There come times when I look at the latest D&D Adventurers League adventure and wonder what the hell everyone was thinking. These times have been relatively rare, but it’s hard for me to look at A Wrinkle in the Weave and not see a clusterfuck of the highest level.

This is an adventure that starts with a good concept, but then gets almost everything wrong. It’s tremendously underwritten; there’s very little guidance to the DM as to how it should flow and people who aren’t steeped in Forgotten Realms lore will struggle with what’s going on. Heck, even if you know a fair bit about the Forgotten Realms, as I do, you’ll probably still struggle. It took me a few hours to work out where the adventure was set. One of the other DMs at my store didn’t realise it wasn’t in Waterdeep until I told him. The other adventures in the trilogy do a better job of setting the historical stage. This one doesn’t.

It’s a time-travel adventure, where the characters visit the court of Emperor Shoon III of the Shoon Imperium. The Emperor has a brother. His brother’s name? Shoon IV. No, seriously – every place he appears in the text he’s listed as “Shoon IV”. Bit of a giveaway as to the coup that is about to happen, right? Do you know how this works in history? They have different names. When the next Emperor (or Pope) ascends, he takes a new regnal name – which might be the same as the previous Emperor. He’s not called “Shoon IV” before then!

There is question after question that the text fails to answer. What are the adventurers looking for? How does the ring relate to anything? What’s a wrinkle in the Weave? Where do the characters arrive? What should they do? What are the personalities of the NPCs? How do the NPCs interact with the adventurers? Why does the adventure’s introduction say the players must discover where Artor and Hilather are going, when that information is completely lacking from the adventure?

Fuck, this adventure is bad.

The adventure also shows off the new adventure format in all its craptastic glory. I think there will come a time when the new format shines, but this isn’t it. It’s hard to find relevant information (when there is any), and the dictate of “no boxed text” robs the designer of the main chance to convey what is going on, especially when the coup starts.

Oh god, the coup.

With no real idea of where the adventure is set, the proper scale of the government, or even who is involved in the coup – apart from Shoon “I’m the next emperor!” IV and a few bandits (yes, the CR ½ ones), running the coup comes down almost entirely to the imagination of the DM. Which means that, yes, you can have an absolutely fantastic time playing this adventure. It’s all down to the DM, though; they’re not aided much by the adventure.

The adventure lacks an end. That’s okay. It’s mostly lacking a beginning and a middle as well. At least be consistent about how crap you are!

This adventure looks like it never got past outline stage, and the outline wasn’t complete at that. The blame for this goes not only to the designer of this adventure, but the AL admins who failed to properly think through the entire story of the trilogy and design proper guidelines as to how its time-travel works and why exactly the Blackstaff is sending novice adventures back in the first place. There’ll be more on that in the reviews of the other adventures in the trilogy.

This is horrendously bad. Avoid.