Prequel Adventure to Rappan Athuk: Against the Cult of the Reptile God

Players stay out…

Looking at the behemoth that is Rappan Athuk, it struck me that a little prequel adventure to both get players used to an old school style sandbox campaign and help them get up to around level three might be in order. You won't want to share the adventure title with them, as it's basically the biggest spoiler possible.

N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God struck me as perhaps a perfect fit. It reinforces similar themes as the later adventure with an evil cult, treasure, travel, and the possibility of deadly fights that require creativity from the players. I might also be interested in playing it because I love this video that touches on it by Matt Colville.

If you're using my hook and metaplot then you'll still have the players be agents of the Archbishop and Archdeacon of Usharia. To slot them into this adventure, simply have them be sent to investigate strange reports about the village of Orlane. The local agricultural gos who the villagers worship is an aspect of one of the Nine Gods of the Church, and tiths have stopped arriving at the Archbishopric of Usharia. You can roll on the rumors table to see what the characters learn on their way to Orlane.

I think the adventure largely runs fine as written in the module otherwise. You can change the names of other towns and the relative locations and distances between them. I might use the Uncharted Journeys rules for the short travel from Orlane to the temple of the reptile god. Use NPC stats like guards, veterans, cult fanatics, priests, and commoners where appropriate (I wouldn't stress much about balance or trying to replicate specific NPC stat details from the original. The spirit naga will be hard for the party, so you can scale down it's abilities if you choose to. Personal I'm just going to go with my new default for a hard campaign which is to provide the Tough or Skilled feat as an extra boost at first level. Using XP leveling, the party should be at second or third level by the time they face the naga, which at least gives them a chance. Remember though, this is an intro to Rappan Athuk. It's supposed to be deadly.

Once the players succeed you can reward them and have them report back to their patrons at Usharia. Then I'd do a little downtime/time jump before launching into the Dungeon of Graves.

And that's pretty much it. This is a classic adventure, and I think it'll be really interesting to run and see players go through it.