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The Hidden Halls of Hazakor

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"For a novice DM (young or old), this is an amazing resource…"

— GeekDad.com

In the frontier stronghold of Purdey’s Rest, rumors of mysterious lost ruins lead a group of young adventurers into the wilderness — and the forgotten dungeons of a legendary dark mage. Facing off against evil bandits, foul undead, and ravenous monsters, the characters seek the rewards of wealth and fame. But before they can claim either, they must survive all the deadly threats of Hazakor’s lost halls.

The Hidden Halls of Hazakor is a starter adventure for fifth edition fantasy roleplaying, written with a special focus on young, beginning Gamemasters of ages twelve and up. In a friendly and straightforward fashion, this adventure explores some of the ways a good fantasy RPG dungeon crawl can be put together. It offers advice on how to just let things happen during a game session, and how to not be overwhelmed by all the directions in which an adventure can go. It talks about how to bring nonplayer characters to life, how to have fun running monsters, and how to challenge the other players and their characters alike. The Hidden Halls of Hazakor is for any player who’s ready to sit in the GM’s chair for the first time — and who is ready to learn some of the tricks and techniques that help all GMs run great games.

The PDF download also includes untagged maps for Purdey's Rest and the Hidden Halls of Hazakor dungeon, making it easy to run the adventure in a virtual tabletop setup. These maps are missing the number key and any features that should initially be known only to the GM (including traps and secret doors).

The Hidden Halls of Hazakor was created with the support of 463 amazing backers on Kickstarter. Thanks to all of you for making this project a reality.

Scott Fitzgerald Gray is a full-time freelance writer, editor, story editor, and RPG designer, whose gaming work covers three editions of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG — including working as an editor on all three core rulebooks and the Starter Set for D&D fifth edition. He’s written and edited upwards of fifty RPG adventures for Wizards of the Coast, Dungeon magazine, Schwalb Entertainment’s Shadow of the Demon Lord, Sly Flourish, Gamehole Publishing, Green Ronin, Frog God Games, and others, as well as producing adventures and gaming supplements under the Insane Angel Studios imprint.

Jackie Musto is a comic creator, illustrator, and educator. She’s been working for nearly a decade creating fantastical worlds, daring adventurers, and monstrous beasts, and spent her childhood lost in roleplaying worlds and games. While playing tabletop games as a teenager, her career path was decided — she wanted to be the person who drew the amazing illustrations that brought those games to life! Now it’s her pleasure to fulfill her dream and help other young folks get entranced and creative with their own ideas and stories. Her webcomics Kay and P (the story of a girl whose best friend is a skeleton) and The Adventures of Lady Skylark (a sky pirate adventure) can be found online.

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Reviews (6)
Discussions (11)
Customer avatar
Russell P February 28, 2021 1:14 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hi!

I have just bought this as my daughter was adamant she wanted to host her own game. We are both new to DnD and I only just noticed that this game was designed for 4 people. We dont know many people who would want to join us in a game so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to how we could best scale down the game for 2 players? or even if its possible?
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Customer avatar
Spencer S February 28, 2021 10:16 pm UTC
PURCHASER
You have a few options, most more art than science, but largely boils down to scale encounters down or scale the party up. The DMG and XGTE books have info on balancing CR against party size and level, and tools like Kobold Fight Club can help with this. There's also the idea of "action economy", where the number of combatants/actions per side greatly sways the outcome of a fight. You could run multiple PCs per player (or use the Sidekick rules from Unearthed Arcana or the Essentials Kit) or DM PCs, artificially level the characters up, grant them extra action (s), etc. Lastly, the PCs could aim to avoid fights, negotiate, or tactically fight (e.g. drop an anvil on the baddies heads), if the DM is flexible in this way. Hope this helps!
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Customer avatar
Scott F G February 28, 2021 10:44 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
In addition to Spencer’s excellent advice (and thanks for that!), we’ve got some scaling guidelines available here for playing with three to seven characters: https://www.insaneangel.com/hazakor/ Just scroll down and click the link under “Encounter Scaling”. For playing with just with one character and a DM, you might want to have your daughter take on two characters (the link above has pregenerated character sheets you can download) and adjust the three-character advice down a bit by removing one monster or lowering hit points. Or, run every encounter just by instinct. Let the fight go for long enough that it’s exciting, and then decide that the monsters hit points are low enough that they expire with the next hit — or have the monsters run away when they get wounded. Good luck!
Customer avatar
David P January 28, 2020 5:44 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I see several comments on pre-gen characters here, but I can't find them in the download and it appears your website is down. Is there any way to get them?
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Customer avatar
Scott F G January 28, 2020 6:02 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks for letting me know that, but the website is up and running when I check it. Hopefully it was a just a short-term glitch. https://www.insaneangel.com/hazakor/ has the pregen downloads.
Customer avatar
Jeremy E December 13, 2019 5:40 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I was looking at getting this during the "Teach Your Kids" holiday sale, but the price appears to have gone up since yesterday. Is this a glitch or is the product no longer on sale?
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Customer avatar
Scott F G December 13, 2019 6:08 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
That is definitely a glitch. Let me get that sorted right now, and thanks for letting me know!
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Customer avatar
Scott F G December 13, 2019 6:18 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Fixed! Thanks again.
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Customer avatar
Jeremy E December 13, 2019 10:12 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thanks Scott, perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but I could have sworn it was $18 for the PoD + PDF yesterday? Am I off base here? Should I roll a sanity check?
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Customer avatar
Scott F G December 13, 2019 11:06 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Nope, you’re right about that too. I messed up the settings when I manually updated the pricing this morning. Hopefully it’s right now, and thanks again.
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Customer avatar
Jeremy E December 13, 2019 11:09 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Looks good on my end, and thank you for being so responsive. I must have this now.
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Customer avatar
Scott F G December 13, 2019 11:21 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Not a problem, and thanks again for letting me know. I think I know what happened, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed it till next week without being alerted to it.
Customer avatar
Spencer S November 21, 2019 3:01 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I've noticed the pre-generated characters don't exactly follow the PHB rules. For example, the Fighter is given Battle Master combat manuevers (some of them named differently from the PHB, which is confusing) at level 1, when normally they wouldn't be given the option to choose this archetype or abilities until level 3. This seems like a house rule that wasn't really called out or explained anywhere that I saw and I did find it confusing for myself and the players when it didn't align with the PHB. I assume there's some copyright issue with using "Superiority Dice" as it is in the rules vs "Mastery Dice" on the pre-gen? Otherwise, I'm very grateful for the inclusion of the pregens and how well detailed and designed they are. Looking forward to the new kickstarter module that follow this one up!
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Customer avatar
Scott F G November 21, 2019 5:19 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
An excellent question! There’s a note at the download page for the pregen characters that talks about how they were set up, and how they convert to regular “Player’s Handbook” rules. Sorry if the link was hard to spot, and very sorry if there was any confusion. The note is here: https://www.insaneangel.com/hazakor/downloads/CharacterSheetInfo.pdf but I’ll explain the issue as well, for anyone else who might have been wondering.

As you guessed, the pregen characters involve a little bit of… let’s call it “creative reverse engineering” of class features, for legal reasons. The System Reference Document produced by Wizards of the Coast covers all the material that third-party publishers are allowed to use in D&D-compatible material, but the SRD covers only part of the material in the core rulebooks. In the case of the fighter, the only subclass in the SRD is the Champion, which is kind of blah. So what we did with the fighter pregen was come up with our own version of subclass features...See more
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Customer avatar
Spencer S November 21, 2019 5:55 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Shoot... apologies for overlooking the other PDF. I've got it now and it explains everything perfectly fine. :-) I appreciate your response here and hopefully it helps anyone else as careless as me... haha!
Customer avatar
jenny G August 27, 2019 12:16 am UTC
PURCHASER
Is there a document that has just the illustrations separate from the DM guide? I would love to be able to show kids the amazing artwork without giving away any secrets of the game!
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Customer avatar
CLIVE C August 27, 2019 6:09 am UTC
PURCHASER
I'd just like to add my voice here. I love the artwork and want to share it with my players. Once or twice I've taken screenshots of the pdf and cut out the wording and showed them the relevant imagery after they've completed an area. Having them separated beforehand would be amazing!
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Customer avatar
Scott F G August 28, 2019 2:59 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
That’s an awesome idea. I’ll talk to Jackie Musto about this for sure.
Customer avatar
Eric E June 05, 2019 1:36 am UTC
PURCHASER
Am I missing something? The campaign book gives no indication of how players can create their own characters. I checked the website for the Creator and they talk about a separate rule book that tells about how to create a character, but I can find no section of the campaign book dedicated to this. Help please
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Customer avatar
Eric E June 05, 2019 1:40 am UTC
PURCHASER
Does this just use standard 5e rules for character creation?
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Customer avatar
Scott F G June 05, 2019 2:05 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi, Eric. Yes, this is a 5e D&D adventure and uses the standard rules for character creation, either from the Player’s Handbook or the Starter Set.

One of the terms of the Open Gaming License that allows us to create 5e-compatible material is that we’re not allowed to mention the name “D&D” or the names of the core books. Sorry for any confusion that way.
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Customer avatar
Julie Y June 07, 2019 9:16 pm UTC
Eric, you don't need to buy anything if your players want to create their own characters, as long as they don't mind limited options. You can just use the free basic rules, which are available for download from the Wizards of the Coast website: https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf. These will let players choose from four different races and four different classes.
Customer avatar
CLIVE C April 04, 2019 12:38 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I'm not sure what I've missed, but I can't find any reference to the room to the west of the Study Hall [6]. The secret room to the east [7] is mentioned, but in the flavour text of [6] it only mentions a closed door to the west without any actual detail about that room - it's not even enumerated. Where can I find details about what's in that room? - thanks
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Customer avatar
CLIVE C April 04, 2019 1:39 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Ah, I found the answer earlier in the book under the section clearly titled "Rooms without numbers". :) Thank you for a great book, now if only I would read it correctly ;)
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Customer avatar
Scott F G May 01, 2019 5:32 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Sorry, Clive; I didn’t get a notification of your original post and just saw it now. But yes, I’m a big believer in the putting-bathrooms-in-dungeons school of design.
Customer avatar
Erik K December 24, 2018 3:42 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I am looking forward to running this as my first full-length campaign as a GM! The book has a lot of good material, including tips on mapping, monster stats, and places to add breadcrumbs/quests for NPC's to expand on the adventure.
On a side-note, the Full-size preview is apparently broken: when I go to it, I get an error message "Resource Not PDF (file=PurdeysRestUntagged.jpg, ext=.jpg) not found." Luckily, from your website I was able to find more information to get a better feel for Hidden Halls of Hazakor.
Customer avatar
Mathew S September 07, 2018 9:37 am UTC
PURCHASER
This really is a lovely thing. I've run it a few times now for different kids groups and it plays so well.
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Customer avatar
Scott F G September 15, 2018 7:09 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Awesome to hear. I'm glad so many people are enjoying it.
Customer avatar
Robert A August 31, 2018 10:16 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Is there, by chance, a complete/total treasure list available for the entire adventure? Thanks.
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Customer avatar
Scott F G September 15, 2018 7:09 am UTC
PUBLISHER
There isn't, but when I have a moment, I can probably put that together.
Customer avatar
Rory K July 10, 2018 9:23 am UTC
Will there be a PoD version available of this?
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Customer avatar
Scott F G July 20, 2018 8:42 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Indeed there will! The print proof just came in yesterday, and we’ll be processing print book orders for our Kickstarter backers shortly. Once those are done, the softcover print version will go live.
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Platinum seller
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Pages
75
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18.56 MB
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File Last Updated:
July 20, 2018
This title was added to our catalog on June 13, 2018.