The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.
Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001
Like many of the people drawn back to the D&D for the first time in years by the advent of 3rd Edition, I was initially turned off of the game by the exceptionally poor quality of the 2nd Edition products which were being turned out during the early and mid-‘90s. Sure, there were occasional high points (the original Planescape boxed set comes to mind), but these were overwhelmed by a plethora of crap.
When Wizards of the Coast bought out TSR, the steady degradation of the D&D game was almost immediately turned around. Unfortunately, people like me were still overwhelmed with a healthy dose of skepticism when it came to the D&D product line – plus, we were turned off by the rule system (which was not only the anemic rules of the 2nd edition, but meaninglessly complicated beyond the bounds of sanity by the Player’s Options books).
So a module like The Gates of Firestorm Peak easily fell through the cracks. In no small part because TSR was so eager to advertise it as “the first adventure designed especially for use with the new rules presented in the three Player’s Options books” with “full-color poster maps” and “a sheet of 56 counters”. (Can you see the bright red warning lights twirling about with an accompanying siren?) It looked gimmicky, it looked silly, it looked overproduced.
Which, to a certain extent, it is. Overproduced and gimmicky, that is. (Not so much silly.)
So why did I pick it up? Well, I’ve been taking a greater interest in some of these “latter day 2nd edition” books – produced in the interim between WotC’s acquisition of the game and the release of 3rd edition. Furthermore, my local game store had put a 25% off sticker on it. And, finally, it’s written by Bruce Cordell – and I had been extremely impressed by his work on The Sunless Citadel.
And I’m glad I did, because The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.
PLOT
Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Gates of Firestorm Peak. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.
Long ago, before the races walked the earth as they do today, the Elder Elves were possessed of arcane arts far beyond the ken of the spellcasters of the latter days. One of their projects was the Vast Gate: An immense gateway to distant dimensions, mystically powered every 27 years by the arrival of the Dragon’s Tear comet. Unfortunately for the Elder Elves, their hubris was destined to get the better of them: As they pushed the limits of the Vast Gate further and further beyond this world, they eventually opened a gateway into a dimension so utterly alien to our own that the Elder Elves could comprehend it only in terms of insanity. (Those of you with Cthulhu experience, plug it in here.) The creatures who lived there, like the dimension itself, were vastly beyond the comprehension of the mortals of this world – and when one of the most powerful of those creatures became interested in the Vast Gate and crossed over into our world, its merest thought eradicated nearly all of the Elder Elves in the area before it became bored again and departed.
The Elder Elves who remained alive fled, attempting to seal the Vast Gate and the horrors onto which it opened through an inversion of their own gate technology. Unfortunately, they made a horrible mistake: Instead of permanently sealing the Outer Gates which led into their complex, the Elder Elves had linked them to the Vast Gate itself (in an attempt to draw power from it and shut it down forever). Instead, the Outer Gates became dependent upon the Vast Gate – just as the Vast Gate was dependent upon the power of the Dragon’s Tear. Now, every twenty-seven years, when the Dragon’s Tear appears in the sky, both the Outer Gates and the Vast Gate open once more.
Fast forward several millennia to 81 years ago: The mountain has become known as Firestorm Peak, due to the fact that the top of the mountain literally bursts into flame during the month when the Dragon’s Tear appears (a side-effect of the Elder Elves’ ancient technology). A mad mage by the name of Madreus enters the mountain and discovers the secret of the Vast Gate. He has been working ever since on harnessing the power of the Far Realm to which the Vast Gate links.
Fast forward again to 27 years ago (the last time the Gates opened): An adventuring party (including the father of one of the PCs) ventured into Firestorm Peak to shut down the Vast Gate forever. They failed – thwarted by Madreus and either killed or transformed into his thralls.
Finally, fast forward to today: The gates have opened once more, and Firestorm Peak lays open for 28 days before they will close once more. For the past five years, the area around Firestorm Peak has seemingly suffered from a strange curse – a result of Madreus’ experiments, which will most likely reach fruition during this opening of the gate. If they do, then Madreus will be able to keep the gate open permanently – unleashing the horrors of the Far Realm upon our own dimension, and destroying the world as we know it.
Toss in a tribe of duergar who wandered into the area several decades ago as they followed a vein of nephelium (a rare ore), demonic entities from beyond the gate, goblin slaves, mutated trolls, and a mammoth dungeon complex and you’ve got The Gates of Firestorm Peak.
WEAKNESSES
My biggest disappoint with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that I can’t find anyway to include it in my current campaign. I’ve got a big round hole I’d love to drop it into, but – unfortunately – there’s just a few too many corners here for me to make it fit. That being said, I’m still going to be able to use it as a massive (and invaluable) idea mine for filling that hole.
But that is, in no way, the fault of the module itself (which is actually extremely easy to include in any generic fantasy campaign with a mountain range). So, let’s move onto some actual weaknesses.
First off, I’m pretty leery of the fact that Cordell expects one of the PCs to have a father who ventured into Firestorm Peak 27 years ago. It seems a trifle presumptuous, and too intrusive. That being said, if you can make it work (i.e., convince one of your players to go along with it), then it works out really well – adding some nice areas of pathos to the adventure.
Moving on: There are a couple of places in the text where Cordell gets a little too casual with his reader. It doesn’t intrude upon the boxed text (which is copious and excellent – you can trust Cordell to produce boxed text which you can read without doubt to your players), but its still distracting.
My biggest problem with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that a group of 4-6 characters of 5th to 8th level (the group the adventure is advertised for) is simply not going to survive. There is, for example, the encounter where the PCs are expected to take on 28 duergar, 12 steeders, four 3rd-level duergar clerics, a 9th-level duergar cleric, and a 9th-level dwarf fighter. Or there’s the fight with 27 trolls (albeit at half strength). Or the final confrontation with a 10th-level wizard, a 6th-level wizard, five duergar, two gibberlings, two myconids, and three trolls. Admittedly, the PCs are supposed to run away from the encounter with 100 gibberlings.
Fortunately, as problems go, that’s the easiest one to fix: Send the PCs through this one at a higher level than advertised and they shouldn’t have any problems.
STRENGTHS
All other things being equal, bigger is better. And The Gates of Firestorm Peak is big. Very big. The dungeon fills an entire poster map and 123 individually keyed encounter areas.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had problems with similarly mammoth dungeons in the past. There is a common flaw to such things: At some point the desire to achieve the size outweighs the need to justify such a size. Fortunately, with The Gates of Firestorm Peak we are in the hands of Bruce Cordell, who doesn’t seem able to design a dungeon which doesn’t make sense.
Admittedly, he has to strain my credulity somewhat in justifying the semi-linear nature of the dungeon – but I’ll swallow the pill that Madreus wants his inner sanctum to be as difficult to reach as possible, and there’s enough branching going on that I don’t think there’s actually a serious problem here.
In short, The Gates of Firestorm Peak delivers exactly what it’s supposed to: A massive dungeon complex, painstakingly designed and detailed, which will provide hours and hours of entertainment for you and your gaming group.
Style: 4
Substance: 5
Authors: Bruce Cordell
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: AD&D
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 0-7869-0435-6
Production Code: 9533
Pages: 96
Back in 2001, I described Gates of Firestorm Peak as a would-be classic that everyone was sleeping on because it was published at a time when D&D was probably at its nadir. (But also, paradoxically, flooding the market with product.) In the years since then, I’m happy to say that it’s achieved the reputation and legacy it deserves, regularly appearing on lists of the Best D&D Adventures of All Time and the like.
Also in the years since writing this review, I have thrice laid the groundwork to plug Gates into a D&D campaign. But in each case the campaign has either ended prematurely or the players have steered it in a different direction. I do hope to have the opportunity to run the adventure in full some day.
For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.
How do you handle combat when it gets too large, though? Assuming it’s possible for the PCs to win against 5-10 odds, that usually means that the mobs are very weak and will go down in waves when hit by an area-of-effect spell.
Even without that, I once had a player playing a barbarian just park himself in the stone doorway, where no more than two monsters at once could reach him, and single-handedly hold off the horde while the other players explored the rest of the dungeon.
Then there’s the time it takes for several dozen enemy turns, and the fact that they clog up the battlefield and mess up any possibility of tactics.
For all the above reasons, I’ve taken to limiting the number of enemies to twice the number of PCs and allies, plus one (to keep the number from being easily divisible among them). Admittedly, it’s not an absolute rule that I’d never break, but it sounds as though large-scale combats are common in Gates of Firestorm Peak.
I do admit that I’m not all that familiar with 2e and 3e. I also do know that 3e had minions (monsters with very low HP that existed for numbers), so it’s possible that I’m missing something.
Thank you very much for all your articles.
I first played and loved 2e (after Basic Set) but had never head of this, so thank you.
Interesting that on the cusp of the WOC era your most damning criticisms were relatively trivial stuff like they might have underestimated the difficulty of the module and one adventure hook is a bit naff, whereas now the criticisms of WOC are along the lines of everyone’s forgotten how maps work 😂
@James Everington, it’s probably not quite fair to compare the very best of the late-2e era to the average late-5e product, but I won’t argue very strongly. 🫤
The splatbooks were mostly very bad, mind you. You can note that the OSR has revived damn near everything else from the history of the game, but not those. At the time, what I mostly noticed was that it felt like D&D books were written for middle schoolers while stuff like GURPS was talking to adults.
I ran through this using 5th Edition. I think my players enjoyed it, but it was also what made me decide that I what I was done with 5th. Nothing stood a chance against them. 🤣
Still, it’s a great module. I’d love to run it again with Old School Essentials.
This got me wondering: Has Alexander ever reviewed The Apocalypse Stone? The Final Module of AD&D, written to end 2nd Edition and to make way for the 3rd?
Because everything I’ve read of it makes it out to be a nonsense railroad that ends with the destruction of the setting and some rather tasteless set-pieces on the way.
@Alexander atoz
I’m not sure why the fireball and choke point solutions are a problem. If the enemies are weak enough and the players are clever enough to pull this off then you’ve given the players an opportunity to be epic. In the door holding scenario you could have intelligent enemies decide they need to change their strategy, such as going to get archers or throwing stuff or just backing off and leaving a watch while the others go look for another way.
As for there being a lot of enemies to track and it taking time, there are several ways if dealing with this. You could include a moral system which shortens the battle by giving a reason for them to run away, or you could have the enemies act in batches (10 archers all fire at once, roll damage once and then roll 10d20 to see how many do that damage). Your players could also lure small groups of them into ambushes that let them deal with a few at a time.
To back up the previous poster’s point with an anecdote:
I once ran a one-shot adventure in 3rd edition for a party of ~5th level characters. The first combat encounter in the module was an ambush by a group of 8 gnolls. Being an inexperienced GM, I naively worried that 2-to-1 odds might be too much of a challenge for the PCs.
Instead, the first PC lobbed a fireball that took out all but one of the gnolls before they even had a chance to act. I then described how the final gnoll charged screaming at the party, his fur smoldering, before the second PC took him out with an arrow to the face. Over 20 years later, it’s the single moment I remember most from the whole adventure. Sometimes overwhelming victory is fun.
That said, I can’t imagine ever wanting to run a combat with 27 trolls.
Also, for the record, 3e didn’t have “minons” as a distinct mechanical concept (unless it was introduced in a supplement I’m not familiar with). Yes, there were weak creatures like goblins and kobolds that were only a real threat at very low levels or in very large numbers, but that’s been true of every edition. It was 4th edition that had a specific definition for minions. Minions worked exactly like other monsters of their type, but only had 1 hit point.