Adventure Site Contest 3: Chapel of Yog-Sothoth

Written by Warped Plots
For AD&D, levels 4-5
Summer Camp for Mythos Cultists
For about a couple of centuries, this place was dedicated to Yog-Sothoth. A remote chapel in the middle of the forest, along with several log cabins, a well, a graveyard, and even some overgrown remains of gardening attempts.      
   It’s actually kind of surprising it’s taken us this long to get to Lovecraft. Mythos creatures have a long history in D&D, where they’re treated less like Ol’ HPL’s incomprehensible and impossible horrors, more nice high-hit-die beatsticks with a few extra goopy bits. The game is fundamentally about defeating monsters, not staring at them and going mad, so it makes sense that this branch of the hobby has taken Mythos stuff this way. In Chapel here, this fundamental attitude is even extended to Mr. Yoggy himself, in this very nicely-sketched log cabin summer camp site.
   We have here a site built for a very specific usage. Although it is certainly conceivable that this site can be bumbled in to, the default assumption is that the party, in the course of doing PC Things, beats an evil thug into spilling the rumor that this chapel exists for teleporting the faithful to anywhere they want to go. Head into the woods, talk to an adorable idol made of eyes, survive a carrion crawler for a night, get a portal to Next Place on Your Quest Docket. Fun and done.
   As described, this is more of a protracted encounter than a site exploration, but there is a lovely sketch of the whole camp along with keys. Against a complicated fighter this whole area would make for a great set-piece arena but a carrion crawler is more of a bitey fight-stick, so unless circumstances conspire heavily to make for a slasher-horror-movie kind of nightmare run-and-hide scenario, mostly you’re just attempting to replicate the quality art while your players poke into every cabin. Sure looks nice though.
   There really isn’t a lot of interaction here. The altar talks, there’s a 25% chance of encountering a semi-helpful ghost, and a 25% chance for a personalized note from Yog-Sothoth found on the mummified corpse of a priest. Most of the cabins are empty, with giant bugs (spiders, centipedes) as our only threats. If the PCs go down the well in the center the writeup concedes there might be other interesting things down there but also tells us descent is tantamount to suicide with more carrion crawlers down there. Um. Okay. Maybe that’s true at levels 4-5, but what if they come back at level 10?
   Unfortunately I think the answer might be “well there’s a different quest area by then”. Despite the AD&D system tag, our only cash is d6x100 copper coins. Now, a massive unlimited (if chaotic) one-way teleport gate is a pretty useful tool/site, but a lot of the design here suggests D&D 2E+ “quest-based” campaign structure rather than “explore and loot” of the original school. That’s not to say the site isn’t useful in any type of game, it’s just notable that in its lack of cash.
   This site can go anywhere in your game, and if played straight, can massively change your game (good). I just wish it was a little more Yoggy.