Anyone up for Copy-Reading my next DMs Guild Publication?

I have another D&D 5E one-shot adventure (Tier 1, estimated 4 hours playtime) in preparation for publication on DMs Guild, which I need some victims - ahem: some volunteers for to read over and give me some feedback. If you find typos and such it is also appreaciated, but I’m mainly looking for feedback (as well as, ideally, suggestions what you would improve in these regards) on

  • whether you think you could run the adventure effectively as DM,
  • whether you think you would enjoy running it,
  • and whether you think your players would enjoy playing it.

If you are interested in this gruelling experience, here is a short summary of what this adventure will be about:

"Old Olga and Young Yvonne"
The adventure revolves around the rivalry between an old hag, Olga, and a young budding witch, Yvonne. The setting is the remote village Willow Creek, plagued by unexplained incidents - cows going missing and turning up gutted in the woods, blighted orchard trees, and ultimately an abducted child. The characters are sent to investigate and find the woods… unusually lively. Arrived in the village, they are greeted with suspicion and must navigate the tight-knit community carefully to gather clues. They ultimately uncover that a young woman, Yvonne, not well liked in the village due to her independence, has entered into a magic feud with a hag in the forest, Olga, competing with her over the limited supply of magical herbs in the area. The problems of the village are merely fallout from this conflict, and Yvonne is responsible for most of it. The reason is that Olga has recently stolen Yvonne’s young son (a bastard, in the narrow-minded interpretation of the villagers) and demanded, in exchange for his save return, that Yvonne perform some vile magic for her - brewing a youth potion, requiring the life essences of many living beings and, ultimately, a human sacrifice. Yvonne is prepared to pay that price, for her son, and Olga has not completely unreasonable motives, once the characters uncover more of her backstory (long ago, she was a young girl with magical talents from Willow Creek herself, shunned by the community, and ultimately twisted into a hag by her grief). Who will the party side with? May they even be able to negotiate a reconciliation? And how will they restore lasting peace to Willow Creek?

I anticipate that I will have the first draft ready in 1-2 weeks from now, so your kind help would be appreciated in about that time :slightly_smiling_face: Full disclosure: it will be something to the tune of 40 pages long (but the essential part will be only around 20 pages, you could easily skip some appendices such as monster stat blocks, etc.).

To prepare you for the “quality” you can expect, here is a link to my first (and, thus far, only) publication on DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/263445/Wolpertinger-Wererat--Well?term=wolp

feel free to pm me when it’s ready for review

Im on it, and ready for a read up. )

I would gladly read your adventure. Please keep me in the loop as well.

Thanks a lot everyone! I will pester you with the draft as soon as it is ready :grinning:

I would like to help as well if you still need it

Cool, the more the merrier :grin: However, I will likely not send this next one to all of you, because there can also be such a thing as too much feedback, in my experience :wink: But I will keep all of you in mind for the next one-shots in the pipeline, if you don’t mind. I have currently six further adventures in various stages of preparation, which I would like to run past other DMs first as well, before I put them up. I hope that I can maintain a frequency of about one adventure upload per month, so all your help will be greatly appreciated :slightly_smiling_face:

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How much prep time do you expect is needed to run this? Depending on the layout/content 20 pages can be quite quick or a lot.

Asking since I’m interested in playtesting this when you think it’s ready. A playtest seems like the perfect excuse for running a oneshot, something I wanted to do for a while.

I think it should be relatively quick to prep, I included a few elements that should help keep things neat for the DM (at least that’s what I hope): sidebars on adjusting encoutners, roleplaying NPCs and describing locations, maps, an adventure flowchart, concise in-character background on the central conflict, etc. In extremis, I think it might be possible to read three or four essential pages and wing it from there… In any case, I’m happy to send it to you and then you can judge for yourself and decide if you want to try it or not - additional playtesting input would certainly be appreaciated :slightly_smiling_face: I’m not 100% sure when it will get finished, I had a few delays this week. I still hope that I can make it by the end of next week, but that largely depends on how clear I can keep my weekend…