The Barrows of Solina, an Adventurers League-legal adventure for level 5-10 characters, sees the adventurers meet some Zhentarim tomb-robbers who are being chased by some angry ghosts. A lot of undead feature in the adventure!

It is a good adventure, in which the main flaws are with its presentation. The storyline, history and encounters are very entertaining. One of the best things about it is how it keeps escalating matters. There’s a caravan under attack by undead, and then you discover the undead were looking for grave-robbers. Trying to deal with the undead, you find that they were noble champions, but a greater force is corrupting them. This is fun for the DM and players; there’s a real sense of story and discovery of secrets.

You also can choose between negotiating or fighting. Though their spirits are corrupted, you can reason with the undead. If you’ve got a group of role-players, you can create some very entertaining encounters. If your players just like fighting, that works as well! It’s good design.

The presentation issues relate to the adventure having Too Much Stuff, and the formatting can make running the adventure tricky. There’s a tendency to overcomplicate the encounters. The first encounter, which has the adventurers riding to the aid of a caravan attacked by undead, takes three pages to describe. The boxed text also tends to be overlong. There’s a lot of info-dumping, particularly in the meeting with the surviving merchants, which has several speakers come and go without giving the players a chance to respond.

It takes three-and-a-half further pages to describe the merchants, their interactions with the adventurers, and get the players onto the next encounter.

I note with some amusement that you should award 25 XP for each surviving merchant. There are 20 merchants at the beginning of the encounter. If you want to track what happens to them in the combat, more power to you. I was glad to be running this adventure with the new AL advancement rules so that I could ignore that bit.

I loved the undead’s barrow, which is carved with reminders of the virtues they swore to uphold in life. It provides a great counterpoint with their corrupted state and helps fuel the role-playing later. The challenge is presenting this information to the adventurers effectively. Some better choice of headings would help the presentation of the trial. “Resolving the Trial”, which is when the players role-play arguments against being killed by the undead, is too easily confused as the only way, especially as it’s two pages later we get “Trial by Combat”. (Calling it “Trial by Argument” would help distinguish it). It would have been good if the boxed text detailed the options for the characters as well.

The adventure leaves open the possibility of further adventures, but has a good ending, and works well as a stand-alone.

Overall, this is a superior adventure, although its presentation can give DMs difficulty in running it. Recommended.