Customer Reviews

The Forge of Fury (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying Adventure)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very mediocre adventure in many ways. In comparison to the Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury lacked the fine writing that made Sunless Citadel fun to read as well as to play. There were enough nice things about Forge of Fury that I had to give it four stars.

First, I think it continues in the tradition of Sunless Citadel by showcasing the third edition and by helping the DM with its many sidebars and hints. In fact, I believe it does an even better job of helping the DM with new third edition rules. Secondly, it also showcases many of the creatures from third edition and it makes these creatures intelligent and worthy opponents. Third, it gives the players a slight chance to negotiate with one set of opponents and to surrender to a different one. I love when role-playing adventures actually suggest tactics that don't include "kill everything you see" and Forge of Fire does an excellent job with that. Now, onto the problems with the Forge of Fury.

This adventure brings first edition AD&D to mind with its large dungeons populated by creatures that seem to have little interaction. Though annoying, it's reasonably well explained. Also, a pet peeve of mine with Forge of Fury was the fact that there were so many coins. True, many of them are silver, but it made me wonder where they got the treasure since the dungeon is explicitly not located near any towns. Lastly, in many places the adventure states that treasure is hidden in the room, but doesn't give you a general search DC to use.

This adventure is rather hard, a killer in fact near the end of it. I suggest that a DM give the players many chances to break and rest. Some of the traps and creatures can outright kill players if they don't get chances to stop and get back spells. The cleric's ability to convert spells to healing will come in handy. PCs should be around third level when they begin this adventure. All in all, I recommend this because true to how it's described, it "highlights" third edition D&D.

We had fun with this one. Following rumors of a horde of weapons from a legendary smith, the PCs find themselves in a dwarven stronghold carved inside a mountain. After the dwarves were killed by Orcs, the Orcs took up residence in one section of the dungeon. In the lower levels dwell troglodytes who have a tenuous peace with the Orcs and come and go via an underground stream. The grey Dwarves have taken over the Forge itself and are trying to discover the secret to the smith's weapons.

The PCs went in looking to hack-and-slash their way through the adventure... they learned quickly that would not work. A stealthy approach did work and they made their way through with fewer problems.

This adventure works best if your players aren't always the 'frontal assault' type players. Especially since the game includes a couple monsters that are more powerful than the group is ready for experience wise. Smart players will know they're in over their heads.

This is a good game to make players think tactically because all the DM sidebars provide tips on the tactics the enemies use. And they use every advantage they can think of. The players will be hard pressed to achieve complete success in this one.

Good grief, it didn't take them long to start giving away the store again. The treasure presented in The Sunless Citadel is not bad, but in this adventure you keep running across coin hoards numbering in the hundreds. Plus magic items just laying everywhere. The boxed text descriptions were also just a bit lame sometimes, whereas in the Sunless Citadel, they were generally of superior quality. "There's an orc coming right at you!" What's with the exclamation points, anyway? The assortment of monsters and the logic of their placement within the dungeon was rather poor. Too much of that "lurking in shadows and waiting for passing adventurers" mentality. There is a trap that protects nothing and leads nowhere, yet this dungeon was once somebody's home. Who rigs a fire trap on the empty hall closet in your own house? All in all, this adventure harkens back to 1st edition days of adventure design. With all the improvements in style we've seen so far in the 3rd edition products, its a shame they let this mediocre, hack-n-loot adventure into the market. There are better adventures than this in Dungeon magazine, which costs less and gives you four or five good adventures for your gaming dollars, as opposed to just one.

I've been gaming for a long time. I feel as though I've seen it all, having watched D&D, the grand-daddy of all RPG's, shift and change with the times over the past twenty years or so.

What I saw in Forge of Fury was the kind of stuff that D&D was meant to be. Way back in the 70's and early 80's, D&D was all about a bunch of friends hanging around for a few hours to slay imaginary monsters. It was a kind of therapy for over-worked professionals, and a healthy way to blow off steam from a long work week.

The process was simple: your characters enter a room, you spot the monsters, you kill 'em, you get the loot, and everyone gives each other high-fives. You move onto the next room, same thing. That's what D&D WAS, back then. And thanks to Rich Baker (who brilliantly brought the discontinued Star*Drive setting to life), there my buddies and I were again, killing monsters, high-fiving, and having a good old chaotic time.

The adventure isn't really complex: a large mountain filled with different levels, each one posessing its own dungeon "flavor": one level is orc-infested, the other with Trogolodytes, another with duergar, a "lost level" of ruins, etc. There's even a Dragon (don't worry, I'm not giving anything away, the darn thing is on the cover). Like most dungeon adventures, the players progress appears to be of their own volition, but there's really only one way to progress through the various levels, each one gaining in difficulty and danger. This makes the players happy (because they have a certain "freedom" on each level) and the DM as well (because she has a pretty good idea of where the players are going to send their characters next). It's awfully hard for a player to throw a "monkey wrench" into the plotline, because the plotline is, in itself, to kill more monsters. Ahh, carnage.

My buddies and I ripped through this baby in about twenty hours over the course of a weekend (it's what we affectionately call a "Testosterone Weekend" which we have once or twice a year). So plan on more or less, depending on how much role-playing your players plan on doing in a typical adventure.

I highly recommend this baby to anyone: young players, old players, and even those REALLY old players like my buddies and me. You might even find yourselves hooting, hollaring and passing High-Fives, too. After all, isn't that what D&D is all about?

As dungeon crawls go, this one is a bit better than Sunless Citadel, if only because players have a substantially wider range of options on where they assault and when -- rarely will they be forced into an encounter unless they walk/run/fall/swim into it.

Warnings/Spoilers:
- Players will face lots of creatures with special attacks, abilities and alignment/racial instructions. Larger, more diverse parties are more likely to survive if only by accidentally triggering the instructions.
- Players will encounter all manners of creatures -- Ropers, Succubi, Black Dragon -- but not necessarily very much treasure. Common sentiment (if played straight) will likely be "I went through *that* for *WHAT*?" [Another reviewer modded the treasures fairly extensively to make the party feel adequately rewarded.]
- And Players, expecting a exploratory dungeon crawl, will probably walk/run/fall/swim to their doom (critters have lots of special attacks) at least twice. Like Sunless Citadel, this is a good mod for sadistic DMs.

OK, so lots of people like this type of adventure - hundreds of caverns, sessions of dungeon-crawling, and no need to enhance your characters' personalities. But for me, I think this adventure is just too long.
My players spent around 9 hours on just PART of this adventure, and, as a DM, I found it highly tedious. There was simply no atmsophere! Just room after room of endless orcs, trogs and dwarves, with none having any special or memorable qualities. Like I said, some DMs relish the thought of not putting any role-playing into it - but for me, it just lacked creativity, and I was very relieved when we found an appropiate place to end it.
Also, it's not just the length of this adventure that makes it boring - factors like treasure and magical items are considerably weak, with PCs not gaining enough wealth to actually keep them up to standard with their appropiate levels. Or, they are given the appropiate amounts of treasure, but it's all in silver pieces and weighs a ton.
However, it's not all bad; the map is very well layed out, with plenty of winding tunnels and passages, and everything is very clear (no intense flicking through the monster manual for last-minute stats!). I particularly like the tactics that the orcs use, and the NPCs that Baker has created.
Well there you go; it seems that I have been quite disparaging of this adventure, but I don't want you to think it's all bad. I think at least one of my party enjoyed it, and it does give the DM a break for a while witinh regards to writing adventures.
Just buy it and decide for yourself!

Great concept. Great plot line. Cool monsters. And a Dead level 5 centuar and a dead level 5 elf ranger. So I cheated. I gave them a centuar. But its kind of cool to experiment with that kind of stuff. So I didn't do what the directions said. I used two level 5's instead of 4 level 3's. It should work right? Wrong. This is one of the best premade missions that you can buy. It contains the qualties of an award winning dungeon crawl. The plot line is simple yet captivating. The concept is one of a players favorite. A long make yourself tired up to all hours of the night whack some serious booty and finish it all off with a dragon. The monsters are not the normal kind. Instead of just a goblins town or something there are real races that the player can and might be, a dwarf. There were almost auctual PC's in some of the creatures which I think is one of the coolest things you can have. There is a ruined city that no one knows about until now. The dungeon is wonderfully designed. A half nature half dungeon cave setting. But there is only one drawback which lost this a star. The creatures are just a tad to hard for level 3's. My guys didn't even make it passed the first level and they were level 5's. So although you I strongly urge to buy the module, follow the rules and tell the players they're in for a looooong night. And I personally know a level 9 cleric thats about to avenge a couple of friends deaths. And he's takin his pet dragon with him.

My most common complaints about modules are laziness on the part of the authors and a lack of logic. In this module, it is difficult to find fault in those areas. The creatures are sufficiently realistically placed that it makes sense when you go from one's domain to another's. Another usual complaint of mine is an appendix that you must reference for each encounter. I want all of the stuff I need for an encounter in one place with the appendix simply pointing to the encounter number rather than vice versa. In this module, though, the appendix is sufficiently short that it doesn't make much difference.

As for the adventure itself, players generally have to use a little stealth and/or strategy. Not thinking can get you killed. That's a good thing in my book. I liked the impossibly tough encounter that you just had to avoid since avoidance was well within the capabilities of a reasonably intelligent player.

I was slightly disappointed with the glitterhame encounters (the second part of 5). The way a treasure chest was guarded was silly (don't want to give too much away, but trust me--it was silly). That was really the only major complaint on that level, though.
Also, the designers probably got a little bored while making the foundry. That's always what I think when what you find in a bunch of rooms is derived from the same random table. How hard is it for them to write a sentence or two about 8 rooms instead of a random list? It probably would take about the same amount of ink.

If this module is done correctly, there is no reason the players should get the hoard. (You'll know what I'm talking about.) I like that. Perhaps the designers were grinning a bit thinking, "if I were DM, nobody would be touching this stuff!" Supposedly the encounter level is 4 (and the characters will probably be 4th level when they encounter it), but the players didn't get it in my game. Now they are heading back, though. It's hardly fair--they are 8th level.

This is another wonderful addition to the 3rd edition role-playing experience! My players and I are still in the adventure and we have 2-4th level and 2-5th level players. While the orcs were almost ridiculously easy (because my players found a rather unorthodox way of entering the keep), I'm already seeing that most of the rest of this dungeon should keep them challenged.

I was as disappointed as another reviewer by the fact that the wonderful weapons are so lackluster (I guess after one hundred years most of the better ones would have been removed). They are doing enough traveling back and forth, however, that I'm giving them a 10% chance that any MW or magical blade they find on random encounters in this general geographic area may have Durgeddin's mark and they seem reasonably content with that.

The only other complaint I had was that the module didn't seem quite as user-friendly as Sunless Citadel. As someone else mentioned, the Search DCs are noticeably absent in several instances and I had to come up with my own Random encounter table for the dungeon. I just didn't feel that certain things were explained well enough and others didn't have enough depth.

As with Sunless Citadel, I used the suggestions for getting the characters into the plot. Actually, I used ALL of them because my players really respond well to such things and it pulls them more into the role-play aspect. I especially needed ways to improve their finances since (unlike many others), the first module didn't quite put them at the base-line level of treasure as recommended in the core rules. They spent quite a bit of money on potions after several deaths required resurrections. Now they have a priest with "Brew Potions" so that expense should decline a bit. Sorry...a bit off subject there...

I think that this adventure and the Sunless Citadel are readily modified by tweek-happy DMs but can also easily be played "as is". Overall, we've really enjoyed both of these adventures. The Speaker in Dreams doesn't look too promising, but then (thanks to our traveling encounters), my characters may be high enough level after this to skip it. Since I pretty much let them choose their next direction (well...okay I cheat a little to get them on a preferable track...but it doesn't always work), we'll see...

The Sunless Citadel, though it had its faults, was a decent adventure. It contained really good writing, enough of a storyline to make your own off of, and had a downright cool dungeon followed by a great boss.

Forge contains none of this. They seemed to get lazy with the writing, having bland and boring room descriptions. The dungon was not special or unique at all. Just your generic dungeon/stronghold that leads into your genereic cave. This is something that has been a D&D staple for years but after Sunless's cool citadel, I expected more.

The monster's populating the dungeon go from orcs to trogladyte to giant lizards to halflings to duergar to allips(weird ghost thing) to flying carpets to a Black dragon. These monsters have little in common and appear quite randomly. There is no really good reason for them to be there, which leads me to my next point. The adventure gives very little reason for the PC's to even be there, and I found it difficult to work it into my campaign.

Now for the smaller problems. In an adventure about a smith's many great magical weapons, i was disappointed with a +1 rapier and a dwarven battleaxe. The dragon at the end is way to hard for any party of 4th level PC's. In fact the whole thing was incredibly hard. Each battle I felt that i could have easily killed the PC's but had to restrain and help them. Duergar can be unstoppable if played right, especially when they have magic support.

This adventure provided hours of boredom. The PC's constantly had to ask "why are we here again?" This was a big let down! I'm really glad they are dropping these 'site based' adventures for something new.