Keep on the Shadowfell – Crypt of the Everflame: Smackdown!

This is a review of the two first modules for 4th edition Dungeon’s and Dragons and Pathfinder called Keep of the Shadowfell and Crypt of the Everflame, respectively. I will abbreviate each one KS and CE throughout the rest of this review.

SPOILER ALERT!!! This post contains significant details about these modules. Do not read this if you don’t want to know!

Packaging and Materials:
Keep of the Shadowfell – Paperboard folder format, an 80 page booklet for the module itself, a 16 page quick-start guide (since the 1st module was released before the official rule books were released) and 3 fold out grid maps for 6 maps. The 16 page quick start guide includes rule explanations specific to players and starter characters to use to begin playing the module. The 80 page booklet has quick start rules for the game master, hooks to start the game and very detailed information about each encounter in the game including stat blocks for every creature encountered and mini-maps for create placement.

The amount of materials provided by WotC in this module is significant. While this is due in part to the fact it was released before WotC released the core rulebooks, it has a definitive advantage in materials including the foldout maps.

However, there is a lot to be said in simplicity in packaging. The materials advantage in KS did not come without a price, literally. The booklets included are printed on material no better than magazine paper. They are quite frail and after running KS a single time, I need to exercise care to avoid ripping the cover off the 80 page booklet.

KS does provide significantly more materials than its CE competitor but this was at the expense of quality AND price. The quality of the materials for KS just sucks. What is the price for the suck-o-rrificness? It is $30.

Crypt of the Everflame – Paizo stuck with their traditional 32 page booklet format for their modules. They have no additional materials beyond this. The 32 page booklet has a stiff paperboard high gloss cover and the pages themselves are high quality. It has maps included in the front cover and in the module pages itself. The last page has the typical quick start characters seen with Paizo’s 3.5 modules. (Though it was disappointing to see Seoni the Sorcerer swapped out for Ezren the Wizard.) The encounters have stat blocks for the creatures though I suspect this is because Paizo had not released the Bestiary yet. Also, there are sidebars throughout the module to point out rule changes worth taking note with respect to the encounters.

CE is light on materials though this is the Paizo module M.O. so it is not unexpected. I was particularly disappointed with the placement of the map of the second level of the dungeon. It was placed in the middle of the module making it difficult to flip back to as the adventurers navigated it. They could have easily, EASILY put it on the inside back cover of the module. What did they put there instead? It was the artwork from the cover without text. Although there are fewer materials, it is noticed in the price and the higher quality of the module materials. CE retails for $14.

One last thing to point out about CE, it is 3.5 OGL compatible. If you don’t want to make the jump from 3.5 to Pathfinder, you can still play this module with little or no changes. I think this is one area that shows although Paizo released new books to further their business, they aren’t forcing you to upgrade.

Edge:
Crypt of the Everflame – The higher quality materials, the lower price and the fact it is 3.5 OGL compatible make this the clear choice. You could argue 4th edition can’t ever be 3.5 compatible but then again, that was WotC’s choice wasn’t it?

Plot:
Keep of the Shadowfell – An evil priest of Orcus, Kalarel, heads up a death cult in Shadowfell Keep which is within a few miles of the small farming village of Winterhaven. Kalarel is researching a ritual to open a Shadowfell rift to unleash skeletons, zombies and many other foul creatures unto the world. He secures his dominance over the keep and slowly expands his dominance outside of it too. The module provides three hooks as to why the party is traveling to Winterhaven which should eventually lead to Shadowfell Keep and its problems. Unfortunately, you need to exercise some care in the hook you pick since some do not directly lead to the keep depending on the paths they take.

Crypt of The Everflame – The group of adventurers may or may not know each other at the start of the adventure. They live in the area of the town of Kassen which is named after the town’s founder. The town was founded 200 years earlier by Ekat Kassen who was killed in a battle against a group of mercenaries headed by his old adventuring partner, Asar. In Kassen’s crypt, a flame burns endlessly. The adventurers are chosen in a rite of passage ceremony and charged with travelling to the crypt, lighting a lantern from the ever-burning flame and bringing it back to the town.

The villagers of Kassen travel to the crypt before the ceremony to setup simple traps and encounters for the adventurers to get through. However, an evil presence now inhabits the crypt and slaughters the villagers. The evil presence is Asar and his mercenaries rising from the grave. The adventurers know nothing about this development.

Edge:
Crypt of the Everflame – I like the plot for CE for two reasons. One, it provides some easy initial encounters to help learn the rules and two; the adventurers are aware they face dangers ahead that aren’t supposed to be dangers but they really are dangers. Got it? Lol!

Supporting Cast:
Keep of the Shadowfell – Winterhaven is a small town with a typical spread of features (inn, temple, shoppes) and NPC’s (town leader, innkeeper, priest, old cronie with info). The town has a population of 977 but based on the map of the town, it makes you question if more than 100 could ever live within its walls. Based on the number of buildings, over 57 people would need to live in each one. I suppose you could argue people lived in the outlying areas but I think this is a pretty weak argument.

Some of the NPC’s I found interesting are: Valthrun the Prescient who is a sage and scholar and I ad libbed role playing him within his tower. Splug, a goblin jailed in the keep torture chamber. He is a character that promises to help the PC’s in exchange for his release. There is Sir Keegan who is the failed protector of the keep. His tale is a sad one but if the party wins his favor, he can provide valuable information. Ninaran, an elf hunter employed by Kalarel to spy on the PC’s and their progress. If they get too far, she attacks them outright. Finally, there is Kalarel himself. He is your typical antagonist and feels the need to taunt the PC’s and let them know how their undead bodies will be utilized after their imminent defeat.

Crypt of the Everflame – CE begins in the town of Kassen. Kassen is also a small town of 750. Unlike Winterhaven, the setting is a bit more believable as there are approximately 13 people for each building in the town. Kassen also has the typical array of town features. Something a little bit unique about the story, since the adventurers are from the area, they can have ‘mentor’ NPCs if you want to role play the start of the adventure a bit more.

CE is a bit light on interesting NPC’s. There is Roldare one of the villagers who survived the massacre and as a result is a bit crazy. There is the boss Asar who does a brief monologue before attacking the PC’s. Finally, there is the spirit of Kassen who helps fill in some of the gaps for the PC’s at the end.

Edge:
Keep of the Shadowfell – There are simply more NPCs to work with in KS and more opportunity to role play them too. In CE, neither Asar nor Kassen are in a good role playing parts which leaves you just Roldare, so you need to really play him up!

Traps, features and other intangibles:
Keep of the Shadowfell – KS starts out with a small wilderness adventure and then moves onto the keep. The keep itself is quite large and extensive and includes interludes for trips back to the town. The keep features a torture chamber, hidden rooms and a trap room. There is a wide variety of creatures to battle, goblins, dragonkin, undead, a jelly, ooze and a gelatinous cube.

This is an area KS falls down a bit, well a lot. First, the trap room, called the chamber of statues, is awful simply awful. It consists of four statue traps: a titan that swings his sword in a circle, two dragons that breathe fire when you are within range and a set of four statues that attempt to drown the PC’s.

I knew how this room would go down upon reading it. A PC triggers the trap and gets hurt once. All PC’s will get out of range of the traps and unload a can of ranged weapon whoop-ass on the statues and effectively destroy anything that doesn’t look like a wall or a floor. As predicted, our thief enters the room, gets hit and knocked prone by the titan statue and the rest unfolds like I thought.

Second, two of the wilderness encounters are absolutely ridiculous. The PC’s come across a group of kobolds for a level 1 encounter. Ok, no problem there. However, a kobold slinger can sneak off and alert another group of kobolds to the presence of the PC’s. This group of kobolds is an encounter level 6. If the PC’s don’t dispatch the first group of kobolds within 3 rounds of the second group being alerted, the second group joins the fight. This effectively makes the whole battle an encounter level 8. Huh? I had to make some on the fly adjustments to make sure there wasn’t a TPK.

Crypt of the Everflame – CE also has a small wilderness portion to get to the crypt, roughly two days of travel. The crypt itself is riddled with undead and traps. Some of the traps are dangerous and some not so dangerous. Most of the creatures are undead but there are a few encounters with living beasts and even a wood golem. There is a nice variety of undead, each one with its own flavor of difficulty: damage reduction, incorporeal, disease opportunities to scare the players.

There are a lot of traps in this module and it keeps the party on their toes the whole way through. It gets to the point they never let their guard down. One is basically near impossible to disarm and the player’s simply need to grin and bear it. There is a single trap which is a bit, erm, easy to get past but there are many more traps beyond this one.

I felt the encounters were well balanced in CE. They ranged from easy to challenging and some resulted in characters dying. None of them were overwhelming though I felt this was largely due to the Paladin in the party smartly using her smite evil ability. If your party is absent a Paladin, a couple encounters will be more challenging.

Edge:
Crypt of the Everflame – CE simply does a better job with the intangibles than KS. There’s not much more to it than that.

End game:
Keep of the Shadowfell – The final battle in KS is long and grueling. A combination of attacks from Kalarel which either weakens characters so PC’s can only do half damage or PC’s getting immobilized, really make this battle nearly unbearable. This battle raged on for nearly the whole night. It scared the PC’s but annoyed them at the same time. The overall length of the battle is what annoyed them the most. They felt like they were not making progress in defeating Kalarel and that is not a good thing.

Crypt of the Everflame – The final battle here was a tad too short but I think this was largely due to the Paladin kicking ass and taking names. Smite evil is evil and the Paladin basically could have handled Asar on her own without help. That is not to say the battle was a cake-walk with a Paladin in the party, ask the monk who happened to be lying face down in a pool of his own blood. He got tore apart by 3 skeletons. Who said Pathfinder skeletons weren’t tough? Lol!

Edge: CE, I think the agony of the final battle length doomed KS. I felt the players weren’t necessarily having any fun in the final battle in KS.

Fun factor:
I’m not going to go into a lot of details here but simply put; the players had more fun playing Crypt of the Everflame than Keep of the Shadowfell. I asked for their opinion and they gave KS a rating of 2 stars out of 5 while CE got 4.5 stars.

Overall:
Keep of the Shadowfell – 2 stars out of 5. The combination of ridiculously long battles, over-matched battles and painfully dull traps really take away from the positives of the module. The roleplaying opportunities are there and the players liked the torture chamber, but outside of those, they didn’t have a lot of fun playing it.

Crypt of the Everflame – 4 stars out of 5. CE has its faults. I personally found the PC’s not getting to level 3 by the end of the module disappointing and the roleplaying opportunities to be lacking. However, what really boosts the score was the players had a lot of fun playing the module and that is what matters most.

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