Down Came a Blackbird is an adventure for level 1-4 characters set in Saltmarsh. The children of the village have discovered a strange egg, and crazed birds are attacking villagers. The heroes need to find the source of the unrest before great misfortune comes to the village. Darker things are afoot than just the birds!

It could go very poorly, however. The first encounter sees the group protecting a boy (a commoner) from three swarms of ravens, and the ravens begin by focusing on the boy. That’s three attacks that deal seven damage against a boy with four hit points. The adventure notes that he should survive the battle. That’s the bit where the narrative DM and the play-by-the-rules DM diverge just a little bit. It’s fine – I’m sure everyone knows how to run this. However, it’s amusing to note that involving NPCs in combat can have unexpected consequences.

This one’s fun. It features a significant amount of role-playing and investigation, though players who enjoy combat won’t be disappointed. It evokes the threat well and may provide a few scares for your players.

I like how thematic the encounters are. The heroes can discover a goodly number of rumours, some hand-outs point to further clues, and there’s a real feeling of being in a living town. The underlying story is a good one. It’s nicely unsettling and gives understandable motivations for the foes. It allows monsters to be monsters, rather than having purely human desires.

There are also secrets for the players to discover. The players get to discover, piece-by-piece, the true nature of the threat. I do worry that, after introducing the children, the adventure delays a bit too much before reintroducing them. Some players may become fixated on talking to them (something the adventure doesn’t allow) rather than investigating the other clues.

I feel it would be a disservice to run this as a level 1 adventure. Although it provides scaling notes for levels 1-4, the lower levels water down the monsters a bit too much for my liking. The stated level of design is for level 3, and that’s where I’d prefer to play it.

The layout and art are superior, and it’s written well. This is potentially set in the Forgotten Realms version of Saltmarsh, but it wouldn’t be hard to change it to another setting.

Overall, I very much like Down Came a Blackbird. It’s got a great story and encounters that reinforce that story — highly recommended!