A dungeon-based adventure for 1st-level characters.
The ruined siege castles outside Absalom have long beckoned adventurers looking to make a name for themselves. Now an earthquake has cracked open one of these fabled ruins, and its lost mysteries and fantastic treasures lie exposed for the first time in centuries. But the tower's empty halls once more echo with living footfalls, and a new master has claimed the Fallen Fortress as his own. Can the PCs find a way to get inside its shattered walls? What ancient dangers and fresh threats will they encounter inside its crumbling chambers? And will the PCs be able to defeat the current Master of the Fallen Fortress?
Master of the Fallen Fortress is a dungeon-based adventure for 1st-level chararacters, written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world's oldest RPG. It also serves as an introduction to Pathfinder Society Organized Play (Paizo's constantly evolving, world-wide megacampaign). The adventure involves exploring an ancient, ruined tower and rescuing the captured Pathfinder held within.
This adventure is set outside the great city of Absalom in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, but can be easily adapted for any game world. It also contains a preview of the six new iconic characters from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player’s Guide, available August 2010.
Written by Rob McCreary.
This special 16-page Pathfinder Module was initially made available for Free RPG Day on June 19, 2010.
Note: Due to the special nature of this product, it is NOT part of the Pathfinder Modules Subscription.
The Chronicles Sheet and pregenerated character sheets are available as a free download here (1.2 MB zip/PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Master of the Fallen Fortress was Paizo’s “Free RPG Day” entry for 2010, and was released to showcase the new classes from the Advanced Player’s Guide. It’s a short module intended to be completed in one session. The adventure itself is only about ten pages, though there’s a lot packed into that space. The inside front cover is a map, the inside back cover is a PFS Chronicle (I like seeing it embedded), and six pages are devoted to Level 1 pre-gens. It’s a bit hard to find a print copy these days, but it is still available for free download on Paizo’s website.
I ran Master of the Fallen Fortress via play-by-post for six PFS characters. I thought it made for a solid introductory Pathfinder adventure. It has a well-balanced set of encounters and led to one of the most exciting endings to a scenario I’ve ever GM’d. There’s not a lot of setting lore, role-playing, or story-telling in the adventure, but it has a solid concept and it’s easy to play and run. There’s a reason why this one is a classic in the Pathfinder stable of first-level adventures.
SPOILERS!:
The backstory to the adventure is pretty slight, even for a one-shot. The Cairnlands are an area around Absalom (the largest city in Golarion) littered with thousands of wrecked siege castles from centuries of failed attempts to capture the city by various forgotten warlords. One of those siege castles has been magically sealed since the death of its master, but a minor earthquake has caused part of it to collapse. A tribe of troglodytes have moved in, and a Pathfinder Society explorer named Balenar Forsend decided to (foolishly) investigate on his own. But Balenar never returned, and many adventuring groups in Absalom are organising to explore the so-called “Fallen Fortress.”
This is where the PCs come in, of course. This is intended to be the first adventure for a new group, and the module presents three viable adventure hooks to get things started. Importantly for PFS play, the adventurers are not PFS agents—instead, the idea is that the adventurers will be inducted into the Society afterwards (as detailed in the very short epilogue).
The entirety of the adventure takes place at the fortress. There’s an encounter with a group of wild dogs just outside, and then the PCs will need to do some climbing to get inside the partially collapsed eastern wing. The tower has five floors, with all but the top floor having four chambers. The encounters inside are fairly traditional: a giant spider, a shocker lizard, a (burning) skeleton, a giant frog, a javelin trap, and, of course, the troglodytes. Writing it, I realise these are an almost random assortment of foes, and there’s only a brief explanation of why each is there. There’s also only one non-hostile NPC—the missing Pathfinder Balenar. He is a bard and can be useful if rescued, but the module doesn’t give him artwork or a personality description. This is definitely not an adventure with a deep story or connection to setting lore that can be teased out by patient PCs, and I imagine it was written quickly.
Still, the climactic encounter is really exciting. The leader of the troglodytes, a druid named Tasskar, occupies the top level accompanied by his albino cave crocodile. Because the eastern portion of the floor can’t take much weight, there’s a very good chance that some of the PCs (and probably Tasskar) will fall all the way to the ground! 6d6 damage is a *lot* for first-level PCs. When I ran Master of the Fallen Fortress, the collapse and fall took one PC deep into negatives and instantly reduced Tasskar to just a few hit points. There was a race to save the PC’s life while also trying to fend off one very angry troglodyte intent on fighting to the death. Good stuff!
I should note that although this is an introductory adventure and isn’t complicated from the PCs’ perspective, it would be good for the GM to do a little prep before running it. Figuring out the relationship between the different levels of the tower and applying some of the template adjustments to the monsters beforehand will make for a smoother experience.
One really shouldn’t complain about a free product, and Master of the Fallen Fortress is a solid, professionally written- and designed- adventure. Although not the best introductory adventure available, it promises a few hours of fun for all concerned.
Last night I had the pleasure of playing this module. We had a brawler, an arcanist and a bard, and I was playing a melee Spiritualist (Ectoplasmatist). Even though we had two wands of Cure Light Wounds, I can’t really say we were particularly ready for this dungeon crawl of epic proportions for level one characters.
Long story short, you do not play this module for the story. It’s thin and not really existent. The best to see this module, is to see it as an introduction to various kinds of different combats. You’ll come across difficult terrain, grab, reach, swarms, poison and stench amongst others. It’s a great way for new players to learn that fights aren’t always that straightforward and that there are a lot of variables one has to take into account. It’s a great way to learn about combat mechanics without having to worry about a storyline.
It does, however, also mean that it can be quite brutal. There’s a lot of fighting to be done, so chances are you’re going to take quite some hits. You really need to have a lot of healing options. I’d say a wand of CLW is a must if you want to survive this place. Except for a couple of fights, I’d say the fights aren’t challenging. It’s the entire experience and the combination of all of the encounters that make this a potentially brutal and unforgiving module.
Even though it’s lacks a story, I’d still recommend it to others. Those that have seen some of my other reviews are likely to be surprised by this. The reason why I’d still recommend it, is because of how well it teaches new players all sorts of combat mechanics. It’s worth playing this, but be sure to bring enough healing with you!
So when I ran this module I let them keep all the equipment and gold and items they found but didn't give them XP. I ran it as a precursor to the mummy's mask campaign. After the completely the Mod I let them change theirs skills, feats, and anything else with their characters they didn't like. Was and easy way to get people into their characters and playing them properly. I think when you use low level mods in a way like they they can be very helpful to making a long last cohesive campaign.
Perhaps the only all-combat-no-roleplay module. You guys go into a dungeon and kill all bad guys then get the treasure.
Good for playing with your little kids, but as an instruction, it lacks of "RP" elements, unlike Confirmation or Wisp. For veteran players just too simple and cakewalk.
Just an FYI, this module is now under the "Evergreen" rules in the PFS Season 8.0 guide. This makes it perfectly clear that it is replayable at Level 1 infinitely, and can also be played (and/or assigned GM credit) at level 2 a single time per play/GM, per campaign mode (Standard/Core).
Also, since I asked the question a few years ago on the previous page, it assigned 1 XP, 1 PP/Fame, as all Free RPG Modules do (half on slow mode).
