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Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Good? Bad?
I find myself wanting to collect a few of the more interesting modules of the past. This one has recently come up and I wanted to sound out with those here.
Is it worth tracking down and paying for?
Is it a good module or just a large one?
How does it stick up against the original?
Is it easy to run, or does it require a lot of work ahead of time?
Any input would be appreciated.
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Good? Bad?
I find myself wanting to collect a few of the more interesting modules of the past. This one has recently come up and I wanted to sound out with those here.
Is it worth tracking down and paying for?
Is it a good module or just a large one?
How does it stick up against the original?
Is it easy to run, or does it require a lot of work ahead of time?Any input would be appreciated.
Yes, track it down and buy it. Ebay sometimes has it. I paid $50 dollars for mine and a couple months later my FLGS had one for cover price. Check out Amazon too.
It is a great module. And a large one.It is different from the original but feature many familiar characters.
You need to prep for it and thoroughly study it before running it. In particular, it is 3.O and you might want to convert the stats of the NPCs and many monsters.
RttToEE is a magnum opus of how to run a cult of evil clerics. It's just plain awesome.
I have no experience running this adventure, and simply got bored of reading through it after a while.
It is a long adventure and it certainly has it's moments. Im'n not sure it's worth the 50 or so bucks it goes for on Ebay.
It all depends on what you're looking for. It is certainly a classic, but I believe there are better modules out there.
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I enjoyed reading it and put alot of effort into preparing it but unless you have a switched-on party who take care and rest frequently they are likely to die. There are many single rooms filled with nasty monsters.
My players simply got fed up of rerolling new characters that had little interest in dying again.
Worse as a DM, you get the chance to bring up other forces against the party, whilst they are busy in various fights, making TPK's extremely likely.
From a collecting and reading point of view it is excellent. And it certainly fits with the first.
Cheers
...it is 3.O and you might want to convert the stats of the NPCs and many monsters.
If you go to this forum, you'll find a WHOLE bunch of conversions and user-created content. Along with 3.5 conversions, you'll find lots of stuff about how to integrate various splat books (BoVD in particular).
You can get an OEF PDF of the book for $30. It supposedly has high-quality original maps instead of scans.
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Good? Bad?
Where's Vomit Guy when you need him? :/
I really didn't care for it, and I don't consider it a classic (as others have suggested). I can't give you firm reasons, but I found it uninspired and often little more than a showcase for monsters the writer found cool.
On the other hand, Temple of Elemental Evil (the original), will be worth having when D&D is up to 15th edition (around 2012, I suspect) and beyond -- get it.
It was definitely a great module at the time, but more recent ones are certainly better (like pretty much any Pathfinder, of course, and the previously mentioned Red Hand of Doom).
My only caution is for the crater ridge mines. A HUGE chunk of the middle of the adventure is a great big dungeon crawl (200 some odd rooms of largely random monsters). When I was a player in it, this section just got boring as we spent months slogging through it. It comes across as a great big XP generator before you get to the interesting outer & inner fanes.
When I DM'ed it for another group, I tried to switch it up and play off some of the political conflicts between the groups, but we still wound up skipping most of it (mostly because I didn't have time to do the prep work and keeping track of the NPCs and groups involved).
So I would say if you are going to run it, either have a group that will enjoy weeks if not months of classic "clear out some rooms, rest, repeat" dungeon crawling or do what you can to make this section come alive as dynamic and shifting with reinforcements and political intrigue. Just running each individual room as written leads to some really boring gaming.
But it is certainly a classic of third edition and has some really interesting encounters you can always steal for other adventures. And, other than the slogging through the crater ridge mines, I really enjoyed the adventure. It's definitely old school inspired.
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I DM'd this adventure a few years ago. 46 sessions. We still didn't entirely finish it, but we did beat the BBEG.
Is it worth tracking down and paying for?
- If you're a serious collector, yes.
Is it a good module or just a large one?
- It's very static, but as mentioned, if you enjoy adding things to adventures using your imagination or other sources, it has plenty of opportunities for improvement.
How does it stick up against the original?
- It's much larger in scope. It visits an altered version of the original. As for quality, I found the first one easier to conceptualize.
Is it easy to run, or does it require a lot of work ahead of time?
- I really recommend grouping creature stats together for each major section. Fortunately, for the very large dungeon of the adventure, the passages and rooms are grouped into sections that allows you to treat them all as smaller sub-dungeons. But there are plenty of opportunities for enemies to intermix, depending on how you want them to respond to the PCs. It's certainly not easy to run.
As I said before, it is a very static dungeon. The way the information is presented, it isn't immediately clear how the enemies will respond to the PC's as they repeatedly assault the areas. Some sections do detail this a little, but not many. It would have been especially helpful to have a schedule of events for the dungeon portion leading up to the main BBEG, since the enemies are trying to accomplish something.
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I have to agree with the TPK aspect of it. My group started to run it a while back, but when the party(7 characters, all fourth level) first visited the moathouse and encountered the Medium Blue Dragon which should have been a 4th level encounter killed 2 party members right away and quickly had the rest of us running for our lives, the DM decided that perhaps it should wait.
I didn't like it. A lot of monsters didn't seem to have much rhyme or reason to them. They were just there to make a challenge. It also wasn't terribly Greyhawkish. Certain things just didn't make sense within the history of Greyhawk and the location of the new dungeon.
I'd save your money, frankly.
Now, I'd also say that most of the original was no gem either. It was far too long and grindy. It needed a lot of editing down after you got through the much more interesting Village of Hommlett segment.
It has its moments.
It's basically a campaign based around a remote mega-dungeon with only the lead in and part of the end based around the original Temple. However, there's a decent amount of material that can be yoinked, even if you don't run the whole thing.
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Well, I found one for less then twenty five dollars so I went ahead and bought it. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your opinions. I decided that I would get it so long as it didn't cost too much money based upon your recommendations, and here I am.
I really like to tweak modules that a run, not to an extream level but enough to make them conform to what my players are looking for. So this one sounds like it will be good.
Again, thank you.
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RToEE is a classic of 3.0. A good mega module. If you're a laid-back DM who doesn't want to think about what NPCs and creatures "off screen" are doing etc, and just run the encounters as they stand, it's decent.
If you run it like the original too was supposed to be played, that is, by taking Hommlett particularly as a springboard for an entire campaign and use all the different groups and factions as dynamic camps that interact and are affected by the PCs' actions, even off screen, then that becomes a complete blast.
It's decent to extraordinary, depending on the amount of thought and dynamism you want to put into it.
Now all that said...
Temple of Elemental Evil (the original), will be worth having when D&D is up to 15th edition (around 2012, I suspect) and beyond -- get it.
This is right. ToEE is superior.
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Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Good? Bad?
Is it worth tracking down and paying for?
Yes. I would have paid full price when it came out, but I found it used for $20. Best purchase I ever made, because it is way more expensive now, and my copy was mint. But, if I did not have it, I would pay. Oh, how I would pay. Be warned, if you expect shiny paper and full-colour pictures, you will be disappointed.
Is it a good module or just a large one?
It is very large, but still good. The thing I like best is that the chapters break up into distinct adventures, so your group can do things in between. If they are like my group, they can turn a small element (Hamlet of Rastor) into an entire adventure. There is lots of nice detail provided about everything in the area, but with room for expansion where appropriate(like the orc tribes near Rastor or the other elemental nodes).
How does it stick up against the original?
Never played the original, but now wish I had.
Is it easy to run, or does it require a lot of work ahead of time?
Lots of work. Getting out of Hommlet can take a while if your players like to investigate, but if they rush off in the wrong direction they will probably die. Hehehe. I did the following:
1. Copied all monster/NPC stats in order of appearance into a huge notebook so that I did not need to reference the Monster Manual or the back of the module.
2. Added a few NPCs in the various towns, random encounters for long trips, and keyed some new buildings in towns.
3. Completely changed the Temple Ruins to include hobgoblins from my Red Hand of Doom campaign. Added 3 elemental nodes to the end game.
4. Updated to 3.5 where necessary.
5. Work as needed (handouts, new treasure, etc).
I highly recommend the RttToEE Resources found here. Lots of neat handouts, maps, and conversions for 3.5 for the whole campaign, as well as errata and bugs. It also has tips for killing some of the modules iconic monsters (Utreshimon and the near-unkillable D'Gran for example).
