A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 5–9.
The dwarven sky citadel of Janderhoff in eastern Varisia is one of the least visited settlements in the land, at least by non-dwarves. Nevertheless, the Pathfinder Society has been invited to assist in the excavation of a forgotten ruin within the large underground complex. What the fearless adventurers stand to find within could be the greatest discovery of the Age of Lost Omens, something sure to immortalize all involved in the pages of the Pathfinder Chronicles for ever more. But the ruins under Janderhoff aren't the end of the Pathfinders' journey; rather they illuminate a treacherous path ahead, from the familiar land of Varisia into much more dangerous territory.
Written by Tork Shaw.
This scenario is designed for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This scenario is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
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Having now played it, after I ran it a chowing off years ago: I don't entirely agree with the reviews below. The lore aspect could have focused a bit more on the dwarven aspect of the dungeon, but this is still clearly a dwarven structure that has stood the test of time.
Some encounters are somewhat unusual, and not necessarily what you'd expect in a dungeon like this, but they somewhat make sense. My only beef with the encounters is really the recycling of a same gimmick in multiple encounters, which is tedious, be it the spamming of darkness, causing helplessness, or spamming Confusion effects multiple times during a same scenario is boring.
The puzzle is a special kind of nightmare in this one, and could have used a clear explanation for the GM, although our alchemist burrowed through the rock right after the explanation.
All in all, I like this scenario, but this is a dungeon crawl: Don't expect a social adventure.
Before I sat down to write this review, I glanced at the other reviews below. They’re honestly pretty spot on. It is nothing short of a dungeon crawl where a bunch of different ideas got their own little rooms. These rooms differ so much from one another, that the only way to make it feel like they’re all connected to each other, is by tossing in an elevator. Ironically this actually makes them feel more random and adding specific types of creatures into the mix doesn’t help at all.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the ideas were nice. I enjoyed the concept of having a trap interact with another trap and I suppose the ‘water level’ was suitably combined with what else you’ll encounter there. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like a nice, complete story. There’s little role-play to be done, for a Dwarven dungeon there’s a distinct lack of Dwarven elements and some of the rooms added absolutely nothing to the adventure. Combine that with certain skill-checks being fairly low for a level 5-9 scenario, and you can basically ignore as much as up to complete floors of this dungeon. My investigator with trapspotting basically had a walk in the park.
Finally there’s the puzzle. Now from what I’ve heard and seen I’d say this is probably one of the worst explained puzzles in the entirety of Pathfinder Society. I think that says enough. If you were forced to actually do this step by step, I can understand that this becomes incredibly tedious and time-consuming. This is absolutely terrible for what actually is the final portion of the scenario. Not only is this a frustrating puzzle, but also a huge disappointment and no way to get people excited for part 2 or 3. Thankfully our GM just us describe how we’d go about solving the puzzle and gave it to us.
Honestly this scenario is a mess. The premise of the scenario had a lot of potential, but it’s execution is quite frankly sub-par. It simply does not deliver. Some checks are too easy, tactics aren’t great and contradict each other, the rooms and the puzzle are poorly described and in my opinion the narrative is laughably bad. Normally I’d stay away from using such description, but I would definitely place this scenario in my top 5 of worst scenarios. The only reason I’m still giving it two stars is because of the two nice ideas I described before. Thankfully I now can continue and play a better part 2 and an even better part 3, or so I’ve been told. I can only hope that to be true.
I never really got how all this fit together. Just kinda like some random rooms thrown together with the elevator gimmick. Played this a few weeks ago and can't even remember it......
Only having played this once and not having GM'd it, my experience pretty much completely matched Beckett's experience below (in different games, probably different parts of the world).
The scenario is mostly a dungeon run, and the thing is I usually like that, and for what that is, I guess it's not bad. The bizarro puzzle really threw us off course and the whole table, including the GM, really struggled to try and work out what was going on with all the facts we knew. We stretched every nugget we could've pilfered from that puzzle to get us a little closer to solving the puzzle, and eventually we did, but even then it didn't really make a lot of sense. Usually when this happens, I'm pretty switched on to a GM making mistakes, but my spider sense didn't tingle here - it's just a really, really weird puzzle.
But as I said, the other encounters were reasonably enjoyable for your standard dungeon run. The first set of rooms dragged on a little more than necessary due to what was in there, but authors probably need to get a little creative with those kinds of mechanics, and we didn't let it drag.
Near the end of the scenario:
while we were running low on time, we weren't really sure what else to do down there because it seemed like our mission was completed, but there was one last room we hadn't really looked at. When we got in there, we learned a large amount of "dwarven lore" all at once, and it was hard to even try and take all of it in, because it just wasn't interesting, and wasn't really of much import to our mission. I guess we were sort of asked to keep track of some of this?
So we picked up "The runes represent Sky Citadels in Dongun Hold, Highhelm, Janderhoff, something, something bla-dee-dee-blah.... (everyone scratches their heads trying to get any kind of meaning out of this, wondering why we're here) errr....you take the information back to Sheila Hardmach." and it's at that point we woke up and said YES that sounds like something that makes sense!
I felt like it would take only the most hardcore Golarion lore lovers to have any real appreciation for that ending!
But whatever, the scenario isn't terrible - but don't expect anything amazing in part 1 either.
More dwarven stuff at last. Perhaps finaly that boon from The Beggar's Pearl back in season 1 will actualy be useful in one of the three upcoming dwarven scenarios.
Us dwarfs have been waiting a long time for stuff like this :).
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Looking forward to your first PFS Scenario Tork Shaw.
I am prepping this scenario for my local PFS. Can someone explain the part in the spoiler to me?
Spoiler:
How exactly is the lock at the end meant to work? I understand the moving up and down of columns. Do you assume all colums are down in the beginning? Also, do the PC's become stuck in the pit once they failed three times? These are unclear to me. Thanks.
Hrm. By the looks of it I think this took a bit of an edit from my original so this is purely what I intended for this device -
Spoiler:
you may want to wait for an official PFS ruling... It looks like the passageway locations have been mislabelled in the text: the SOUTH EAST passageway in fact leads "across a short bridge over a deep trench before terminating in a small recess just large enough to accommodate a fully armored dwarf", while the NORTH WEST passageway "winds gradually to the south and is littered with but not blocked by rubble", leading back to the other chambers.
If players fall into the pit beneath the vault lock they can use the trench to return to the circular room (F3a) as per the description (with the directions fixxored).
"The trench extends 30 feet into a vaulted open space beneath the SOUTHERN room, and its walls are fairly smooth, requiring a successful DC 25 Climb check to scale."
The southern room in this case is the vault lock.
Likewise the whole trap description has had a wee bit of an edit too, but yes the original intention is that ALL the columns but that in the single entrance square are down. Only 1 column can be raised at any time, so as soon as a lever is activated to raise an adjacent column the currently raised one drops.
"...causing one to rise to create a new open space and the previously raised column to fall, closing off a previously open space. This movement happens quickly, but an attentive individual can easily step into a new space before a column drops into the vacated space."
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Tork Shaw wrote:
Hrm. By the looks of it I think this took a bit of an edit from my original so this is purely what I intended for this device -
Spoiler:
you may want to wait for an official PFS ruling... It looks like the passageway locations have been mislabelled in the text: the SOUTH EAST passageway in fact leads "across a short bridge over a deep trench before terminating in a small recess just large enough to accommodate a fully armored dwarf", while the NORTH WEST passageway "winds gradually to the south and is littered with but not blocked by rubble", leading back to the other chambers.
Actually the intermediate directions in the scenario are correct. They might have changed the Compass North point on you after turn in.
North is not straight up and down, but right and left. Right being North, left being South.
Spoiler:
Therefore as the scenario states the vault lock is northeast across a short bridge over a deep trench and the way back is southwest
I've been part of Tork's gaming group for several years and he ran this module for us on Saturday.
We're all experienced players but none of us generally plays in PFS and we had new characters for the occasion. Due to our unfamiliarity with PFS modules, having only four PCs, drinking too much, roleplaying too hard, and a litany of terrible dice rolls we had quite a lot of trouble with the encounters and ultimately a TPK. We didn't even make it as far as the puzzle the other reviewers are raving about.
All that aside, I really enjoyed the adventure, particularly since I haven't actually played in years (I'm the GM). It was frustrating, ridiculous, energetic, confusing, and ultimately a lot of fun. That's Tork.
Can anyone tell me if this book contains a map of the town of Janderhoff itself? I'm searching everywhere for one and I can't find one. I would really like to have my all Dwarven group based in Janderhoff, but don't want to make the whole town from scratch.
Can anyone tell me if this book contains a map of the town of Janderhoff itself? I'm searching everywhere for one and I can't find one. I would really like to have my all Dwarven group based in Janderhoff, but don't want to make the whole town from scratch.
It does not contain a city map of Janderhoff. The closest thing we have to such would be the map of Highhelm that appears in Castles of the Inner Sea.
The description of the puzzle maze makes no sense in context of the map provided. I'm frankly disappointed and confused. I know i'm a bit late to the review party here but this alone is enough to give it a huge hit to stars. Im trying to prep this for a con and frankly it's absurd that something that is such utter nonsense made it into a scenario.
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