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The cover of the module is glossy full color piece by Wayne Reynolds, while the interior is grayscale. Reynold's cover work is as good as ever. The short story booklet is yellow monochromatic (basically grayscale plus yellow). Tommy Castillo does the interior artwork in pencil and shading. For the most part its good to excellent, though a couple of personality stat-block portraits were less impressive. But don't get me wrong, I have seen FAR worse. Overall, the art for SotLW is excellent.
All maps are embedded in text, and the cartography is without flaw.
SPOILERS follow...
The core of the adventure is the tried-and-true (putting it kindly) Fedex/retrieve the McGuffin quest. The party is asked by a damsel in distress to retrieve something.
It starts off fairly well. There is an exciting initial encounter, and play in the starting town has a distinct and evocative feel. But then...
THE ROSE QUARRY
The nature of the Rose Quarry setting displays the unique feel of Eberron. The ruined town on the edge of the quarry is encased in molten glass, including burned corpses encased in glass. The problem with this area is a series of events is supposed to occur, which is supposed to lead the characters to make a certain decision.
It looks as though the intended sequence is:
1) The player party arrives at night
2) They decide not to battle an encamped force, but decide to explore the ruins the group is encamped in (the ruin is not more than 300 feet across at the widest)
They find 2 locations that seem worth exploring. Both buildings are among the few that are mostly intact. They are located next to each other. Sounds of excavation come from both. One is well lit, the other is not.
3) Having chosen to investigate the ruins under cover of darkness, they then decide to investigate the brightly lit location first, not the shadowy one.
4) They resolve the encounter successfully (and almost certainly loudly), they rouse no alarm, and they spend minutes, if not longer, successfully deciphering the puzzle therein
5) After a successful solution, the chief of their opponents in this ruin shows up, from his station 100 feet away
6) In the confrontation that ensues, the chief foe looks like a vampire, casts obscuring mist, and disappears the following round, leading the party to believe that he is a vampire that went gaseous
7) the party flees to the location deciphered in the puzzle solved in #4
Unfortunately, this sequence can be mangled in many ways... The more likely results are:
-Assuming a of party of 2nd level characters doesn't expect to find a camp of more than a dozen guards all at the same level as they on such a lowly mission, they attack the camp in what they perceive as a moment of weakness, with sneaking/coup de grace, then taking out the investigating group, then taking out everyone else. Prevention of this is left to the DM who is supposed to strongly hint that the party shouldn't fight them. Given the heroic style of Eberron, and the PC tendency toward min/maxing facilitated by 3E D&D, this warning seems unlikely to work.
or
-The party encounters the "vampire", and doesn't buy his trick. In fact, they may well be confused by why he went into "gaseous form", especially after the "vampire" calls out to his buddies while "in gaseous form". Perhaps party bunches together, tries to kill the enemy chief, or any opponents that come running. The enemy's "gaseous form"/obscuring mist backfires as the rest of the encampment tries to help, only to be unable to provide missile fire because of the mist, or even identify the attackers. The spellcaster, despite his level, is almost useless in combat, because of his spell choices.
Result of either: TPK, or the party wins and the sequence (and expected module resolution) is mangled
Or -The party decides they can't take 'em and leaves, long before they get to the puzzle they are supposed to solve to continue the adventure (yeah right).
or
-The party chooses the wrong building of the two, opting for the one that is shadowed and offers concealment, and thus meet the "vampire" before they get their next breadcrumb, and flee, or fight as already described
Result: The adventure is over
This kind of thing reminds me of the reasoning behind the publishing of some old Dungeon magazine adventures. I can just hear some creative director saying "So he disguises himself to look like a vampire, then creates mist, then disappears, so that it looks like gaseous form! Wow, thats clever. I like it!"
Meanwhile, back at the gaming table, the players are all asking each other "Why did the vampire cast Obscuring Mist? Wouldn't he just kill us? Is he a cleric-vampire? If so, why cast such a lame spell? If I was a vampire I'd start by charming the fighter or casting a good domain spell." And all of this assumes the party doesn't lay the smack down on this guy before he becomes invisible. And they don't use holy water or Detect Undead and thus realize he isn't a vampire. And they don't see him drink the potion. And...
It reminds me of some Shadowrun adventures I have run, where things are supposed to happen a certain way. The party totally wrecks everything the designer planned for, based on entirely reasonable thinking and actions, and leaves me trying to figure out what to do next. Essentially, this adventure is a Badly Constructed Railroad.
The final dungeon area could still be theoretically located if the party wins its conflicts, assuming they feel any need to. However, since the opponents are "fanatics" and never flee, the party will have to be tough, indeed. If they do get there, they face a fairly sophisticated and inventive challenge.
The final dungeon area (Whitehearth) is interesting and tricky, though the emphasis on colored keys ("keycharms") reminded me rather irritatingly of Doom 1 and 2.
Allow me one final clarification of the mindset of the writing/design here...the concluding portion of the module doesn't even address the possibility of the party achieving total victory over all opponents present.
I suppose there are two ways you could look at the substance of this module.
1) Effective use of setting specific elements, cleverness of design elements
In that case its a great module.
2) How it will likely play
In this case its a poor module. The basic adventure concept is nothing special either.
This is unfortunate because there is a lot of solid and interesting material here...it is certainly salvageable. The final dungeon is challenging and interesting, the uniqueness of the setting is ingrained into encounters throughout the entire module.
I don't know what scenario I mentioned above is most likely. The scenarios I described above are pure speculation, but are based on my experience as a DM. I wanted to playtest the module but my playing group basically refused. They didn't want to deal with learning the Eberron setting, making new characters, etc.
I'd appreciate (and I am sure others would too) knowing how the adventure actually went for those who have run it.
