Siege of Durgham's Folly

[Messageboard Golem]

An embattled outpost at the edge of the wilderness has finally been overthrown. Strange creatures patrol the land. A local hamlet is in ruins. But just who-or what-has taken over this once mighty fortress? An adventure for 4 to 6 characters level 5 to 8. Contains a strange new set of monsters that will plague your campaign world for years!

 

[GreenPiece]

'The Siege of Durgam's Folly' is a 32-page stapled soft-cover module by veteran author Mike Mearls, written for 4 to 6 characters of 5th to 8th level. So far, this has been Mr. Mearls only adventure published by Necromancer Games. The cover is of the same high quality and style as known from all other publications from NG, very much reminiscent of the old 1e modules.

The maps for this module were made by Conan Venus, who has left Necromancer Games a while ago. Again, his maps are not error-free but still ok and well usable.

The price of $ 9.95 is standard for a module of its size, though I know that many people considered it too small for some reason. WotC modules of the same size and price do not receive this critique for some other reason (which is beyond my understanding).

If you plan to play a character in Siege of Durgam's Folly stop reading now! The following part will contain heavy SPOILERS!

For best chances of concluding this adventure I'd recommend a healthy mix of character classes. There should be at least two fighters or otherwise melee-orientated PCs in the group, as there are parts of heavy fighting that will most likely eradicate any group not prepared to take on large numbers of enemies.

To the story of the module itself: The party gets hired to protect a mysterious caravan that is headed for Durgam's Folly, a remote outpost on the border to the territory of the ogres and other vile races. This fort is somewhat legendary as it has never been defeated or taken by an attacking force.
Unbeknownst to the party there is an old artificer, Theodocious, who conducts secret experiments in the dungeon he discovered below Durgam's Folly. He is working on a new type of soldier that would not feel pain in battle and obey any order. For this reason he has developed a new category of constructs, the Clockworks.

The trouble already starts on the way to this outpost. The party finds the village nearest to Durgam's Folly in ruins with all inhabitants brutally slain or gone. Pushing on to the fort, they are ambushed by a horde of ogres and get the opportunity to find out that Durgam's Folly has fallen to a large band of ogres under the lead of an ogre-mage by the name of Grimulak. Reaching the vicinity of Durgam's Folly concludes part one of the module.

In part two the party has to reclaim the fort, with or without the help from the caravan's personnel. The author has left this part relatively easy. All the ogres are off guard and most of them drunk. Infiltrating the fort shouldn't be too difficult, given that the party makes up a good plan (i.e. find out where the prisoners -if any- are kept and free them, etc). At this point the PCs should still believe that Theodocious and Grimulak are working hand in hand, although this is not exactly the case.
Defeating Grimulak and his band of ogres concludes part two.

Part three leads the party into the dungeon below Durgam's Folly, where they'll find out the bitter truth. Theodocious had enlarged the dungeon part by part and had accidentally opened a passage to an ancient temple of the Demon Lord Orcus. The influence of this evil place made his experiments go awry. The central control unit for his clockwork soldiers, the brain-gear, developed its own consciousness and enslaved Theodocious, now forcing him to build new clockworks all day, mainly from the bodies of the poor souls taken prisoner by the clockworks (they had taken over the fort, then contacted the ogres to reinforce them) or the innocent people taken away by the ogres from the nearby village.
The dungeon itself is tricky and very interesting for both, DM and players, and should turn out to be a deadly challenge for anyone wandering in unprepared.

All in all, 'Siege of Durgam's Folly' is an excellent adventure. Unfortunately, this is not quite obvious when reading through it. The story seems strange at first and the clockwork constructs (there is a 5-page appendix, detailing all different types of clockworks) don't seem to fit a fantasy setting at first glance. On the contrary to (i.e.) Lance Hawvermale who writes in a very lyrical style, Mike Mearls' style is more technical, more DM-orientated. This means that it doesn't read as easy as (i.e.) 'What Evil Lurks' and I guess this is the main reason why this module didn't get the acknowledgement it deserves.
There is one little secret about SoDF: You'll have to play it. I gave it a shot and it turned out to be one of the most fascinating, PC-scaring, ass-kicking adventures I've DMed in over ten years. The atmosphere of horror and helplessness still makes my players shiver when they're thinking back to this experience.

I've rated this great work with only four out of five stars as it takes a half-ways experienced DM to have this module blossom into a five star adventure. I can only recommend this to all DMs out there. Wanna scare the sh*t out of your players? Run 'The Siege of Durgam's Folly'! It's unforgettable.

 

[trancejeremy]

This is a 32 page adventure from Necromancer games, written by Mike Mearls. It's priced at $9.95, which is a pretty standard price for adventures of it's size, but suffers a bit from the fact that Necromancer puts out much larger adventures for slightly more money. On the front page is a password for additional web supplements, but when you go to the Necromancer web page, there are none. So, price wise, it's not bad, but no bargain, either. I paid $4 for it, used.

The outside margin is pretty big, but nothing obnoxious. There's a good amount of artwork, and it's all excellent. Not in an ultra-realistic style, but very well done. Evocative and sets the mood. The kind of art that makes you think, "Wow, that's really nice looking", but it's not flashy. The maps are very clearly done. A bit on the artistic side, but just a bit. Very useable, not like the nearly unreadable stuff WOTC uses.

On the face of it, it's a pretty simple adventure. The PCs are hired as escort for a caravan to a distant outpost/castle called Durgam's Folly. Everything is left very vague, so it's extremely easy to adapt to most worlds. I used it in the Soverign Stone setting with no problem.

The adventure is broken up into 3 parts. The first two parts are pretty conventional. The last part is a bit of a surprise, though it is still pretty much a dungeon crawl.

The first section, or act, as the module calls it, is the trip to Durgam's Folly. Besides the usual encounters and problems characters on a journey has to face, there's a lot of role-playing potential here. The 3 main NPCs of this section are all given excellent descriptions, both physically and in terms of their personality. And all are illustrated (more than once, actually). This is really a big help.

I'm not going to give away any major spoilers, but the only real problem in the first section is that huge difference in EL. Some parts are extremely easy, some are extremely hard. However, as I ran this for PCs that were somewhat lower level than this module was aimed at, it was fairly simple to reduce the challenge of the higher ecounters (one was based just on high numbers of opponents, and one can be hidden from, basically)

The second section deals with the PCs having to retake the outpost. It seems that it was conquered by ogres while the PCs were travelling there.

This is actually relatively easy, because the ogres are not that organized. But there are a large number of them, and it's up to the GM to decide how the fight goes. Rather than a location by location assault, it just describes the locations and then tells you the total number of ogres and other enemies. It's up to the GM to handle it from there. Though several guidelines are given. Again, it's easy to scale for lower (or higher) level characters.

The last section is a dungeon crawl. Once they capture the main areas of the outpost, they have to take back the dungeon area of it. This is really unexpected. Not that it's a dungeon crawl, but what the PCs fight. It seems that the head wizard of the fort liked to experiment with golems. But his latest creation sort of backfired, in a horrible, horrible way. The end result is something out of a horror movie. There are a few fairly gorey illustrations that show the results.

There are some hooks on how to extend the module, but nothing really great. There are some new monsters in the back, but all related to the monsters in the dungeon, which the players might be sick of. So, this module probably doesn't have much use beyond the adventure itself.

All in all, this is an excellent module. Has that nice combination of combat and roleplaying, and is also quite unexpected. Besides being readily useable for most fantasy settings, with just a little bit of tweaking it can be altered to use with Pinnacle's Weird War game. Just change the ogres to Nazis, and boom, it works great. Can probably also work in Dragonstar, or Fading Suns, or even Star Wars. Just make the fort a space station.

The only downside is the nature of the encounter levels. Most ELs range from 5 to 6. But there are a few that are much higher (10-12). The module is recommended for PCs from 5th to 8th level. Those that are 8th level will breeze through most of the adventure, with some stuggle towards the higher ones (though probably not that much). OTOH, at the other end, 5th level PCs will be able to handle most of the encounters, but as written, will be outmatched by a handful. The latter was the case when I ran it, but it wasn't hard to reduce the difficulty of the hard fights (and thankfully, the EL of each encounter is given. Most, but not all, companies do that, but it's still worth mentioning, and very nice).

I think it was a pretty solid A. Not A++, but very enjoyable and well done. On my budget, I would probably balk at full price, but if you have no problems paying $10 for a 32 page adventure, then this is definitely worth the money.

 

[trancejeremy]

BTW, there's no 'H' in Durgam (as the cover pic shows). Not that it matters, and I always wanted to add one.

 

[Psion]

The Siege of Durgam's Folly

The Siege of Durgam's Folly is a mixed wilderness and dungeon adventure written by prolific d20 system author Mike Mearls and published by Necromancer Games. The adventure is designed fo 4 to 6 characters of 6th to 8th level.

A First Look

The Siege of Durgam's Folly is a 32 page sadle-stitched softcover book priced at $9.95 US.

The cover and interior art are handled by frequent Necromancer Games artist Brian Leblanc. The cover depicts a squad of ogres led by an ogre mage issuing forth from the gate of a keep. Though I am not normally a big fan of LeBlanc's art, this cover picture is actually quite nice.

The book has the same high text density that is typical on Necromancer Games products.

A Deeper Look
Warning: This section contains spoilers to secrets behind the adventure.

The namesake of the adventure, Durgam's Folly, is a keep that stands on the frontiers of the hypothetical kingdom. The catalyst of the adventure is a wizard by the name of Theodocious who resides at the keep.

Theodocious has been charged by the king to come up with new magical defenses for the kingdom. He devises a new breed of clockwork golem that can replicate and adapt. The results are all too successful, and the "brain gear" that controls the clockwork creatures achieves self awareness and takes control of the fortress. Unbeknownst to Theodocious, the keep was build on the site of an ancient temple of a blasphemous deity, and the dark magics of the temple twisted his creation.

The brain gear has set about creating more clockwork minions, and enlisted the help of an ogre mage (and through him, some ogres) to assist in its schemes.

The PCs become involved in the adventure when they are hired as part of the guards for a caravan headed to Durgam's folly with some expensive supplies for Theodocious.

The adventure is divided into three acts.

The first act covers the travel en route to Durgam's folly. In addition to getting to know the other caravan guards (the leaders of which have fleshed out personalities), the party will run across some trouble along the way. In addition to some random brushes with some ravenous beasts, the party run across a thorp that has been sacked by some ogres as well as the ogres responsible for the carnage. There are role playing possibilities in here; the guards stumble across a drunken ogres and they players can get some important information out of the ogre if the they can convince the guard to withhold her vengeance.

The second part of the adventure covers the actual siege of Durgam's Folly. The PCs arrive at the keep to find it occupied by the brain gear's ogre magi ally and his ogre minions. The key to the area describes the salient features of the keep, but creatures are not keyed to specific locations. Rather, there are a number of ogres within the keep and it is up to the GM (with a few words of advice from the author) to decide how respond to the player's tactical decisions.

Once the players have made their way within the keep and dealt with the ogres, they can go on to the third act, which takes the party to the dungeons beneath the keep that once housed the workshops of Theodocious and are now the home to the clockwork constructs. This section is a more typical dungeon crawl with challenges keyed to locations. Here the players must deal with the clockwork constructs and some other threats, such as demonic servitors sent by Necromancer Games' favorite demon lord.

The appendices contain a new magic item, and several new creature types that make up the clockwork colony. The clockwork creatures include several distinct types of clockwork creatures that fill different roles, and a clockwork template that is applies to organic creatures that have been converted to into minions of the brain gear.

Conclusions

In essence, The Siege of Durgam's Folly is a fairly straightforward adventure with some additional elements to make it interesting. The first part is a typical wilderness and exploration trek with some good roleplaying potential, the second part is more tactical challenge than room-to-room monster hack, and the third part is a dungeon crawl with some complications against an engaging new foe.

Overall, the adventure appears easy to run but has a lot of good play potential that should satisfy a variety of players.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[DonAdam]

I won't cover what the module is, since every other review has done that. Instead, I'll jump right in.

This is a playtest review... mostly. See below for special considerations and my changes, as I didn't run the module as is.

Biases: I don't like adventures that follow the DMG guidelines, where the average encounter is equal to the party's CR. I find that tedious. I prefer adventures with more difficult combats that require the PC's to use top-knotch tactics. Furthermore, I like a good mix of traps, roleplaying, and fighting in modules, and I like them to be mixed up. I get bored of combat rather quickly if it's just one fight after another. My players spent a whole session planning an attack, and I thought it was much better than just hacking monsters.

Changes:
1) The option pack; go to Necromancer games' website and download the option pack. It makes the first part much harder, but, as you probably guess, I like that. Without it, I would have given this module a 3. I used everything except the wight.
2) I changed the ending scenario to suit my game. This was nothing serious, and by looking at it it may have been easier as written, but note that I did not test it.
3) Nonstandard party: part of the reason my group found this challenging was because they don't have a single classed wizard. Also, their fighter died against the ogres, which actually made it a little too hard.
4) I switched out the evil helper NPC (Gorush Karr) to one more effective and that fit into the campaign. This helped offset the loss of the fighter.
5) My party has very few magic items.
6) I added more monsters than was recommended when the party would spend long periods away. My group is unusually clever (they constantly surprise me) so this worked out well.

Strengths:
-This module has very, very cool monsters; they are original, with a good use of mechanics.
-No gratuitous monsters: you won't find sections that feel tacked on.
-The maze. The maze was awesome.
-Roleplaying opportunities with the caravan group with some well written NPC's.
-Tough encounters; tough encounters rule.
-Good tactics on the monsters (I can add these, but it's nice to have them here).

Weaknesses:
-A little too much combat. Some traps would have filled out the dungeon nicely.
-Hmmmmm, that's about it.

If you like 1e style modules, this one fits. The players loved it.

In terms of value for the money, we played this adventure for around 8 sessions. $10 for 8 sessions is uber cheap.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

SIEGE OF DURGAM'S FOLLY

CAVEATS
This is a playtest review-I ran a group of players through this adventure several months ago. There are fairly extensive spoilers within this review.

OVERVIEW
This is a 32-page adventure for four to six characters level 5-8, published fairly early in the history of Necromancer Games. The adventure comprises only 26 pages of the book, with the remaining pages devoted to new monsters and items, and the OGL.

The adventure begins when the PCs join a caravan bringing goods to Durgam's Folly, an outpost located at the edge of civilization. While the caravan was away on its supply run, the keep has been overrun by ogres led by an ogre mage named Grimulak, and the PCs will need to invade the keep, eliminate or drive off the ogres, and investigate the dungeon beneath the keep, where the true threat lurks. Thus the adventure is divided into three parts: traveling to the keep, the battle for the fortress, and underground exploration.

Formatting and font are fairly standard for Necromancer Games, with the usual skull-filled sidebars, and overall good use of space and font. The maps for Durgam's Folly and the dungeon beneath are located on the inside cover; they are crude and some of the weaker maps I have seen from Necromancer Games.

POSITIVES
1. The highlight of this book for me was the battle to reclaim Durgam's Folly from the ogres. Information on the ogres and their habits in the keep is clearly and simply provided, and the PCs are left to their own devices to explore the keep and defeat them. While a large group of ogres would normally wipe the floors with PCs level 6-8, especially attacking en masse and led by an ogre mage, players with a decent grasp of tactics should be able to come up with a plan to take them on and prevail. For example, the characters may try to poison the ogre ale supply, or free the surviving residents that are being held captive in a tower, and have them help in the battle. They might locate and attempt to assassinate Grimulak, or take over one of the towers in the fortress wall and use it as a bastion against the ogres in the rest of the complex.

2. Another nice surprise is the dungeon beneath the keep, which is crawling-often literally-with bizarre constructs built by a wizard stationed here who was researching cheap, effective devices to replace common soldiers on the walls of fortresses like this one. These constructs have gone rogue, and represent the true cause of the ogre presence. It provides an interesting change in tone from the straightforward ogre battle with its creepy feeling. Players probably won't see it coming.

3. There is an excellent web supplement for Siege of Durgam's Folly as well, which provides additional options for assaulting the keep, such as a hidden underground tunnel that leads into the fortress-but it is undead-haunted, and subject to flooding.

NEGATIVES
1. The maps are a bit of an issue for this book, as they are not always clearly labeled or sensible; for example, the trapdoor to the dungeon is marked in the wrong area, and there is no door connecting the kitchen with the common room where the soldiers would eat. An alert DM should be able to recognize this, however, and compensate for it with relatively little difficulty.

2. At one point in the dungeon, the PCs come across a bound demon, and guess what? If they free him, he will betray them! I can't imagine any PCs in their right mind freeing this demon, so I'm not sure why it was included as-is. A sympathetic human NPC possessed by a demon would have been far more interesting.

PLAYTESTING
I ran my group through this adventure in about five sessions-for a $10 product, that comes to $2/session, which is a good value in my book. The players had little trouble with the journey to the fortress. There is a dangerous battle when a roc attacks the caravan at night, but as long as characters keep out of melee with it and use ranged attacks, they should be okay. An assault by ogres on the caravan was a more difficult challenge, and I toned it down a little to avoid slaughtering the entirety of the caravan NPCs.

The players best liked the attack on the fortress itself, taking on the ogres. They came to fear Grimulak, who would fly overhead and blast them with his cone of cold from invisibility, and this part of the adventure did result in more NPC deaths and several PCs dead or on death's door. They ended up retreating, regrouping, and then leading a second assault-and the ogre mage was able to escape into the dungeon.

The final part of the adventure turned out to be the most difficult for them, and perhaps their least favorite section. They were slightly frustrated by the dungeon maze (none of my players were fans of maze mapping), and some of the constructs down there were excellent at pasting adventurers. I believe I had a PC death or three during the course of this dungeon exploration. Then, once they made it about halfway through, the final confrontation with the mastermind construct was almost an anticlimax due to sound player thinking. Still, I think they enjoyed it to some extent, and the parts they didn't care for were in my opinion more due to dubious player tactics and decisionmaking than any inherent fault of the adventure itself.

RECOMMENDATIONS
This is a short but sweet adventure that is easy to read through and run on short notice. I have a particular fondness for "base assault" type adventures where PCs are given an objective and then given free reign as to how to accomplish it, since it provides both a structure for the adventure and scope for the players to achieve it as best suits them. Some parts of the adventure are a bit rough, notably the maps and some of the stuff in the dungeon, but a thoughtful DM should be able to adjust this with minimal effort. There is also excellent web support for the adventure. All in all, I definitely recommend this to any group not afraid of some serious combat.

In addition, the constructs have significant longevity, and I can see exporting them to another adventure, such as Rappan Athuk. These creatures are detailed in the Tome of Horrors by Necromancer Games as well as here, so you won't need to keep this product handy if you wish to do so.