Attack on Coppercoil is an adventure for 1^st-4^th level characters set in a gnomish settlement that has been attacked by duergar slavers. The adventurers are summoned by a messenger bat to the settlement’s aid. Once they reach it, the adventurers must explore the interior of a massive tree while dealing with the gnomes’ strange contraptions and various duergar slavers.

This adventure offers a lot of opportunities for players who like exploring and interacting with their environment. It’s cleverly detailed and shows the potential of a site-based adventure. The Dungeon Master needs to use a little judgement to determine the actions of the duergar in response to the adventurers; broad guidelines are given, including what happens when the adventurers don’t interfere. There’s a clock ticking, even if the players aren’t aware of it. They should be, however – it’s inherent in the set-up of the adventure!

Most of the combat is against the duergar slavers, although a few other opportunities exist. There are not as many opportunities for role-playing, but there are a couple that could be quite memorable.

The location is remarkably spacious and lacks the claustrophobia of other settings. However, this presents a few problems with the reproduction of the map. When viewed on my iPad, the individual encounter locations are difficult to make out. There are several versions of the map provided – colour, black and white, with and without keys or grid – but you’ll likely want to enlarge sections of it for play.

The writing and editing are good. A few locations have several items of interest and so are more cluttered as a result. This is an adventure that presents the setting as you’d find it in a fantasy world, and it has a lot of verisimilitude thereby. I love the little touches, such as an unfinished note of the same style that alerts the adventurers of the raid, or a birthday present, still wrapped, in an abandoned home. The layout is basic but clear – although I’d prefer more space between the columns. The one area where the layout is less than clear is in the monster statistics; these could be better laid out, especially the ability modifiers. Notes present scaling advice, as you’ll find in Adventurers League adventures.

Overall, I very much enjoyed perusing this adventure. It does a lot of things right, and it presents an intriguing situation for your characters to explore. Recommended.