MCDM
5E 8th level
Premise: Recently, a powerful earthquake opened a rift in the mountainside, unleashing waves of unstable magical energy and deadly automatons. The nearby town of Ashtead is simple, modest, and ill-equipped to deal with the magical monstrosities attacking the town.
What do we get here?
This is a 9 page adventure with an extra 4 pages of monsters for a two level dungeon that has 10ish rooms.
Usability/formatting
Not much is offered in the way of hooks for this adventure, characters should be passing through town when weird shit happens and the local big wig offers you 2000 gold to sort it out. A bit more thought please? Even if it is just a list of bullet point options that are not fleshed out, give me something to work with.
The different parts of the adventure are explained fairly well upfront. I do think more could have been made of the tavern encounter in the first act, the hard no on being able to save any tavern patrons straight away is a bit of a railroad. We get another annoying railroad in the second act where detect magic will not work on illusory paths because reasons.
Most of the writing is fine if not evocative. The double column format is about average, some more use could have been made of bullet points and the information in act one on the town could have been trimmed down a bit in my opinion.
It could be that I just do not like sci-fi in my fantasy but the actual dungeon itself is not that interesting, there is not much unconnected to the main plot to interact with, no real loops and no faction play. For a fantastic lab from an advanced civilisation it is a bit of a let down.
Portability
Nothing much ties this adventure to a specific location and there is advise on how to frame the lost civilisation as something that fits your world. The downside to this flexibility is a lack of interesting details or personality to the adventure.
Recommendation
You can run this 5E adventure perfectly well as a short drop in on a journey or as the kick off to exploring a lost city. I am just not sure in either instance there is much that makes this one jump out as something you would have a burning desire to run. All in all a bit linear and lacking in personality or wow factor.
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