Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master

Here is an old module that I have never fully played or ran (though I did swipe a few maps from it for another adventure), but it seems like it would be fun: THE HIDDEN SHRINE OF TAMOACHAN!! This was from the period before D&D had a consistent worldview so authors would just say “I think I’ll do a Mayan/Aztec adventure today!” and they would retcon a “Mayan” area into the World of Greyhawk and it was all good. Frankly, I think it would be better to have more obviously real-world culture-themed modules/areas in D&D rather than the default assumption that it’s all set in a world where giant fire-breathing lizards with breasts run around wearing spiky armor and no one says anything. Hittites! Uighurs! Portuguese! Tamil Indians! Of course, some people from these cultures might object to being used in D&D modules -_- But so far no one has complained about Tibet the Roleplaying Game! I would also like to volunteer Poland as a RPG setting for anyone who is interested in making it. We deserve better than just one RPG about the Warsaw Uprising!

The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, being a tournament adventure, is structured as a “reverse dungeon” — the PCs start the adventure by falling through a trapdoor into the ruins, and must find their way out. It’s a good premise (I ran The Sunless Citadel for 3e like this, and the entire party died ^^;; ) and definitely increases the urgency of the game. The adventure is full of traps, man-eating plants, bats, zombies and all the other things you would expect in a buried ruin in the jungle. It is also famous for introducing the Gibbering Mouther, which looks sort of like an H.P. Lovecraft version of a Mesoamerican frieze come to life. However, as a friend pointed out, the interesting thing about this module is that they take standard D&D monsters and reinterpret them in a Mesoamerican light. Xipe, the lord of flayed skins, is represented by an ogre mage. Xilonen, the mother goddess of corn, is represented by a giant killer polyp. Even the Gibbering Mouther represents Tlazoteotl, the earth goddess. Actually, now that I think about it, many of the gods and mythological creatures are original or semi-original creatures, but there are some interesting fusions. One big question is why and how the culture that built Tamoachan worshipped these 7 hit die creatures as gods. Were they all that low-level?

The Mesoamerican theme is more than just the monsters, however; nearly every room is based on some location within Mesoamerican mythology and there is tons and tons of information contained in the carvings, the statues, the room descriptions, and so on. I could easily imagine a party getting distracted by the sheer amount of info and forgetting that time is running out and if they don’t escape the dungeon before time is up they will die because of the stagnant, poisonous air. As in many 1e modules, there are lots of weird things to explore and tinker with. There’s the room of smoking mirrors — red, black, white and blue — each with different magical properties. There’s the magic diorama which has different effects, most of them harmful, on whoever goes near it. There’s the magic ball game, the calendar glyphs, etc. In a module full of weird magic items, perhaps the most awesome one is the “death servant,” a one-time-use creature/item which follows its master like a shadow and jumps out when they would otherwise take a killing blow, taking the blow in its master’s stead.

While reading this module, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be impossible to recreate a D&D1E feel in 4E. Many of the traps in modules like this one or Tomb of Horrors have very arbitrary and insta-kill effects and don’t give you saving throws anyway. Since you don’t get saving throws in 4E (in the old sense), it would be easy to recreate these traps in 4E, it just takes a certain attitude to be willing to hit player-characters with unavoidable crippling and killing effects. “Sorry, the trap hit your Reflex defense… YOU DIE.” ^^ If everyone is in the right mindset, this could be an interesting way to run a 4E campaign; it’s not even such a big deal because there is so much raise dead magic available in 4E and you don’t take negative levels when you die. Maybe I’ll try it out and see how it goes….