Death Frost Doom

Death Frost Doom
Module published by Self published
Rule System	Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Authors	James Raggi IV

Death Frost Doom is a module for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, written by James Edward Raggi IV. The adventurers will explore a cave that was used as a place of worship by an evil cult long ago. They will also die, either due to a death trap or boredom.

As you read this module, you may notice that the ideal scenario for the players is to enter the dungeon, don't interact with anything or try something out of the ordinary, pick up whatever treasure lie here, and get out immediately. Indeed, this is all part of the masterplan of James Edward Raggi IV to punish player that would dare having fun. On the other hand, if they try anything foolish, like say using their character in the way they are supposed to be used, they will meet certain death, despite the author claim that "there are multiple means of escape once those events are triggered" (a lie).

The adventure

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

A long time ago, an evil cult has taken home on top of a mountain. They are long gone now, but the place is still haunted. The adventure begin with the party hearing about it, and deciding to investigate.

The first part of the module is the actual trek to the house that serve as an entrance for the cult stronghold. The second part is the inside of the house, and the third part is the cave beneath the house (the actual place were the cult members were doing their thing).

The first thing the players meet is an old hermit who watches over the graves of the cult's victims (they were mostly children). Closest thing to a normal nice NPC the author has made in a long time. He tries to convince them to move on, with many dire warnings, then with non-lethal-but-desperate force if they persist, running away in terror if they keep on pressing on rather than be at ground zero to what he suspects might be coming.

The stronghold has a magical drug sitting in one of the rooms. Should the players be dumb enough to pop it in their mouth they make a roll on a d100 table. In an uncharacteristic move for Raggi, some of the results are positive. But it's a double fake-out, because they will walk away from the stronghold with crippling drug addiction.

The underground are a realistically laid out catacomb (minus the screaming faces) that is loaded down with risk free treasure. One that pretty much is risk free. Yay. Also cursed treasure that gives you permanent disadvantage on your attack rolls, no save. Yay.

Finally, after all the bullshit, you meet a plant. The plant bars forward progress, and trying to get past it will probably kill it. If the plant dies, within a few rounds, every corpse on the mountain arises as a zombie and tries to kill the party, and there are tens of thousands of the fuckers. Also, turn undead doesn't work on them because fuck you. It's about here that the "realism" of the dungeon's layout kind of breaks down, since the rest of it's build around the assumption players will trip the undead trap and doom everything.

There's more stuff in there, an ancient vampire who wants the players to drag his sarcophagus back to civilization, a big spider. But all in all there just isn't a lot other then wandering in the dark. Most players will either give up due to boredom or trigger the zombie apocalypse and drop an undead bomb on the campaign setting. Because if there is one thing GM's love, it's one shot modules making the entire rest of the campaign about them.

Unless, as the module itself notes, you've got a druid around who can politely ask the plant to move out of the way, preventing the zombie apocalypse and allowing the players to raid the rest of the dungeon in peace. Though, as the entire thing is designed as a bit of a "fuck you" trap, 's not much left once you've already scavenged heaps of gold off the corpses and then moved on.

There is then a small bonus adventure.

Small bonus adventure

There's a tower, built by the same evil cult that keeps showing up in all the author's work. It is explicitly designed as a screw-you trap to kill adventurers. They get pointed there by a conveniently-placed treasure map and key.

The door is guarded by an intimidating looking but feeble and tired old creature, which keeps being resurrected to continue this charade unless someone throws bless on the thing that contains the final boss. The door is actually a shapeshifting monster that attacks and devours anyone who doesn't have the key MacGuffin.

From there, the rest of the dungeon spins a yarn about a princess in the top of the tower, and how wealth, glory, and princess booty awaits one who deliberately strips off all his gear, throws it in a suspiciously-full bin loaded with what looks a lot like the gear of many previous adventurers, and then walks past the creepy, well-armed skeleton guards to the top of the tower. One at a time, in single-file only please.

Naturally, as all but the most-dis-embrained have probably gathered from the incredibly-obvious signs that others have gone through this rigmarole before, and the profusion of rats that keep getting mentioned who must have some kind of food source, it's a trap, and the sarcophagous on the top floor, surrounded by broken glass (too much to have come from the fallen chandelier in the room with her) so anyone walking up to it will make lots of noise, contains a wight who attacks anyone that opens it, gets automatic surprise if they're somehow dumb enough to buy into this trap, and drags their souls off to be tortured by a dark god for all eternity when she kills them. The only way to prevent everything from restoring itself if the adventurers figure it out and kill everything is to bless her sarcophagus after killing her.

All corpses are dumped behind a curtain, where rats eat them to bones, then carry their shinies off to dark masters, who put the key and map somewhere in the world so the cycle goes on.

Also, if you try to grappling hook into the top-most floor without braving the door, it's not connected to the rest of the dungeon, and is actually a zone of magical darkness filled to the brim with sharp objects that slowly grind anyone who falls in into bloody rat chow unless he can make a couple thematically odd saves and has enough hitpoints to survive climbing out.

The ending then sarcastically notes that the tower contains no actual treasure.