My group and I were on the brink of starting a new campaign in the deep jungle of Gamulganjus but decided to instead give this new campaign a try. We played A Mishap of Ill Portent this evening and it was a mixed experience.

Generally, the adventure is straight forward with a McGuffin, a few enemies and a setting to make it interesting. I found the adventure to require some adaptation from the gamemaster in order to work smoothly. My review will start from the beginning of the adventure and work its way though, so it might contain spoilers.

• The adventure starts with an introduction including an adventure synopsis, background for the adventure, and the seemingly mandatory small parapraph on how to read he various boxes and understand the references that appears in the adventure. All great. Then comes the "involving the PCs". This is not a section on suggestions for why the PCs are in the village or what could motivate them to begin this perilous adventure. This is instead where the adventure starts as opposed to the first chapter where I might have expected the beginning to be.

• Next is a table for Mesos' Bane which is triggered by an epic event in the story (and I like epic events so that's great). However, I am unsure if I should treat this table as a handout to my players who play arcane casters or if the table will be present in the next installments of the campaign. Also, if it is supposed to be information revealed to the players, is it then a spoiler that the name of the table is Mesos' Bane?

• Durgan's Rest. Small village with a population of 220. 10 of which work as guards not including the sheriff. That's a lot of guards.

Chapter one

• The last paragraph in the first plain text section seems like something that should not be read out to the players.

• The burning house and the zombies. My players' characters were absolutely decimated by this encounter. The adventure introduces a new type of zombies that are very offensive. While their hitpoints are greatly reduced, their offensive capabilities have compensated for this. A normal Zombie deals 4 damage on a hit. These zombies deal 6 damage on a hit and a melee attacker takes 2 damage when hitting a zombie. That is the recipe for a dangerous encounter for level 1 characters. The 3 zombies constitute a hard encounter for 4 level 1 PCs if we accept the assumption that these altered zombies are challenge rating 1/4 each. Add to this the initial roll for a level of exhaustion (and every 6th round thereafter - does a second fail apply a second level of exhaustion, and so on?), the burning surroundings which easily adds 3 more damage to a character and steals an action from either the character on fire or one of the allies (and with the possibility of snowballing), and add the damage (10-15% of the spellcasters maximum hit points) that Mesos' Bane inflicts on arcane spellcasters. Oh, and there's two of these encounters. And some environmental hazards. And no time for short rests.

• The encounter was also a strain on both the players and me as the gamemaster. For the players it was the amount of saves, damage and conditions that was inflicted on them without any chance of effecting the outcome. For me, it was all the bookkeeping on squares that was on fire, rounds before the mage dies, saves for the zombies when they caught fire, informing the players of all their saves and the consequences of failed saves, and running the combat. I understand that the adventure wants to make the encounter interesting, but it was too deadly and needed some steamlining.

• Area A4 states that the stairs require a succesful dexterity check to navigate safely. It says nothing about what happens if that check is failed.

• I had one character death from the first encounter (he was on fire so the death saves were rapidly building up) and the group had to retreat and let the building burn down. Upon investigating the smoldering remains they failed their DC 15 intellligence (investigation) or DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check to find the McGuffin. Without succeeding one of these checks, it looks like the campaign ends here.

Chapter two

• My group were able to get the information from the townsfolk about the female elf which is something I guess. Other than that, the mage's body was lost to the flames and I presume that goes for his spellbook as well. As such, judging from the adventure alone, my group shouldn't have any clue on where to go next.

I really think that this adventure could benefit from some more playtesting and then a revision to streamline it. The encounters are too deadly for a 1st level group, a skillcheck decides if the McGuffin is found or not, and if the place burns down then there's no clue on where to go next. All these things need to be handled by the gamemaster, and quite frankly, this level of meddling is not what I expect when I pay for an adventure for low level characters.

3 of 5 stars. One of them just because it's Scarred Lands. Looking forward to the next part of the campaign.