Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…hell knows no bounds

An adventure by Jared Price, level 5
Written for D&D 5E
  Picked up a lot of these trifolds, just as a warning, so expect to see a lot of them in the month ahead. I’m not particularly fond of the format, but at least its twice as much page real estate as a one-page dungeon. Everyone picks a different way to fold these things too, which is a little funny. Mr. Price here, despite his reprehensible choice to eschew capitalization in his title, made a product that’s otherwise quite readable and comprehensible, so we’re already in the up quartile.
   Story time. This is level 5 5E, so of course all these characters are now beefy enough to walk where angels fear to tread. Why not take ‘em to Hell then? Well, not proper Hell, but a localized dimensional breakthrough at a local cathedral, sure. The interest of the characters here is to safeguard the cathedral’s relics, the interest of the players is to take the cathedral’s relics…this is actually very good hook design, targeting both P & C is how to get the PCs involved at their very best.
   What I liked after this solid bit of scenario design…starts to run a bit thin. I guess the monster mix is pretty nice, with a barbed devil as the main big boss but lots of hellish-themed other monsters leading up to him, like devil dogs, gargoyles, undead, and cultists. Solid variety for your fights. Might be a little tough at times, but hey, that’s what relics are for.
   Why aren’t the relics in the liked section? Well that’s because what can be improved first and foremost is don’t suggest that your relics get nerfed if they get used outside of the cathedral. DANGIT module, don’t do this. The relics are nice and all, but let your players have nice things. I should have taken the preamble as a warning, where the module brags about details being intentionally vague so as not to hamper the players in their “unique and collaborative storytelling experience”. Direct quote. Yeah, that’s a danger sign. As expected, this lack of detail, rather than making things freer, actually means the events are presented as a railroad. The map is just an actual church map, which means that you’re not getting much from that either. Finally, the relic acquisition table is a d8 table with 6 results…no, we don’t need that 1-2 “reroll but meaner” result, module.
   Of course this means our best use case is probably “steal some slightly underpower relics from the list”. The hard-up 5E DM who is exclusively looking for content on itch.io might grab this just because there aren’t a lot of other options.
   Final Rating? */***** with a disappointed “tsk-tsk” sound. I’m not mad, I’m just angry.