There are many great adventures in the D&D Adventurers League and Con-Created Content range. The Shadows of the Trees, the second of a trilogy of Tier 1 adventures that premiered at Gary Con X, is not one of them.
This is not an adventure that is actively bad. It consists of three moderately engaging combat encounters and one role-playing encounter. The encounters provide entertainment, provided you like fighting zombies and other undead. Which many players do, so it’s got that.
Unfortunately, when you look at the rest of the adventure and try to determine what the players are doing, why they’re doing it, and if they achieve anything by the end of it, the answers to each of them is disappointing.
Adventure designers: take note. If you’re writing a series of adventures for Organised Play, each adventure must stand on its own. You cannot assume that players play them in order, or play more than one. You cannot assume that the Dungeon Master has run previous parts of the trilogy. Give an introduction to the adventure. Give goals the players must complete within the adventure. Give a climax based on those goals. You can have ongoing plot threads that are resolved in later instalments, but make each adventure self-sufficient!
Let’s have a look at one of the suggested adventure hooks:
Aetherglen is a crossroads between neighbouring nations and regions and is a natural wayside for wandering adventurers and merchants. As characters of means and power, they are roped into the events of the module.
Who recruits them? What are they asked to do? These extremely important pieces of information are utterly missing.
The opening boxed text begins, “Just as you feel like the forest is trying to swallow you whole, many tents come into view through the trees.” The DM and players may well wonder why they’re in the forest, what they’re trying to do, and why they’re feeling things alien to their characters. (With boxed text, don’t assume feelings on the part of the characters.)
However, at least they then meet the elven refugees and get to learn some things, and see an army of zombies wandering by. (My players asked which way the zombies were going and if they could follow them. The text doesn’t mention if they’re coming from the heart or going to it. I waved my hands a bit.)
The rest of the adventure? Two combat encounters as they make their way to the elder Gulthias Tree. And that’s where it ends. No sense of accomplishment. Just a big “to be continued” – and not a very exciting one at that. The potential that was built up in the first part – the excellent The Darkness of the Mountains – has been wasted, fritted away on pointless combat.
I have a distaste for adventures that are just a collection of random encounters on the way from point A to point B, and that’s what The Shadows of the Trees feels like. The players aren’t making interesting decisions. Consider if, in the opening encounter, the elves had recently had their elder kidnapped by the zombies and the characters had to rescue her to find the way to their destination. That provides a goal to the characters and opens up interest in the play. It makes the adventure work as a one-off experience, while still contributing to the overall story.
As it stands, The Shadows of the Trees is just marking time until something interesting happens. Don’t defer pleasure – get to it!
Overall, uninspired plotting wastes the potential of this adventure. Not recommended.