Dungeons And Dragons Dungeon Module T1 The Village Of Hommlet

Getting Started With The Village Of Hommlet

I picked up T1 again last month after running it at least twice before. The module still holds up if you approach it the right way, but there are a few things that trip up new DMs every time. I am going to walk through what you are actually working with, what breaks when you run it, and how to fix the problems that show up. T1 The Village of Hommlet is a starting point for a campaign. It gives you a town, a handful of NPCs, and a dungeon underneath it. That dungeon connects to the C1 Ruins of The Underworld module, which is where things escalate. The village itself is the tutorial layer. You can skip right past it if your group already knows what they are doing, but most tables benefit from sitting in Hommlet for at least a session.

What You Are Actually Running In Dungeons And Dragons Dungeon Module T1 The Village Of Hommlet

The village has about forty NPCs spread across different buildings. Each one has a single sentence or two of flavor text. Your players will ask questions. Most of those questions have no written answer. That is the module being honest with you. It assumes you will flesh things out or say you do not know. The Temple of the Seven Faiths runs the town's religious infrastructure. The inn, the blacksmith, and the tavern are the three social anchors. The rest is filler or hooks. I keep a small index card system running for the NPCs. Each card gets the name, role, and one secret. When a player asks about someone, I pull the card and have them answer. If the answer is not on the card, I make something up. This cuts research time to under five minutes for any given NPC. The dungeon under the village is the Temple of the Goat. It is not long. Maybe two hours of play if your group fights efficiently. The key encounter is the cultists and the goat head altar. Players can also trigger the secret entrance to C1 here. Some groups bypass the entire village section and head straight to the dungeon. That works fine.

One edge case I hit repeatedly: players often try to bribe or interrogate the innkeeper, Merwin, for information about the dungeon. The module does not give him a lot to say beyond the basic rumors. When my players did this, the session stalled for twenty minutes because I had nothing to feed them. My workaround was simple. I wrote a short note for Merwin before the session started. It gave him one specific rumor about goat worshippers under the village. I kept it in my notes and read it verbatim when asked. This saved the momentum and kept the session moving.

How To Run The Village Without Losing Time

The biggest bottleneck with Hommlet is prep volume. There are dozens of NPCs and several locations. Reading everything before you run it takes roughly ninety minutes for a first pass. Most DMs do not have that kind of uninterrupted time. I prep in two stages. Stage one is the village center. I read the inn, the tavern, the temple, and the blacksmith. I give Merwin and Llewellyn a couple of extra lines each. This covers about sixty percent of likely player interaction. Stage two is the dungeon. I read the temple maps and the cultist encounters. This adds another twenty minutes. Total prep time lands around an hour and ten minutes. That is sustainable for a weekly session. The rest of the NPCs stay as one-liners. Players can discover them organically. If they do not, it does not matter. Nothing breaks if they ignore half the village.

What To Expect In The Dungeon

The goat cult dungeon has five main rooms. The first room has a trap. The second has a few cultists. The third is the main altar room. The fourth has a puzzle or hazard depending on edition rules. The fifth is the exit leading toward C1. Difficulty scales with your party level. Hommlet is designed for levels one through three. Anything past level three will breeze through the cultists. If your group is higher level, I trim the cultist numbers by one-third and let the altar room hold a minor treasure instead of escalating enemies. A counter-intuitive detail many DMs miss is that the village section can support side quests even when players do not care about them. The local druid, the missing child rumor, and the bandit problem outside town are all self-contained. They each take about fifteen minutes of play. I run at least one of these per session before the group moves toward the dungeon. This makes the village feel alive without adding any prep time.

Another thing that catches people: the module does not explicitly warn you that players will try to kill the goat before engaging the cult. The creature is labeled neutral and can be killed without triggering combat with everyone else. When this happens, the cult loses its symbol and becomes confused. Some tables treat this as a quest complete. Others treat it as escalation. I treat it as both. The cult fights less effectively afterward, but they hire mercenaries to replace their lost status. This keeps tension without breaking the encounter balance.

Links And Where To Find It

The module is available through official D&D retailers and digital platforms. Searching for T1 The Village Of Hommlet on major RPG marketplaces will bring up the product page directly. You can also find it bundled in older starter sets and campaign compilations. I recommend the standalone version if you want the full map inserts and handouts. The bundled versions sometimes compress the artwork. If you are looking for a free reference, the SRD covers basic mechanics, but it does not include the village layout or the cult dungeon. For actual play, you want the full module. The maps alone are worth the purchase price.

When This Module Fails You

Let me be clear about the downsides. Hommlet assumes a slow-play table. If your group wants to move fast and fight constantly, the village section will feel like padding. You can skip it entirely and still have a complete experience. The dungeon is only about two hours long at low levels. After that, you are moving to bigger content. The NPC density is also a trap. New DMs often try to track every conversation and relationship. This creates a notes crisis within thirty minutes of play. Do not track everything. Track what your players care about. Ignore the rest. Another failure mode is over-prepping the cult encounters. These are standard low-level fights. Run them off the page. Do not min-max monster stats. The fun is in the roleplay around the goat head altar, not in rolling optimization.

If your table prefers heavy combat or tactical dungeons, Hommlet will frustrate you. In that case, start with a combat-focused module instead and return to Hommlet later when you want a social-heavy opener.

Final Practical Notes

I run this module every few years. It rarely changes my approach. Read the village center and the dungeon. Prep one rumor card per key NPC. Let the rest breathe. Move to C1 when the group is ready. The module does not need much love. It needs someone who understands that most of its value is in the downtime between encounters. Give your players ten minutes at the inn. Let them talk to one NPC. Then send them underground. That is how Hommlet works best.