REVIEW N1 - AGAINST THE CULT OF THE REPTILE GOD
Terror by night! The Village of Orlane is dying. Once a small and thriving community, Orlane has become a maze of locked doors and frightened faces. Strangers are shunned, trade has withered. Rumours flourish, growing wilder with each retelling. Terrified peasants flee their homes, abandoning their farms with no explanation. Others simply disappear.
Damn, that could be the basis of a great Call of Cthulhu scenario! But in this case, it's the cover intro blurb for AD&D module N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Written in 1982 by Douglas Niles, this was the first adventure in the N series, with N being short for Novice.
If this is a Novice adventure then I'm a 6'2 adonis with a full head of hair, perfect teeth, and a Lamborghini in the garage. Sadly none of those things are true. But more about that problem with the adventure later.
As was typical of the day, the adventure came as a 32 page booklet with a cardboard outer cover featuring one of the main maps - that being the village of Orlane itself. There are a number of other maps in the booklet itself. All the maps are clean and appealing, though there is a glaring error in one as it has a maze with no exit. Artwork in general is a bit of a mixed bag, from an atmospheric cover piece, through some entertaining action scenes. to a few almost farcical pieces displaying a couple of the creatures, it's inconsistent.
Orlane appears to be that way...
Somewhat unusually for the products from early 80s TSR USA, the combination of writing quality and organisation in this module is very good. The main body of the adventure is logically divided into 3 clear chapters and the text is easy to follow. The 1st chapter covers the party's arrival in Orlane, descriptions of the town locations and some expected events. Chapter 2 is weaker though, a sorely underdeveloped wilderness trek to the enemy lair - it consists of just a very basic map and some suggested random encounters. Chapter 3 is a lot more meaty and details the lair of the eponymous Cult. Text is succinct and helpful throughout giving clear descriptions, stats and motives of all involved.
So what is this module about? Erm, well, the title is a bit of a giveaway. Having arrived in Orlane for whatever reasons the DM choose - the default is to find a missing merchant - the party find the place to be more than a little odd. Some people are friendly, some are nervous, some are rude, but the general air is one of fear - at least from the innocent. Some buildings stand abandoned, and nobody is willing or able to explain exactly why. The aim is for the adventurers to talk to people and slowly unravel the clues that pertain to what is going on. There are a lot of NPCs, and the scope for roleplaying here is immense, but the party need to tread carefully as a misplaced word to the wrong people will attract unwanted attention. Gradually they need to win the trust of certain key individuals. Inevitably at some point all hell will break loose - there is the potential for a lot of combat in the Orlane section, and much of it is very tough for a novice party.
There's the potential for things to get VERY bad for the party in Orlane
Once Chapter 1 is complete and the party have learned where they need to go it is time for a short trek to the lair, and then loads more combat in Chapter 3.
Orlane is an extremely well crafted village, and a group who enjoy focussing on the roleplay pillar of gaming can easily get absorbed here. There's the potential for the first chapter of the module to stretch over several lengthy sessions. In fact the module as a whole contains a lot of meat, and how it all comes to the table is heavily dependent on the skill of the DM and how they control the cogs of the module.
Tough combat? Party need to be cautious? Loads of NPCs? A module with many moving parts? And this is supposed to be a NOVICE module. Novice is it not. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Against the Cult of the Reptile God is a challenging adventure to both play and run, and it's release as the 1st in the N series was utterly inappropriate. It suggests a party of 4-7 characters of levels 1-3. I believe it is best played by about 5 characters of level 2. The last time I ran it my players had a poll of 10 1st level PCs. They operated in 2 groups of 5, 1 group out investigating, the other staying at an inn. and my reasoning for this was that due to the adventure being deadly, having a spare PC in the village would make life logistically more simple. 6 of the 10 PCs died, 5 in Orlane, 1 in the final fight of the adventure.
I've seen better pictures of Harpies....
There are 3 other key criticisms that get dredged up. Firstly the party are overly dependent on a *certain* NPC in order to have a chance of success. This complaint is fair, though the on the 4 occasions I have run it, nobody has had an issue. The second is a technicality drawn from the AD&D rules - the priests from the Cult are able to cast spells, but as their so called deity in fact fake and very much mortal, then by the rules of the game their spells should not be available to them. My opinion on this complaint? It's not the serious issue some grogs make it out to be. Yes, the basic framework of official modules *should* generally follow the accepted framework of the rules around which they are designed, I'm quite happy as DM to handwave away those oddities in favour of fun. The third problem is a little more serious - as I mentioned earlier the title of the adventure is a huge spoiler. With so much of the adventure devoted to investigation, the cause of the problem is spelled out by the the name of it.... The townsfolk are nervous, people are disappearing, what could be the cause? Well it's called 'Against The Cult of the Reptile God' so I wonder if that's anything to do with it?
In my opinion though, all those criticisms pale into insignificance when the adventure is played - especially when run by a competent DM for a patient and attentive group. The structure and pace of this module is such that it is thoroughly rewarding. Despite being light on puzzles, the scope for roleplay is substantial, a rarity in modules of this era. Add to that an array of creative locations and situations, and the likelihood of plenty of highly challenging and varied combat and you have what I believe to be the 3rd of the 3 great early low level modules - along with U1 and T1.
