The last season of D&D Encounters – Against the Cult of Chaos – was fantastic. It was an adventure that pulled material from three other adventures and weaved it into a really coherent whole. What made it really great was how it allowed the players and the DM to create their own adventure – the town was well-detailed, and the PCs could investigate the segments of the adventure in the order they liked. When they talked to NPCs, there were enough notes for the DM to create memorable personalities and give the players real interactions and information.

This current season – only two session to go, thank goodness! – is nowhere near that good. It's a return to the linear plotline of previous adventures, and, to make things worse, the role-playing and investigation elements are barely there. So far…

Session 1: Interact with locals at the inn, then get attacked. This works; there's good building of suspense before everything starts.

Session 2: Investigate kidnapping, then brave cultist hideout. The investigation is fairly simple, and the descriptions of where the party end up aren't detailed enough (IMO), but the session still works.

Session 3: More investigation, then go to pub and get attacked. This session is where the adventure really begins to fall off the rails; the "investigation" beforehand makes little sense for the characters to be doing (why don't they just go home and do it the next morning?), and why are they waking people up to do it? It feels very forced. There's a key death here, but the group doesn't get to interact with the NPC in this session enough for it to be felt.

Session 4: Chasing people through the streets worked well as I took what was there and added a lot of humour and danger to it, and then there's a combat.

Session 5: There's a lot of follow-up hooks for the players, with very few actual details on what the DM should do if they try to follow them up. Then you have them trying to get into a stronghold – which is fun – but it's quite possible to end the session without any combat at all, due to a lack of doors to the final chamber.

Session 6: A straight-up fight with no role-playing. And, in D&D Next, not a particularly interesting one. It probably played better in 4E.

I'm really feeling that this adventure works best if (a) the players are big fans of the Forgotten Realms and thus can recognise the familiar Neverwinter faces (we're not), and (b) you like combat a lot.

It's feeling railroady, and though most Encounters seasons are railroads (they need to be), this one feels more forced than most.