Rating: 
Summary: Great, but a little deadly
Review: Again awesome like Sunless Citadel, but this time, instead of being a little boring at the end, there are 3 or 4 places where it's rediculously easy to get needlessly killed.However, since these aren't necessarily going to be encountered, I give it the 5/5 rating.
Rating: 
Summary: Not For Every Party
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Fair and Balanced
Review: As with all modules ever created or that ever will be created, as a DM it is your responsibilty to change some things in this and future modules to your particular adventuring party. This adventure has an outstanding story to it. I droped Blasingdell into my campaign world and my players finished the crawl in about 12 hours actual playing time. I had to adjust the rewards and the plot hooks a bit to suit my friends and thier playing styles, but like I said, this is always a responsibilty I take on with any module. I would suggest this module to any DM who has PC's of level 2 or 3 that need to go up a few more levels.
Rating:
Summary: Forge of Fury huge improvement over last few adventures.
Review: Forge of Fury was a great adventure book to go through. Playing this adventure with my friends provided hours of fun. The past two adventure books Wizards have published were merely decent. This sure beats them out. I strongly suggest that you take the time and money to buy and invest in this book. I garuntee you will like it.
Rating:
Summary: Monty Haul
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Buy-probably
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A very good but long adventure
Review: I ran this adventure with my group and it took us almost 10 hours of play time to get through this adventure. The Dragon at the end was nice but the Roper I didn't think belonged. Great concept.
Rating:
Summary: A very good but long adventure
Review: I ran this adventure with my group and it took us almost 10 hours of play time to get through this adventure. The Dragon at the end was nice but the Roper I didn't think belonged. Great concept.
Rating:
Summary: Return of the Dungeonhack!
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: Return of the Dungeonhack!
Review: 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?
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