Adventure Site Contest 2: Crimson Garden of the Crocodile Spirits

​Written by Tristan Shoudy
AD&D, levels not listed (mid-ish)
Haunted greenhouse
  A ruined greenhouse that has been long abandoned rises about the grasslands surrounding it. Within the crumbling palisade surrounding it are shells of other ruined stone and wooden structures. It was once an alchemist’s greenhouse but was left abandoned long ago after he was slain. Prior to his death the alchemist has imported Crocodiles from the south to act as guards for his precious greenhouse. After his death the crocodiles remained but soon perished. They soon rose anew as ghost’s continued to perform the task they were given in life, with renewed dedication.
  Since the beginnings of the hobby, there’s always been tension between in-fiction character power and “levels”, a very game-centric concept. In the simplest conception of D&D, character levels correspond with floors of a dungeon; first levels are on the first floor, second levels are on the second floor, etc. Higher level characters should face higher hit-die threats, with commensurate higher-level rewards. In a realistic world, while there will be more or less dangerous areas, some variety is to be expected, and certainly in a sprawling long-term campaign I’d hope for low level adventure sites to sprinkle around for new characters in an established high-level character’s domain. Despite the artificiality, tagging an adventure with “levels X-Y” is a wise practice, useful both to reviewers and to the user. Here, for example…if I send my max-level players into this site, they’re going to sneeze and destroy everything. But if I send in four hapless level 1’s, they’re dead.
  That metacritique aside, the story here is fairly simple…alchemist guy has a greenhouse. He imports crocodiles to guard his greenhouse. He dies. They die. Now the greenhouse and the fort around the greenhouse are ruins and overgrown and guarded by ghost crocs. As will happen. Also the greenhouse is a redhouse because the plants (unspecified) are red.
  I’m going to stop overusing the word simple, so the map is…okay. Works fine as a little fortified site, just not a lot of stuff to discover. A lack of random encounters or order of battle means we’re just meandering from space to space poking at them. Drawn well, clean lines, and si…er, basic, is fine but you need spice if you’re going to have a simple location like this.
  The nicest bit of spice is in trap for the ledger room (5), which sprays a mist that inflicts “death by cardiovascular-renal disease in 5 days”, now THAT paints a picture. There’s a sad miss in terms of interaction here with those crimson plants, both hooks mention them as a general draw to the site, but besides being something with a sticker price this was a perfect opportunity for something weird.
  This applies to the crocodile spirits too. Skeletons of crocodiles that have ghosts issue forth? That’s a great idea, it’s a pity that statwise these things become just lower-level ghosts (aging fear aura, nasty). A wight, ghouls, and sixteen skeletons fill out our monster roster, they’re doing stuff upon bumbling into their rooms but are otherwise not particularly dynamic. As is an issue with any all-undead adventure site, there’s the question of cleric turns completely trivializing everything.
  Treasure mix is good, but some of it is laying completely unhidden and unguarded. 12,141gp, over half in the fragile red plants, feels like an okay payday for the site’s scale and the hit dice of the enemies, but once more you have the Cleric Question. Loads of magic items for eight keyed rooms.
  Insertion of this adventure site into a campaign is really a question of specifics. I like the premise, I like the idea, I like ghost crocodiles, weird overgrown alchemist gardens, ruined forts…just needs another editing pass to add specificity, and I think you’ll see this really pop.
  Also the crocodile skeletons should totally attack along with the crocodile ghosts.