The 8th adventure is Shivering Death, for level 11 characters. Adventurers must brave the lair of a white dragon to recover a ritual that will end a devastating heat wave.
The Good
One of the stronger offerings in the book, Shivering Death has a great full-color lair map (looks like Mike Schley's work). The art I mostly enjoy, although in the splash page the white dragon looks too cute and almost owlbear-like - that bit should probably have been reworked, but the rest is basically perfect for this adventure.
Just a very solid high tier 2/low tier 3 dungeon with plenty of points of interest, multiple creatures and groups with overlapping and often mutually exclusive agendas, and plenty of opportunities for dynamic play and different ways to resolve challenges.
There is a rogue's gallery of creatures present that will be VERY familiar to anyone who has run Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden: white dragon, frost giants, winter wolves, ice mephit, a troll (should be a snow troll, but those don't exist yet in 2024 rules, remorhaz, etc.) A lot of these creatures are not on the same page with each other, and players willing to parlay - and to thoroughly explore the environment for hidden secrets - will definitely be rewarded.
Complaints
I can't say for sure if this will be the case if you run this with 2024 rules and creatures, as I'm still getting experience with them, but I will say, for sure, that if you run this with 2014 rules, a level 11 party will handily curb-stomp everything in this dungeon. I suspect this will also be the case with 2024. So the DM is probably gonna have to beef up, like, everything. Again I haven't run it and I don't KNOW that, but I STRONGLY suspect this is the case.
The adventure doesn't explain the source of the inciting heat wave, and kinda leaves that as maybe something you could weave into an ongoing campaign. I get it, but I think the designer could include maybe just a side bar of "here are some possible ideas for what's causing the heat wave; feel free to come up with your own as well". The complete lack of an explanation here to me falls less on the side of "inspiring DM creativity" and more on the side of "couldn't be bothered to put this in."
Verdict. This is at least a B+ and could be higher for some groups; I'm kinda deducting slightly as I do think the DM has work to do with making this more challenging for 11th level (alternately, you could just run it for I think a level 9 group). But it gets a LOT of stuff right and is a very good mix of combat, rp, and exploration that all hangs together logically and offers a lot of meaningful choices.
