Barking Alien Challenge day3: Where the heck are we? + reviews reconsidered

Where the Heck Are We?
The main playable areas of my campaign

Exile Island & Shadelport.
The land is crawling with criminals, dungeons and monsters.
It was once capitol of the global monster empire in the age of darkness.
After the fall of the second empire a thousand years ago pirates ocupied the ruined eldritch cit and built a global maritime trade empire that the third empire ended up reliant on. Until the pirates and all the kingdoms of the empire revolted against the mad emperor of the continant ending the third empire. Outside this vast city and its giant bridges and mutant and goblin and orc ghettos, their are many small villages that make food for the city. Farmers are protected by law and lightly taxed. Bloodsand Beach is a whaling and seal-hunting town of slaughter with a mostly male population. The smell keeps most people away.

The empire a few times colonised a southern island but always ended up isolated and backward. The empire sent convict labour here and many fleeing the empire came here. They say there are secret tunnels connecting the island to the imperial continent you can walk. The straits on the surface seem close but weather, rocks, dangerous islands and seamonsters make the closest point the most deadly. Their is a great swamp spoken of as if it was a self-aware evil being. Their are multiple forests wildly different and haunted by faerie folk and human ruins. The northern wilds have tribal folk, tiny dwarf kingdoms, giants and a elf region. Humans and elves were enemies, but now it is forbidden to kill elves or unicorns. People from all over the world can be found here because of the maritime endeavours. The city has the worlds biggest magic university and thousands of holy shrines.

Forbidden Island (also monster island)
Their is a small port used by traders and a viking outpost used by modern visitors. The rest is a volcanic tropical jungle with ruins of the monster empire. The biggest volcano is a dragonsparn pit connected to Hell and the lair of Tiamat. Many thunderlizards, reptilian peoples and caniibal cultist tribes.

The Straits: Scarford Reef and Anglerslund
Scarford reef is a dangerous, rough region with some large islands with inhabitants. Some more modern village folk, just isolated but their is a millenia old amazon citadel and one Island full of older Islander folk holtile to civilisation.Under the reef is a vast network of caves and below that a cavern land covered in mountains and sealed by the gods. Great ancient citadels and strange landscapes in this cavern have made it a famous regiou of the underland. Anglersland is a strange island kept isolated by the hungry god lampgulp, an idiotic anglerfish who swallows ships. Visitors say the land is full of madmen and cultists.

Auldwood
The north east corner of the continant. The south is aforested rich kingdom recovering from the civil war with the empire. Tho hilly northern lands were almost abandoned and depopulated and now adventurers and settlers are returning. Sour Hill was a city mostly abandoned and locals always need help to drive out monster squatters in ruins. Under the city are far older tunnels form the age of stone and bone. The western auldwood up until the wastes of Chagrinspire are forest full of knightly manours and villages. These all grew isolated and those trying to return it to the kingdoms control note many estates are cursed, haunted or elfstuck with madness. 

Chagrinspire
The great waste around an 18km high tower built by gnomes a thousand years ago to destroy all creation. A thousand years ago a terrible war accelerated technology and wasted most of the worlds lives. The wastes around the tower are full of monsters, mutants and undead soldiers still fighting. Very few get into the tower or the great gnome city below.

B9 solo play
This adventure didnt have so much magic loot. At least it has more adventures. Has a  master encounter table which is handy. We all got rabies last time from rats and had to blow thousands on cure disease spells but traded some +1 maces. We had our Templar and Rover reach 3rd level, sorcerer lv2, young wolf 1HD, student templar and a kobold with a +1 sling.

The clearing of castle caldwell
A bunch of monsters who dont really get along living in a castle. At least they ignored hearing fights mostly. Another humanoid massacre but not as bad as the previous castle raid. Lots of mostly empty rooms with petty loot. We immediately used out knock spell to go to the next scenario but we could have rest. Our kobold tried to convince kobolds to join us and it failed and we killed them all. 

Dungeon of Terror
This wasn't too bad, but a sneaky doppelganger was exposed by detect evil when they met someone. Wights were nasty, but a whole party throwing their best at it worked. 

The abduction of Princess Sylvia
So your supposed to walk in and a wizard lv 3 with a second-level spell has made a 30hp owlbear illusion. Its not really how I want illusions to work and it seemed a bit gross. Our silent rover saw an owlbear and shot it and it didn't respond as the wizard couldn't see this happen and react. Suspicious party went around it, killing lots of orcs and robbing them. The pinned the wizard in his spyhole and recruited a goblin follower who squealed on the wizard. 

The Great Escape
Players love loss of autonomy and losing all their stuff. So calculated AC and checked unarmed damage and had to fight out of a cell. First room checked had a store room leading to the monsters treasure. The next room was a few guards and armoury where we got stuff back. So for an escape resource challenge, it annoys players then nakes non of this matter. Lots of empty rooms or a few people in their rooms easy to kill. 

The Sanctuary of Elwyn the Ardent

This temple has a spiralling passage so one way railroad. It describes altars you can barley move you could sell and redescribes them several times which one description would do. So more monsters and you hear a maniac cackle as things hurt party. The monsters escalate - orcs, a wood golem, rock staue shooting lava (almost killed templar), then a black dragon. The templars follower was liquified and others badly injured but kobold and goblin stayed well behind. It was a nasty fight but the beat it unconciois then chained it up and gagged it. Almost a TPK. That dissolved student templar had a fortune of magic gear too. A nasty ambush by 2 shadows and 2 gargoyles was a bit of a pain but the shadows barley lasted but drained the spell slinger a bit, but hey its a dump stat for him. The crazy boss didnt last long and had lots of loot. This was a railroad meatgrinder.

We had lots of treasure and suits of +1 plate by the end. More generous than what I would give people. Thousands in coinage and other loot. Everyone, even flunkies has magic items. Tht last black dragon was one of the worst fights but technically we captured it. The castle raid in B12 was pretty harsh trying to get breaks for healing while killing scores of humanoid swarms. It could have gone worse. A few times low level wizards cast sleep on party and could have caused TPK too. Mostly the followers and pets go down, leaving the strongest to kill the wizards. Lots of weird potions also. My characters ended up probably willing to retire with lots of loot. Was a good playest. My system probably did a bit more damage and were tougher and had more abilities but most of party were low-level flunkies. Rediculous magic armour and sheilds and rings or protection are really the reason the party survived and could keep going. All three of these playtest adventures B11 B12 B9 had lots of healing and we could progress without the module-imposed breaks in a few cases.

Satisfied my guys could run in old module with no adjustments, feel plenty of risk and have a few near TPKs and one permadeath follower. I think these adventures seemed a bit dumber than say B1 and B2. I can see they were instructional and they had to make more basic adventures but you can see the tone is aimed a bit younger and heading to the mid 80s era of sequences of 6-room dungeons. Empty rooms of clutter are time sinks and its ok to kill everything then search the place. Morale was a big decider too and saved us from TPKs and encounters. The plots were all very wordy for what was involved and im sure my murder hobos got bored and zoned out in these briefings. Point to the villains we can kill and profit from I say. If I ran these in a campagn I think it would ruin them with magic loot. As beginer game with impressive loot to excite maybe its forgivable.

If every 3rd Lv wizard can have a illusionary 30hp owlbear I think it would be a problem. One of the lair dungeon comps had a ruling for beholder power that made something normally a hazard turn into a lethal attack based on rule reading nobody would use. It doesnt come up too often this problem of problem rule stretching. I like the test that you shouldn't be able to get a better result than a higher level version of same spell.