Return to the Temple of the Frog, WotC 2007

 In 2007, Wizards of the Coast decided to revisit one of the most iconic locations in Blackmoor. Return to the Temple of the Frog was published and released as a free PDF on the Wizards of the Coast Website. This was quite surprising since Dave Arneson's company Zeitgeist Games were publishing Blackmoor at the time as well. Dave Arneson is surprisingly not credited for the adventure even though it is clearly based on his original designs and concepts. The PDF does credit Dave Arneson as one of the creators of D&D however. The Temple of the Frog has gone through many iterations and I detailed a history of the adventure over at my website. 

Return to the Temple of the Frog takes place more than twenty years after the original adventure and the defeat of the Temple. Known to his followers only as Saint Stephen, D&D's first arch villain has somehow managed to rebuilt the temple with newly gained abilities. New adventurer's are needed and will be put up against mutated apes, cyborgs and an enormous mutated frog before they finally can confront Saint Stephen and his nefarious allies. 

The adventure provides updated maps of the original Temple of the Frog and presents players with 3E rules for sci fi weaponry and equipment as well as stats for some of the classic opponents found in the Temple. In many ways this adventure is a replay of the 1987 version (DA2) of the adventure, although with much of the surrounding framework removed or changed. 

The introduction provided on the website at the time was as follows: 

"The Order of the Frog was led by a man of resource and ambition. High Priest Saint Stephen and four companions appeared out of nowhere and took over the order twenty five years ago. Though Stephen and his companions seemed normal enough (except for the slight greenish cast of their skin), they were quite literally not of this world. They were aliens, members of a scientific expedition that crash landed on this planet some years ago. Temple of the Frog was first published in the 1975 D&D Supplement II Blackmoor. It was later republished in 1986 as module DA2, Temple of the Frog. In the original adventure, the PCs were hired to find a missing person (Rissa Aleford, Baroness of the Lakes) and investigate a strange cult based on the worship of frogs. Return to the Temple of the Frog picks up the adventure decades later. During an adventuring party's assault on the temple over twenty years ago, Saint Stephen escaped the conflict and hid in the swamp until the adventurers departed. Having completed their raid, rescued the prisoner they had come for, and hurriedly looted the temple, the heroes left the area and never looked back. Saint Stephen entered the temple hoping to salvage anything that he could. The Order of the Frog was done for, all his fellow aliens were slain, and his frog cultists had fled or were put to the sword. He only wanted enough to allow him to flee the swamp and find a new hiding place. He found more than he had counted on...."

Title: Return to the Temple of the Frog

Year Published (2007, Wizards of the Coast)

Format: PDF

Pages: 36

Author: Ted Albert

Have you played Return to the Temple of the Frog? What did you think about it? What is your favorite version of this adventure location?

• More discussion of this adventure at The Comeback Inn. 

-Havard

Afridhi from Tékumel?

Last Monday, I wrote about the origins of the Afridhi of Blackmoor. I mentioned how the player, Deborah Naffziger, who controlled the Afridhi was a young lady who primarily played in Professor Barker's Tékumel Campaign. Comparing this to how another player, Stephen Rocheford was working with Arneson to come up with the background for his character, St. Stephen, it is not unlikely that Arneson and Naffziger worked together on developing the culture of the Afridhi.

Since both Arneson and Naffziger had experience Barker's campaign, it is not unlikely that they would be drawing on that lore when developing the Afridhi Warrior Culture. The name itself suggests Asian inspiration, which is one of the parts of the world which Professor Barker drew his ideas from. Poster Aldarron, over at the Comeback Inn Forum even suggested that the Afridhi actually travelled from Tékumel to the world of Blackmoor. You can read his interesting theories about this here. I think it is worth exploring further the cross polination between Arneson and Barker's games.






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-Havard

The Frog God

The players still remember the day when Dave Arneson placed a large ceramic frog from his mother's garden on the gaming table. This was their first meeting with the Temple of the Frog, an adventure location which would be the focus of four different published modules for three different editions of D&D spanning three decades. Something dark stirred that day, and the players grew nervous.... 

The order of the Frog, the religious group who used the infamous temple as their base of operations had been organized by St. Stephen, played by Stephen Rocheford. Last month, I described how Arneson and Rocheford came up with this idea back in the spring of 1973. At the time, the Blackmoor players had relocated to the swampy environs of Lake Gloomy and the Temple was located just a few days travel to the south.

St. Stephen himself may have been a cynical manipulator, his religion a trick to be able to control the followers of the cult. Imagine his surprise when the monks of the temple began channeling divine magic. Who had been manipulating who here, the alien may have wondered. Was the idea for the cult really his, or had the idea come from those strange whispers in his head? Who was the true master of the Temple of the Frog?

In Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor it is described how a now lost race called the Sar Aigu once lived in the area where the Temple of the Frog later was constructed. In the 2008 version of the Temple of the Frog, it is revealed that a strange god whom the Frogmen simply call Brr'brrt in their croaking language is the patron of the Frogman priests.

Over at the Comeback Inn Forum, Jeff Berry explains where the Frogmen came from:

"...all three of the 'first three' (Dave, Gary, and Phil [Prof. Barker]) all affected each other; you have to remember just how small the gaming world was back then. I'd be willing to say that this forum has more members then were around in the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva *combined*. Both Dave and Gary were hugely impressed at Phil's work on Tekumel dating back to the 1950's, and he in turn was impressed by their ability to run games and write the rules needed for those games. The D&D world-settings became a lot more detailed and 'culturally aware' after Phil's work became familiar to Gary and Dave. Likewise. Phil elaborated on elements of Tekumel that he'd largely neglected until he'd had a chance to work with Dave and Gary. [...] All three had frogmen because all three read a lot of H. P. Lovecraft, and you just had to have frogmen and other servants of the Old Ones infesting the place; it gave the players something to do when they weren't exploring the dungeons."

Frogmen need not be the only thing that wandered off out from the Cthulhu Mythos and into the Blackmoor Campaign. The Mythos also has a Frog-like deity; Tsathoggua created by Clark Ashton Smith:

"In that secret cave in the bowels of Voormithadreth . . . abides from eldermost eons the god Tsathoggua. You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice."
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Seven Geases" (1933)

Tsathoggua also has a counterpart in Stodos of the Icy Wates in the Mystara Setting, a setting which incidentally is also linked to Asthon Smith's universe through Tom Moldvay's classic module X2: Castle Amber (Chateaû d'Ambreville).

One thing is certain. There is a great power lurking behind the Temple of the Frog. There is a reason why the Temple keeps resurfacing. And that power is nowhere near being defeated.




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-Havard

[Video] A Song for St. Stephen

Thanks to BlackBat242 (John) for reminding me about this Grateful Dead Song. As John says:

"That song was on Aoxomoxoa, released 1969 (and re-released in a "cleaned-up form" in 1971)Perfect timing for that 1973 conversation!"

Who knows, maybe it did in fact seep into the minds of Dave Arneson and Stephen Rocheford as they came up with the idea of first D&D Archvillain.

-Havard

[Characters] Stephen the Rock – First D&D Arch Villain

In 1975, TSR published D&D Supplement II: Blackmoor. Unlike Supplement I, Blackmoor was not just a mere collection of additional rules and monsters, but also featured a unique look into the actual Campaign World of the author through the world’s first adventure module Temple of the Frog.


The Temple of the Frog featured not only a dungeon, frog people, cultist-like monks and other critters.  It also featured the first Arch villain in D&D history. The villain was known as Stephen the Rock, or simply St. Stephen. I have previously discussed Dave Arneson’s tradition of letting players control the bad guys. St. Stephen was no exception. The player who had come up with this character was Stephen Rocheford, known as “Rocky” or “the Rock” among his friends. He remembers how he and Dave first came up with the character back in 1973:

“Dave approached me to invent an 'evil' character that would be 'different from the norm' in this world. Ergo, I thought and settled on a character that was 'not of this world' of Blackmoor. My inspiration eventually was from an old episode of the original Star Trek television series. In it, Captain Kirk found a planet of Nazi's and found the earthling, an historian, who founded it in the hope eliminating it's excesses and organizing this society for the betterment of all in the name of efficiency. I told Dave Arneson and he was delighted. He asked that I ‘flesh out’ the character. “

As we know this was not the last time that Star Trek would be a source of inspiration for the Blackmoor Campaign. The line between fantasy and science fiction was more blurry back then and elements of science fiction had been present from the beginning of the campaign. However, Rocheford’s ideas took things one step further:

“My character was a soldier( I was an Army Officer) who crash landed in Blackmoor with several others from a 'spaceship'. He found a village organized around a group of monks. They and the villagers thought the stranger was a very powerful wizard; in fact he was a man who used a 'phaser' and so overawed the indigenous people that he was proclaimed the ‘High Priest of the Monks of the Swamp’. “

Not only do we see the early seeds to the fabled adventure of the Temple of the Frog here, but also what would become the City of the Gods. Two of the most famous adventures of the Blackmoor line thus sprung from the discussions between Arneson and Rocheford. Rocheford had further ideas for the religious order his character established.

“I set about to organize a theocracy based on the worship of frogs, which were in great supply in the swamp. These frogs were bred and genetically improved over time until some special breeds grew to enormous size. A Temple was erected and an Order of Monks reorganized around this hall of worship. The High Priest had his secret chambers in which no one was allowed except his companions who filled various roles: security chief, treasurer, medical staff (for the genetics ) and so forth. In the High Priests most secret room only the security chief was allowed in as it possessed the generators to 'charge' the weapons and maintain the remnants of the computers from the crash. This allowed this small group to take over the immediate environs of the swamp and the villages. The High Priest wore robes similar to a Roman Catholic Archbishop( I grew up Catholic), complete with staff and mitre. In the temple at the far end was a large pipe organ that ran to the roof and which the openings allowed the countryside to hear the strain of the High Priest playing THE music of this cult: Toccata and Fugue in d minor, by Bach. He played this piece at the time of weekly feedings of the frogs. Those who failed to convert were fed to the frogs, and their possessions were donated to the church. The Temple expanded to transform the original social structure found into a complete theocracy that was evil in nature and which preyed on it neighbors in raids for loot and captives but which always retreated to the swamps in which to hide. Outsiders who ventured into the swamps did not return. The myths and legends which grew were terrible as to what evil lurked in the swamp.”

The basics of the Order of the Frog were given in Supplement II, but it is impressive to see the level of detailed planned for the actual campaign, even down to the music St. Stephen played on his pipe organ. In Supplement II, Stephen was not the one who set up the cult originally, but an unsurper, who had taken over the Order. The DA series saw further developments to the character as Dave Ritchie explained St. Stephen’s relationship with the City of the Gods, making him a traitor to Captain Bork Riesling, seeking power instead of obeying Riesling’s orders to follow the “Prime Directive”.
Rocheford explains that the character was developed in several stages in discussions between him and Dave Arneson. The original concept was formulated in 1973, but the two gamers kept working on the character until 1977. However, already when the first ideas had been sketched out, the character was to be introduced into the campaign:

 Eventually 'The Great Svenny' and his friends heard of this and were intrigued sufficiently enough to launch an expedition. Dave made sure we had worked out several details about this prior to him, as referee, passing on the rumors of this society in the swamps to the players. I kept my role as High Priest, per Arneson's request, secret from the others until the first actual expedition. One of the characters was killed and his loss was a warning to the others and so set the stage for future endeavors by the group who wished revenge and to find out what happened. It was a great "what happened" set up when they finally found the the weird guy in the robes who shot an immensely powerful lightning bolt at them. Awaking later in the swamp, all that could be remembered evoked a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. The game was on!!!

Thanks to Dan H Boggs for providing the information from Stephen Rocheford.

Image Source: Brainiac 5.





-Havard