latest_gator
| What system? | Any OSR |
| Where do I find it? | Here |
This is a pamphlet module written by Christian Sahlén for SKR. To my knowledge SKR doesn’t exist on the public internet, but this module is compatible most old school games.
Here’s the premise:
Deep in the desert, there is a network of tombs of forgotten royalty. It is said that the crypt emerges from the sand for just one week every 13 years and that those brave enough to enter seldom return. But those who do come back, do so with enough riches to retire, at least that’s what people say. The Crypt of the Crocodiles have now been sighted, this is your chance.
I really enjoyed this module, and my table had a lot of fun with it too!
It’s exactly what I want in a trifold dungeon. It’s got a really fun concept, a pretty map, concise writing, and it all fits on a single sheet of paper!
My biggest points of friction were the following:
I’d definitely run this again!
I ran this with Mörk Borg. I chose this system because at the time I wasn’t comfortable enough with any retroclones and Mörk Borg seemed like the closest alternative. I don’t think the game suffered for my choice of system, but I did have to make some changes:
I also made some unintentional modifications:
This was completed in person over two sessions, two hours each. The first session had 3 players and the second session had 4, with one player shared between each group. About half the players had never played Mörk Borg before. This was a one shot with pregenerated characters.
The characters entered the dungeon and immediately flipped the lid on the first coffin they saw. Wraith.
Two characters took up arms against the wraith while a third ran off into the dark, where they bumped into Sabit and the bodies of Sabit’s former party. I rolled a reaction roll, double ones. Sabit, thinking the PC was a monster, hurled a snake in their general direction. After some yelling and swinging of swords Sabit and the PC agreed to a cease fire.
Meanwhile the other two PCs were able to kill the wraith (I think one of them died and was replaced in the process). They met up with Sabit and the other PC, things had calmed down at that point. At least until Sabit made it clear that the party couldn’t loot the bodies of their dead companions. Sabit and the cowardly PC resumed fighting, both were killed in the process and the remaining party members looted all the corpses in the room. Another adventurer wandered into the dungeon to replace the dead one.
The party entered the Cursed Urn chamber and decided the pop the lid off an urn. A Belze emerged. In the chaos a couple more urns were knocked over, and the party was soon in a heated battle with skeletons. In the end the PCs survived but the party’s small but vicious dog, Fifi, was eaten by a skeleton.
The party decided to flip another one of the coffins, this time they found jewels. One member of the party had a compulsion to collect sharp rocks, they took all the jewels and left the dungeon.
The party explored the Temple of the Crocodile. One of them managed to steal a jewel from the eye socket of one of the statues while deftly detecting and avoiding a spear trap.
One PC walked through the Chamber of Heads door while holding their best friend, a skull. The trap did not fire. The PC then proceeded to speak with the gibbering heads, collecting a couple spell scrolls while miraculously never failing their saves against getting cursed. Another member of the party tried to enter the Chamber of Heads. First they tested the magic doorway with their hand, and their hand was immediately burned off.
The party flipped a couple coffins and manages to collect a huge bounty of jewels without triggering any traps or wraiths.
They found The Warning and managed to fish the corpse’s backpack out of the room with a makeshift grappling hook.
Then they found the Crocodile Lair and spent some time discussing their options for distracting the crocodiles. Eventually they landed on a plan of removing a piece of the barricade and lobbing cursed urns into the room. On their test run they tossed in ten urns and watched in horror as skeletons and crocodiles gnawed at each other. When the dust settled they tossed in 20 more urns, finishing off the remaining crocodiles.
At that point the party really felt like they had done the dungeon to the best of their ability, but they decided to open up the Ceiling Sarcophagus without any careful planning because this was just a one shot. The PC who opened the sarcophagus was crushed under falling gold and rushing water.
While most of the remaining party ran out of the tomb as fast as they could, one PC remained and entered the Chamber of Heads. This character was obsessed with heresy and on the run from the church, and I had given the party the rumor that everyone interred in this tomb was a heretic. This PC beheaded themselves while standing over an empty pedestal so that they could spend the rest of eternity screaming in the company of other heretics.