The Blurb
Overview
N1 - Against The Cult of The Reptile God was the first adventure made by Doug Niles for TSR in 1982. The work was finished in four weeks and for its time, it was a progressive module. The formula of town-with-nearby-dungeon had already been established in earlier works, notably by Gary Gygax himself. But N1 really set the adventuring to begin in the town, rather than having to travel to the nearby dungeon before some action (unless robbing people was the action). This would be something that T1 The Village of Hommlet would touch on, correctly, but not over-focus.
The Town Stuff
It contains elements of town-play, wilderness, and of course, a dungeon. There are layers of discovery as the characters arrive in the village of Orlane. People have mixed reactions, from friendly to suspicious, and an investigation begins. Eventually, the players will learn of the presence of an evil cult. Some amount of exploration later, and the players will enter the dungeon itself. There is a stronger degree of investigative roleplay than what I prefer, but I think this stuff could be a bit more directly fed to the players via rumors, preferably before the PCs would even arrive to Orlane.
The module contains a lot of detailed information on the village of Orlane, which is needed to get to the meat of the adventure. Some of that juice could be squeezed and repurposed for a wider campaign. There will be signs of the cult and even confrontation. An adept Dungeon Master could easily lift these connection points and drop them into a town in their own campaign or even simply just take Orlane and drop it into a Hex.
The local temple has also been corrupted which provides a miniature dungeon itself as it proceeds to the mazes and tunnels below. What starts off as a normal religious operation is quickly made obvious that the cult ideals have also spread here. Below, encounters are met with monsters that make sense thematically as they have been charmed, and naturally in the case of the Shrieker.
Another interesting aspect of the adventure is that the party can’t just rest in town indefinitely. The cult will make attempts to abduct them. There’s a very good chance that the characters will become charmed or imprisoned. Even if they attempt to pretend to be charmed, if they are imprisoned, there’s a good chance that they’ll be fed to lizards or killed and animated as zombies. Depending on the status quo of the campaign, a DM might better tip the players off rather than tell them a story about being abducted. This is done by the suggestion to ask the players about sleeping arrangements. In most campaigns, it would be tedious to ask how PCs are sleeping every night in a town/city, so this should raise some eyebrows.
There is an NPC named Ramne who has a critical, as written, importance to this adventure playing out. This seems innocent enough at first, but we'll get to why this is terrible below.
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| I don't know what's funnier, the calm smiley face of the guy with a bag over his head, or the oof-man. |
The Wilderness Stuff
Learning about the Cults Headquarters will kick off the wilderness portion of the adventure. The module has clear and generalized descriptions of the areas the party will move through as well as different appropriate random encounter tables. That's pretty much it. There are no interesting sites, obstacles, or encounters to speak of outside of random encounters. If you're dropping it into your own hex crawl, it's not really a problem.
As the group gets closer to the dungeon itself, it will be clear that Ramne is a critical NPC. The module advises that if he isn’t present or is killed to have the characters find a scroll of minor globe of invulnerability and a 7th level dispel magic scroll. Also, I should mention that Ramne’s familiar “Whiskers” is somewhat needed to trail the Troglodytes. This is the worst part of the adventure, needing the reliance of a 7th level wizard. The module does encourage you to play him up as a feeble old man, but the idea that he’s not only present in a low-level adventure, but also necessary to a degree is awful.
I'm sure that in 1982 that people coming into the hobby just didn't know better and that included a number of people hired at TSR. But looking at it with our crystal clear 2025 20/20 hindsight age-of-hyper-criticism, putting in a powerful NPC that gets you past a powerful obstacle is not a satisfying challenge to player characters.
The actual dungeon itself is pretty good. I’d say it was reasonably well laid out and has a lot packed into it. It does have a few things that don’t make total sense, but in general, these are minor. I will go into more detail in the “How I’d change it” section.
The Dungeon
After two floors of the dungeon and overcoming its challenges, I’d expect that the party will need to leave and rest or risk some unfortunate random encounters. The entire dungeon is either naturally occurring or excavated with muddy walls held up by slightly rotting timbers. The top floor is largely a constructed dungeon with walls, cultist servants and other monsters. The bottom floor is a more natural cave system with few constructed areas.
Once the party gets to the final encounter, it is revealed that a Spirit Naga is Explictica Defilus, the Reptile God. Here is where Ramne provides a protective and countering magical measures, otherwise a low level party stands no chance in this fight. She will start with a fireball, which requires Ramne’s minor globe of invulnerability. He will cast Lightning Bolt, quite softening her up. She will cast Darkness, which he will counter with Light. And finally, his Dispel Magics will be used to remove Charm.
How I'd Change It
- The setup: First, it's best to structurally frame important information about this adventure within the rumors/information gathering in your campaign before arriving at Orlane. The play-time juice that you want to squeeze out of this is mainly the dungeon and, to a lesser degree, the church primarily. Seed in hints that The Golden Grain Inn and the Temple of Merikka seem to be at play somehow, likely with local rumors. Perhaps even that Inn of the Slumbering Serpent as a better option for staying out of sight. If the party is suspicious of The Golden Grain Inn, they make poke around there and perhaps even set up a counter-ambush. At the very least, the party will want to check out the Temple and there's a good chance they'll want to break in at night.
- Room 3: The Cultist treasure room wouldn’t make sense that they’d have to brave scary frogs to truck valuables in and out of the area. How about Zombie frogs since the dead work for the cult. Minor flavor change and nobody is any wiser to it.
- Room 6: Burial pool - why waste skeletons when the level below has them trying to keep up with undead production? I'd think it would be easier to expunge what they could, right in their own home, rather than abducting more people and risking exposure unnecessarily. Simple fix: just have it be bones and body parts. Femurs, a skull, somethings hand, and maybe a foot float at the surface of the water.
- Rooms 7-8: It doesn’t sit well that a slime would just be harmlessly hanging out right next to cultist living quarters. Close off the hallway with a door and have the slime hanging above the door way, telegraphed with an unfortunately cultist who wandered in. Or just get rid of this hallway, it's pointless and move the slime to 12a or 12b. Those are prime for this kind of monster and are empty rooms.
- Room 16-17: A harpy lives here. This should be more of a nest than an actual room and it would make sense more if the ceiling had collapsed here, but not required. I'd definitely blow the ceiling open though.
- Room 26: A “Zombie Factory” with a cleric who can Animate Dead once/day. What does Garath Primo do after the few minutes per day or raising a single zombie? I don't know, I'd have him doing other things like trying to assemble a flesh golem with parts, but no means to animate it. Promises of the Reptile God can have him working tirelessly to achieve something out of reach. Also, it would add a bit of gruesome detail to see a patchwork set of stitched together body parts. Perhaps he made a humanoid arachnid or the human centipede? Perhaps there are two or more clerics taking shifts.
- Room 37: Explictica is too strong for this level range of players. So strong that it is assumed that you railroaded your PCs to use the NPC help. She can cast clerical and magic-user spells, including fireball, and her gaze can charm. She's got 9 HD, 40 HP, and an AC of 4. The entire forced guiding around the NPCs of this adventure is there because she is too powerful. Make up something new or lesser, get rid of Ramne. What I did was had a priest (basically Lareth from T1) be the mouth piece of the Reptile God. Or the Reptile God itself could be a stone guardian (MM2) shaped like a serpent man. I also made Ramne a proper old man NPC, with some sagely advice, but not the kind of guy who was ready to run to the dungeon with the players. It worked fine, but in retrospect I might make something like a half-strength Yuan Ti that can cast charm person and replace the cleric with another, even weaker, one. There's really only so many ways you can meet the expectations of a low level adventure alluding to a 'god'.
- Overall: have the undead more detailed, towns people (might even be cool if it was 'oh thats the seamstress' husband!') or failed adventurers adds a bit of flavor.
- Beforehand: Setting this in a world, I would already have a lot of the information gatherable before heading to Orlane if you wanted the session time spent more on the cult and the dungeon and less on in-town intrigue.
