Friday 26 January 2024

[MODULE] The Webs of Past and Present & Cloister of the Frog-God (NOW AVAILABLE!)

Can you have enough frog-themed modules?

I am pleased to announce the publication of two adventure modules, The Webs of Past and Present and Cloister of the Frog-God.

Buxom Elven Wenches
May Be Included
The Webs of Past and Present
is a 28-page dungeon module by Gabor Csomos for 4th to 5th level characters, with 39 keyed areas. The module features cover art by Graphite Prime, and interior illustrations by Ferenc Fabian, Cameron Hawkey, the Dead Victorians, and the Robot Overlords. It takes adventurers to the decaying elven pleasure-palace of Túr Eridenal, now a monster-haunted ruin still clinging to its past glories. Exploration-oriented gameplay in an open-ended environment is combined with complex puzzle-solving, a ticking clock, and evil flying elven heads. The booklet comes with a fold-out GM’s map of Túr Eridenal. This adventure was the winner of the 2021 No Artpunk Contest, a mighty accomplishment.

“A group of adventurers took a job they were unable to finish. They went into the ruins of Túr Eridenal, an abandoned elven palace of some kind, and never returned. The characters’ mission is to find out what happened to them, rescue the survivors, and – if possible – finish the job they started. Besides the predatory creature the adventurers were hunting, the ruins are overrun with all kinds of monsters, and corrupted by a sinister curse. There are survivors, however, whom the party may rescue if they are smart... even more than just some lost adventurers. All shall be caught in… The Webs of Past and Present!

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Death Frog Doom
I am also pleased to announce the publication of Cloister of the Frog-God, a 40-page wilderness and dungeon module for 4th to 6th level characters, with 15 + 77 keyed areas and more frogs than you can shake a stick at. The module features cover art by Denis McCarthy (who also did a bunch of the interiors), and interior illustrations by Andrew Walter, Matthew Ray, Stefan Poag, the Dead Victorians, and the Robot Overlords. The module’s wilderness section describes the Marshlands, a labyrinth of waterways, strange denizens, and swamp monsters. However, it is the frog-cultists who truly rule the land from a half-ruined cloister complex, sitting on top of ancient catacombs that reach far down – and just as far back in time, before the coming of Man. The cloister is a large, interconnected dungeon environment with multiple access points, different sub-sections, and challenges to test both the cautious and the daring. The booklet comes with a fold-out GM’s map of the Marshlands, as well as the Cloister complex.

“The cloister has stood on a desolate ridge overlooking vast swamps since time immemorial. Dedicated to the great and terrible Tsathoggus, this edifice of evil was destroyed again and again through history, only to re-emerge from its slumber once the forces of Law grew lax and the terrible deeds of the frog-cultists became forgotten. Now a new order rises among the old walls, while older evils stir in stone grottoes and underground sanctuaries. Spies visit the settlements of the marshlands, and offerings make their way to the cloister where the monks hold their vigils as their ancestors have, guarding a nightmare that refuses to die.”

NOTE: This is a scenario whose two parts have been released before, and are now combined into a single adventure. The Cloister dungeons were published as a chapter in Frog God Games’ Rappan Athuk (and are reprinted with permission), while the Marshlands were published in Echoes From Fomalhaut #04. The current edition has been re-edited for greater accessibility.

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The print versions of the modules are available from my Bigcartel store; the PDF edition will be published through DriveThruRPG with a few months’ delay. As always, customers who buy the print edition will receive the PDF version free of charge.

20 comments:

  1. These both look great! My players are just entering this level range now, let's see if I can delay them long enough with the playtest for these to cross the pond.

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  2. Grand to see such a worthy entry make print in its final form. Big mood!

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  3. I was looking over one of your modules and thinking this is graceful mapping, effortless but complex, the architecturally real implemented with daubs. Low vanity, the maps could be beautified with shadows and varying thickness and textures but we see raw draughts which in a funny way 'connaisseurs' prefer having seen the end result.

    The Chinese brushstroke, minimal-effort maximum-effect, from years of experience, is a helpful analogy because there is so much to do for an Ad&d game and the meticulous map is likely to be discarded, if it is not enforced. In other words if you don't have a light touch with maps you as DM will force the players to use your burdensome intricate maps.

    Personally I think two kinds of maps styles are needed. Your style which is on the go (of the highest calibre), but also beautiful, intricate maps which require judgement or anticipation or decree.

    You don't use your blog to explain your process.

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    1. Food for thought, particularly on the cumbersome/light touch dichotomy. I agree there is no single solution, though. My own mapping exercises have been all over the place, from planned to free-flow, semi-randomised to structured, and hand-first to digital-first.

      This also makes it hard to pin it down as a codified process. I suppose the central element is emerging structures - start with a few visually strong ideas (with Cloister, it was the opposed monasteries on a desolate hilltop, and the multiple entrances), develop detail texture, then let things take shape and connect through the process.

      Not sure if I could express it as a more essayistic blog post. In any event, the blogging spirit has departed me for the time being, so I am taking a break from posting. But that's probably obvious.

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    2. You are doing yourself a disservice, but more importantly you let down the youngsters of the future who might share your mentality and aesthetic while they have youth when you are becoming too old to care, by not recording for youTube at least one of your AD&D-like game sessions with Premier and your pals.

      At least do it. You don't have to publish it. Hungarian will be easily translated in the future. Good thought is all that survives.

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  4. I must admit that at the time of reading, the Echoes #4 swamp crawl section was one of my least favorites of the zine, as if something major was missing - an interlude to something big that ended in a whiff. Now I am reading the full Cloister module, and everything synergizes better. The wilderness nodes refer to the cloister (references that were obviously altered in the zine for editorial reasons, but doing so made the swamp encounters feel disjointed) and so the module feels much more complete, with actions in the wilderness having repercussions on the cloister part later on.

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    1. Fair points! It was written up there as a standalone tournament scenario, but obviously, the full module is the real thing. I have run it from all possible angles with various groups (dungeon only, wilderness only, wilderness and dungeon), depending on the time allowance, setup, etc.

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  5. Don’t know if you remember but we spoke a few years back about Cloister and how great it was running it for my group. I am so glad that it’s out as a standalone. Probably my favorite all time experience running a module, and a benchmark for a site based module. Thanks so much for this release, and I loved the personal note on the invoice when I got my physical copy.

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  6. Can I ask how and where the store produces the zine? I'm based in the Netherlands, so if a soft cover edition printed in the EU is possible, that'd be ideal.

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    1. My zines are all produced in and shipped from Hungary. I ship regularly to the Netherlands - shipping usually takes a week from placing an order. Do note that I combine shipping on multiple items.

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  7. Oh, awesome! Thanks for the quick reply. I'll go through your catalogue and see which zines I'd like to order.

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  8. Melan, you have an idea when the PDFs will be available?

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  9. Any news for Melan? Santiago, an avid reader.

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    1. Not much blogwise - I am in a phase where I am just not feeling the blogging spirit. That said, Khosura is inching closer to release; the last art pieces have come in, and maps are taking shape. Two smaller publications, a zine and a supplement are also in the works; one done and one waiting for art. One of the zine adventurers should be very familiar to you.

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  10. Just curious is EMDT 93 – The Peace of Sleepy Haven you have listed in the back of Cloister of the Frog God the same title as Álmosrév Békéje?

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