I like the escape angle a lot. There's a lot going on (in a good way!)

This escape adventure has got a lot of flavor to it. Year-long masquerade, cursed animal hide masks, bodies falling from castles, golden automaton. I think it does a lot to give you a sense of what kinds of people these "nobles" are and it's kind of a grim place to live. Good layout choices, I like the full three column landscape. The intro is a little long, but it works for what you're trying to achieve. Maybe a little editing for conciseness might make it cleaner.

Plenty of flavor in the subtext of this scenario. Love the idea of a "high ranks dungeon". Cursed masks are a bonus point. The map is not very clear and I don't understand how the isometric and the other one are related.

I read your fake book review on Mastodon, that was a great idea. Now I want to see your follow-on adventure with the full masquerade!

You could include a few of the ideas you developed in the fake book review in the intro to this adventure (e.g. the bit about the long masquerade thrown by the prince while the king is away on endless war campaigns). The masquerade ball is a nice twist on the dungeon escape, I think it’s worth giving this context.

The intro page is has all the necessary information. Paragraph 1 is great, simple and to the point. I think I would move paragraph 2 to the end of the page, and group the introductory info under, “The Masquerade”, “The Masks” and “Player Intro”, with a natural segue from Player Intro into Location A.

The map is very easy to follow, with an interesting choice of locations. You could make more use of the isometric layout by having more 3D features on the upper level, e.g. towers or battlements around the courtyard, or a balcony in the main castle where the half-eaten waste and torn clothes are thrown down (p.1).

I wondered why the escapees don’t have to pass through the barracks, and why the stairs from the dungeon lead straight into the masks atelier. A slight rearrangement of the rooms would put more obstacles in the way of the players, forcing them to be inventive to escape the dungeon and obtain masks.

Overall this looks like a fun and very playable adventure. Although it’s system neutral, I can see it working well as a zero-level funnel for Dungeon Crawl Classics or gauntlet for Shadowdark.

I love the isometic map and the simple frame/border around the edges. There is quite a bit of set up on the first page. I wonder if you could break it up with pull quotes or smaller art? Or, you could probably cut some of the GM notes. The number of rooms is kind of impressive for A5 pages, haha.

This is funny - my appendix n entry last year, Entranced in the Verdurous Villa, was a garden party where players were forced to wear masks. It's fun to see similar concepts executed in different ways.

Definitely a decent little adventure with some creativity. The Dungeon has a lot packed into such a small package, and the meta narrative of a book that doesnt exist is neat. I love Masque of the Red Death, so thats a nice little touch. Theming is decent, but i find the room descriptions to be rather limited and simple. Good enough if i want to elaborate and expand on it, but id almost have preferred less, more detailed rooms than more, less detailed ones. Map is simple but workable. Overall a solid 3.8? 3.9? Out of 5. Solid showing for something that had to fit into 4 pages :3

Okay, so first thing I got in my overview pass was just how much this felt like a big wall of text. 3 columns, some bolding, and the exterior line wrap do a bit to help mitigate this. That said, some call-out boxes, uses of color, or other methods would have gone a long way to create some visual interest through the piece without costing any of the content. Incorporating the credits and link into the border were a smart use of an otherwise decorative element.

Page one is our setup and while some of the wordings could be tightened up a bit for better flow, clarity, or simplicity, it does it's job well. Several times I found myself quickly jumping down to skim what was being referenced to be sure what I wanted to know was going to be there. That's not an issue (especially with only 4 pages) though it could be if you decide to expand this. Something to be aware of.

At the mentioning of masks, it points out premade vs create your own. Jumping down, the area is pretty strait forward about what is there and obviously no mechanics since it is system agnostic. This said, I would have liked to jump down and find a few suggestions on existing masks (I can make up more details myself) to pull from in a pinch as a DM if I wanted a few there for players who aren't crafty (system dependent) enough to make their own and I just pulled this out of a folder for a one-off on a given night. System agnostic means no way to suggest a benefit to making their own, but I can figure that out on the fly from what is here.

Map threw me for a few minutes. My brain kept wanting to overlay it on top of the castle due to the similar shape and those guard posts (assuming they flared at the top) even though I know the page one and key said courtyard. This wasn't helped by the widest point of the map being the narrow part of the of the isometric visual and the actual squares being roughly a square when I counted them out! This might be something that could be addressed to improve the playability. I could also see putting a faint grey castle shape up against the proper wall so it's very clear how it is laid out in relation to the picture in the corner. If I am going in cold from my emergency game folder, this removes any pause in the flow for me.

I'm not a huge fan of flavor text paragraphs since I basically never read them and just roleplay out whatever's needed. In this case, I don't mind it a lot. It is a few sentences that inform me what is even going on here right at the start and not used again. Good. Easy to work with even if I don't use it as empty narration.

Breaking out of the cell being automatic and the roll being about not drawing attention is a good choice. Still might end in TPK given their lack of armor and weapons, but still solid choice. No risk of the dreaded 'everyone fails and nothing happens' some modules suffer from. Torture room is just a visual in theory, but players will almost certainly gain improvised weapons before moving on. Good choice for progression. The corridor is a bit strange. I'd have rather seen a set encounter here like a lazy guard rather than some of the strangely random options instead. The idea of giant rats (without any obvious source in such an actively used castle) or festival litter down below feels a little too 'this is a dungeon lol' to me. Save the table for later on and just put a lazy guard here not expecting to encounter anyone. Maybe separating the corridor below from the ones above in terms of your table and then replace rats with some castle dogs or something?

Nice choice again for a decision for the obvious exit or risking a threat to gain better armor and weapons. Masks I already covered, but good that there's no way to miss this location. Store room feels a bit dull, but depending on the roll could create some interesting events (system used making a lot of difference here). Courtyard's fine, lots of potential story elements or encounters. 'I' and 'J' look nearly identical on the map! I had to stare a few minutes when I had it at printer scale to decide which was which. Not helped by the fact that they are in similar placement. My original thought was it was 2 'I' locations serving to guard both ways to the gate, but apparently not. This also makes me question why there's only a gatehouse on one side and not the other.

The clockwork guard is interesting. It's not letting /any/ guest leave. This means players can try going through the castle, climbing walls, finding a way to get it distracted on another guest, etc. Player choice for the win. It's not clear if the players will be aware of its nature or if that's DM only info. And of course, this is meant to be able to plug into a larger setup. That's good too. Instead of a one-off location they might manage to finish in an hour, it can lead to several nights of play depending on the player choices and all I need to do is grab a castle map. If you decide to expand this, I would love to see the greater castle and maybe include some court intrigues in it. That falling body could even become a major story plot in some games.

I think the weakest element here is theme. It mentions a book (that never existed), which is kind of a fun meta, but in two years when I pull this out I am going to have no idea what that's about and since the book doesn't really exist, I am going to be left blinking and just ignoring that part. There's nothing here that really feels like it isn't just as easily an entry in every other dungeon map jam outside of that small note. I don't see any recurring characters who feel like I read them in a pulp fantasy novel. I don't have a sense of the greater world beyond 'everyone gets locked in and has to wear masks because reasons'. It's a solid dungeon. Is it telling me Appendix N if I didn't read it on the border of every page though?

The layout is on point and the map is awesome. Love the writing; especially the intro and the designer's note.