The Chapel of Yog-Sothoth (Warped Plots)
AD&D adventure for three to four PCs of levels 4th-5th
I am reviewing these in the order they were submitted. For my review criteria, please check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (two page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews brief.
Oh, good! An AD&D adventure! These I know!
The author shows some good knowledge of Yog-Sothoth here...yes, he is a Chaotic Evil entity. Yes, he has powers as a 15th level magic-user. Yes his sphere of interest/control is gates and openings. Yes, man and beast may well worship him.
But his worship area is "deep caverns"...not forest chapels. See DDG, p.137.
Unfortunately, this entry has worse problems going for it. This isn't really an "adventure site;" it is a location that has...well, not much going on. There's a single carrion crawler that can get "summoned" (is that really a challenge for a party of 4th-5th level characters?). There's an abandoned temple compound that, I suppose provides "challenges" (players that poke around might find 2d4 poisonous vermin...large spiders and giant centipedes).
But there's really nothing here to incentivize the PCs to explore it, or reward them, unless they really need to travel somewhere fast (i.e. via teleportation)...in which case you get the carrion crawler summoning situation.
And, no, just saying the party can go down the well and find "treasure type B" (and "maybe more carrion crawlers") doesn't make this an adventure.
Sorry, I'm giving this one zero stars. This is a house without furniture.
This could have been so good too... I imagine a woodland chapel with a small carefully tended and well kept cemetary, not more than two dozen graves. No undead. A nearby well, the kind with a roof, a crank, lots of rope and a bucket, that you make wishes in. Everything inside the chapel is in perfect order, just... unused, dusty, abandonded... but still intact? Nothing but dust and slight exterior wear has touched it. Why? I would play up Roman Catholic architectural church terms here. Talk up the litergical furniture and supplies. An arsenal for a cleric of this faith. The final sermon perfectly in line with the theorology of the faith given in this place is still in the pulpit. In the basement, or some other part of the chapel there is a large 3x3ft flagstone affixed with crude iron handles. Beneath, a slightly rusting iron ladder leads down to a small level - beams of wood holding back the dirt and rock like a mine. The floor - bedrock. A crude dirt tunnel, a shovel left at the aperture, leads to where someone entered from the cobblestone lined wall of the well in the chapel yard. Central to the level is a place where irregular carved stairs spiral down into the bedrock. The edges of the steps show divits in the stone from heavy regular traffic over time. Careful examination shows they must have been carved from the below, not above. They go down. down. down. down. A few rooms and votive cells with their denizens along the way to the bottom to break up the monotony. Strict time records must be kept. Distance down must be measured, because this is the trap: when you run up stairs, how far up matters. At the bottom are the rest of the rooms in the dungeon inhabited and decorated with the logical results of a millenia of extended Yog-Sothothery appropriately leveled for AD&D 4-5th level.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom level obviously being large vaulted lightless caverns filled with cyclopean stone avenues and causeways and buildings designed from blasphemous architectural principles.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree that the concept has potential. Unfortunately, in this case it is unrealized potential...there's just nothing here when it comes to "adventure."
DeleteWhich doesn't mean it's not a place worth dropping in your campaign...a shrine where you pay a price to get teleported is kind of nifty (just like a shrine where you can pay to get resurrected or cured of level drain or whatever). But this doesn't speak to me as "a night's entertainment," which is the objective of the adventure site contest.