GameMastery Module J2: Guardians of Dragonfall (OGL) (based on
4
reviews)
Paizo Publishing, LLC
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A journey adventure for 11th-level characters.
Auranorex, the greatest gold dragon in the world, is dead and his kin are looking for answers. To uncover the mystery of his demise, the heroes must travel to the one place forbidden to all mortals: the dragon graveyard.
Guardians of Dragonfall is a mid-level adventure written by Anson Caralya that has the players investigating the untimely death of a dragon. Violating the dragon graveyard is a death sentence and the heroes must risk their very life if they are to uncover the secret behind Auranorex’s fate.
GameMastery Modules are 32-page, high-quality, full-color, OGL-compatible adventures for use with the world's most popular fantasy RPG. All GameMastery Modules include four pre-made characters so players can jump right into the action, and full-color maps to enhance play.
This story is littered with some unique, engaging encounters
(particularly encounter areas) and some interesting monsters. For
that, I appreciated.
However, there were two things about it that bothered me:
1. Cliches. The idea of a sacred dragon's graveyard is overtired and
has not been dealt any new twists here. But it's a cool cliche so
I can forgive that. Unfortunately, the accompanying "wise old man
needs you to save the world in secret" premise is even more
ancient than said wise old man. It has been delivered in this mod
in a manner that I found completely flavorless.
2. Wrong party level. I had a really hard time getting past the idea
that a sacred, uber-secret dragon's graveyard is accessible to
11th level PCs. It may seem like a simple thing but it really
sabotaged the story for me. It not only tarnishes dragonkind but
also insults the players. This story would 100% better if it was
targetted at near-Epic level characters with the challenges
augmented to boot. The author clearly has a good grasp of how to
make things interesting at high APLs, why clamp it so low?
Still I'm starting to sound really negative. There are some great
ideas in this mod. It's just the composition that ruins it. If you
buy this, do it for the cool encounters (many of which can be pillaged
and put into other contexts). It's worth your money just for that.
Good but not epic is the most condensed review I can give of the module. While the module is a good read (I must confess I haven’t run it) it just lacked the epic feel I was expecting. The Dragonfall in the title is a dragon graveyard, but not just a dragon graveyard, THE dragon graveyard. Somehow I just didn’t get that epic feel from it.
Spoiler:
The Dragonfall just didn’t feel epic. Firstly the construct that guarded it just seemed to weak to me. They are supposed to have kept this legendary dragon graveyard safe for millennia against powerful adventurers, mages etc and they are only challenge rating 8 and 9? Also their look and concept as flying construct snakes really did nothing for me. The art for them did not help. I am aware that this is very subjected but as monsters they left me cold.
The whole adventure lacked this feel of epic-ness. While the villains where cool, the various dragons in particular, I didn’t really believe that they could have infiltrated and overthrown the worlds only dragon graveyard.
The locations in the module were awesome but I didn’t feel they were used well enough. The Paragon Hall has an amazing list of all the most powerful dragons that ever lived and you end up fighting an unrelated dragon.
I also was want desperately wanting to know more about the graveyard rooms. I also had trouble believing that these rooms would be enough to contain all the dragon skeletons from each colour. It was little aspect like this that really brought down my enjoyment of the module.
Having said the negative many of the encounters where individually great. And if I don’t use the entire module I will definitely lift some of the encounters from it.
This is a pre-play review, since it'll be a while before my players at as far as Dragonfall. Nonetheless, I've read and assessed the module and have to give due praise.
All the usual Paizo features are to be found, good production values, nice art and a solid layout for combat statistics and such.
In addition, it has a fairly grand feel to it all, if perhaps not such a great incentive on its own to go on this 'suicide run' to Dragonfall itself, but I think by 11th level the DM can contrive good reasoning for it.
The behind-the-scenes notes are appreciated, as is the link to Pathfinder #4. I feel that Galorian is shaping into a very nice setting and this product highlights that.
While I can't account for the balance of encounters, they seem fair and well-designed. High-level magic and monsters feature as you'd expect however, so good DM management is a must. But honestly it's not something that should be an issue by 11th level.
Overall I can't fault it. I'm reluctant to over-rate and praise products needlessly. But for the price, page-count and intent, GoDF fulfills all its goals very very nicely. Highly recommended.
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