the future/ give 2 extra reputation with a faction if that faction is called out in the scenario tags.
So is this retroactive? Or only for future scenarios?
In other words, does this adventure provide 2 or the 1 listed in the scenario?
EDIT: Saw your post on Discord and will look for the Blog update soon!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Is this scenario supposed to give one or two points of reputation with the Verdant Wheel faction? The scenario and the reporting page are kind of add odds here.All scenarios are meant to/now/will in the future/ give 2 extra reputation with a faction if that faction is called out in the scenario tags.
Making this more standardized is certainly appreciated!
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Just GMed this earlier tonight. I have just one question: where are the PCs supposed to start in each encounter? Especially map B is tricky. There's a dotted line, indicating something's supposed to go there. I thought it was the PCs, but it's an awfully small box. The centipedes/spiders aren't given a spot either. Only after the fight was over did I realise that the Scarecrow is large, so it wouldn't fit in the indicated circle anyways. Was he supposed to begin in the dotted square?
I really loved GMing this scenario. Lots of cool little touches, such as the children's statline: human adorable brats. The whole scenario is full of details like this, which elevates it above the rest. The blending of horror and humour was also great. At first I was a bit shocked at how informal Jaldan was, but the Leshy Crafter's box text convinced me it's just the writer's sense of humour shining through.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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Yes, the scarecrow is large and suppose to start in the box in the upper left corner of the map. As to the other creatures, they don't have a starting place.
Since they are intended to ambush the PCs, especially the spiders, I just put them in the forest around the path that goes from south to north so they could ambush the PCs.