Back to the Swamp: N1 Curse of the Reptile God

Yo' Dicechucks, you've been silent since July. What the heck are you up to?

Thank you for asking. What happened was this: I started playing 5E online--using a psudonym of course--during the pandemic. Someone leaked this secret to the OSR police and they busted me on charges of Taking Opportunity Attacks in the First Degree and Rolling Charisma Checks with Malicious Intent. The outfall is that my blogging rights have been revoked. DiceChucker Enterprises Legal Team has been working on getting a reinstatement; they've managed to get a temporary easement that allows me to post old material that was written before I went afoul of The Law. So here is a piece I wrote up 7 years ago when I went on my N1 tirade. Read it quickly, before the pigs shut me down again.

I've gone on record as saying that the Naga in the basement of N1 was perhaps not the best choice of critter to base your entire cult on. Besides being far too powerful an opponent for the posse of novice PCs who are supposed to be going through this adventure, the naga charm ability is just a Mass Charm spell which doesn't really create the creepy side effects that the module calls for. The cursed townspeople of Orlanes often were characterized as losing interest into complete apathy regarding their work and or family. And the cursed cleric of Marrakesh was so far gone that he defiled the sacred tomes at the church and kidnapped a young girl from the neighborhood to be his sex slave. Nothing about a mass charm spell would cause that sort of reaction.

 

Of course you could just change the Naga so it's a less powerful critter, but then it seems unworthy of your worship. How about an ancient artifact of evil? I like the sound of that because it allows us to redefine the charm to handle the range of results that are described in the module. So instead of a Naga it's a statue of a magic constrictor snake with a woman's head that comes to life under the full moon. When the statue comes to life it encircles the victim in its coils and infiltrates their will with it's hypnotic gaze. In this way it can manufacture 5-10 new "cult members" per full moon.