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GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL)

4.60/5 (based on 34 ratings)
GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL)

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A dungeon adventure for 1st-level characters.

The town of Falcon's Hollow needs a miracle.

The plague has come to the town of Falcon's Hollow, and not even the town's priest can abate its wretched course. With the coughs of the sick and the wails of the dying echoing through town, the local herbalist uncovers a cure, but she needs some brave heroes to retrieve the ingredients. Finding the cure means risking the dangerous Darkmoon Vale, infiltrating a witch's haunted hut, and delving the ruins of an abandoned dwarven monastery.

Hollow's Last Hope is a wilderness exploration and dungeon adventure for 1st-level characters, compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. This sixteen-page adventure includes details on the haunted forest and deadly ruins that hide the key ingredients to the town's salvation. Do your heroes have the skill and courage to find the cure in time?

This adventure can also be run as a prelude to GameMastery Module D1: Crown of the Kobold King.

Written by Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider.

This product was originally made available for Free RPG Day, June 23, 2007.

Pregenerated characters for this adventure are available for free download: 320KB PDF

The print edition of this product is limited to one per customer. This adventure is now available for free download: 2.9 MB zip PDF

DriveThruRPG: This product is available as print-on-demand from DriveThruRPG:

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A Strong (and free!) Introductory Adventure

4/5 —

NO SPOILERS

Hollow's Last Hope is a 16-page module for first-level PCs that was released as part of Free RPG Day in 2017. It can be run as a standalone adventure or as a prelude to the first full adventure released in Paizo's module line, Crown of the Kobold King (the two adventures use the same setting, but have different plotlines). I ran this as part of my "Roots of Golarion" campaign and thought it was a solid adventure in the classic "quest through the wilderness" vein. The writing is really good, though the interior artwork is more of a mixed bag. There are hundreds and hundreds of modules out there for first-level groups, and I can't say Hollow's Last Hope is necessarily among the best of the lot. On the other hand, it has the advantages of being completely free, is set in Golarion, and serves as a perfect introduction to several other Pathfinder modules. It's definitely worth a look.

SPOILERS!:

It's a bit weird to be writing this review during the coronavirus pandemic, as the premise of Hollow's Last Hope is about a disease known as the "wheezing death". Also called blackscour, the disease has infected dozens of people in the small logging town of Falcon's Hollow. The PCs will have to undertake a quest for ingredients necessary to cure the disease, and this will take them into the depths of the dangerous forest known as Darkmoon Vale.

The module gives the GM several suggestions on why PCs might have come to Falcon's Hollow and how to get them generally interested in seeking a cure for the plague. The adventure proper begins with the PCs waiting in line to visit a local healer and herbalist named Laurel. Laurel's shop, Roots and Remedies, is nearly overrun with people seeking folk remedies to help deal with blackscour. The module contains a good description of the shop and of Laurel's personality. After some conversation, she'll reveal that her grandmother's herbal recipe book contains a purported cure for blackscour--but the ingredients are incredibly rare. The curing brew would require Elderwood moss which only grows on the oldest tree in the forest, a specially pickled root called rat's tail which might be in an old witch's hut in the forest, and ironbloom mushrooms which are most likely found in an abandoned dwarven monastery on the far side of the forest. The "find three ingredients to cure a disease" is a bit video-gamey as a plot device, but otherwise the writing is strong in the opening scene.

The town of Falcon's Hollow is not mapped or really described here, so having Crown of the Kobold King or Towns of the Inner Sea (which contains a full gazetteer) is helpful in case the PCs decide to buy supplies or try to gather more information about these places before departing. The module does make provision for the PCs to find an experienced woodsman named Milon Rhoddam who can give them more specific advice on where to find the cure ingredients in Darkmoon Vale. The little scene also serves to introduce the Lumber Consortium, which is good if the GM plans to run other adventures in Falcon's Hollow.

The PCs will need to plot their own course through Darkmoon Vale, and paying attention to overland speed and terrain modifiers is crucial because the group is on a time limit: every day, a randomly-determined number of residents of Falcon Hollow die from the disease (until it "runs its course")! The three destinations can be approached in any order, and the module includes a good section on random encounters--only a couple of the encounters are combat-based, which I like. There's also one fixed encounter as the group travels through the forest--a fight against a hobgoblin ambusher.

The first ingredient, Elderwood moss, is found in a clearing deep in Darkmoon Vale. A new monster called a tatzlwyrm guards the tree. The back of the module contains a bestiary entry for the tatzlwyrm; it's a sort of wingless drakonkin that looks like a snake except for the fact that it has arms. The idea comes from real-world mythology, but I didn't find it particularly interesting and a standard constrictor snake would have worked just as well.

The second ingredient, pickled rat's tail, requires finding the hut of a witch named Ulizmila. Ulizmila isn't home when the PCs arrive, but it's good for the GM to play up her legend as she's further developed in other descriptions of the region. Once the PCs start snooping around, they'll be the victim of a surprise attack by the hut's guardian: an animated object in the form of a cauldron, complete with the swallow whole special ability! It could come across a little cheesy, admittedly, but I liked it anyway. There's a unique magical item to be found in the hut called a soulspeaker, and I particularly like the (ghastly) artwork for it.

The third and final ingredient, an ironbloom mushroom, is the hardest to obtain. This requires searching the grounds of a ruined dwarven monastery. There's really nice exterior shot of the monastery that perfectly fits the gridded map on the inside front cover. Several encounters are here, including wolves, a monstrous spider, a kobold rogue, darkmantles, a bat swarm, some traps and hazards, skeletons, and the "boss" of the module, a worg named Graypelt. Honestly, I think it's probably too many encounters in too quick of succession. This is a module designed for first-level characters, so it's very possible some of these PCs will be walking around with just 6 or 7 hit points as a maximum. Smart and cautious groups will explore the monastery over a period of days so they can heal overnight, but the fact that there's a disease raging in Falcon's Hollow could pressure groups to press on. In general, I really like tough decisions in gaming and external time constraints to keep the tension high--but I think for an introductory adventure like this, it's probably too much. I do like how much lore about Torag and Droskar the monastery subtly introduces. As a side note, the GM will have to decide how to address the connection between the monastery and Crown of the Kobold King, as the monastery has the entrance to the subterranean dungeons in that adventure.

Hollow's Last Hope is an adventure in the classic mode. As a standalone module, it's a solid product and would work well to introduce new gamers to the genre (with perhaps some subtle guidance from the GM about the need to heal in the final section). And as a free product, you can't beat the price! The module works even better as a prelude to the multiple other Paizo modules that use Falcon's Hollow and Darkmoon Vale as a setting. With those adventures as the skeleton of a homebrew campaign, a budding GM could tell some great stories and introduce players to their own little piece of Golarion.

Confused about 3.5 references

—

I just picked this up to try out GM'g a game for my son and his friends. I've seen several references (not just to this product, but elsewhere on the site) to "3.5," "3.5 conversion," and the "3.5 core rulebook." I'm confused by these references. I thought that Pathfinder RPG didn't revise their rules like D&D did... unless the 3.5 references are referring to how to play D&D characters with this module? Just trying to understand the difference between Pathfinder RPG and 3.5...? Thanks!

Great adventure. Not for beginners.

5/5 —

When i downloaded this lovely adventure i realised two things. First, there are some old skills that don't fit into the 3.5 edition of the core rulebook, which means, that you have to edit some of the characters.
Second, this adventure is not for 1st-level characters, unless they are particularly skilled in combat maneuvring and can manage to slay a worg after having dealt with two wolves. And the treasure given is too much for a 1st level character. Thats what i thougt anyway.

But the plotline is great, and it has a lot of ideas for new adventures. It would be a really great starter adventure if it wasn't that challenging.

Thanks for the great adventure - and totally free!

ok for a free product

3/5 —

Terribly generic, and doesn't make much sense, but I guess you shouldn't expect a lot from a free downloadable product.

Great Intro and Can Lead to a Pretty Long Story Arc

5/5 —

To give a little background, I basically picked up this freebee module to give GMing a whirl and introduce some of my friends to Pathfinder. Although this module can be hard to get your PCs hooked into,once they are in it functions as a great level 1 adventure. Both the random encounters and the different areas give a lot of variety for introduction to mechanics, and it's a heck of a lot of fun to GM through these challenges.

From a GM perspective it's well laid out and doesn't leave a newbie GM hanging to do too much work. If you are running this as a Pathfinder campaign instead of 3.5, the conversions may take a little time but overall nothing too difficult.

The best parts about this module are that it's directly connected to D1 and it's free! If your party ends up like mine and is itching to continue playing their characters, you have D1, D1.5, E1 and D4 to keep the story rolling in Falcon's Hollow.

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Sovereign Court

I just wanted to say I think it's awesome that you guys are releasing your free game day modules for free dowload. I don't have a LGS that participates so to get them from you guys online is so sweet, you guys are a great company that have turned me into a loyal Paizitte
Grand Lodge

On a quick note, the copy I downloaded through the "My Downloads" link had a few pages flipped. The back cover shows up a few pages early in the middle of a stat block (if I'm remembering correctly).
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Andrew Betts wrote:
On a quick note, the copy I downloaded through the "My Downloads" link had a few pages flipped. The back cover shows up a few pages early in the middle of a stat block (if I'm remembering correctly).

Thanks for letting us know—we're fixing this as we speak.

Dark Archive

Abyone seen or have a print copy of this for sale?
David Wickham wrote:
Abyone seen or have a print copy of this for sale?

Nope. Recently tried all sorts of combinations on ebay.

It'll turn up. I'm going to look around at GenCon for it.
Dark Archive
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

I have one. Very nice. Yes, for the small price of let's say the distilled spirit of 34 imps it can be yours.
Dark Archive
damnitall22 wrote:
I have one. Very nice. Yes, for the small price of let's say the distilled spirit of 34 imps it can be yours.

All of my imps were in their raw natural state until I had to let them go in Korvosa...

but if you seriously have one...
Dark Archive
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

Well I do have one. However I was joking about the distilled Imps.
Dark Archive

do you want to sell it? if you do how about emailing me at da_wickham at yahoo dot com
Sovereign Court

i tried to download but acrobat does not accept it for some reason.
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Cold Steel wrote:

i tried to download but acrobat does not accept it for some reason.

I'd need more specifics on what's happening to definitively solve your problem, but my first suggestion would be to ensure you have the latest version of Adobe Reader.

I just have to say I've been a DnD fan since 2ed, but Pathfinder has totally stole my attention fast. I love what you are doing with the game, and I love how you make it so easy for people to switch and get involved-without hurting your pocket book. Keep it up Paizo, and you'll soon have another band of faithful players.

wat does OGL meen?
Thinharath wrote:
wat does OGL meen?

Open Gaming License

Just finished running this for 1st and 2ed level Pathfinder group. I dropped it in as a diversion during a quest. It worked out great. Thanks.

Any chance this module is going to see another print run at some time in the future?
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Vertelemming wrote:
Any chance this module is going to see another print run at some time in the future?

If we ever do look at updating some sold-out Modules (and updating them for the Pathfinder RPG), this one would almost certainly hit the short list for consideration. But there are no current plans to do that sort of thing.

Three notes:

1) In the entry for the animated cauldron (page 10 of the PDF, page 8 by numbering), it is described consistently as being made of iron except in the "Swallow Whole" section, which refers to "the stone of the cauldron".

2) In the section describing exits from the yard of the dwarven monastery (page 11 of the PDF, page 9 by numbering), the double doors are described as being to the east - they're to the west.

3) On the map, there is an entry for "Elara's Halfway House" but no explanation as to what this is. I did some wiki-searching and found a few notes, but coming to the PDF with no knowledge of the campaign setting, it was very confusing to find a map entry with no reference or explanation in the text.

Niggles aside, my group (including my 12-year-old brother) really liked the module, though they thought the cauldron was unreasonably tough for a party with no spellcasters due to its hardness. The flavour, though, especially at the dwarven monastery, was fantastic and they found it very evocative. Amazing - and it's free!
Dark Archive
Sir Ophiuchus wrote:

Three notes:

1) In the entry for the animated cauldron (page 10 of the PDF, page 8 by numbering), it is described consistently as being made of iron except in the "Swallow Whole" section, which refers to "the stone of the cauldron".

Bloody cauldron ate my Cleric... *pout*

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS MODULE!!

(there's no review section I can use to extoll upon its virtues, so here I am in the comments)
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
Mikhaila Burnett wrote:
(there's no review section I can use to extoll upon its virtues, so here I am in the comments)

Is so. Go to the product page instead of the discussion page and you'll see it before the messageboard posts at the bottom of the item description.

Sir Ophiuchus wrote:
3) On the map, there is an entry for "Elara's Halfway House" but no explanation as to what this is. I did some wiki-searching and found a few notes, but coming to the PDF with no knowledge of the campaign setting, it was very confusing to find a map entry with no reference or explanation in the text.

Hollow's Last Hope (D0) was written as a prequel to Crown of the Kobold King (D1). As I recall, Elara's Halfway House is a site that is referenced in Crown of the Kobold King and there's an NPC with a direct tie to the site.

Wolf Munroe wrote:
Hollow's Last Hope (D0) was written as a prequel to Crown of the Kobold King (D1). As I recall, Elara's Halfway House is a site that is referenced in Crown of the Kobold King and there's an NPC with a direct tie to the site.

Ah, thanks. Yes, there is a bit of tension if the module is run as an unrelated stndalone entity, though it still works. Thanks for clearing that up!

Sir Ophiuchus wrote:
Wolf Munroe wrote:
Hollow's Last Hope (D0) was written as a prequel to Crown of the Kobold King (D1). As I recall, Elara's Halfway House is a site that is referenced in Crown of the Kobold King and there's an NPC with a direct tie to the site.
Ah, thanks. Yes, there is a bit of tension if the module is run as an unrelated stndalone entity, though it still works. Thanks for clearing that up!

Just ran this one for my GF and she LOVED it. As a D&D player since the old Erol Otis Redbox, she's finally getting back into d20 style games with me with PF.

Her party was 2nd level. (We did some PFS adventures in Absalom as an intro so she could learn how to play the game better.) But they had a blast and worked to help with the diseased before heading out to the Monestary. We had a ball with the undead kobold (talked to the familiar with speak/ animals) and now has the fox as a companion.

And, after the attacks by the ranger's hawk, the bat swarm, the darkmantle, and the spider...the party's fighter has a irrational (or maybe rational) fear of things that drop on you from above...

She does, however, want to return to Falcon's Hollow in a few levels to have some "corrective discussions" with Gavel Threed and his boys.

(Really, how does this guy survive past Carnival of Tears. Even at his level, I can't imagine any "good" party avoiding killing this bastard and his boys. Especially if they play COTKK...)

This was my first module in my first campaign. My players and I really enjoyed it. We even had fun with random encounters in The Woods. I even sprouted some potential side quests and returning villans. This is a great first-timer module, plus it runs nicely into D1, D1.5 and D4. My only caution is that there's some work to be done if you're using the Pathfinder Core Rules.
Nicodemis Finch wrote:
This was my first module in my first campaign. My players and I really enjoyed it. We even had fun with random encounters in The Woods. I even sprouted some potential side quests and returning villans. This is a great first-timer module, plus it runs nicely into D1, D1.5 and D4. My only caution is that there's some work to be done if you're using the Pathfinder Core Rules.

What kind of work? I know this was written for 3.5 but I've actually been looking at this as my first attempt at DMing Pathfinder.

Dark Archive

It's the only thing I am missing to complete my collection. I have all of the game mastery modules and every Pathfinder product.I have been looking for a hard copy of it for a while.
Sovereign Court
bigkilla wrote:
It's the only thing I am missing to complete my collection. I have all of the game mastery modules and every Pathfinder product.I have been looking for a hard copy of it for a while.

It's good too. You could try printing the pdf?

Liberty's Edge

I am going to use this as a start for my campain witch will take place in Darkmoon Vale. I plan to use Paizo products as well as a few homebrew.

I was wondering if is posible to obtain a copy of the maps in the pdf files without the text added on - I going to use VTT for my campain and that would be a great help to me and I am sure LOTS of others. I have tried to copy image, however this does not appear to be a layered image. Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks,

Arbarth
Old School Gamer
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Arbarth wrote:

I am going to use this as a start for my campain witch will take place in Darkmoon Vale. I plan to use Paizo products as well as a few homebrew.

I was wondering if is posible to obtain a copy of the maps in the pdf files without the text added on - I going to use VTT for my campain and that would be a great help to me and I am sure LOTS of others. I have tried to copy image, however this does not appear to be a layered image. Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks,

Arbarth
Old School Gamer

This product was made before we started requiring layered maps from our cartographers, so even we don't have what you're looking for.

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
Arbarth wrote:

I am going to use this as a start for my campain witch will take place in Darkmoon Vale. I plan to use Paizo products as well as a few homebrew.

I was wondering if is posible to obtain a copy of the maps in the pdf files without the text added on - I going to use VTT for my campain and that would be a great help to me and I am sure LOTS of others. I have tried to copy image, however this does not appear to be a layered image. Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks,

Arbarth
Old School Gamer

Try using Some PDF Extractr. That is what I use and it usually works. btw I use Maptool + Skype.

Good luck and have an awesome campaign!
Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

This tutorial may help.
Liberty's Edge
Vic Wertz wrote:
This product was made before we started requiring layered maps from our cartographers, so even we don't have what you're looking for.

Thanks for the info - I will figure out something - at least I will not keep banging my head about this direction.

Arbarth
Old School GM
Silver Crusade

Hi,

Anybody have a new or great copy of GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL) that they are willing to part with? If so, e-mail me with condition, and price.

best regards,

Bel. :)
Dark Archive
Belnor wrote:

Hi,

Anybody have a new or great copy of GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL) that they are willing to part with? If so, e-mail me with condition, and price.

best regards,

Bel. :)

They are pretty hard to come by nowadays. I just picked up a copy about 3 weeks ago from Knoble Knight Games for 40$. They are out of stock atm but if you make a account with them they will email you when they get them in.

Silver Crusade
bigkilla wrote:
Belnor wrote:

Hi,

Anybody have a new or great copy of GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL) that they are willing to part with? If so, e-mail me with condition, and price.

best regards,

Bel. :)

They are pretty hard to come by nowadays. I just picked up a copy about 3 weeks ago from Knoble Knight Games for 40$. They are out of stock atm but if you make a account with them they will email you when they get them in.

Thank you Bigkilla. :)

Bel.
Dark Archive
bigkilla wrote:


They are pretty hard to come by nowadays. I just picked up a copy about 3 weeks ago from Knoble Knight Games for 40$. They are out of stock atm but if you make a account with them they will email you when they get them in.

*whistles*

Wow for a free module, or $5 after free game day, thats quite a climb in price.....almost worth it to sell it. Almost.

Well, it's OOP AND a great Module.

carmachu wrote:
bigkilla wrote:


They are pretty hard to come by nowadays. I just picked up a copy about 3 weeks ago from Knoble Knight Games for 40$. They are out of stock atm but if you make a account with them they will email you when they get them in.

*whistles*

Wow for a free module, or $5 after free game day, thats quite a climb in price.....almost worth it to sell it. Almost.

Liberty's Edge

Ummm. PDF is free as well.
Dark Archive

Anybody have a new or great copy of GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL) that they are willing to part with? If so, e-mail me with condition, and price.

Thanks
Silver Crusade
edmud wrote:

Anybody have a new or great copy of GameMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope (OGL) that they are willing to part with? If so, e-mail me with condition, and price.

Thanks

Edmund, thanks for copying and pasting what I wrote and then using it for all your subsequent posts. One word: LAME.

Hi! I just downloaded this module and I can't wait to run it.

The maps are awesome, but it seems I cannot use them as players' handsouts: all of them are keyed with numbers and even the secrets doors are revealed!

Any idea how I cau use these maps anyway? Or any software I can use to delete the numbers and the secret doors symbols on the pdf?

Thanks!
Grand Lodge
Vassago Embrace wrote:

Hi! I just downloaded this module and I can't wait to run it.

The maps are awesome, but it seems I cannot use them as players' handsouts: all of them are keyed with numbers and even the secrets doors are revealed!

Any idea how I cau use these maps anyway? Or any software I can use to delete the numbers and the secret doors symbols on the pdf?

Thanks!

GIMP or Photoshop

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Vassago Embrace wrote:

Hi! I just downloaded this module and I can't wait to run it.

The maps are awesome, but it seems I cannot use them as players' handsouts: all of them are keyed with numbers and even the secrets doors are revealed!

Any idea how I cau use these maps anyway? Or any software I can use to delete the numbers and the secret doors symbols on the pdf?

Thanks!

The PDFs we produced in the past several years generally have maps that can be extracted without the room labels and such, but this was one of our first PDFs, and the labels are inextricably part of the image. So you'd need image editing software.

This is a really great module.
Many a round applause for the great work from Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider.

As for Map extraction,
use the free adobe acrobat reader, goto the page with the map, go Edit-> "Take Snapshot" and click drag the box over the desired map.
Open MSpaint or Photoshop, and paste it in and done as is.
If you want the room numbers removed, it'll require some editing. I would recommend the clone tool in photoshop to make it not as apparent.
Azure_Zero wrote:

This is a really great module.

Many a round applause for the great work from Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider.

As for Map extraction,
use the free adobe acrobat reader, goto the page with the map, go Edit-> "Take Snapshot" and click drag the box over the desired map.
Open MSpaint or Photoshop, and paste it in and done as is.
If you want the room numbers removed, it'll require some editing. I would recommend the clone tool in photoshop to make it not as apparent.

Thanks a lot mate, really! That worked amazingly well!

Your welcome.

Did you use MS paint or Photoshop to edit the map.
I personally use the clone tool in Photoshop (even though it's a really old version, like mid 90's)
Azure_Zero wrote:

Your welcome.

Did you use MS paint or Photoshop to edit the map.
I personally use the clone tool in Photoshop (even though it's a really old version, like mid 90's)

I used Paint, as I do not have Photoshop!

Scarab Sages

Looks like I am not the only one that is missing a print edition of this to complete a collection.

Thanks for the Noble Knight Games tip btw. Checking it out.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Last year I bought a copy on Amazon for $7.88 from a seller. I just checked and there are no copies for sale right now but they do appear sometimes. Just check each day and one will be for sale. The price will vary. Buy it quickly because they go fast.
Dark Archive

They are pretty hard to come by nowadays.I paid 40$ for mine from NobleKnight.com.If you make a account with them you can set up a email notification and they will email you whenever they get a copy in.
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