Drums in the Marsh is a four-hour adventure for level 1-4 characters and part of the first season of the D&D Adventurers League.
The adventure features an investigation into recent kidnappings and raids and then a trip into the Twilight Marsh to discover the perpetrators and rescue the victims.
For a low-level adventure, this is very ambitious and gives many options for the players and DM as to how it plays. While its form is primarily linear, there is enough variation in situations to allow players and DMs to vary the methods.
However, you do need to approach it with care. There may be too much material – it is pretty easy to have this adventure take longer than 4 hours, and DMs might get lost amongst the possibilities. By the end of the scenario, the options have opened up significantly – the text suggests three primary ways of dealing with the antagonists, not all of which involve the characters trying to kill them all. Because the adventure is good at laying the groundwork, the DM should have enough material to resolve events, but this is not a scenario that holds the DM’s hand throughout.
As this is a Season 1 adventure, the descriptions of the encounters are more verbose than some that came later, but a good use of headings makes it relatively easy to find information.
The opening act involves investigating the sites of the raids and offers many opportunities for players to use the Investigation skill. It is nice to see this; Investigation typically gets a lot less attention than Perception. This section focuses on building up the tension and atmosphere and giving the adventure context. I think it does it well. The players can have one short combat at one of the farms, allowing players who prefer action to have a taste before diving back into the plot. Notably, a sidebar informs the DM of what happened during the raids: this is tremendously helpful.
The focus on atmosphere continues as the characters follow the trail of the raiders through the marsh. The adventure has a couple of sidebars that explicitly mention the Adventuring rules from the Player’s Handbook and what the characters do as they follow the trail; this can significantly affect how much time it takes to navigate the marsh. Unfortunately, the amount of time the characters take does not affect the scenario’s progress: there are no random encounters or consequences if they take a longer time. The DM can use it to increase tension, but that is about it. However, the rest of the journey is high-quality, with the sound of drumming adding to the experience.
Three combats in this section – some of which are avoidable – provide the requisite action for the adventure.
The finale, as noted, allows the players to choose their approach. The situation is complicated enough that the DM needs to be familiar with the material before running it. I would not like to run this adventure “on the fly”; I am sure that I did miss a lot of its potential when I first ran it. And, because the situation is so complicated (three tribes are vying for dominance), players might misunderstand what is going on and just run into a fight beyond their low-level characters. There is enough information for the players to understand what is going on, but players who charge and attack may find themselves in trouble.
Possibly the weakest part of the adventure is how it reveals the background to events, which is incredibly important. The scenario has relatively few clues and, while the players can learn the information from the prisoners, it feels like a throwaway section of text which the players (and DM) can easily miss. The backstory to this adventure is brilliant and something the players should learn.
The original adventure has only one map (of the finale’s location) and no art – as was typical for D&D Adventurers League adventures of the period. The revised version on the DMs Guild includes more maps suitable for Fantasy Grounds VTT use.
Overall, I like Drums in the Marsh. It is an excellent adventure that, despite its flaws, provides a variety of challenges for the players and a good story; no matter how the story turns out! Some care is needed as a DM to run it well; I think it would be very easy to run this poorly. However, despite that caveat, it provides material for an enjoyable session. Recommended!