This was not as well written as the first in the Ancient series, unfortunately, and was not nearly as engaging as a result. Read on for group play; not suitable for solo play. TL:DR at the end ;)
What I found good:
1) Interesting first chapters with fleshed-out NPCs, largely on par with those in the first Ancients module.
2) An interesting look at the details of the Ancient's civil war. Some fun ideas about what might have happened to result in the current world.
3) Early scenarios play out logically and contribute to the plot.
4) Early pacing is fast, but reasonable for the scenario.
5) There are several contacts to be made that could tie in well in a later adventure.
What I found not so good:
1) Several heavy-handed deus ex machina moments could have been improved significantly with better design and editing. These sorts of events break the momentum of the game and make it seem scripted. It takes a lot of effort, but for the cost of this module, I expect someone to have put in that effort.
2) Several times NPCs act ~completely~ out of character, which is impactfully illogical. A person does not just let someone else kill them, for example, but changing this behavior alters the entire experience, so fixing the error requires a major rewrite. At times the NPCs also act like simpletons rather than the powerful people they are. Again, changing this behavior requires significant effort. An outline of their motivations and goals, and a brief personality should be sufficient to allow the Referee to play them more logically than is suggested in the module.
3) Multiple TPK (total party kill) encounters are based on a random roll - this should not happen in a non-fan-generated module like this. Design encounters so the party must make a clearly illogical move to wipe the game. This is the middle of a very long campaign - don't wipe the party on random chance. I re-wrote these more natural events, giving the party the chance to succeed through effort rather than random chance.
4) Continuity with the rest of the mega-campaign is non-existent in several places, most notably at the introduction. The author made no effort to tie in the previous module when writing Vlan, and the Referee must re-write large portions of content to compensate through the entire module.
5) Continuity within the module is broken as well giving the impression that the author came back to that section after a long break and began from scratch rather than re-reading their work to get smoothly back into the moment. Simple enough to compensate for, but distracting just the same.
6) The whole precursor section is just an info dump and at least in this campaign, it fell flat. This is interesting information, but it could have been delivered more meaningfully without breaking the momentum.
7) The team regularly had no agency in their choices as all alternatives funneled them to the same point the 'logical outcome' suggested. This plays out more engagingly if the team has an opportunity to end up at the keystone moments via several paths rather than being forced into either a wipe or accidentally finding the correct choice.
8) Not all of the ideas were particularly original, to put it lightly. You will see a good number of tropes from other science fiction shows and movies, but they don't always work as well as the original. These could be solid elements if they had been better designed.
9) The pacing was too fast, even for the conditions. Yes, anxiety is good and when things are moving fast, the Travelers need to feel that intensity, but this got out of control at several points. I toned this down to what seemed appropriate to keep them moving quickly without going LeRoy Jenkins(!!!) The mix of intense pace and TPK potential was not a positive blend for us.
Conclusion:
There is no argument that the Referee ~always~ adapts as necessary, even when running their own work, but some sections of this module require a ground-up rewrite to play smoothly, and in some cases, this represents a week or more to craft smooth transitions and repair jagged plot holes. In the end, this felt like a stand-alone module rather than the middle of an epic adventure and it broke the momentum we had from the first module.
TL:DR
For a TAS module, this would have been a solid purchase (at a lower price.) For an official module, it felt poorly edited and incomplete. At the end of the first Ancient's module, I bought this without hesitation, but at the end of this module, I'm not sure if I will buy the third or roll back the team to where they were at the start of this module and then go in a different direction. Hopefully, your experience will be different, but for me, this was the first disappointing module I've seen in Traveler...
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