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The Old Church

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Suggested Price $0.00

An adventure where every play through can have its own twist and there is more to explore than meets the eye!

The Old Church was built long ago. Under the vision of a priest whose name has been lost to the ages. Those that fell into his beliefs believed that when the world was near its end and the sun would set for the last time, they would be’ the chosen ones’ and would take shelter within the walls of the church as a way of saving themselves from the destruction. The priest would lock the doors of the church to isolate them from the apocalypse, only for them to emerge when the time was right and the ‘new world’ had come into its own. And one day, the doors shut. The people who marched in alongside the priest were lost to time and now, nearly eight centuries later, the player-characters have come searching for the Old Church in an attempt to uncover an item…

  • THE OLD CHURCH is an adventure designed for 4 characters of 3rd level
  • Set in the Sunset Mountains, south of Darkhold
  • Random tables make each playthrough different while still sticking to the storyline
  • There are tools to help dungeon masters play the surrounding world as well as the area involved in the main story
  • There are many ways to play the adventure and it is perfectly possibly to chop the adventure up and rearrange it to play as you like

This is the first adventure from Murray C (The Aussie GM)

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Reviews (0)
Discussions (8)
Customer avatar
Kerry W June 22, 2020 11:07 am UTC
PURCHASER
Thank you so much for this one! I adapted a lot of the story with some of the suggestions below and improv-d quite a bit as we went along. As someone else commented I added some 'shadows' and also random strange noises every once in a while to keep the players on their toes. I also incorporated the warring inner factions that someone else mentioned and added a couple of traps inside after these factions had split the church between them and defended their area of the church. I removed the two brothers at the start of the church and was going to have one final cultist boss who had been driven mad and still believed they were at war with the other faction, thus was still defending the chapel to the death, but ultimately the session dragged on so long and one of the traps really gave them bother that I instead kept the original ending. It left them with lots of questions and they've been talking about it so much in our group chat!

A really lovely module without too much fluff that was super easy to run...See more
Customer avatar
charles B May 07, 2020 6:19 am UTC
PURCHASER
Freaking neat....DMing again after 10 year ....
fyi been DMing on and off since "80" 3 rd batch of gkids love
D&D Basic and Expert....and so have I.
Thank you for the great short adventure.
Customer avatar
Jasmijn V November 14, 2018 3:33 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thank You for putting your story online!! It's a wonderfully guided for a beginner DM like me!!
I've only DMed once and then all the players were already weekly playing for at least half a year !!
Now, I'm thinking about starting with a oneshot for a group of complete beginners to give them a taste of DnD and I feel like your story is gonna help me do that! It's easy to understand but still has a lot of depth into it and there's still so much room for own improvisation!! Thank You!!
Customer avatar
Zane B June 16, 2017 2:36 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I'd like to adapt this to the Ravenloft setting, if that's alright with you. Do you think moving it will degrade the atmosphere of the adventure?
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Customer avatar
Murray C June 26, 2017 11:57 am UTC
CREATOR
I don't think it will degrade it at all! Ravenloft is a fantastic choice of where to run this! Sorry for the late reply, if you haven't I hope you went for it and ran it!

I wrote it to be adaptable without any issues, that was part of the reasoning behind making it so self-contained. Take it, run it, change it, do whatever you wish with it :) Glad you enjoy the adventure!
Customer avatar
Tyler M May 14, 2017 4:45 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hi! I'm working on an adventure set in the Sunset Mountains and was wondering if you'd be ok with me referencing this in the adventure at some point.
Customer avatar
Scott P February 21, 2017 7:24 pm UTC
PURCHASER
My players really enjoyed this. Creepy music on a loop added to the tension. I did decide to include two shadows, which the characters would catch glimpses of as they entered/exited rooms. But I agree with previous posters who say that the lack of "enter room, kill monster, go to next room" is part of the fun of the scenario.
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Customer avatar
Murray C February 26, 2017 6:54 am UTC
CREATOR
Awesome to hear! The shadows sound like an great addition to the adventure, I was hoping when i put it out that people would take it an add and take things from it because to me that's how you make the game great for your players, that custom experience of the adventure.

If you want to know my thinking, the adventure came from playing with my idea of the location and seeing it 'on its last legs'. I feel boxed in when there's an expectation about what an adventure should have, so rather than look at examples and read other DMs Guild material i came into it with a location and a 'thing to discover' then made what i'd expect from those into the product :)

Cheers for running it, glad to hear they enjoyed it
Customer avatar
Richard B August 22, 2016 7:54 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I have to say, I loved the vibe from this adventure. I played it for my group and they all said they liked the feel of this creepy old church in the middle nowhere with everyone just about dead. This was just a detour in our CoS adventure, but it fit in perfectly and the real lack of enemies allowed actually started getting the group. I like how it was set up rather bare bones so that the adventure could be adjusted easily for whatever campaign it's set in. I really look forward to more of your work.
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Customer avatar
Murray C September 06, 2016 12:41 am UTC
CREATOR
So glad you enjoyed it! you have no idea how awesome that is to hear! I'm in the working phase of something right now but i have no idea when it'll be finished. It's awesome to hear how you took it and used it, that's what i wanted it to be, just a small thing that played with an idea for a brief moment that could invoke some sort of mood :) thanks a bunch
Customer avatar
Graeme H July 10, 2016 5:57 am UTC
PURCHASER
This is a great concept. I love the idea that people would seal themselves off from the world for 800 years out of religious fervor.
Good stuff.
- encounters outside the church. Explaining the situations and motivations of the different monsters lets a DM play out their actions.
- Some of the stuff in that church is genuinely creepy. The dark visions are DARK. The heart in the jar is bizarre enough to inspire nightmares all on its own. The random item finds are subtly horrifying.

Stuff that needs work
- is there a challenge within the church? the only adversaries seem to be the animated armor on the outside. There is potential for a lot of weird and wild stuff in here.
- There are a lot of Typos
- After 800 years, why are there still items made of wood and paper? They would be dust, or would crumble to dust at a touch.
- Consider having the fate of those stranded within be darker than simple death and internment in a crypt. Did they go through an age...See more
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Customer avatar
Murray C July 12, 2016 9:58 pm UTC
CREATOR
Thanks heaps for the feedback! I'll be updating the adventure soon, making sure those typos are all fixed as well as adding some more to the church :)

- Murray C
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Customer avatar
Graeme H July 15, 2016 12:47 am UTC
PURCHASER
I have been thinking about this thing. You have an excuse to have a truly terrifying dungeon here.

Bear with me.

Religions are schismatic, which means that they always develop different versions of themselves, and then those versions fight. We see it in in this word all the time: CAtholic/protestant, Sunni/Shiite etc. Given enough time, your religion that founded the old church would have developed different sects, which would have disagreed. . They could have had a holy war under, down there in the dark, for decades, until all of them were dead.

Think about that for a second.

It gives you an excuse to build traps. The factions may have trapped parts of the church to keep others out. It also gives you an excuse to have monsters around. These are high level clerics we are dealing with here. They may have summoned all sorts of nasty stuff that may still be around. There could be passwords to get around both the traps and the monsters that could be found in...See more
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File Last Updated:
July 13, 2016
This title was added to our catalog on July 04, 2016.