D1 Crown of the Kobold King Deconstructed

Crown of the Kobold King is sometimes considered a kind of mini Paizo classic—one of those modules that almost everyone who plays Paizo anything plays; kind of like how everyone played Keep on the Borderlands or The Sunless Citadel back in the day.  It follows closely on the heels of Hollow's Last Hope, and even takes place in some of the same locations.

The premise is pretty cliche; some kids are kidnapped by kobolds who want to sacrifice them to whatever kobolds make sacrifices to, and the PCs wander into town, hear the rumors, and presumably decide to go rescue them.  Another "Timmy fell in the well" adventure.  The PCs are meant to travel back to the dwarven monastery and dig a little deeper into it this time.

PART ONE: LIGHTING THE WAY
This part of the module is all about "Gathering Information"—finding out who the missing kids are and why they're missing, i.e., the dare that they made to go spend the night at the burned out shell of an old orphanage out of town, etc.  This includes finding rumors about the dwarven monastery, since the module makes no assumption that you've played Hollow's Last Hope.  If you have, you'll have to do your own work to integrate the two.

PART TWO: SEEKERS OF LOST CHILDREN
Presumably, the PCs will then investigate the site of the old orphanage, since they find out about the dare.  Investigation uncovers a trapdoor in the ruins, and inside is the corpse of the woman who ran the orphanage.  While I'm not certain how exactly the PCs would piece all of this together, apparently the narrative is that one of the recent orphans was turned into a werewolf when her parents were killed (by werewolves.) She was imprisoned below the orphanage while the headmistress ran an ill-advised program to "purge the beast"—what ended up happening, of course, was that she flipped, went Wolfy, killed everyone in the orphanage, and then set it on fire herself, before running off into the woods.  Really all that the PCs are likely to find out though is that there's a basement or cellar that looks like a torture chamber, some silver knives, and the body of the headmistress with her throat torn out (this was months ago, but I guess the body mummified or something.)  Oh, and there's a swarm of spiders to fight, and there's obvious clues (and an obvious trail) that kobolds attacked the camp of the missing kids.

The werewolf girl then appears and tries to ingratiate herself to the party before attacking them.  But that comes later.  In the meantime, if the PCs somehow missed the very obvious clues of the kids' camp and the signs of kobold struggle, and the trail to follow, the werewolf girl can offer to lead them in the right direction, as she's interested in rescuing the kids herself so she can eat them.  And then the PCs too.

So, the module gives a number of Darkmoon Vale encounters that can happen to liven up the journey from the ruins of the orphanage to the ruins of the monastery, including some that are just color.

• disturbing crows
• assassin vine
• some bugbears arguing about how to eat a lumberjack (echoes of The Hobbit, a little bit.
• Allips (a type of ghost)
• the body of an adventurer, including an animated goblet the PCs have to fight as well as some other minor treasure.
• an imp who was the familiar of a dead wizard.  He mostly just wants to pick the PCs pockets
• a drunk giant who could easily kill the entire party, but he's drunk and looking for his lost wedding ring before he goes home and gets it from his wife, so there's a chance of either avoiding him entirely, or even helping him.
• a harpy luring four lumberjacks to their death, unless the PCs stop it.
• a manticore

PART THREE: INTO THE DARKNESS

The dungeon part of the adventure.  There's no mention of the worg threat dealt with in Hollow's Last Hope, and I haven't bothered to see if the location guides even correlate or not, since I don't particularly care about dungeon adventures.  They encounter some kobolds, a grick that camps out here looking for food, shocker lizards in a hot spring, what is meant to be presented as a ghost, but which actually turns out to be the indigestible armor of a dwarven adventurer suspended in a gelatinous cube, stirges, dire rats, a stupid stone trap that releases vargouilles, more traps, a leftover homunculus, an allip, etc.  There's a battle in the old mess hall between some kobolds and some of the captives who have escaped (including the leftovers of an ill-fated adventuring band and two of the missing kids.)

Anyway, there's more, including various undead, more kobolds, more traps, etc.  All stuff that any self-respecting cliche D&D dungeon adventure for low level characters would have.  

PART FOUR: CROWN OF THE KOBOLD KING 

The next level down is more typical D&Dishness; more kobolds, a choker, a gargoyle, dire bats, etc. Some items that are at least nominally innovative; the kobold hatchery, and the giant saber-toothed frogs that the kobolds ride on. There's a further level below this, but it's not detailed and it's assumed that the PCs can't (or won't) go down there, but there's graffiti on the wall about how dangerous it is, warning the kobolds not to go down there. Naturally, there's another adventure later on that covers this.  In the meantime, undead shadows should keep the PCs away.  They are meant to fight the kobold king himself, of course, and then the tribe's shaman who's still trying to make sacrifices.  The last of the missing kids is here, as well as another adventurer taken captive (who was probably already killed in a "practice run" of the sacrifice.

CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE

There's drama in town for the PCs to get involved with.  Also, the author is revealed as a bit of a weirdo and a downer; his notes following the adventure have one of the kids go crazy and turn into a serial killer, one of them's dad was secretly a necromancer, one of the mothers tries to hit on the PCs, and the rescued daughter (and her dad) freak out and handle that development badly.  All in all, there's a pretty grim, nihilistic, "nothing you do will really make a difference" vibe to it, although that's not literally true (a few of the NPCs can become good, including the arrogant son of the "lumber baron" who can be lured away from the greedy capitalist pig pursuits of his "lumber baron" father.

Sigh.  PNW hippies are the worst.

Anyway, then there's a teaser for worse evil yet to boil out of the levels of the dungeon that are even further down, and a pretty nifty appendix that details Falcon's Hollow, the town that all of this is based on.  For such a small town, the level of "urban politics" and skulduggery is... rather unrealistic, I think.  But, hey—a town map is a town map, and it's got plenty of ideas of stuff, at least.  And there's a couple of new monsters; a new type of undead, and the saber-toothed frogs.

My problems with this module are very similar to the ones I have with Hollow's Lost Heart (and I presume, to some degree, the entirety of the D-series): 1) I dislike "Save Timmy, he fell in the well!" premises and 2) dungeoncrawls.  Especially low-level dungeoncrawls, which by definition make less sense than higher level ones do, although none of them really work well.  Also; often in D&D adventures, monsters appear gratuitously, which is kind of irritating.  And if those starting premises don't bother you, the depressing nothing-matters vibe and tawdriness of the module is kind of off-putting too.

For my money, what I find potentially usable in this module is some of the detail of the town itself, and maybe some of the ideas for wilderness encounters.  The rest of the module is either too cliche to be interesting, or actively kind of insulting or off-putting.