The Forge of Fury

Note: This review contains "spoiler" information.

The Forge of Fury is the second adventure for use with the third edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules and is designed to take characters from levels 3 to 6. Forge is set in the ancient caves of a dwarven fortress which has since been invaded by orcs and duergar. While the adventure has lots of opportunities to introduce players to spelunking skills like Climb and Balance and a fair number of tactical combat opportunities, it lacks the strong central villain that makes so many adventures great.

The first level of Forge is focused on getting into the fortress, past the insidious defenses that the orcs have put in place. The encounters are tough and require a party that can think and sneak as well as hack. The highlight of the level is a rope bridge encounter that makes for a great action piece as the player characters battle orc archers while trying to get across the rope bridge before the orcs send them plunging into a deep ravine.

The lower levels are a mix of hacking against a tribe of troglodytes and a group of duergar who have taken over the forge. The troglodyte encounters are mostly about combat. The duergar provide the player characters with the chance to negotiate or face fighting creatures who can become invisible and cast illusions. The adventure provides good help for the starting DM on adjudicating illusions in the adventure.

The encounters in Forge are quite varied, but they lack an overriding story to pull them together. The heroes get to investigate lots of empty rooms or abandoned dwarven architecture, but the story of the place (which is included in the DM notes) never really gets told clearly. I eventually added some encounters with dwarven spirits to help relate the history of the place. There's a lot of back-story to an undead creature the player characters encounter, but since the creature can't speak, there's really not a simple way to tell its story.

Besides the ogre who is working with the orcs on the first level, there's no major villain in the module. The ultimate encounter, a young black dragon that inhabits the very lowest level, is supposed to be a surprise, but since the dragon is pictured on the cover of the adventure, it wasn't. Oddly, the dragon on the cover is much bigger than the one in the game, which is only Medium-sized. By the time they got to it, my party had an easy time with it.

The maps are well drawn, and provide great encounter opportunities like the rope bridge, windy shafts to climb down, and rushing waterways to move and fight through. I was a bit confused by several tunnels connecting the various levels marked with letters, as I couldn't always find references to them in the text. Keying them in order with the rest of the encounters would have been helpful.

Overall, The Forge of Fury provides a lot of great encounter spaces for action scenes, but lacks a really cohesive goal for the players besides getting in and getting loot. While there's a lot of story in the DM notes about the history of the dwarven stronghold, there's no really simple way of relating that story to the players. For a module designed in part to teach, it might have been nice to help the starting DM not only run the combats, but involve the players in the story as well.

Reviewed by Keith Gapinski

 

Summary

Readability	Good
Playability	Neutral
Production Quality	Good
Value	Neutral
Overall	Neutral Good