The Divine Alligator

[Messageboard Golem]

An adventure inspired by such undying classics as I2: The Tomb of the Lizard King, U2: Danger at Dunwater, and N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God -- and yet innovative enough to satisfy the most battle-hardened adventurers.

 

[GameWyrd]

The Divine Alligator is an adventure title that grabs your attention. This 49-paged PDF comes from 0one Roleplaying Games and that's a company known for absolutely fantastic cartography. Sure enough there are excellent maps in this adventure; we have the usual battlemap tiles and we also enjoy a bird's eye view of wide area geographic locations. There is, however, a separate Battlemap PDF just for the key building of the adventure.

The interesting thing about The Divine Alligator is that you don't have to have an alligator in it. Nor do you need to set it in a swamp. Nor do you need lizardmen. I suspect most DMs who buy pre-written adventures do so with some expectation of changing bits. It's good to have the publisher offer some helpful bits of help. Oone's adventures also typically find some space to help DMs scale adventures up, making them harder, and down to make them easier. The Divine Alligator is no exception. As with others in the Master Adventures series some of the encounters in the game are probably too tough to combat dice through. Thinking will be required for this adventure and this is always a good thing.

This is a d20 adventure. It's written for four 7th level characters and it works best if one of those four characters is a druid or ranger. It's also preferable to have someone with a touch of diplomacy, religious knowledge and it's a whole different adventure if someone can speak Draconic.

And that's it. If you're a naughty player who suspects your DM might run The Divine Alligator then go read something else on the site now. Er, run the divine alligator? Take it for a walk? Walkies! I wonder if plays fetch.

Problems in the swamp go back to the dealings of an ancient black dragon. Working to please a draconic deity of Death and Decay the black dragon sets about creating a horde of minions. The dragon creates the half-dragons by infusing each with dragon blood. One of the more terrible and therefore satisfactory creations was Tannin the dragon-alligator. The dragon retires to hibernation but Tannin remains. Some time later human and Halfling settlers move in to the swamp. There's conflict with the local lizardmen tribes; newcomers over natives. Many of the lizardmen tribes move deeper into the swamp to escape. One of them, unluckily, moves into Tannin's lair. Problems. Deaths. Then after some internal politics in the tribe - important later on - a new, Tannin worshipping, leader comes to the fore. Tannin can't grant any divine power of his own but the draconic Death Decay deity is more than happy to feed the cult. As the conflicts gets worse the whole swamp begins to change and this includes the creation or mutation of new animals. It becomes an evil place known as the Dread Swamp. This is where we take our player characters.

Rather conveniently 0one includes a chapter-by-chapter summary of the adventure. DMs shouldn't read this and think they know the game, The Divine Alligator requires more preparation than that and the summary is selectively concise. This following overview of the adventure is even shorter.

Chapter one has the PCs arrive in the outskirts of the Dread Swamp where they become (hopefully) involved in sorting out tensions between the settlers and the nearby lizardmen. In a nice twist there are plenty of human and Halfling settlers who are really the aggressors and troublemakers in the conflict.

Chapter two has the PCs have their first real trek through the swamp. This will involve encounters with some of those warped creatures. The PCs will (hopefully - ah, the problems with pre-written adventures) meet the nearby tribe of lizardmen and find them quite friendly. They'll learn of a splinter group, a break away tribe, and that it is likely to be them causing the problems.

Chapter three has the players meet the Splintered / God's Tribe and enter their settlement. The God's Tribe is so-called (by themselves) because they are Tannin's lot.

Chapter three isn't a combat-fest. It isn't a skirmish which pits the player party group up against the tribe. At least, it doesn't have to be, it could certainly wind up like that. There are two more chapters. Two chapters where the players can explore the temple and come face to face with Tannin and even here there doesn't have to be a grand finale.

0one's work is always pretty. The Divine Alligator has some excellent maps and illustrations. There are maps so there's bound to be an element where the game is designed to have miniatures moved around in a tactical melee. To a point The Divine Alligator is a linear adventure and to a lesser extent it is a dungeon crawl - but that's not really fair. The Divine Alligator is as non-linear and as open as a game designed to lead players to an ultimate encounter in the deepest level of an atmospheric building as could be expected. The Divine Alligator works best, I think, if the DM has it handy but doesn't need to use it. PDF adventures suit this sort of "handy resource adventure" role well. 0one's help on scaling the adventure and setting it elsewhere is exceptionally handy in this respect. On the other hand, with the exception of the cartography - the bulk of which is else product - there isn't anything here which a DM of some experience couldn't throw together quickly himself.

* This The Divine Alligator review was first posted at GameWyrd.

 

[LizardWizard]

Thank you for your criticism, GameWyrd.
I wholeheartedly agree that this adventure doen't open new horizons in the industry. I just tried to do an old story (humans vs. supposedly evil lizardfolk) right, because too many adventures dedicated to this theme quickly degrade into a hack-fest.
I'm glad that you have noticed the features that set this adventure apart.
Artem V. Serebrennikov,
Author of The Divine Alligator

 

[johnsemlak]

The Divine Alligator is an adventure for 3.5 edition D&D, designed for character level 7. There are notes for scaling the adventure up and down a level or two. Though the adventure claims to require simply the '3rd edition' PHB (i.e. 3.0), the stats in the adventure are complient with 3.5 rules.

The adventure is 49 pages long, including covers and the legal stuff. It comes in one single file--no separate version for printing. The covers are full color; the interior is mostly black and white, with a simple color border and numerous B&W illustrations. The maps, of which there are 4-5, are full color; I don't know how they'll look on a b&w printer. They're not the most utility oriented maps, with no grid. Also included is one battle-grid map, for the final encounter (Oone Games specialize in battlegrids). The grid is for use with the final encounter, and comes in a color version and B&W version.

My quick read of this adventure found no quibbles with the adventure's editing; the layout was nice and I spelling/grammar errors were not noticible.

The illustrations are numerous and quite good by the standards of PDF publishing. Overall, the layout is rather attractive and makes a good first impression.

The adventure is has relatively linear storyline that takes the PCs from a small backwater village near a swamp, through the swamp and to the ruins of a lost civilization. The plot involves two gods, both described in the module, worshipped by lizardfolk and other reptilians. As a reptilian god is generally on the fringe of most cosmologies, these gods should be reasonably easy to integrate into most campaigns. The locations are also fairly easy to place in most settings--you simply need ot find a swamp on the edge of civilization and be willing to place the remains of a long-gone civilization there.

The encounters, which are mostly EL 4-6 but a few of which are 8 or higher, are well detailed with the monsters' tactics and encounter development provided. Also, for each location notes are given for how to handle various approaches taken by the PCs ('Kick in the door' approach, 'deceptive' approach, etc.).

Some of the encounters are quite intriguing, with several options for the PCs, and often with combat not being the best option. Several NPCs have motivations that may not be immediately apparent to the PCs, especially the various lizardfolk who vary in alignment from good to evil. The final encounter involves an very interesting and challening half-dragon/half crocodile ('The Divine Alligator')

Overall, this is a reasonably simple yet intriguing adventure with a variety of challenges for the PCs. It is very faithful to 3.5 edition rules, mechanics, and adventure design conventions. The adventure is laid out very professionally and looks much better than many PDFs on the market. My main quibble is the maps--I would have prefered a more utilitarian approach, with B&W maps that are easy to print and with grids.

If you'd like to give your characters a fun adventure in the swamp and scare them with some really frightening reptiles, this adventure is for you.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Divine Alligator by Oone Roleplaying Games, is an adventure for four 7th level characters. The book recommends a druid or ranger, as well as someone with good diplomatic skills.

The material revolves around a small human encampment being in the middle of a lizard man power struggle. The characters, through one way or another, are asked to step up and find out why Great Bogs is under attack by lizard folk. Once the party moves into the swamp, they discover that there are two factions of lizard folk here. One, a more traditional and declining race lead by a druid, the other a malevolent and dangerous group lead by the ‘Divine Alligator”.

The adventure isn’t bad, but is fairly straight forward with few options to do things outside of follow the adventure. Part of this is due to the size of the adventure. There isn’t enough room for example, to discuss how Beleera, a local adventure, came to hate lizardfolk, or provide any enemies in the city, perhaps minions of Beleera, who might strive to keep the party in Great Bogs while she takes her vengeance.

In the swamp, there are no chance or possible chance encounters. Just wandering ones. In other situations, there are options for roleplaying events out, but they often lead to a bit more information, useful for the player’s understanding of what’s happening, but unless the party is of a truly evil bent, nothing else as the party comes to blows against the evil worshippers of the Vine Alligator before moving on to attack the Divine Alligator itself, a half-dragon half alligator that funnels power from a dark god to those who would pay it homage.

The adventure isn’t bad in any sense. The layout, while draining an ink’s reservoirs of color, is solid. Because it’s a PDF file, the user doesn’t have to print the two pages of advertising. Certain areas have a full color map and a standard map. The art is greatThe illustrations give the book a high quality feel. For example, the half page illustration of the druid Kedaloss, with her scythe and constrictor snake, is powerful. The illustration of the Divine Dragon itself is another example of something that should be in a hand out so that the GM can say, “And you see this!” Being a PDF, that would probably be a good idea to put maps and other utilities separate from the main body of the adventure for the GM’s use. The game stats, for the most part look good. Editing could be a little tighter. In one prison, a fiendish giant constrictor guards a special prisoner, but the text notes, “If the guardian serpents are defeated”. Should be guardian serpent.

Ironically enough, one of the things I don’t like in the adventure, I otherwise love from this company, and that’s the smaller maps. These maps use a one square equal ten feet, which means when drawing it out, that each square is four squares. The maps are also in full color, which make them a little hard to see, unless printed out on a very high end ink jet.

The Divine Alligator will easily provide a few nights of adventure and provide the GM with the tools he needs if he wishes to augment any of the lizard men here with say, templates from Template Troves Volume 1 or the Forgotten Realms Sourcebook, the Serpent Kingdoms.