DnD Reviews: Lights Out at the Nightwatch Lighthouse

You don’t forget your first is something that I happily apply to a lot of things. About fifteen years later and I still haven’t forgotten my first ever crab cake that I had at Disney World Orlando and I’m thinking I am also unlikely to ever forget my first Dungeons and Dragons adventure that I ran for my group. I’ve run a bunch more since then and I’ll get to them as well in future posts.

Lights Out at the Nightwatch Lighthouse

by David Barrentine

The small coastal town of Pinepass spends its days in relative peace until the nearby lighthouse stops shining. Nobody knows what could be the cause but with reports of one ship already wrecked along the shores it won’t be much longer before others follow. Travel across open ocean to reach the Nightwatch Lighthouse and reignite the flames above while also investigating the other much darker deeds below.

• Adventure length: A single night’s play.
• Pages: 6
• Levels: 1 to 3 (my players were level 3)
• Players: 4 to 6 (I had 4)
• Comes with maps
• Includes, among other things: Ships. Mystery. Cultists. Harpies.
• Highlight: There’s a harpoon mounted on a ship and Tom was all over it. Like handing an eager kid a new toy.

While I said above that the adventure fills a single night’s play, I split it into two sessions. That’s mostly since we play online and with text only, which tends to stretch the content artificially. Regardless of that, the pacing of the adventure still held up great and I felt that my players were engaged through it all, from having been sent on their little quest, to returning back to shore with a few wounds to lick.

Preparation time was minimal, and I’m thinking I could have run this after skimming the material, so it’s suitable to be played as a quick “omg, I forgot to prepare” session.

And even so it served perfectly as a smaller standalone story that I could customize and add to my larger campaign, adding plot hooks and clues for the story’s overall mystery to be found throughout the adventure. The author enables this quite easily, since even if the adventure is short, it already comes with a solid mystery of its own.

A mystery that remains largely unanswered.

Yep. It’s open ended!

And that’s great, I think, since the players and the GM can decide whether or not they would like to simply return to shore, get their reward and be off to more adventures, or if they would like to get to the bottom of the Nightwatch Lighthouse’s mystery.

I totally and absolutely recommend this adventure!

Available at the Dungeon Masters Guild: Lights out at the Nightwatch Lighthouse