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This linear story is written quite well and gives you a whistle stop tour of many places in Svilland. It sees characters get initiated as a 'Warband'; a title that seems to hold a lot of esteem and the story will have players fighting hard battles at the request of those less fortunate and less capable. A true zero to hero story, this module definitely works for groups of players who like to be heroic and not wander a morally grey line (without some work).
Like any pre-written module, it has its hiccups. It's a linear story that takes you through various encounters and locales. Some plot devices feel strong until you get past them and realise they aren't explained or can be a bit anti-climactic. The opening sickly child that needs to be delivered somewhere brought a lot of contentious discussion amongst my group only for the conclusion of this part be somewhat disappointing. The first dungeon delve is executed quite well, but its reason for an infestation feels largely unexplained and given the sanctity of the dungeon, it feels like someone really did it just for the lol's. The subsequent tracking down of a person of importance quickly leads to the cults downfall, so they (the cult) really dropped the ball here in raising so much attention of themselves so soon. The use of their own classes and races, whilst they are in keeping with a Nordic theme, don't quite align with the standard 5e races and classes. As such, the use of the spells are interesting and shocking to players. The use of 'sacrifices' amongst even good aligned deities, whilst in keeping with the brutal Nordic histories, makes players wonder whether the good aligned religions are in fact dark cults themselves.
Some features are exceptionally well implemented. The Hel points keep players on the side of good (if you're into that sort of thing) but can make players inquisitive to stray from the path and realise some benefits they don't have but want to keep (such as darkvision), whilst mechanics such as the Black Winter really makes players feel on edge. Some of the boss battles are very well designed - Hel's Chosen was well done introducing mobility and objectives however they aren't clearly telegraphed unless the DM makes it explicitly clear what the objective is. We haven't got this far yet but I can tell The Worm and the Gates is going to go down exceptionally well amongst my players who enjoy combat. The change in dynamics and objectives on the missions are timely. Moving from roleplay and hunting, to a big town, to a dungeon delve, and then off to three towns with individual curiosities and objectives have given a lot of drive from players to enquire and engage.
The art style in this book is great and the level design doesn't disappoint. The dungeon delves even in the bigger complexes feel more polished and navigable when compared to (for instance) the Netheril floating cities from 5e's official Icewind Dale module. Descriptions can be gory, but they help add to the decisions that need to be made by the players; it's clear you're after some very evil people. There are also player choices to be made, although again it's down to the DM to telegraph these if the players aren't paying 100% attention to the situations. Whilst they're not things that massively affect the story, it's still a dilemma for players to make these decisions and they feel like they're contributing to the story where they can.
All in all, the module is good value for money, especially as it takes the players up to level 20, and overall a great module for novice to advanced DM's to run and learn from. There's very little about this module that has to be changed or improvised compared to some of the WotC branded modules in 5e, and I'm staggered that there's not as much buzz around it as I think it deserves. For rookie DM's, it's worth picking this up just to steal some of the unique monsters and study the encounter design. All in all, a great job - I would recommend to a group who wants a long term game and are happy to just cruise through a story but don't want to take on Curse of Strahd or some of the other popular offerings. Small issues such as typo's, copy and paste errors, or issues in catching problems with monster stat blocks feel clumsy, and not having more satisfying endings to the chapter missions prevent this module from being a 5. It would also be good to have had some side missions; the game feels like it has less downtime and side plots than a Michael Bay movie, however given it's a level 1 to 20 in nearly 300 pages, you can't have everything. It's a good 80%+ score in my opinion.
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