I’ve rarely been as disappointed with a series of releases as I have with the Dreams of the Red Wizards adventures. When first announced, they were meant to be an adjunct to the D&D Adventurers League new program of “Seasonality”; a series of adventures serving as a new storyline running in addition to the regular season-based play, aimed primarily at higher-level characters. Then Seasonality was announced to the DDAL players, which read as “your character should only play adventures of one season”, and it was received extremely badly, taken out the back, and shot.

However, Dreams of the Red Wizards survived. The initial release consisted of a document supplementing Ghosts of Saltmarsh, in theory interweaving its adventures into the Thayan storyline, three DDAL adventures and one D&D Epic. My impression of the supplemental document was that it was half-baked and didn’t provide enough information to relocate the adventures to Turmish, but I was quite positive about the first of the DDAL-DRW adventures. The second adventure, however, had numerous flaws that made it very problematic to run.

Saving Silverbeard is the third of these adventures. It follows on from the Epic, which I haven’t run. There may be information in the Epic that is vital to Saving Silverbeard. I hope not.

However, the reason I can’t be sure is that a key part of the adventure revolves around the “Iltkazar Sceptre”. This is the magical, barnacle-encrusted club that Zahira discovered in part 1 of the series. It’s the first time I was made aware of its identity, and so either it was revealed in the Epic, or it’s done poorly here, because the text just assumes you know what the Sceptre is. I had to read over the adventure carefully to make sure.

Be that as it may, Saving Silverbeard runs as follows:

• Zehira, the captain of your ship, is kidnapped
• You travel to a tropical island to rescue her
• You travel through the jungle to the cave complex where she’s held
• You explore the cave complex to find her
• You fight a four-way battle against a Red Dragon, her kidnapper, and the malenti from Part 2
• You escape (this may be more challenging if you use a bonus encounter).

The basic storyline works well. It feels a bit too similar to Part 1 for my liking, but you’ve got a lot of combat and some opportunities for exploration and social interaction. There’s enough combat that, even when other things don’t work quite as planned, you can fall back on the most consistently entertaining aspect of D&D.

The initial encounter forces the kidnapping of Zehira, which is a bit problematic because players will be players and may find a way to thwart the kidnapping. I feel the description of what happens is a bit messy, and it has a few rules issues as well. For instance, only characters with darkvision have a chance to see a ship at a distance. However, in 5E, darkvision has a range, so how does this work? I love the idea that the pirates distract the players by calling for help, as they’re “fleeing” lacedons, but the adventure has the pirates only calling for aid when the characters spot them. I changed it so that the pirates always call for aid. I’m not entirely sure how Zehira gets kidnapped. Does her kidnapper use magic or a boat to transport her away?

There’s a very cool scene where, as you arrive at the island, your ship is caught in a storm that might destroy it. It’s even better as it’s linked to the powers of the sceptre and – if you use the bonus objective – the cause of the storm is revealed as you try to escape. I appreciate that a lot. Unfortunately, the table of storm events has entries like “the ship suffers a 2 penalty to AC”, but the adventure doesn’t give the ship’s statistics. Also, if the ship capsizes, how do they recover it later?

The travel on the island consists of three combats in different types of terrain. A paragraph giving a description of the general terrain, and then a paragraph describing the foes. These are basic fights, which set the mood of the island but otherwise just provide delays on the way to rescuing Zehira.

The dragon’s lair is a lovely map drawn by Dyson Lygos, but the adventure fails to give it a scale. I think we have to assume one square is 10 feet, because otherwise the dragon doesn’t fit. An additional problem is that the description of the location of the climactic encounter doesn’t quite fit the map.

The volcano’s second largest chamber was mostly a cavern, then built out by former inhabitants to become a full rectangular room.

I’m not quite sure if it’s intended that the room (area 8) overlooks the big cavern below, or if it’s meant to be a separate chamber. The map implies the former, but the text implies the latter– especially as the big cavern below also has potential enemies in it.

However, it’s this chamber, which has the big set piece encounter of the adventure, that has the most problems.

The set-up is as follows:

• Zehira is a prisoner in the room, tied up in a corner.
• Rune, the arcane trickster who kidnapped her, is experimenting on Zehria’s club (the sceptre)
• The Malenti (sahuagin infiltrator) who appeared in Blood in the Water is invisibly trying to recover the sceptre
• Once combat begins, in the third round the Adult Red Dragon who lives in the volcano arrives and attacks EVERYONE

This promises to be a fun, if chaotic, scenario. I love the ambition of it. However, this is also a Tier 3 adventure.

The malenti is a CR 5 opponent with AC 14 and 71 hit points.

Rune is apparently a CR 15 opponent with AC 14, 78 hit points, a 15^th-level spellcaster with only 3^rd level spells (animate dead and vampiric touch) and can make two dagger attacks dealing 6 damage each.

What we appear to have here is a level 15 Arcane Trickster, whose sneak attack isn’t on the stat block, significantly reducing his damage potential, and who should be listed as a 5^th level spellcaster. Not that a creature with only 78 hit points that is effectively fighting solo (with no resistances save Evasion and Uncanny Dodge) is going to engage any Tier 3 party for more than a round or two. Even with sneak attack, the lack of any support for Rune makes him ineffective. Arcane tricksters need a bunch of fighters to delay the enemies and provide extra opportunities for sneak attacks. By the time the dragon arrives in the third round, it’s probably too late for Rune.

There’s no real pay-off for the malenti’s presence, either. As far as I can tell, it just wants the sceptre.

Thankfully, an Adult Red Dragon is a significant enough threat that it’ll provide an entertaining combat just on its own. Which is just as well, because it attacks Rune and the malenti in addition to the party! Everyone is its enemy!

I feel that this adventure either says “here’s some monsters, design an interesting fight around them”, or – as in the case of the first and last fights – designs an interesting fight with terrain and tactics, and then mucks up a rule or the implementation so that it requires the DM to fix things. There’s potential here, and most DMs should be able to run an entertaining adventure, but I wish there was more attention to the details. The editing is pretty poor. Consider this text in Rune’s statblock:

Magical Ambush. If Rune is hidden from a creature when they cast a spell on it, the creature has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against the spell this turn.

The biggest problem with Saving Silverbeard is that, for an adventure that is the final of the initial releases, it doesn’t resolve anything, and the main plot that it advances (the identity of the magic club) has hardly been touched in previous adventures. The sceptre/club is a problem. In the first adventure, it’s described in one line that I completely missed when I ran it. In the second adventure, it’s only mentioned in a bonus encounter. And suddenly it’s the item that everyone is interested in? If the club is meant to be an important item, then I’d rather that more of the adventures provide clues to how it’s special. The mere fact that an NPC carries it means that the players won’t think about it unless the adventure really demands it.

There are other problems with the flow of the adventure as well. Where is Rune’s ship on the island? Where are his minions? Why doesn’t Rune consider the dragon a threat? It all feels very odd.

Ultimately, Saving Silverbeard has some good material, but is very uneven in its implementation and storyline.