But not bad. No major plot twists...no major plot, in fact. For an introductory adventure for people new to Pathfinder, it's pretty good. It showcases a bunch of different rules well and shows off the shiny, new character classes as well. Veteran gamers might find it ho-hum, but I think it's good for new players.

The Physical Book
The adventure is a 16-page, full-color, saddle-stapled book. Like all of Paizo's Pathfinder products, the production values of this item is really nice, something which is especially worth noting considering the book was given out for free. The art, especially the cover and the Wayne Reynolds' pieces, is very good. The cartography decent but pretty basic and, to be frank, rather boring - the rooms are almost all octagonal in shape, being differentiated only by the number of doors and the contents of the room.

The Adventure
The adventure, which is designed for 1st level characters, is nothing special nor particularly interesting. The basic premise is that a recent earthquake has provided access to an ancient siege tower which gives the PCs the opportunity to explore. There's a little more going on in the tower, but that at its core is what the adventure is about.

As for what's inside (remember I promised this would be spoiler-free), there's a decent enough reason provided for what's taken up residence within the tower, but for the most part the adventure is pretty much a room-by-room dungeon tower crawl. The PCs move from room to room, killing (or maybe talking) to what's inside before moving on to the next room. While the arrangement of the tower means it's not a linear crawl, it's still a crawl.

The Other Contents
Of the 16 pages, the adventure only takes up pages 2-9. Pages 10-15 contain pre-generated PCs, each of which also serves as a preview of the upcoming Paizo's Advanced Player’s Guide. These are pretty cool and not unexpected since part of the strategy behind Free RPG Day products for many companies is to provide something that also doubles as advertising or preview material.Each of these characters includes a small, iconic-style portrait, and a complete write-up which is quite nice although of limited utility to anyone not actually wanting to run the module using the PFRPG.

The Verdict
The Master of the Fallen Fortress is a decent enough adventure for a free product but nothing I would recommend paying money for or going out of your way to buy unless you're a die hard completest. That said, Paizo deserves some kudos for producing such a good looking free product.

WARNING! This review contains spoilers.

I have GMed this adventure for one group, when all of us were new to PFRPG. I had Gmed 3.0 in the past. It is now my standard introductory adventure I will use for all groups wanting to try Pathfinder.

Visual appeal: Amazing. Full color, pretty art, great layout, very sexy map!

„Out of the box" playability: The GM doesn't really have to do a lot to prepare. It's all there. Some of the monsters use a template, but with the quick rules that is easily taken care of.

Structure: 16 pages and yet there's choices? Believe it! Despite the small scope of the module, the players are not completely railroaded. At several points they actually have two ways to go, or different ways of handling a situation.

Story: The one weakness of the module and the reason why I would like to substract half a star. Some of it doesn't make too much sense. Some of the monsters seem a little arbitrarily placed and there's a couple of logic/consistency issues with the layout of the dungeon. Nothing that isn't easily taken care of (see my post in the discussion), but just enough to make me go „uh, what?“ when I read it the first time.

Suitability as an introduction to RPGs: Very good. You have roleplaying opportunities before the heroes set out, although these have to be prepared completely by the GM. Then there's exploration, fights, skill use and another roleplaying opportunity inside the dungeon. Also, the fights show off several different types of enemies, lots of different abilities, with each fight adding something new in terms of tactics or rules elements.

Extras: The preview of the new classes from the Advanced Player's Guide is a great extra for people who are already familiar with Pathfinder.

Conclusion: Amazing product, especially seeing how it's completely free! Great start into the Pathfinder experience and also a nice kick-off for a Pathfinder Society Campaign. My players loved it and I loved it!

Over all this one was kinda bland. It did not give a good feel of what can be expected in most pathfinder organized play scenarios, (spoiler)
there were no faction missions, no real society mission, and really not a lot to it other then a straight out dungeon run.

It all began with an earthquake and an ancient siege tower that apparently wasn't built to code... a bit crumbled away, providing an opportunity for some neophyte adventurers to go exploring. Needless to say, they weren't the first to take advantage of the crumbled wall.

The exploration of the tower - and dealing with an assortment of creatures that have taken up residence there - provides a neat and compact adventure for starting characters, with some interesting leads to future exploits especially if they choose to take up the introduction to the Pathfinder Society that's a likely reward. Groups wishing to participate in the Pathfinder Society shared campaign could use this to launch their involvement, as it is authorised for campaign play and the required record sheet is included.

The pre-generated characters provided are also interesting, as they are 1st-level examples of the iconic characters from the Advanced Player's Guide - this adventure was released a couple of months prior to this work's publication.

Overall a neat adventure that would make a good start to a Pathfinder campaign, particularly if you intend to use Pathfinder Society adventures or indeed wish to participate in the shared campaign.