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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e) $2.99
Average Rating:4.1 / 5
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Joseph V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/07/2023 22:56:23

All of the content in this adventure is top tier, I replaced several parts of the Tomb of Annihilation adventure with content from this adventure.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Sean H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/04/2023 21:00:43

I ran this adventure to push me out of my comfort zone. I generally prefer the pillars of play in this order: Combat then Exploration then Social. So I decided to run this for my players as a real change of pace. The result was a lot of noisy fun. Here are my hot tips:

  1. Think of a couple of hooks to get the players to be at the races at all.
  2. Don't start by emphasising the 'mystery' too much; it can derail players away from the big ticket item, which is the race. I started by getting them there just to experience the races, then had them betting and watching the first few races, meanwhile overhearing the little secrets. I then had Mowbula bustle up, tell them that a race crew had pulled out and that she had already registered them to race. (Yes - a railroad, but I played her as an unapologetically bossy aunty type).
  3. During the race, be sure to add vivid descriptions to go with the dice rolling. Baskets of chickens being knocked over, gnome children running onto the track; dinosaurs pooping and tripping and stumbling; opponents using prestidigitation and mage hand to interfere etc. Keep it a rollicking good time. The players will come up with all kinds of stuff to do - remember the "Yes, and..." rule. Get the players to describe what happens when they succeed (or fail) in attempts to interfere with their opponents.
  4. During the race, I made one of the opposition teams 'the main competition' and got them to play dirty to get the players to really dislike that team. I had them be 'humans' but as the race went on, the players gradually realised that the team was actually made up of yuanti purebloods. When the players won the race, I made sure to say that the yuanti team was so angry that "one of them didn't even show up to accept the trophy on the podium" which made my players 'boooo!'. (This, of course, was the yuanti who ends up dead in the dino pen at the big end battle, and helps link the final combat to the race itself much better - and explains the cheating too. This resulted in an aha! moment).
  5. It is almost impossible to learn the rules of the race 'on the fly'. I prepared to run this adventure by creating a "Race Tracking Table", broken into each leg of the race, with columns for each team, and rows for the various checks to be made in each leg. This made it heaps easier to keep track of where the various teams were up to.

All in all, this was a fun adventure. It is light on combat but provides a chance to have a session of D&D that is quite different from the norm. I can imagine that the novelty would be lost pretty quickly if players replayed this several times; mine had never played any dinosaur racing / Chult adventures before so it worked like a treat.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Briana C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/07/2023 19:01:45

I love running this adventure. I've never had any issues with players being willing to join the race like some other reviewers. "Join the race to make sure no one cheats" has always worked just fine.

However, it's the race mechanics themselves that I really enjoy. It's something unique that you don't see very often and the race manages to be both fun and a decent challenge for a variety of skills.

In person, my preferred method to put tiny dice on the colored race map and track the teams that way. This works great to give the party a sense of their lead (or how much they need to make up).

My only real complaints are that the betting system is a bit confusing - I think there may be a typo in the table - and some of the NPCs can turn into caricatures if you aren't careful. I find that avoiding any stereotypical accents helps with that.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Clifford M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/17/2021 03:27:12

Be very careful if you run this as written. Know your party, which might defeat the point of being an AL adventure.

The problem I ran into with this adventure is actually at the very start. My players never even got to the race. A couple of them got too distracted playing Sherlock Holmes and then they got side-tracked by other things going on in the city.

The adventure is all about creating a cool fun shiny thing, Na N'buso's Haka, multi-event race. But then it drops this evil plot hook onto the race which is effectively like jingling keys off to the side. Depending on how easily distracted your players are they may get sucked into investigating that rather than doing the event.

The hook to the adventure is tenuous as to why they would do a race rather than go around asking questions and searching for clues. To fix this issue I would completely remove any hints about some kind of plot if your players already want to do the races, which they probably do. If you still want to hint/foreshadow, do so very sparingly. Instead build up hooks around why your players might get a special chance to compete in this event, ideally related to things they've done already. Or make a mini adventure to win entry.

At the end you can have the evil plot unfold as written and the investigation can start.

On top of all that it's pretty lame that the entire plot hook for why the players should be in the race to investigate is that the cheating might be happening during the race. Then, in the end, that's not even true and what my players ended up doing actually made the most sense. Ironically, they staked out the pens instead of joining the race.

Also, as others have said some things feel kind of racist.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Matthew M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/22/2019 17:31:08

So.... this is much better than the race scenario in DDAL07-1, and if you want to make Racing Dinosaurs in Port Nyanzaru!!! a thing your campaign, this is a decent start.

There's a minor issue with this as an adventure: there's a kind of weird story problem where actually being in the race seems like a silly way to actually investigate the problem posed. It doesn't really make any sense and you basically have to railroad your players into it.

But, that's not the main problem. The main problem is that the broken English of Mowbula Utakulu ("A dark skinned, beady-eyed Chultan bookie with and friendly smile") feels super-uncomfortably racist. The presented sample dialog is painfully embarrassing. (Sample: "Nay-um’s Mowbula. Yuhs look like da mob dem owls said me. Cooee close!”) And the other race teams — presumably also native Chultans — are supposed to act with the mannerisms of jungle animals.

Come on, DM's Guilld / Adventurer's League. You can do better than this!



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by John C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/28/2019 20:10:17

I played this with a mix of experienced and first-time players. Five level 3 PCs, as the adventure suggests. The adventure consists of a small amount of pre-race roleplay, an extended skill challenge, and a fight, to be played over a single session. The pre-race sleuthing/betting/cheating doesn't have a lot of relevance as a self-contained adventure, which I was running this as. The race requires (and encourages) a lot of improvisation to make work, so mileage will vary dramatically. The fight is straightforward, which worked for us, and there was ample advice for adjusting it. My players liked the adventure, but I was a little underwhelmed by the race segment. Time is so abstract in D&D that I had difficulty making the race feel tense or dramatic. It's not a bad adventure, but less structured than I'd like. It's a solid B.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Ben J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/31/2019 23:55:51

It's a kind of interesting story and a decent module for weaker parties, since a lot of the encounters are skill challenges rather than combats. Because of that, it can kind of fall on the DM (or player, I guess) to tell a good story about the check, rather than "ok, you passed the check and the thing happens" Also, being death-cursed is no fun :(



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Thomas P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/02/2018 08:20:00

An amazing module that immediately hooked my players into Nyanzaru and set off a great start to a (hopefully) long campaign. The racing mechanic was simple and much easier to follow than a fully theater-of-the-mind race sequence. I, for one, have always struggled with running chase scenes based on the DMG guidance, but this module helps anchor the idea of such a scene without getting too granular. My players absolutely LOVED forming a rivalry against another group of racers. The "Grung Gang" have now become somewhat of a rival adventuring party that now hassle my players whenever they are back in port.

The combat scene at the end was incredibly well-timed, as my players were itching for some combat after the adrenaline rush of the race scene. I had amped the race up a bit by adding "dark zones" (while passing under a bridge, or through a narrow alley where there were no spectators) where players could use tricks like misty stepping onto a rival's mount and cutting the reins. Still, they wanted more. Thankfully, the authors had my back on that. I'd highly suggest picking up the supplemental map pack, too - adds a lot of visual punch.

Also, little nuances like specifying mechanics for stealing the second prize purse during the post-race chaos were much appreciated. Really felt like all the bases were covered to accomodate just about anything the players chose to do. Will definitely run this again!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Corey K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/04/2018 01:12:44

Probably one of the best Starting adventures, full of skill checks that any T1 character can feel useful.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Nathan B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/27/2018 08:05:41

best module this season loads of fun to play multiple times



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/26/2018 14:39:51

I was, at first, a little worried that this adventure might be too similar to one of the missions from DDAL07-01 A City on the Edge. Thankfully I was wrong - we all had a blast! Part 1 seemed a little awkward - my players didn't jump in to the opportunity to gather information from the crowds without a little nudge, and weren't particularly interested in betting on the early race.

The race, however, was really engaging and fun for all of us. I made a cheat shett with all the important info to help me keep track of each leg of the race, which helped me keep the action moving. On the surface it was similar to the dino race in the intro adventure, but there was a nice variety in mounts and challenges to keep it fresh, and to give every PC a chance to shine. The adventure concluded with an unexpected battle against undead dinos (how cool is that!), and another clue to the sub-plots threatening Port Nyanzaru and Chult.

This was a fun and fast-paced adventure - one of the few that I actually got my group though in pretty close to the recommended time of 2 hours.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by James A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/23/2018 20:29:32

This was an amazing adventure! The racing was well built and engaging during play. It was difficult to keep both opponent teams in the race for the full go but there was still plenty of doubt if the players would actually win. My players surprised me by grabbing the other trophies, so I was happy a note about those were in the text. The battle in the dinosaur pens was a great way to cap off the night.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Richard C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/13/2018 18:43:02

I liked that this was a good way to get the players introduced into Port Nyanzaru/Chult. The dinosaur race was a lot of fun and the race was more detailed and involved over the DDAL07-01 race. I liked that the race has various options for completing the various stages.

A quick note on the betting before the race, the odds listed have been reversed, so that what would be listed as bet 1, receive 7 is listed as 1:7 instead of 7:1.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by John R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/11/2018 09:27:23

I liked that this was a good way to get the players introducted into Port Nyanzaru/Chult even if they did not run through the intro mod. The dinosaur race was a lot of fun and the race was more detailed and involved over the DDAL07-01 race. I liked that the race has different aspect to completing it. It was a nice break from over simply hack and slash. This was the best of the T1 mods out of the series.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jonah J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/09/2018 17:38:52

I had a blast running this module for my group of coworkers to introduce them to Port Nyanzaru! The concept is really fun, and it's nice to have some different mechanics to switch things up from regular combat encounters. Since I was running this as an encounter within the Tomb of Annihilation HC, I tweaked the introduction from how it was written to help things flow better.

As fun as the module is, there are a couple of minor issues I had. The mechanics of betting before the team starts to race are a little strange, with everyone making bets for separate outcomes of the same race. Also the rules for the Sea Leg of the race are a little confusing with how long you can stay underwater and how you are supposed to complete that objective.

But overall, with a personal touch from a DM who knows how the race needs to work to keep moving and stay interesting, this module can provide a very entertaining and unique experience!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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