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:
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.
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).
