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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting story but some possible problems in practice..
Review: I'm going to stress that I haven't played this module/adventure with a group yet but I did read through the book. I have yet to be able to compare this with other 3E AD&D adventures because it's the first I've looked through (I have 3 other Kalamar modules and two other AD&D modules on the way). I'll review the components and then the story, leaving out spoilers as much as possible (be warned there may be a couple however):Components: Nice glossy, colorful cover (which you can see easily enough here so I won't describe it as I started to.. habit from reviews elsewhere). I like the fact that, like the other Kalamar adventures, it shows in which portion of the Kalamar setting the adventure takes place, on the back cover. The book itself is 48 pages, 25 pages for the adventure, 13 pages for appendices (including NPC descriptions, the Brigand prestige class, new magic items and spells, maps, etc) and 10 pages using the ImageQuest 'innovation' which is the use of nicely done black and white drawings to give a visual image of some of the areas to the players. I have to say though, that I'm skeptical how useful they are, since players may assume that if they aren't shown something, that it's not important. Story: Not a straight dungeon crawl. The players are encouraged to choose beginning level characters that have a history in the hamlet, and the nature of the story allows them to be 'movers and shakers' (big fish in a small pond). If not, they can just be passing through. Further, there are four different 'sides' in this story, all vying for control or at least certain parts of the hamlet. What the characters decide to do can certainly have a huge impact of the lives of the 150 or so residents. The way the characters go about things is reasonably open ended, and I like the background. However, some of the story elements seem quite contrived (the Druid's maze), and part of the module hinges on attempting to keep the players split up during an important portion. Since what happens to each character is supposed to be happening all at the same time, either the players have to ignore knowledge of what they hear happening to one character, or else they have to leave the room for extended periods. This seems a major problem for a module designed for beginning characters (and presumably a beginning DM). Also, while the module does give a couple of ways to conduct adventures for the characters afterwards, the kind of character that the module is designed for (leaders in a hamlet) isn't the easiest to continue adventuring with. If you use this module, be sure the players want a more political campaign style, and be prepared to run one. To sum up, it's a nice break from the usual dungeon crawl, but the idea has some flaws in the execution, particularly for a beginning group.
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