DA2: Temple of the Frog
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The module that has the chips to call itself THE ORIGINAL D&D Dungeon Crawl. Written by Dave Arneson with help from Stephen Rocheford, the Temple of the Frog was bundled with Supplement II Blackmoor.
It's... a little rough
What's the Plot?
 This article contains spoilers! You have been warned. |
In the Great Dismal Swamp, off Lake Gloomy, exists the City of the Frog. There, the Frog Cult is building an army of genetically modified frogmen while kidnapping and enslaving the populace of the surrounding area. Now, it's up to the PCs to infiltrate the Temple, discover its secrets, and in general do what adventurers do.
In truth, the Frog Cult's new leader, Stephen the Rock, is actually a space traveller who has passed his advanced technology as divine power.
Playing It
Herein lies the problem with the Temple of the Frog: it was written in the proto-D&D Chainmail/Blackmoor slurry and later converted to OD&D. As such, the combat encounters are massive (there are areas in the Temple proper that have hundreds of guards, suicidal for a straight fight even for an experienced party). Meanwhile, the mapping itself is amateur and poorly keyed.
Dave Ritchie got the module rereleased for D&D Expert Version as DA2. This version is better edited, which is to say - it's edited at all. Saint Stephen the Rock is here named: "Rocklin", not Rocheford as we'd expect. Because the DA line doesn't require the Companion Set, it borrows precious space to include CM-level spells, items, and/or monsters. And because it's Ritchie, who'd rather be writing Flashman novels, the DA variant suffers from heavy railroading - the intro monologue to the players being several pages long. And there's a sequel: DA3: City of the Gods.
All in all, Temple of the Frog is not good, but it is an interesting piece of history, showcasing the weird and wild flavor of D&D before it became codified into its familiar form. (Among other things, there's a boat named for a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters...)