[Ravenloft] Dreams of Dust Feedback

This past week, I received feedback from my playtesters. You may remember my public call in this call from October 2. I must say the three groups who ventured into the adventure provided me with some very useful feedback. Without spoilers, I will try and summarize some of the best elements that came back.

- Play time is around 12-hours: This makes it a little longer than I expected, but that is also a good thing, putting the adventure right in that sweet spot where you get to play up to 15h depending on your party. Good.
- Needs a better introduction: The introduction was short and simple on purpose. However, this did not go over well and everyone mentioned that the party spent time trying to discover what to do.
- The story works: Both GMs and players reported that the adventure was well-organized with a very sandbox-y story. Almost all GMs mentioned that the multi-point way to resolve the plot really stood out. I was very glad to hear this one because I spent a lot of time trying to break the railroad A-> B-> C solution I initially came up with.
- The difficulty is about right: I got a lot of variance on this one, some encounters were described by one GM as "going from overly easy to near-tpk". The variety of encounters played into that, as there are many different types of encounters. The frequency of the random encounters will be scale back a little.
- The variety is about right: The creatures in the adventure add to the situation at hand. As such, I cannot put in all the monsters I would like to put in there in order to remain consistent. The adventure mixes straight combats, skill/guile encounters, and even a few social encounters.
- Needs to add more art: I had some in there and cut it out from during first-pass edit. These will be back.

So how did it end? One party got TPK'd (due to bad tactics and dice roll), one are nearly done, and the other one blasted through. So this all confirms the feedback.

The parties were HIGHLY varied in composition, and the challenges affected them differently. What some thought was difficult, others breezed through. That for me, is a big win.

Big Thanks to David, Joe, and Jon.