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Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Module #C1
The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
32 pages TSR Hobbies (January 1, 1981) English 0935696156 978-0935696158
40 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 23, 2012
Hidden Shrine is a potpourri of set-piece encounters. The encounters are brilliant, but what separates a tournament module like this from a fully fleshed out adventure like Caverns of Thracia is the lack of a compelling backstory. Play of this module would be vastly improved by appropriate foreshadowing beforehand, so that the players have heard of such notables as Xipe and Camazotz. At any rate, I find the idea that in tournament play, the party can make any meaningful progress in 2 hours, laughable. I do think it would be fun to use the tournament characters and play through this starting from the cave-in, just not with the poison gas and not with a time limit. My favorite room is probably the miniature city; reminds me of Raiders.
December 10, 2022
One of the wordiest adventure modules we've had up until now, this was actually released in a limited fashion in 1979 as a competition module at Origins '79 under the title: "Lost Tamoachan: The Hidden Shrine of Lubaatum", but the mass market version was this 1980 version (with a color update for the cover later on).
Tamoachan is a really detailed module, with immense descriptions of each area as well as visual aids for each room in the dungeon. The dungeon itself is a reverse dungeon in the sense that you start at the bottom and need to go up to reach freedom rather than exploring down as is the case in most adventures. The setting is Greyhawk and more specifically in the Olman islands which are introduced in this module, a clear one for one lift from Mayan, Aztec, Olmec and other mesoamerican cultures.
The party is stuck underground, inside a pyramid and goes from room to room in order to find freedom. In a kind of Haunted House style each room has a different danger and puzzle to fix in order to move on to the next one. Full of undead and even stranger things (the Gibbering Mouther makes his debut here, for example), the pyramid is really a temple complex, with different areas dedicated to different gods, both good, evil and neutral. Added to this setup are a bunch of really cool illustrations to help players visualise their surroundings. A fun adventure for sure.
Tamoachan is a really detailed module, with immense descriptions of each area as well as visual aids for each room in the dungeon. The dungeon itself is a reverse dungeon in the sense that you start at the bottom and need to go up to reach freedom rather than exploring down as is the case in most adventures. The setting is Greyhawk and more specifically in the Olman islands which are introduced in this module, a clear one for one lift from Mayan, Aztec, Olmec and other mesoamerican cultures.
The party is stuck underground, inside a pyramid and goes from room to room in order to find freedom. In a kind of Haunted House style each room has a different danger and puzzle to fix in order to move on to the next one. Full of undead and even stranger things (the Gibbering Mouther makes his debut here, for example), the pyramid is really a temple complex, with different areas dedicated to different gods, both good, evil and neutral. Added to this setup are a bunch of really cool illustrations to help players visualise their surroundings. A fun adventure for sure.
February 2, 2017
Yes, this is a tournament module with no reasonable plot hook, but it's absolutely intelligent in design, consistent in style, and it'll make your players wish they stayed home.
Since all of the module's flair comes from its mix of Mayan / Aztec culture, it has almost no place in most D&D games. I recommend that you instead make the tomb part of a demon-worshipping culture from long ago. In my game, I had my players seek a devil's horcrux after getting bad instructions from a demon (yes, a devil's horcrux, so as to not confuse the players about lichdom).
Bam. Instant creepiness, as all the monsters become demonic and abominations.
"Converted" to 5E on the fly. It isn't difficult, since most of the monsters kill you through their understanding / manipulation of environment rather than by damage.
Since all of the module's flair comes from its mix of Mayan / Aztec culture, it has almost no place in most D&D games. I recommend that you instead make the tomb part of a demon-worshipping culture from long ago. In my game, I had my players seek a devil's horcrux after getting bad instructions from a demon (yes, a devil's horcrux, so as to not confuse the players about lichdom).
Bam. Instant creepiness, as all the monsters become demonic and abominations.
"Converted" to 5E on the fly. It isn't difficult, since most of the monsters kill you through their understanding / manipulation of environment rather than by damage.
May 15, 2024
For some reason I've never read or played C1 but now, having read the original (with second version cover of the ogre magi by Erol Otus) I may well purchase the 5e update on Roll 20 out of curiosity.
Like many early modules C1 first saw light as a tournament module and indeed has the pre-gen stats and scoring in the back of the module. What struck me throughout is the precision of detail of this adventure. Some of the rooms take an entire page of text to detail. Even the PCs come with three paragraphs of background which would aid roleplay but I imagine would go by the wayside within the timeframe of a tournament. According to the introduction this was designed for 2h tournament play! In 5e you'd be lucky to get two scraps in that time let alone navigate through 39 locations before the poison gas gets you...
The gas gives a sense of urgency to the lowest level where the PCs enter following falling down a hole (not the strongest hook but who cares). The encounters are a mix of trap and battle with some superb flavour. It feels well laid out, although with limited routes through the hidden shrine and often only single ways to ascend to next level up. The treasure is meagre which, for AD&D campaign play, could be an issue.
There's some great parts in here: a giant god vampire bat; a god slug in a flooded room; a cunning nereid and a gibbering mouther (first appearance I assume); a strange game called pelota with a magic ball; animated statues galore; a grumpy couatl; and a strange gigantic polyp that made me think of Call of Chthulu.
And loads of visuals in the form of an illustration book similar to S3 and S1.
All over, really enjoyed this.
Like many early modules C1 first saw light as a tournament module and indeed has the pre-gen stats and scoring in the back of the module. What struck me throughout is the precision of detail of this adventure. Some of the rooms take an entire page of text to detail. Even the PCs come with three paragraphs of background which would aid roleplay but I imagine would go by the wayside within the timeframe of a tournament. According to the introduction this was designed for 2h tournament play! In 5e you'd be lucky to get two scraps in that time let alone navigate through 39 locations before the poison gas gets you...
The gas gives a sense of urgency to the lowest level where the PCs enter following falling down a hole (not the strongest hook but who cares). The encounters are a mix of trap and battle with some superb flavour. It feels well laid out, although with limited routes through the hidden shrine and often only single ways to ascend to next level up. The treasure is meagre which, for AD&D campaign play, could be an issue.
There's some great parts in here: a giant god vampire bat; a god slug in a flooded room; a cunning nereid and a gibbering mouther (first appearance I assume); a strange game called pelota with a magic ball; animated statues galore; a grumpy couatl; and a strange gigantic polyp that made me think of Call of Chthulu.
And loads of visuals in the form of an illustration book similar to S3 and S1.
All over, really enjoyed this.
May 29, 2013
Brilliant
July 22, 2017
My first competitive dungeon module. I was introduced to the Aztec and Mayan mythology with Kukulkan, Mictlan, and Tezcatlipocas. The gibbering mouther was pretty amusing.
September 8, 2020
This module was certainly creative and it features the old-style "illustration book" which would help players to grasp the unusual environment. However, I can't imagine running it with actual players, let alone only the 3 tournament characters. The module is basically a deathtrap dungeon with some monsters thrown in, and modern players might have a very hard time with what seems to be a very, very difficult and unforgiving dungeon. Still, it was very detailed and different, so I have to give the author credit for originality.
July 5, 2025
Honestly, I don't quite understand why it's in the "greatest adventure of all time". For the vibes maybe? But even so, it felt like a themed dungeon with a lot of rooms and monsters that don't know nor care about each other. I thought maybe towards the end, there would be something to wrap everything together, but it never happened.
I think I'm even being generous giving it a 2 stars, because it's more of a 1.25 to 1.5 imo
I think I'm even being generous giving it a 2 stars, because it's more of a 1.25 to 1.5 imo
May 18, 2019
There's really not nearly enough South American fantasy around.
Read
January 3, 2022One pastel one brown
September 21, 2023
9/21/2023: One year later, and my players completed the module. I think they had a good time, but some of them would have liked less of a traditional dungeon-slog and more opportunity to role play in the environment. They became very suspicious of any aspect of the environment that stood out or was different, due to all the traps. There was one annoying bit of “window dressing” that they were sure was significant, but the text didn’t clarify – a small metal pyramid with the symbol of the god of the moon and lightning on it. It felt like the purpose of this complex is lost somewhere – was it sort of a museum of the Olman culture? Perhaps because of the old-school assumption that trapped adventurers would be unable to rest safely, I found that many of the encounters were under-powered and had to be beefed up. With fifth ed rules and regular long and short rests, my players were encountering the toughest foes while at full power.
10/5/2022: Now it’s interesting, seven years after the below review, that I have attempted to run this module once, and am preparing to do so again. It just happens that it can be hard to find a good “mid-level” adventure, and this one does offer some interesting challenges, when played with modifications. It’s true that it presents challenges for the DM, in that it is located in a remote place, unlike any the players are likely to make their base, and as mentioned below was conceived as a tournament module, a kind of “race to the finish” that doesn’t fit every campaign. But, one can eliminate the poison gas, or modify it so that the threat is less imminent, one can provide some kind of nearby camp and not trap the players in the beginning corridor, or one can create a different objective than simple survival, encouraging players to check more carefully for elusive treasure or to fight a specific monster. On the other hand, questions of cultural appropriation are probably more fraught today, and I suspect that the current Wizards of the Coast would think twice about publishing something that borrows so heavily from a real-world culture. In that sense and others, this is a way to achieve an old-school vibe, and one that some will approach with more sensitivity than they might have in 1981.
5/17/2015: I have owned this module for something like thirty years now, and not only have I never played it, so far as I can tell I never even read through the whole thing. It’s not the sort of adventure I like. Rather than an opportunity for role-playing in an unusual environment, it is a highly goal-driven “quest” in which the characters are not encouraged to explore their environment. This is partly due to the fact that the adventure was originally designed for tournament play, imagined as a situation in which multiple “teams” of players would simultaneously compete to get through the adventure in a limited amount of time (an hour seems to be the intended amount of game time, though that could be more in terms of playing time). A Dungeon Master who wanted to adapt it to a campaign situation gets a few suggestions in the introduction, but really it was published with minimal effort to convert it to a more adaptable scenario.
The basic situation is that the characters are trapped in a dungeon in a wilderness area, far from any civilized outposts. They discover upon recovering that the ruin is filled with a poisonous gas that will incapacitate them if they don’t escape in less than an hour. Doing so means keeping on the move, and not getting distracted hunting for treasure or fighting monsters. In other words, the objective is to gain as little treasure and experience as possible in order to reach the end and figure out how to get out. Which makes the whole thing unsatisfying to players, or at least it would to me as a player. There are a variety of highly creative traps and monsters that the players can stumble onto if they veer too far from their objective, but good players will bypass most of them, which would frustrate me as a DM.
While I didn’t get much from reading this as a kid, I do remember the artwork clearly, suggesting that I spent more time looking at it than reading the words. The interesting part of the module is that it is set in a Meso-American ruin, with monsters adapted from that mythos and artwork that draws on the traditions of the time and place. This module was unusual, in fact, in providing an extra booklet of drawings, which are intended for display to the players when they enter certain areas or encounter certain monsters, to help them visualize the situation. This is a great idea, and accusations of “cultural appropriation” aside, led to some of the most creative artwork for any D&D adventure. I particularly like the “gibbering mouther” shown at the end of the module, who seems to be a renegade cousin to the Shoggoth from Deities and Demigods. If anything, I’d say that this module is worth it more for the art and inspiration, than for the dungeon it provides.
10/5/2022: Now it’s interesting, seven years after the below review, that I have attempted to run this module once, and am preparing to do so again. It just happens that it can be hard to find a good “mid-level” adventure, and this one does offer some interesting challenges, when played with modifications. It’s true that it presents challenges for the DM, in that it is located in a remote place, unlike any the players are likely to make their base, and as mentioned below was conceived as a tournament module, a kind of “race to the finish” that doesn’t fit every campaign. But, one can eliminate the poison gas, or modify it so that the threat is less imminent, one can provide some kind of nearby camp and not trap the players in the beginning corridor, or one can create a different objective than simple survival, encouraging players to check more carefully for elusive treasure or to fight a specific monster. On the other hand, questions of cultural appropriation are probably more fraught today, and I suspect that the current Wizards of the Coast would think twice about publishing something that borrows so heavily from a real-world culture. In that sense and others, this is a way to achieve an old-school vibe, and one that some will approach with more sensitivity than they might have in 1981.
5/17/2015: I have owned this module for something like thirty years now, and not only have I never played it, so far as I can tell I never even read through the whole thing. It’s not the sort of adventure I like. Rather than an opportunity for role-playing in an unusual environment, it is a highly goal-driven “quest” in which the characters are not encouraged to explore their environment. This is partly due to the fact that the adventure was originally designed for tournament play, imagined as a situation in which multiple “teams” of players would simultaneously compete to get through the adventure in a limited amount of time (an hour seems to be the intended amount of game time, though that could be more in terms of playing time). A Dungeon Master who wanted to adapt it to a campaign situation gets a few suggestions in the introduction, but really it was published with minimal effort to convert it to a more adaptable scenario.
The basic situation is that the characters are trapped in a dungeon in a wilderness area, far from any civilized outposts. They discover upon recovering that the ruin is filled with a poisonous gas that will incapacitate them if they don’t escape in less than an hour. Doing so means keeping on the move, and not getting distracted hunting for treasure or fighting monsters. In other words, the objective is to gain as little treasure and experience as possible in order to reach the end and figure out how to get out. Which makes the whole thing unsatisfying to players, or at least it would to me as a player. There are a variety of highly creative traps and monsters that the players can stumble onto if they veer too far from their objective, but good players will bypass most of them, which would frustrate me as a DM.
While I didn’t get much from reading this as a kid, I do remember the artwork clearly, suggesting that I spent more time looking at it than reading the words. The interesting part of the module is that it is set in a Meso-American ruin, with monsters adapted from that mythos and artwork that draws on the traditions of the time and place. This module was unusual, in fact, in providing an extra booklet of drawings, which are intended for display to the players when they enter certain areas or encounter certain monsters, to help them visualize the situation. This is a great idea, and accusations of “cultural appropriation” aside, led to some of the most creative artwork for any D&D adventure. I particularly like the “gibbering mouther” shown at the end of the module, who seems to be a renegade cousin to the Shoggoth from Deities and Demigods. If anything, I’d say that this module is worth it more for the art and inspiration, than for the dungeon it provides.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews