Pathfinder Module: Heroes for Highdelve

Heroes for Highdelve is a module written specifically for Gencon, with slots of uncertain length, that is supposed to be good for introducing new players to Pathfinder. And, if the ads are any indication, for selling Gencon junk.

It borrows the structure that was used with great aplomb in adventures like We Be Goblins! with roleplaying followed by dungeon delving. For new players, for whom the idea is new, this can be a beautiful experience! For old players, though, this is just going to play as "We Be Humanz!" without much of the charm. That said, meeting the [redacted] is sort of cool (again, more cool for new players...) and that's worth something. Plus, you can skip huge chunks of this and make it run in just a few minutes.

Of course, the huge volume of ads for minis of questionable quality eat up space that could have been used elsewhere. As has been mentioned before, the room descriptions are sparse (casualties of low wordcount, perhaps?) and the conclusion got typefit right off the printed page, which is also sort of a travesty.

As you can tell, I have mixed feelings about this. For new audiences, it can be an awesome experience, although you probably need a GM who's been around the block at least a couple times to really make it shine. But that's exactly the situation it's written for! So while it's not as unique as it could have been and it does have shortcomings, it's hard to hold them against it--at least too much. So I guess I'd rate it par. It is perfectly good at what it's designed to do--but it doesn't really succeed beyond that.

Pedestrian adventure whose concept has been successfully executed many times before, this is written with the intent of using the (incorrectly built) pregens that come with the 20 page book.

The book has like 20 pages, 4 of them advertisements for add ons for this adventure, 4 pages for pregens, 1 page for credits, and 11 pages of adventure. Box text for areas consists of sometimes as little as 1 sentence. The entire conclusion is missing. Plot hooks are incredibly dependent on the pregens and do not translate to built characters.

This would be a good way to bring random characters together and start an adventure if We Be Goblins, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Hoard of the Dragon Queen didn't already do it better.

I’ve ran Heroes for Highdelve twice now. Above anything else I have to say this is a short module that is rather easy to prepare. You can finish the adventure in as little as 90 minutes if you and the players really want to. In that case you’ll skip most of the role-playing and get straight to the fights and subsequent dice rolling. The fights can be scary as there can be quite significant hits, but I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it. The final encounter can be scary for any low-level character though.

While it is certainly doable to tackle the module that way, it is my firm belief that you’re missing out on the greatest strength of this module: role-play potential. Especially at the start there’s a lot of opportunity for both the players and the GM to improvise and really get into character. If the players are willing to showcase what their characters are like based on their descriptions and don’t take things too seriously, they can have a lot of fun exploring the festival. This is especially the case if the GM can improvise well. I myself had a blast of a time responding to and setting up all sorts of shenanigans. Considering some of the players had tears of laughter, I think it’s safe to say we all enjoyed it.

The pregens are solid, but not overly special. They do somewhat foreshadow things, but they’re all useful throughout the module. The only minor complaint that I have concerns Meraina and combat situations.. Both times I’ve GMed the module, Meraina ends up being the ‘I got nothing better to do, so I’ll just walk around and hand out potions’. And that’s a shame. While her spells, scrolls and touch make sense considering her persona, I don’t think there’ll be many moments where players will use them because of a variety of reasons. Especially her touch ability is rather risky to use given her hitpoints. So while the spells available to her make sense, I feel like other options could have had more of an impact and would still have made sense on a thematic level. That said, she’s still a solid and fun pregen though.

The first segment, with all the activities, is therefore the highlight of the module for me. While the rest isn’t bad, it just feels a bit more generic and, dare I say, standard. The words railroad come to mind for the second portion and some of the ‘clues’ early on in the third part were a bit too forced. To conclude I think that this module is an interesting option for timeslots that are roughly between 2 and 3 hours. While veterans can still have fun with the role-play options, I’d say this module is better suited for new players and I would certainly recommend it to them.