Review of Hall of Harsh Reflections from the Age of Worms Adventure Path

See my guide to running Encounter at Blackwall Keep, the previous adventure in the series.

Initial Thoughts

First, the basics: The adventure is written by Jason Bulmahn and published in Dungeon #127. I ran it in 6 2-hour sessions at 7th level.

I have a fairly bad taste in my mouth about this adventure. It’s the first time my Age of Worms campaign lost momentum. Almost every group hits this now and again, and I thankfully have a group that is very good at powering through. And more often than not, it’s the DM losing energy that’s the problem, not the table. That happened to me here. This really felt like 3e pacing padding the adventure and making it take twice as long as it should have. As the person converting it, I should have stepped back and redesigned the whole thing - it should have taken 3 sessions, not 6. But hindsight is 20/20. My group just has the final battle with the mind flayer whose name I am never going to remember and wrap up.

Adventure Structure

The adventure is cleanly broken into three parts: exploring the Free City and the doppelganger attack in your tavern, a dungeon crawl in a doppelganger lair, and a dungeon crawl in a mind flayer lair.

Part 1 in the city has some nice little vignettes you’ll need to flesh out to introduce the character of the city. It’s also great foreshadowing for the next adventure, The Champion’s Belt, since it makes it clear the city is on the eve of a big event. The party meets the sage they were sent to find, and while they are waiting on him to complete his research, a doppelganger attacks the beloved owner of the inn they are in wearing the appearance of a character. This scene is hard to pull off. I had a character retire early and then come back down and attack. It was a really heavy handed approach, but I let the characters know it was in service of story. I also had no doubt my players would immediately think doppelganger, so I wasn’t worried about confusion. It all went well enough because my players leaned in, but I could see a lot of groups having trouble navigating this.

Part 2 is the doppelganger lair. It’s fairly easy for the party to track the attacker back to their warehouse lair, where you have a fairly lengthy dungeon crawl. It sets up a doppelganger conspiracy in the Free City, but my group didn’t see a lot of payoff. I also replaced a character with a doppelganger, which was a cheap surprise thrill in a room with doppelgangers who looked like the characters were tied up. The final boss is a pretty uninspiring guy - there just isn’t enough set up to make the villains sing here. Once you beat this dungeon’s boss, the ultimate baddie, a mind flayer named Zyrxog, shows up with some thralls and wails on an already weakened party.

Part 3 is another dungeon crawl to get to the mind flayer. You get some drow thralls, and a welcome spirit naga that will parley. There are custom monsters called octopin that I didn’t find very interesting. I just reskinned some chuul and called it good. The highlight is Zyrxog’s museum full of nasty little tricks and traps - we skipped to the final battle, so I am interested to see how the characters handle all the interesting knickknacks.

The adventure wraps with Eligos the sage telling the characters bad things are afoot, and that he has them a spot in the upcoming Champion’s games. At this point the party knows the person putting on the games hired the mind flayer to kill the characters, and is associated with the cult of Kyuss.

Good and Bad

The Good

This adventure does a fantastic job setting up the Champion’s Belt, which seems like it is going to be the best adventure of the campaign so far after my first read.
The museum in Zyrxog’s lair has a lot of fun stuff in it.
The doppelganger-as-PC was a cheap surprise, but I bet it will be very your mileage may vary.

The Bad

Written for 3e’s experience math and it shows. The adventure drags because there are too many encounters, some redundant. I’d aim for one session per section if I reran it.
Lots of dependent encounters with the doppelgangers that could go sideways for a DM depending on the group. This adventure might be better if there was some prior build up as part of a different campaign, but here it is too sudden.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t run Hall of Harsh Reflections as its own adventure unless I had several levels of doppelganger conspiracy adventuring ahead of it. As part of an Age of Worms campaign, I think it does important work to set up the next, seemingly excellent, adventure. But I would make sure to shorten it to 3 sessions and not run it as is because it can drag.