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That said, I've felt that many of the modules published by Wizards of the Coast are dull and predictable. Sort of like building a brand new race car and puttering slowly around the same old block.
Even mega-projects like "Temple of Elemental Evil" felt soft. They lacked real atmosphere and narrative tension. In short, a lot of missed opportunities.
Eberron offers a chance to go deeper into the rich genres that inspre D&D. Not just fantasy, but pulp, horror, science fiction, and spy novels. The mini-adenture included in the Eberron Campaign setting teased us with the promise that this would happen.
"The Forgotten Forge" featured a mysterious female patron, in the flavor of a Raymond Chandler novel. There's murder on a rainswept bridge, a cryptic book, a descent into the "cogs" of a shadowy city. Not a masterpiece, but promising.
"Shadows of the Last War" just doesn't fulfill that promise. To aoid spoilers, I'll remain a bit vague, but here are my main digs:
1. Weak Motivation. Stories matter -- even pulp stories -- because the characters care about what's happening. This adventure offers characters no real reason to do the rather insane things that their patroness asks of them.
Frodo wouldn't enter Mordor on the urging of some gal he met in a bar. Sam Spade might drive across town for a glamorous woman in trouble, but he wouldn't fly to the darkest heart of Africa. Especially if she's busy running the opposite direction.
2. Villains We Don't Hate. The first really memorable foe (i.e. someone not meant to die in the first encounter) doesn't turn up until the party has already travelled halfway around the world. There's no foreshadowing, no slow building of animosity or rivalry.
Why haven't we been spotting shadowy figures lurking just outside the glare of lampposts? Why haven't the party's preparations been interfered with in some diabolical way?
3. Villains We Don't Fear. In theory, the adventure pits the characters against the most cunning and evil conspiracy on the continent of Khorvaire. But when the dastardly fellows do finally appear, they're buffoons. They apparently know that House Cannith is searching for the same treasure, but they don't even bother to post guards.
And in the end, they can't think of anything more diabolical than going head-to-head in stand-up battles. There's no noxious poison, no effort to con or manipulate. In short, the evil cabal behaves like a band of common street thugs.
4. Tantalizing Mysteries, Solved by NPCs. There are several points in the story when players might have used their character skills (and their own brains) to solve a fun mystery. Who raided the Message Station and why? How can we track down the culprits? How does their trail lead us closer to our goal? Is there some connection to a far-off, mysterious land and the schema?
Before they have the opportunity to think and DISOCOVER, the party is spoon fed great dollops of information by NPCs and hurried on toward the next battle.
5. Muddle We Don't Need. (***Spoiler Alert*****) One of the hallmarks of Eberron is complexity and moral texture. No one is who they seem to be. Alignments come in shades of gray. Fine.
But there's a difference between tense mystery and simple confusion. If this adventure is about dealing with an evil conspiracy, why does the party spend most of its time dealing with an entirely different set of bad guys? And why do those first villains vanish at the precise moment when we travel into their homeland? And what clues have been offered to players to help them tell the two factions apart?
And again: If it's really necessary that our patroness be a member of a dragonmark house with three rival factions, does she HAVE to be lying about which faction she's loyal to? How exactly does that serve the story? There's no sign that it does.
6. Dull Appearance. WOTC knows how much art matters. Especially in a setting like Eberron where "feel" and "mood" are important. Yet the drawings here are dull. There's not one "iconic" Eberron image. The patroness looks like a cheerleader. The Bloody market in Rhukaan Draal looks downright goofy. Even the maps are clunky -- far less interesting than the maps published for free on the Wizards website.
Final verdict? Shadows of the Last War is a typical D&D adventure. Basically solid. A big step up from your old fashioned dungeon crawl. D&D 3.5E and the Eberron setting deserve better.
