Pros:
- Nice mini-setting, with a little something for every race or class, two interesting organizations to contend with (and a host of other groups, merchants, houses, etc statted out)
- A medium-sized city centerpiece, with enough fleshed out to be immediately useable, with plenty of room for DMs to expand and customize.
- Lost of plot hooks for an extended campaign
- Colorful maps, plus pictures for specific locations
- The adventure sites (3) have some variety in layout, opponents, and focus. The adventure itself isn't strictly linear, and there's quite a bit of room for ad-libbing.
- Player guide with useful information for relatively new players to help make characters that fit the setting, plus some campaign-specific magic items.
- Sidebar with notes for incorporating Valley of the Obelisks into Eberron or FR (but they forgot Greyhawk!)
Cons:
- The three adventure sites have encounters in EVERY SINGLE ROOM. Which would be OK, if there was some variety, but the overwhelming majority are combat encounters (there are a couple "roleplaying" encounters, and a very small number of traps). I'm afraid the sites themselves -- all dungeons -- would turn into: (1) Enter room, (2) Slaughter monsters, (3) Search for treasure, (4) Rinse/repeat. The third adventure site has a bit more complexity and variety to it, but without some DM modification I'd be afraid the players might get a little bored with the application. Were I running this, I'd delete a few encounters, and insert a few more RP-based ones to break things up. Sometimes, the party should be able to find an empty room to search or puzzle over without it being a fight to the death.
- Organization. The third adventure is in the campaign book, while the first two are in the adventure book. All the location maps are in the campaign book (though each encounter in the adventure book has the single room map). Why they didn't put all three adventures in the adventure book is beyond me ... or just combine the campaign and adventure books, and have a couple of pull-out maps instead.
- Material quality. Guess I've been spoiled by previos WOTC soft-cover offerings, but the paper quality in the booklets is less than impresssive. The booklets don't really feel up to hard campaigning, to me -- I'd prefer something with a bit tougher cover (like older 32-page modules, which had cardstock covers, or better yet, a product qith production qualities like City of the Spider Queen). Yeah, there's the outer folder to keep them in, but they'll still tend to get banged up/folded/torn during play. Materials aside, the interior production quality -- color print, legibility, etc -- is good (and is far more readable than Scourge of the Howling Horde was with that product's illegible greyscale backgrounds).
I haven't spent ay time double-checking stat blocks or the like, so I won't comment on accuracy of mechanics or editting. All the creatures have full stat-blocks, though, so the module is essentially self-contained.
Overall, it makes for a reasonable mini-campaign for a relatively novice DM, and would provide a good starting backdrop for a campaigbn by a more experienced DM ... and could easily serve as a launching point into a later long-term adventure like Red Hand of Doom.
Grade: B
