After the disaster of A Wrinkle in the Weave, it’s a relief to say that the next adventure in the trilogy, Hero of the Troll Wars is quite playable and entertaining.

It isn’t without flaw, however. In particular, its links to the overarching storyline are weak. There isn’t an introductory segment where the rules of time-travel are explained and the characters are given their mission. And, indeed, some of the information given about what happened in the previous part is at odds with what did occur! Apparently, in part one, Artor Morlin was already a vampire, which is not how’s he’s described there.

The adventure also keeps on the trend of not giving the DM enough information to properly understand the situation or the NPCs. Both in last season and in this one, certain adventures assume you have the hardcover adventure are are familiar with it. That’s a dangerous assumption, especially for an DDAL adventure. Assume the DM knows nothing about the situation. It’s fine to let them fill in details themselves, but the foundation needs to be solid. I don’t think it is here.

Luckily, its only the opening scene to the adventure that requires that foundation. The DM might not know what the Troll Wars are, the significance of Artor Morlin, Ahghairon and Malcar Gost, or the exact circumstances that cause Aghairon to need help, but at least he has a quest, and it makes sense that he’d give it to the player characters.

The quest requires the characters to retrieve wards created by the Mad Mage of Undermountain from around the environs of Waterdeep. There’s a nice range of challenges for the adventurers, and the bonus quests expand on certain challenges. That’s good design. What makes the adventure special, in my opinion, is an ethical challenge where the characters can save the settlement, but at the cost of the lives of some badly wounded people who are sustained by the power of two of the wards.

While I enjoyed seeing this in play, it should be noted that some players may object to this type of challenge and rightfully so. D&D is meant to be entertaining, but an ethical dilemma of this sort can cause significant distress. (It would have been nice to see an alternative encounter, but such is not the case).

The climax of the adventure comes as the party defend Ahghairon from a wounded troll as he completes the ritual; his success depends on how many of the wards are found. As an adventure structure this is excellent – just as you ignore the time-travel elements, which are mostly ignored by the author (or handled poorly).

Again, there’s no resolution to the time-travel. Do you return to the present, or are you taken to the next quest? It’d be nice to have a leaving scene of some sort.

Now, although the structure is great, and there are a many enjoyable challenges, a few things don’t quite go as well as they might.

First, the wards are poorly described. Can they be moved? Or is attuning them enough? One ward is specifically described as unmovable, but I’m not sure about the others. Ahghairon says “recover the wards”, but if he said “recalibrate the wards”, it’d make much more sense.

A sidebar explains the procedure for attuning the wards, and it allows a single DC 18 Intelligence (Arcana) check, which if failed, means the ward can’t be attuned.

This is a tier one adventure. It’s a DDAL adventure. It’s entirely possible the party’s highest intelligence bonus is +0. So, after overcoming all the challenges to find each ward, there’s a 85% chance the calibration attempt fails? Heck, no! Both times I’ve run the adventure, the Sisters of Chauntea have given the players the means to calibrate the wards, and it runs a lot better as a result.

The other problem comes from the bonus objectives: although their some of the better bonus objectives I’ve seen, which integrate well into the adventure without feeling necessary, they tend to run very short, and I found them very confusing as to their set-up and goals; in particular, it seems like the merman will only give the solution to a puzzle if the characters do the bonus objective, but in fact the objective is to get Umberlee’s help in quenching the flames. The links aren’t as well described as they should be.

This is, indeed, the overriding flaw of the adventure: good challenges, but the explanations as to how everything works is poorly written.

My favourite encounter is the Very Weak finale, by the way, where a troll climbs up a cliff… without arms. (It has one arm in the normal setting, but loses the other arm if for a weak party. Which leads to the question of “How did it get up the cliff?”)

The adventure needs more polishing and better explanations, but at least it presents entertaining challenges. Just don’t think too hard about its integration into the greater storyline, which is poor at best.