Mystery at the Starlight Festival

From La Lionne Publishing, Mystery at the Starlight Festival is a cozy, low-stakes mystery module inspired by German Christmas markets intended for four level 3-4 characters. Its focus is on roleplay and exploration, with vendor booths to engage with and mini games to play!

Overview

Haresgrove is known for throwing lavish, weeks-long winter festivals as part of a friendly year-long competition with neighbouring cities in the region. Each season has its own festival, hosted by one of the four towns, and Haresgrove is aiming to win this year’s contest. 

There’s a few problems, however. Namely that Fensalor, the festival’s chief organiser, has been missing for two days and all of his responsibilities have fallen on his assistant, Sandara. She’s doing her best, but between trying to keep the news of her missing boss quiet and dealing with the unusual amount of chaos in this year’s festival, she needs help. Sandara is worried that if things continue this way the festival will be forced to close early and Haresgrove will lose the yearly competition.

Highlights

I love the variety of the activities presented and think having them spread across three different sections makes them much easier to manage. There’s something in each section that will speak to the interests of any given party, and it would be entirely possible to play through this multiple times and have a different festival experience based on what activities your group checks out! I was particularly keen on Mouse House Roulette, Snowshoe Hare Racing and the Ice-Skating Rink. 

The mystery truly is low-stakes, and while each section provides you with further clues it’s entirely possible that your group won’t figure it out – and that’s okay! This is presented as one of the possible outcomes, and it was refreshing to see that a party not figuring out what’s going on isn’t ideal but also isn’t a complete loss. They tried, and that’s what matters most. 

As A DM, As A Player

As a DM you will want to read over the module before running it. In part this will be to familiarise yourself with the available activities and determine what is most likely to work for the interests of your group. It’s also because in some cases information relevant to a particular activity is presented later. For example, a relevant NPC is present at one of the activity stations, but this information is only presented after the section detailing these activities.

The table of contents is hyperlinked, which I love to see! It makes navigating much easier. Note that you will need access to the Player’s Handbook for stats for one of the monsters. The development in section three provided me with the most challenge as it leaves quite a bit up to the DM to figure out but I think that’s part of the trade-of for having multiple possible endings. I’m okay with that! Seeing possible ends laid out is a valuable tool for me, and the nitty-gritty of how things work out is so individual to a given group.

As a player, I was eager to experience several of the activities and stalls. I had a lot of fun thinking about the different ways interactions would play out with the various parties I’m part of. I enjoy that there’s enough options here that I could play this with three groups and quite possibly have a different story each time. I don’t even know that all of them would figure out the mystery and appreciate that while solving it without violence is the ideal outcome, not solving it isn’t presented as a full loss.

Final Thoughts

I found the use of accent art particularly well done. It lends itself to the atmosphere of the market and overall feel of the book. I also appreciate how, right at the start, it is stated that you do not need to make use of all the scenarios presented and can have your group move between the stalls as best suits the interests of you and your table.

Overall, I think Mystery at the Starlight Festival is exactly what it claims to be: a cozy, low-stakes adventure with a fun mystery! DMs will need to give it some prep time ahead of running just to make sure they know what’s developing in each session. This is a fun little game for the holidays and left me feeling curious about the festivities that take place in the neighbouring towns!

Mystery at the Starlight Festival is available on Dungeon Masters Guild for $2.99USD [here]. This is La Lionne Publishing’s second release, and I am excited to see what she gets up to in 2023. To keep up with everything La Lionne is doing, including cosplay, APs, and being a pro GM, you can find her [here].

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