The adventures are good. Secrets in the Dark has quickly become on of my favorites and I run new groups through it any chance I get. I can't recommend it enough. We're in the middle of The Lost Tome and it's been a fun one so far. I have my own homebrew world so the campaign guide is just something I can "borrow" from. My only real gripe is that the modules in this pack aren't the most recent versions. I'd have to go buy them all again, separately, to get the up-to-date modules. If Dan were to update this pack, then it would definitely be a five star product.

I'm a relative newbie, but I played this with my sons and some 1st level 5e characters we'd just created. We had a blast. I highly recommend Dan's stuff. It's clear this guy puts the time in to think about the total picture when designing an adventure. Very professional look to it, too.

I ran all three. And the big thing I took away was - PCs dangling from a rope on a cliff fighting swarms. There were several memorable moments in the three adventures, but that was the one that evoked the most "heroic fantasy" from my PCs.

These are not easy adventures. There are new/modified creatures that are definitely on the upper end of the power curves for their CRs. But there are notices about this in each adventure. So I adjusted some of the hps downward to better match the power curve of my PCs and things went smoothly.

One thing I really like is that there is a (relatively) lot of overcoming situations instead of monsters. There are a couple diseases, and several environmental effects (I guess you would call them "traps"). And they bring a lot more into play that passive Perception.

Another thing that I had been struggling with was explaining to PCs why they can't take a long rest. The design of 5th ed is to have PCs make several encounters before a long rest, and these do a nice job of explaining why they can't that makes sense in each adventure.

I will be running a party of 4 intrepid heroes through "Secrets in the Dark" this evening. I am likewise setting the piece in the Dimgaard campaign world. I am very intrigued by the notion of low-wealth/low-magic and LOVE the idea of the Inquisition. This campaign is clearly not for everyone. But for a seasoned group of veteran role-players, this should prove a welcome diversion from the standard "loot & scoot" adventures that permeate the market. In fact, we will be tackling this as a band of mercenaries using ideas from Todd Crapper's Mercenary Campaign writeup in the old 4E Combat Advantage E-Zine. But back to the adventure! Secrets in the Dark is precisely the sort of thing I like: a single session's worth of encounters with enough challenge to force the party to think outside the box. Honestly, we have never used the Exhaustion rules and this is a great opportunity to do so! The only reason this lost a star was that it is very minimalistic, which may turn away some folks. The mapping is very much open to interpretation. Likewise, the encounters look TOUGH for a first level party.

I'd really prefer to give 3-1/2 stars, but opted for 4 since 1/2 stars aren't an option.

Pros: -it is designed to be scalable for anywhere from 1-6 PCs, which is very helpful for my small group -excellent value for the price -I love the use of "she" when referring to the DM -upfront about the deadliness of the encounters -enough detail to use the Dimgaard setting, but not so much that it is hard to transplant elsewhere. -short, fairly straightforward adventures set in a wider context of intrigue and geopolitic

Cons: -Most of the maps are not on a grid system, so even though there is a scale, there is no quick way to calculate distances. -Some of the encounters are not clear about where they occur, making it hard to know how to connect them. (I'm thinking here of several of the encounters in The Lost Tome) -Encounters as written are very hard/deadly (a con for my group, not necessarily for others) -in many cases, HP of NPCS is VERY high for the CR. eg. a Cheynan Warrior has 40(!) HP but is only considered a 1/4 CR. Sometimes these adjustments are related to party size and make sense, for example when there is only 1 giant spider in the encounter regardless of party numbers, changing the HP for the monster make sense. But other times (as with the Cheynan warrior encounter) this creates a very high possibility of TPK (Total Party Kill). I've made major adjustments to HP to bring them back in line with their stated CR.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the xenophobic nature of the wider Dimgaard setting, nor the related Inquisition. But it hasn't been difficult to remove/ignore those aspects and tread Ashlon as a region in Forgotten Realms or a similar world. And some folks might really enjoy it.

The author frequent makes long rests impossible/difficult, to the point of being repetitive and continuously increasing the difficulty. This is somewhat by design, given the intent for these encounters to result in "more PC deaths than other campaigns," but I found it a bit tedious. I opted to replace that approach with a random encounter table in places.