RttToEE vs. Shackled City

[Eltern]

So I'm going to be starting a new campaign here at college, and I'm looking for something that I can run at the drop of a hat. The group members are all friends that I live with (college dorm), so this would be a "whenever" type of game that we can play at the spur of the moment on a Thursday night, or Saturday night, or just whenever we're sitting in the lounge and have nothing to do. I suspect we'll play at least once a week for four to six hours in total.

I've run Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil before, and so I'm thinking of running that, as I will need vastly less prep and know the entirety of the plot and characters better. However, I understand that Shackled City is evidently supposed to kick butt in every way. Can someone tell me what the key differences in style and "random playability" will be between these two campaigns-in-a-box? Shackled City seems more episodic, so having irregular sessions may not work well with it. But then, RttToEE is a vicious meat-grinder

Thanks for the help!

 

[Agamon]

Shackled City is fairly linear in how it plays out, but it does have the advantage that every adventure is a little different in flavor from the others. And while not on the RttToEE scale, SC could certianly be placed on the "meat grinder" list.

If it were up to me, though, I'd re-run RttToEE. At first glance, while epic in size, the mod is fairly basic in structure, aka massive dungeon crawl. However, the possibilites for roleplaying in the adventure are endless. The political scheming that can come from head-buttling between the many power groups (the four temples, the temple head priests vs cleric underlings, the temple head preists vs outer fane priests, Hedrack vs his underlings, Hedrack vs Thrommel, Hedrack vs Lareth, the outer fane preists vs the Triad) can make for a really interesting game. The hints and clues Monte leaves in the mod just begs to be expanded upon.

Plus, even though it's a dungeon crawl, it's fairly flexable on how it plays out. You can even do the Uncovered Temple, which is supposed to be the end, before the Inner Fane, which is supposed to be the penultimate chapter. But, yeah, it is nothing if not a meat-grinder. My players are about to enter the Inner Fane and there have been over 30 PC deaths so far (plus another 7 party NPC deaths). One player is on his 8th PC. But hey, they're having fun.

That, admittedly, is less a comparison, and more an explanation of a mod you've already run, and is probably less useful than you'd like. I've only played the first 4 adventures in SC, and read most of the rest. I've only played/read the Dungeon mag version, not the hardcover.

 

[Hussar]

Voting for the World's Largest Dungeon for obvious reasons.

Seriously, as a pick up game for college, this would rawk.

 

[Psion]

Well, I am a pretty big fan of Shackled City, and find RttToEE a bit too monolithic to get by with one shots.

My favorite "one dungeon" resource for quick forays is Rappan Athuk. It has no nonsensical "no exit clauses" like WLD, and is loosely enough integrated, you can expect players to get something out of a quick raid.

Course, until the revision is out, you will have to do with the old books. Which, since you are considering RttToEE is not such a big deal.

 

[Eltern]

In terms of "one shots," I doubt we'll actually play like that. It will be more of picking up the same continuous story. While I obviously don't think dropping and picking up mid-combat is very sensical, we won't have any problem leaving looting the bodies until whenever we next play. I'm sure most of you understood that, but I just wanted to make that clear. This was why Shackled City seemed like it might have problems, because if we don't divide things up based on how the adventures are designed to be divided, we could have problems. Return to the Temple, on the other hand, plops you down and says "Go"