I don’t like the Season 8 format.

This explains some of my problems with The Folly of Sneaky Simon, a DDAL-legal adventure for Tier 1 characters set in the Border Kingdoms. The material is always struggling against the format. I have seen very few scenarios that handle its limitations well.

The Call to Action is a good example of where things falter. The text describes two scenes: the party enter the town and meet the town guard, and then the guard takes them to the council who give them a mission. However, these scenes are mushed together. The clarity suffers, and I have a feeling that important information that is needed later is lost. The mission details are split between a Creatures/NPC section, a What Do They Know? section, and a Call to Action section, and the DM needs to jump back and forwards to assemble everything.

What are the party asked to do? They are hired by the council to deal with threats on the road north of town. An upcoming festival provides urgency. The council knows of one main threat: a small devil-like creature robbing merchants. Additional threats are available if you use the bonus objectives.

The small devil-like creature turns out to be a gnome who is in debt to a duke. This revelation brings us to my other major problem with the adventure: the text assumes that once you discover why the gnome is acting as a bandit, you try to help him. However, he is not described in a very sympathetic manner. Consider this text:

The red on his clothes is blood, but Simon promises that he hasn’t actually killed anyone here. He just injured a few merchants who were being rather stubborn about turning over their money to him.

It’s a complicated situation:

• You are hired to deal with a bandit.
• The bandit turns out to be Simon, a gnome who borrowed money from a Duke.
• The Duke wants Simon to find a lost relic.
• Simon hasn’t been able to find the relic.
• Simon has been stealing from merchants to repay the duke.
• Simon offers you the money he stole to find the relic.
• Rather than take the bandit into custody, you take his offer and try to retrieve the relic for the duke.

Would you help Simon?

Other material in the adventure works better.

The relic is in the possession of a lonely hag, and although killing or tricking her are available options, you could also befriend her. This is a good example of a situation that can go several ways depending on the desires of the party.

Once the relic is recovered, the party discover the duke is in trouble himself, and must deal with some soldiers of the Black Wyvern that want to take the relic for themselves. This offers some interesting options, although I am uncertain from the text if the soldiers just ignore the party if the party leave the relic on the altar (thus gifting it to the Big Bad of this series of adventures).

There are two bonus objectives. One sees the party helping a farmer with a monster that is killing his animals; this is straightforward and should be enjoyed by combat-loving adventurers.

The other sees the party encountering a group of Black Wyvern soldiers, which again is most likely going to eventuate in a battle, but it has other options that can lead to interesting decisions. The DM might need to point out to the players that the soldiers are a potential threat to the town that should be investigated, but I am curious how different parties might deal with this.

Ultimately, The Folly of Sneaky Simon suffers from a convoluted plot that makes a lot of assumptions about what the players do next. It could very easily go off the rails: What happens if they arrest Simon and take him back to town? I believe that the DM can invent solutions to find alternative motivations for the players, but I’m curious as to what the adventure would look like if you removed Simon from the adventure and instead had the duke directly hire the adventurers to find the relic. In a two-hour adventure, it’s hard to do complications well. The adventure has encounters that are enjoyable to play, and you can likely focus on them.