Retrospective: Temple of the Frog

By most measures, Dave Arneson's "The Temple of the Frog" is the first published Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Originally appearing in the second supplement to OD&D, Blackmoor, it's a very strange scenario – or so I thought when I first read it. As presented in its initial form, the eponymous temple is home to a weird religious order whose members have "delved into the forbidden areas of study and determined that animals have more potential to populate the world than man, who was, after all, a biological abomination which would ultimately threaten the existence of all life." To that end, the Brothers of the Temple "began developing a strain of amphibian that would combine the ferocity and killer instincts of larger mammals with the ability to move through swamps with great swiftness to strike and avoid retaliation." Weird indeed!

More than this, what caught my attention all those years ago was the mysterious individual who acted as the temple's high priest, Stephen the Rock. According to Blackmoor, Stephen not only "possessed some very unusual powers," he "is not from the world of Blackmoor at all, but rather he is an intelligent humanoid from another world/dimension." We later learn that he was the member of some kind of scientific expedition to study Blackmoor and became stranded there. Owing to his origins, he brought with him advanced technological devices – the "very unusual powers" mentioned above – and used them to cow the locals and establish himself as leader of the frog-breeding Brothers, accelerating their work through the application of otherworldly science.

Now, at the time, I was already quite familiar with the idea of mixing fantasy and science fiction. I'd refereed Expedition to the Barrier Peaks several times and, while I had many misgivings about it, I largely enjoyed it. Barrier Peaks is basically a dungeon filled with alien monsters and high tech "magic items." It's quite self-contained and, at least as presented, there's only minimal suggestion that the presence of an extraterrestrial starship in a fantasy world will have any long-term consequences. That's not the case with "The Temple of the Frog," where it's very explicit that Stephen the Rock and the Brothers of the Frog are involving themselves in the politics of Blackmoor, hence the need to oppose them. That probably explains why I found the scenario in Blackmoor so compelling.

So, when TSR announced that they were releasing a revised and expanded version of the original scenario in 1986 as part of its new series of Blackmoor modules for D&D, I was enthusiastic. I dutifully bought Temple of the Frog and devoured it, tearing through its 48 pages in a single sitting. Developed by David J. Ritchie from the original by Arneson, I found the module is solid, if somewhat overelaborated. Like so many D&D modules at the time, it's filled with lots of boxed text, most of which, to be fair, is simply descriptive, but it does pad out the text more than I think is necessary. Less forgivable, though, are the initial dozen or so pages that sets up the adventure scenario through NPC dialog and exposition (again, presented in boxed text). 

The main portion of Temple of the Frog consists of detailing the temple itself, as well as its denizens and treasures. Being familiar with the 1975 version, I saw lots of similarities; it's clear that Ritchie hewed as closely to the original as possible and I appreciated that. That said – and despite what the great cover by Denis Beauvais implies – the 1986 module somehow feels much less "science fiction-y" than does the original. All the elements are still there. In fact, there are a few new high tech elements, like a cyborg, for instance, but somehow that I can't quite articulate the end result feels much less wild and transgressive than the Blackmoor version. Whether that's an actual function of the module itself or simply that, by the time I read this, I was already familiar with the concept, is hard to say. Regardless, the end result is, in my opinion, lackluster and full of unrealized potential.

Even so, I retain a great fondness for Temple of the Frog. Much like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, it played an important role in helping me to become more comfortable with mixing science fiction and fantasy. Given how much of a stick in the mud I am about such things, that's not nothing.