Ogre Caves of the Toad God

By Ian Hickey
Gravity Realms
2e
Levels 1-2

Crashing into an unfamiliar world, the adventurers begin to uncover past events between two warring factions and a hunger that led to their downfall: a hidden cult dedicated to the return of the Great Toad, Father of Death and Rebirth, an ancient being responsible for birthing the universe! For many decades, the cult has been in hibernation. But now, a wandering tribe of ogres has awakened the cult, becoming its servants and capturing tributes to feed the Great Toad in preparation for an ancient prophecy. The stars are in alignment, and the hottest of summers is upon us; the way to RA’hala will soon open, and the father of death will consume everything!

This 117 page adventure uses about seventy pages to describe sevenish scenes, some of which are mini-dungeon and some full blown, in an interconnected set of adventures that don’t mean anything. Mostly stabbing, the great set up is marred by overly lengthy text, as usual, and problems with the encounters. It’s not a disaster, but not worth running. Except for that set up …

So I’m taking my first run through this and I get to the section on weather on page elevent and it says “Clean, fresh water will be hard to find as dead bodies fill the lakes and rivers.” What’s that all about, I think to myself. Then, I get further in: “The day of the falling, thirty thousand people fell from the sky. Screams and thuds broke the silence of the summer heat.” OHHHHHH! That’s fun! This is a whole Dungeons and Dragons ride at the amusement park, except thirty thousand people get transported to the sky WAY above the new realm. Bloody splats! A friendly wizard zips by to give you a levitation potion, so, you know, you’re safe. And others survive also. You come together, only to find that you are revolving in to neanderthals AND your metal is rusting fast. Oh, also, there’s disease everywhere because of all the bodies. And, also, it’s super hot and dry, so you need extra water. (That fucking shit is not my favorite. I assume there’s some game trauma buried in my past when some asshole DM took away all of our shit because of it.) Anyway, you see a tower nearby and fight the small group of cavemen goblins in it. You get a hint to the curse, and follow that to a manor, and then meet a paladin, and then that leads to a village thats been raided, and then to an old dwarf mine, and then to the titular Ogre Caves, and then to an extradimensional space where thousands of high priests of the toad god from thousands of planets are all sacrificing people to bring the toad goad, avatar of universal destruction, back so he will destroy the universe. There’s nothing you can do, so you save the paladin from YOUR evil high priest (which is not as great as it might seem) and then run through a portal to another world. As the adventure says, “without the adventurers entering RA’hala, Imhullu [the paladin] dies, and the Great Toad God, father of destruction and rebirth, returns and consumes the cosmos. Can the adventurers stop the coming of the Great Toad if they enter RA’hala? No! They can only save Imhullu.” 

So, congrats, Friendship was the goal the entire time. I guess, maybe, you leveled? It feels wrong. I’m down with meaningless adventuring. I may even be down with a plot. But to have the goal of the adventure be a plot and then not be able to impact things in any way?  I mean you collect things along the way in your mini-adventures/scenes in this adventure, but, if you don’t collect them, not to worry, the evil high priest has them all collected for you. The lack of any free will, of your choices matterring, is just nonsense. This is the bullshit of one of those adventure paths, except all in one adventure package.

Looking at the read-aloud, it follows through on the railroad theme, along with over-reveals. “By the sound of it, the tower is infested with goblins; their shaman leader stands on top of a pile of stone blocks in the tower’s centre. Waving primitive stone weapons and covered in fur they prepare for your attack” or “ Two large palisades flank the entrance outlined by the campfires. From behind the palisades, a hail of poisonous toads rains down on you.” It doesn’t matter what you were doing, the designer has deigned that you must now be attacked. Nerfing any of the parties actions. You have no free will, you are but a pawn. This is not fun. This is the kind of shit that causes players to disengage. Don’t fucking do this! We can also see in places an over-reveal in the read-aloud. The RA telling the party things that they should only really be aware of after a deeper examination of the rooms. Not to mention, some of the re-adloud is just confusing. “A faint glow of light spills in a doorway at the far end of the room.” … uh, that room has no doors? I guess maybe a hallway?

This all extends to the DM text where things are padded out through some sloppy writing. “This large kitchen has an entrance into the dining hall and pantry and, a corridor connecting it to the reception and ballroom.” It’s the old wound, my lord.  Which is frustrating because in places there ARE hints of things being done correctly. “The large wooden dance floor, once polished and intact, now warped and buckled, covers the room. A large wooden piano dominates the southwest corner of the room” Getting near the piano can cause the floor to collapse. And we’re told that, or its hinted at anyway, by the warped and buckled floor. That’s the way you telegraph a graph in read-aloud. 

There is a disconnect in this adventure in places. We’ll get mounds of text but then that whole “falling through the air” air just comes out of nowhere eleven pages in. Likewise, there’s this paladin that things hinge on, supposedly the only reason you exist in this adventure, and yet here’s what we get “Shortly after the adventurers clear out the Duke’s Manor and attain 2nd level, they will encounter Imhullu in the wilderness, possibly near the kitchen gardens. Alternatively, she can show up near the adventurer’s camp. Imhullu is with a handful of survivors. They are being attacked by an ogre raiding party riding giant toads. Shouts for help attract the adventurer’s attention.” That’s the ENTIRE adventure section. Mountains and mountains of text, and then this. That fucking paladin gets almost nothing in the adventure. And yet thats who were supposed to be focused on saving at the end. (Again, for no fucking reason other than doing it.)  Tonally, this follows as well with things like “The Shamen of the Crow and Chief Mayor Randy Adams.” Uh … ok, it is 2025, I guess. If I’m not mistaken, he runs the inn that “The inn has turned into a hub for drunken Neanderthals” Sure thing man. It’s just got some weird tone to it in places. More of a Gamma World vibe, but in a weird way. 

Did I mention the challenge levels here? Level one? AT the dukes ruined manor, the second location? It’s got a garden. Want to check it out? “The adventurers will be randomly attacked by ankhegs if they wander around the garden” Uh. Sure. I don’t know. Doesn’t feel kosher. Hydras in the wilderness table? Ok, I guess. Maybe. But, also, you WANT the party wandering in the wilderness. It feels like punishment for playing the level one adventure instead of real world verisimilitude. I’m up for high level shit, but not being FORCED on the party. It’s as if the level one party must travel through Tarrasqueland for two weeks where every 30 minutes a tarrasque shows up on a 1-2. Uh. Ok. You TOLD them to do that! In another place there’s forty ogres. As enemies you are supposed to kill. I’m not even sure this is kosher in a 5e adventure? And, on that front, almost ALL of the interactivity in this is just stabbing things.

So, I went on a lot about hating this. And I don’t like it. But, also, it’s not as bad as most things. If you wanted a plot based adventure where most of what you do is stab things then this would be ok. You can see hints of decent things. Yeah, it’s padded out. And I hate the RA. But it does manage to do a plot based multi-location adventure in a less cringy way than most. Plus, you know, it starts with all those splats and that ending where no matter what you do the toad god shows up to start consuming the universe. There’s something you don’t see every day …

This is $14 at DriveThru. Fourteen dollars and no fucking preview. Great. Sucker

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513622/ogre-caves-of-the-toad-god?1892600