While the adventure may be short and the storyline is brief, there is a definite flow to the content with options for future adventures or even a launching point for a campaign. Blessed by Poison could most likely be played within a single gaming session and could make a great adventure to drop into an existing campaign, used as a launching point for a future campaign, or run at conventions.

The layout is very smooth and the illustrations are fairly good. Each section is properly identified and a background and synopsis are included to give the GM more ideas, options, and a better feel for the adventure. However, I find the maps could be improved upon to keep with the overall quality of the rest of the content.

The storyline is fairly developed, has a purpose, and flows relatively smoothly throughout. However, there isn’t a large amount of narrative, which the storyline could benefit from, especially during the encounters and leading up to the beginning of the journey. The purpose of the storyline could also benefit from being expanded upon through more background, in-game effects, or possibly an “aftermath” narration. But there is still a fair amount of content that the GM could easily expand upon.

Location-based adventures often offer more playability than what is simply published in the adventure module. This adds to the value of the content not only as an adventure but also as source material. Because Blessed by Poison has a developed storyline, maps of the location, and particular adversaries presented throughout, the playability value is higher and could potentially hold a decent amount of interest from the players.

As a short adventure module for a single gaming session, Blessed by Poison could be a nice change from the standard or used to continue an existing campaign. The material is flexible in nature allowing the GM to make minor changes here and there with a storyline that allows a multitude of settings. The content could easily be expanded upon creating a series of adventures or a new campaign. It’s a good, solid adventure module, but could benefit from an expanded storyline and more narration.

For a simple introductory adventure, it shows some nicely thought out encounter design and the author knows when to go all out with the creep factor. Looks good for the future.

Very good short adventure. The story is quite creative, the encounters are well described, with tactical maps easy to convert with ground tiles or an erasable battlemat, and there's two well thought skill challenges that have a real impact on the adventure. I ran it two times with different groups, and both were a little frightened by this strange spider story ! Maybe more precise descriptions of the monsters would have been an interesting addition, but for the price it earns easily five stars still.

The "hook" for this adventure is a bit of a cliché: local hero goes missing, and the PCs are hired to find him. However, there's an interesting twist, and the adventure does a good job of showcasing a number of different D&D 4e concepts. Combat against customized monsters, skill challenges, terrain features, diseases—there's a little bit of everything here, reasonably well-executed. The writing isn't stellar, and there are a few grammatical mistakes and such that slipped through proofreading. I certainly wouldn't call this adventure a must-have, but you could have a lot of fun running this adventure for a group of new players or as a diversion from a higher-level campaign. DMs can also mine the adventure for ideas, especially some of the new creatures.