Saturday Night Special 1: Hollow Mountain (PFRPG) (based on
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Frog God Games
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The Hollow Mountain is designed for four to six characters of 8th to 12th levels. We recommend 40–50 total character levels between the party members. While the characters can be of any basic character class, a good mix of character classes is helpful. A rogue, strong warrior type, and good-aligned cleric are all extremely valuable in this adventure, druids will be especially useful in the Hollow Mountain and have the greatest motivation to participate in it. A traditionally peaceful tribe of nomadic wood elves suddenly becomes hostile and starts raiding neighboring human settlements with murderous zeal. It seems that the main object of these raids is prisoner capturing and wanton, senseless destruction of any man-made objects.
The PCs are hired by the local baron to investigate the cause of this sudden change of heart in his former allies and soon discover that tribe has abandoned its traditional nomadic lifestyle and taken up residence inside a famous local landmark called the Hollow Mountain.
The Hollow Mountain is a very sharp, lone mountain that sticks from the dense forests of the region like a rotten tooth. It derives its name from the fact that it is almost completely empty inside. On their way to rescue the victims, the PCs encounter a wounded and scared satyr who tells them that plants and sylvan creatures in the area are corrupted by some vile infl uence that must be destroyed before the whole forest turns on its inhabitants. As they proceed the PCs are attacked by strange and hostile plant creatures that resemble man-sized flowers with dagger-like petals and groups of elven fanatics armed with poisonous arrows. These fanatics claim to be leading a holy war against the unnatural and corrupted civilization and the “false” that produced it.
Once inside the mountain the PCs must brave cave after cave of different misshapen enemies, mutant elves and their animalistic masters and prehistoric plants and monsters. Finally, they pass into a nightmarish plane through a portal opened ages ago by highly-advanced lizardfolk who once occupied the Hollow Mountain and experimented with powerful magic in its higher levels. There they face the unlikely master of this insane unholy war, the Tree That Sees, a tree-like aberration from before the dawn of time that threatens to spill its madness into the world.
Remember when the world was a sandbox and you just inserted modules into your campaign whenever and wherever you wanted to? Remember when companies like Judges Guild and TSR produced short stand alone modules, not tied to any setting or campaign? Remember when the cost 5 bucks (ok we can’t do print books for 5 bucks anymore, but we can do that for the pdfs)? Remember when you directed the action independent of what the “world” rules said was there? We do, and in response we decided to fill the gap with our One Night Stands and Saturday Night Specials series.
These modules are designed to be played over the course of 1-2 nights. Each is a sandbox style short adventure (One Night Stands) or a short dungeon crawl (Saturday Night Specials).
One Night Stands Saturday Night Specials
Frog God Games knows that in this day and age, sometimes a gamemaster just needs a short trek to take his players on, or to fill those regular gaps and interludes in his campaign. Sometimes its just fun to enter a dungeon and kill things for a night! Old school feel is the trademark of these product lines. Look for easy deaths and tough puzzles. Frog God Games is not made for rookie players.
These series are designed as stand alone modules and are typically between 24 and 32 pages. We have designed just one piece of cover art for each series in order to keep the price point low (though the cover art is rockin’, and the interiors and maps are all of usual Frog God Games quality!). All of these books will be released in both Pathfinder and Swords and Wizardry format.
The nice part about these books is that some of the best authors in the industry, including Matt Finch, Casey Christofferson, Patrick Lawinger, Anthony Pryor, Nate Paul, WDB Kenower, Scott Casper and James C. Boney have been enticed to write for us. You may even see some work from Old Tsathogga himself in these soon as well!
This pdf is 48 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 3 pages of advertisements and 1 page SRD, leaving 41 pages of content for this adventure, so let's check it out!
This being an adventure review, the following contains SPOILERS. Players might want to jump to the conclusion.
Still here? All right!
The Elves around the Hollow Mountain just aren't what they used to be - in more than one sense. The once peaceful nomadic wood elves have started raiding and killing humans and other humanoid creatures to convert them to the true nature - something that should give druids nightmares indeed: The elves have resurrected a strange cult that has them growing plant-like mutations like deadly spores and briars. It is these strange elves that now inhabit a forest of petrified mushrooms inside a hollow mountain and that make up the major opposition of the PCs.
Their fortress is inside one gigantic petrified mushroom and thus makes for a rather creepy backdrop for the dungeon crawl. The fortress of the elves is well-defended by their tainted nature, their massive capabilities and rather deadly allies (which includes a dragon as well as an awakened tiger who thinks he is a dragon). Have I mentioned the deadly war flowers?
Hopefully, the PCs manage to free the erstwhile druid of the tribe (now utterly mad) and finally reach the hidden temple of the dread cult to reach a highly mutable plane where a deadly, aberrant nature provides terrible hindrances in the PCs final fight: The end the threat of the constant corruption of the nature, they will have to destroy a thing left behind from an aborted version of creation, an utterly disturbing tree-like monstrosity whose mere proximity mutates his foes.
The pdf closes by providing the complex reborn-template as well as a player handout.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, however, I noticed a major formatting glitch on the first map, starting room 20 to 26 there seems to be a discrepancy between the map numbers and room numbers, which is a bummer. Layout adheres to the b/w-2-column standard and the pdf is extensively bookmarked. We get 3 maps and the original b/w-artworks belong to the best you can imagine - especially the one-page picture of the final adversary is just plain awesome in its creepiness. Indeed, an almost cthulhoid sense of wrongness pervades the whole module - author Uri Kurlianchik did an awesome job creating a truly disturbing dungeon crawl with interesting locations, smart foes, social interaction thrown in and an overall feeling of being unwelcome in this dark new world order. In fact, I consider this adventure to be quite deeply-entrenched in the horror-genre - if not for its narrative structure, then for the increasingly disturbing foes the PCs face and the furios final fight that truly deserves the name. However, a warning to players participating in this adventure - you probably will come out of this...changed. And some changes are hard to reverse... My final verdict will be 4 stars, as the map/room-discrepancy makes running a section of this adventure slightly more complicated than necessary.
