Temple of the Rotting Priest (Shadowdark edition) is free. The author posted it to RPG Trader. 13 pages. Levels 3-4. ~2000 words. ~10 minutes.
I found this a few weeks ago while perusing RPG Trader for something to review, before I asked people on the Arcane Library Discord (so those requests will be coming soon). I was pulled in by the bold use of red & the title. It was marked free, so if you like it, I’d consider trying something else from the author that’s paid. Admittedly, I was put off by the 5e conversion, but OSE converts nicely, so I was hopeful. Great art, but it needs work to run it well.
What is it?
A short, one-session dungeon crawl by Michael J Patrick (Raccoon Pinion Games) for PCs level 3-4. It’s a conversion of a module that started life elsewhere (the author has 5e and OSE versions out there), now made for Shadowdark. Here’s hoping for a good conversion. 5e conversions tend to struggle simply because the base assumptions of gameplay typically aren’t the same.
Unique Features?
The hook here is the corruption. Something in the temple spreads through the water, and anything that falls to it has solid black eyes. The goblins you’d expect to fight are mostly not goblins anymore, and the few that are left are scared. That’s a nice inversion of the “goblins in a hole” setup.
Bold print marks monsters and magic items, and bold red marks the ones original to this adventure. Simple, but useful.
It ends with a hook pointing somewhere bigger. I won’t say where.
What’s the story?
A buried temple of old, forgotten gods was taken by the followers of a newer god, and the priest who resisted was dealt with in a way that didn’t stick. Centuries later, a merchant’s caravan gets hit by black-eyed goblins and a huge white wolf, and he wants his cargo back. Especially one black iron box. Unopened.
(Insert Se7en meme: “What’s in the box? What’s in the box?”)
It’s a lot of story layers crammed on top of one another. For a 13-page adventure, it’s possibly a bit much.
So… Adventure?
Setup
One hook, delivered at the tavern: a bloodied merchant bursts in and offers 200 gp for the box plus 10% of anything else recovered. It’s a classic “go get the thing” job. It works for a one-shot. It also gives the players an ethical question the second they find the box, and I like that.
There are no rumors. There’s no random encounter table, no danger level, and no light notes. For a temple that’s literally buried, that’s the Shadowdark basics missing. A torch should matter in a place like this, and right now nothing in the text says it does. It’s the 5e conversion seeping through.
I added a note to make a d6 encounter table built from what’s already here (frenzied goblins wandering, the wolf hunting, whispers from the fountain) when prepping. I tend to prefer deadly encounters, but despite “frenzied,” it feels mostly unsafe. If staring into the black eyes were a true mechanic, I’d consider that deadly.
This is the gap where 5e conversions often feel incomplete for Shadowdark.
Room Keys
The keys are prose paragraphs. Read-aloud-ish description first, then the details. There’s no real formatting distinction to help you be clear about where that line is, though. There are also some formatting issues from copying it over (see “Blood and gore stain the walls and floor.” above, with its unnecessary line break). It reads more like a 5e module than a Shadowdark one. Not thrilled. I like a little more structure in my room keys so they are easier to run at the table. This harkens back to needing copious prep & notes.
There are quite a few points that should be interactive, but don’t really provide the detail to make them real points a party can sink their teeth into.
- Feasting Hall (Area 2). This is the first time “frenzied” is mentioned pertaining to the Black Water. But it doesn’t have the interactive ability to do anything about it. It’s a thing to kill. It would be nice if there was a way to redeem the frenzied goblins for non-murder-hobo parties.
- Beezul (Area 4). A terrified goblin shaman hiding behind a tapestry. The character art before him doesn’t depict a cowering goblin shaman so it’s a little confusing/contradictory. He’s there, but he has no goals, wants, or secrets. I don’t really have any guidance on how to play him beyond fearful. Without it, he’s essentially a talking painting on the wall.
- Fountain of Bones (Area 6). This is the heart of the adventure and it’s a mechanic that should have been called out in the setup. Why? Because it’s on the frenzied goblin stat block in Area 2, which tells you to read Area 6, where you learn it’s predicated on something in Area 10 (mislabeled as Area 9), with nothing you can do except roll a WIS check to survive it. This is what I mean by “this should be interactive,” but there’s nothing here to sink teeth into.
About half have no levers to pull on. The Vestibule (Area 1) is description and exits. The Defaced Shrine (Area 5) is an Intelligence check to learn some god names. That’s lore, and I’ve said lore isn’t empty, but there’s nothing to poke. Give the defaced statues something to do (a hidden offering, a reaction to the god of wolves) and it’d be interesting.
So as part of my prep, I’m adding rocks to turn over, a way to redeem the frenzied goblins, a method of removing the Black Water effect without killing anyone, & fixing some of the contradictions (per Area 10, no frenzied goblins could get past Area 6, but we meet some in Area 2). After a bit, it feels like I’m writing the adventure which is not what I want to do when I pick up someone else’s adventure. I want most of the work done so I only need to tweak it to suit my tone & locations.
The ending is abrupt. The keys end and there’s no “follow-ups” or “concluding the adventure” section, nothing on what happens to the temple, the merchant, or the corruption afterward. So that’s another thing to prep, because the players will either want to bottle it to feed to people so they can control them OR want to destroy it because that’s too much power for any one person. Or something in between.
Either way, I need answers on how to handle it. And… it looks like I’ll have to create them.
So who is this for?
This is for GMs who want a free, one-night dungeon with a creepy central idea and don’t mind prepping a healthy chunk to make it work like Shadowdark. It’s free, so it’s an easy grab for a decent base, but you will need to crank out the elbow grease. Also, not the same old goblin adventure. That’s a lot going for it.
I think what holds me back from liking this more is that the central premise of a corrupting rotting thing excites me & it sets my expectations high. I love that kind of gnarly corrosiveness. It feeds the gothic tendrils I enjoy about cursed families and the houses being polluted with that curse by their existence, poisoning the land. But I have to do quite a bit to pull out that storyline that I wanted.
If you made it this far, thank you. Now, I’m going to nitpick & nerd out on design. You have been warned.
Design Nitpicks
It does its own thing. Red, black and white, a big snarling cover, a horror title font, black pages for the creatures and magic items and lots of art. Points for that. None of it soothes the eyes, though. Lots of copy-paste line break issues. Poor line spacing, and some paragraphs are separated by a line break and some by a paragraph break (Based on the formatting above, the “Two frenzied zombies” should have an extra space above it.) There’s no rhyme or reason from what I can tell.
Will anyone care? Just me. Which is fine. But to me, it’s a small thing that reflects how much care & attention to detail goes into the quality of the work.
Map placement. The map is on p. 10, after all the keys. I groan every time. Put the map before the keys so the GM knows where they’re going before they read where they’re going. It’s middle school English class on how to write a paper. “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.”
DCs. The fountain and the locks use standard DCs (15 and 18). Thank you. But a lot of checks have no DC at all (“a successful Strength check,” “requires an Intelligence check”), and one reads “a +4 Intelligence check,” which I genuinely can’t parse. Is that a DC? A bonus? Just give me a 9, 12, 15, or 18.
Checks with costs. Moving the entrance slab is a Strength check with no cost for failure. Just let them move it, or put a clock on it. Identifying the gods is a check with nothing riding on it either.
“Saves.” The trapped box says “save versus poison.” Shadowdark doesn’t have saves. It’s a CON check. Small, but it’s one of those conversion fingerprints. And it’s not even a conversion fingerprint from 5e to Shadowdark. That’s a stop in other systems (I’m guessing OSE).
Monster math. The frenzied goblins and zombies get proper stat blocks on a dedicated page. Blaarg, though, gets his stats in a sentence of prose in Area 7. And I’m not sure the numbers line up. Regardless, none of these are a threat for level 3-4 PCs unless they get charmed by drinking Black Water.
Treasure XP. Treasure is listed in gp and sp with magic items named, but there’s no XP noted anywhere. Write it in. I can use the 100g = 1 XP conversion, but it’s not clear that is the intention with some of the odd rewards. Like 90g 20s is not 1 XP on the 100g = 1 XP conversion, but it’s kind of close enough. And the Discord makes a case for doing lower amounts at lower levels. So at level 1, 20g = 1 XP and at level 7, 250g = 1 XP. Not being consistent is both an aesthetic & game design flaw.
Layout. It’s two columns and entries break across columns & pages (BOOOOOOOO!). Area 8 starts on p. 4 and finishes on p. 5, with the wolf, the altar loot, and the secret door split up. Area 10 is split too. On a tablet, that’s flipping mid-fight.
Page numbers & bookmarks. It has some page numbers. At 13 pages it’s not a huge deal, but links from bold monster names to their stat blocks would make that bold/red system actually do work. Also, just include the monsters from the Core Book. It’s under license. Do it.
Art & credits. “All art and words were created by me, a human. I don’t have any tentacles.” Lame. Tentacles are awesome. Ask Cathulhu. The art is charming and it’s all one person’s. It’s definitely the stand out piece here.
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