Temple of Elemental Evil - expectations

[Derulbaskul]

These two threads prompted me to go back and re-read Temple of Elemental Evil with a fresh set of eyes.

As I have mentioned in both threads, I thoroughly dislike the adventure as written, and most of that is because of the outstanding background that EGG wrote but never actually utilised in the adventure.

There is no sense of elemental evil, and there should be.

What if the earthquakes, forest fires, tornadoes and tidal waves that are mentioned or hinted at in the opening fluff actually became hooks and ending the thread of the corresponding faction also cause the related natural disaster to end? That small change would have, itself, made the temple make more sense and also provided meaningful objectives along the way.

I've used ideas sparked by this adventure in my current FR4E campaign but now I am also thinking about rewriting it, based on EGG's introduction, to be the centrepiece of my next FR4E campaign.

As always, EGG's background material is wonderfully flavoursome and evocative. Its just the execution that sucked. The ingredients are definitely there, they just need to be better organised and executed.

 

[Pelenor]

I basically agree with you -- all of the above would make a great adventure and the above approach was certainly implied in the module as written, but was definitely not "front and center" of the adventure as written. As written, the adventure was really presented as a giant dungeon crawl and bringing all of the above elements front and center required a lot of work on the part of an experienced DM. But, I largely evaluate modules and adventures based on how they appear on the page; if I have to do major reconfiguring to make an adventure good, then why am I buying the module and paying someone else to write a good adventure? If I have to most of the work myself to make it good, I'll just do it myself from scratch and save some money.

In sum, I don't think TOEE was totally worthless and there was a lot a good DM could mine from it to make a great adventure, but, as written, I was disappointed that it was nothing but a repetitive dungeon crawl.

Ah here we come to an issue which really doesn't have much to do with the adventure and far more to do with Gary Gygax, or more specifically his writing style. Gary in a lot of his work did just give the dungeon portion and was of the opinion that the elements that provided the roleplaying and story needed to come from the DM because only the DM was in a position to know his group well enough to provide those elements. So does it look like just a dungeon crawl? Yes. Was it mean to be? No. Now should he have provided the elements to make it more than just a dungeon crawl. That's a trickier question. Personally I think if he had he just wouldn't be Gary Gygax. Evaluating how they appear on the page is a good thing to do but knowing the author's intent is something that should be taken into account if you can find that info. ToEE is even more complex as what was printed is not what Gary really intended. Gary was not the person who prepared the module for publication. That fell to someone else and as a result certain things were left out or changes Gary made did not make it into print. An example; Lareth being a priest of Lloth is a leftover from when the demoness in the module was Intended to be Lloth not Zuggtmoy. Lloth was changed to Zuggtmoy but Lareth never got changed over. there was also supposed to be an additional level beneath the final level in the printed module but that isn't there either. So in a way ToEE is also a victim of the publishing/editing process. In short if you go only by what you see and not what you can do with it. Your shortchanging the module, yourself, and your players.

Having said that I'll say again this module is not for everyone and it is certainly not something that should be run by any but an experienced DM.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Gary in a lot of his work did just give the dungeon portion and was of the opinion that the elements that provided the roleplaying and story needed to come from the DM because only the DM was in a position to know his group well enough to provide those elements. So does it look like just a dungeon crawl? Yes. Was it mean to be? No. Now should he have provided the elements to make it more than just a dungeon crawl.

My memory of reading through ToEE is that:

(a) The presence of the factions in the temple were evident;
(b) But if you're going to use them, the module is essential unusable in its current form.

Flipping to a random page, let's look at room 203: "The hydra's keeper, a troll, dwells here on orders from its master, the priest of the Fire Temple." Finding the hydra in the preceding entry of 202 is easy enough, but where the heck is the priest of the Fire Temple?

One naturally goes flipping around looking for the Fire Temple. But that doesn't do you any good, because the priest of the Fire Temple isn't there. Nor is he with the Under-Priests hanging out in a salon. He's actually in the "Western Side Room" (which should probably called "Chamber of the Fire Priest").

That took me 5 minutes of flipping around to figure out; and that's 5 minutes I just don't have to waste when I'm sitting in front of my players. Nor is it sufficient: I still don't have any real sense of the full roster of resources the Fire Temple has at its disposal.

It's all well and good to say that the DM should "familiarize" themselves with a module before running it. But ToEE has literally hundreds of keyed locations.

When given the raw material, I'm more than happy to run inter-factional disputes on-the-fly and in "real time" (so to speak). But the raw materials in ToEE are so poorly organized that I would need to essentially reverse engineer the module from the ground up to make it usable for that style of play.

Which is, of course, why the majority of DMs defaulted to a default door-bash style for handling the module's material. (I defaulted to never using it, although that decision was heavily influenced by the frankly goofy nature of the lower levels, which would have required a completely different sort of re-design.)

 

[Jhaelen]

So in a way ToEE is also a victim of the publishing/editing process. In short if you go only by what you see and not what you can do with it. Your shortchanging the module, yourself, and your players.

Having said that I'll say again this module is not for everyone and it is certainly not something that should be run by any but an experienced DM.

In other words:
It's a bad module.

Because the thing is: Even a crappy module can be turned into a great adventure if you happen to play it with a great DM that has spent a lot of time and effort to turn it into something that is actually great.

Imho, a good module is supposed to save the DM some work, not create more.

Reading Beginning of the End's post, I immediately thought of Castle Whiterock, which afaict, does an excellent job of providing all of the info you need when preparing to run the module. It's also the only megadungeon I know, I'd consider running. So, did Castle Whiterock succeed where ToEE fell flat?

 

[TheYeti1775]

My memory of reading through ToEE is that:

(a) The presence of the factions in the temple were evident;
(b) But if you're going to use them, the module is essential unusable in its current form.

Flipping to a random page, let's look at room 203: "The hydra's keeper, a troll, dwells here on orders from its master, the priest of the Fire Temple." Finding the hydra in the preceding entry of 202 is easy enough, but where the heck is the priest of the Fire Temple?

One naturally goes flipping around looking for the Fire Temple. But that doesn't do you any good, because the priest of the Fire Temple isn't there. Nor is he with the Under-Priests hanging out in a salon. He's actually in the "Western Side Room" (which should probably called "Chamber of the Fire Priest").

That took me 5 minutes of flipping around to figure out; and that's 5 minutes I just don't have to waste when I'm sitting in front of my players. Nor is it sufficient: I still don't have any real sense of the full roster of resources the Fire Temple has at its disposal.

It's all well and good to say that the DM should "familiarize" themselves with a module before running it. But ToEE has literally hundreds of keyed locations.

When given the raw material, I'm more than happy to run inter-factional disputes on-the-fly and in "real time" (so to speak). But the raw materials in ToEE are so poorly organized that I would need to essentially reverse engineer the module from the ground up to make it usable for that style of play.

Which is, of course, why the majority of DMs defaulted to a default door-bash style for handling the module's material. (I defaulted to never using it, although that decision was heavily influenced by the frankly goofy nature of the lower levels, which would have required a completely different sort of re-design.)

I just kept a list of the major NPC's (i.e. The High Priests for each Element) listed on a side paper with notes on them. I do this with any module.
Another big thing most forget to do was general movement of monsters or the factions when they brought in new recruits/sacrifices or even simple guard patrols.
Even movements by various major NPC's should be tracked that way. Cause honestly, very few of them will never sleep or have a pressing matter that might call them away from the ToEE.

ToEE was never meant to be a simple dungeon crawl (at least IMHO), while it could be treated that way it held in many of our hearts by the fact we had DM's running it that brought a life to it.
Most look at ToEE as not explaining the surrounding areas, what they don't realize when they voice that complaint is most of us had the old Greyhawk boxed set to refer to for the world-wide implications of it.

If you went into too much detail within a module you would be upsetting the Canon of the world the fans loved so much. Think about the fiascos (i.e. Nerdrage) of the Realms with the Avatar Trilogy and the Spellplague through the editions.

As has been mentioned the length of it, does hurt it when looking back upon it without the Rose Colored Glasses. Especially when you compare it to the 'Adventure Path' method used nowadays.
But the main gist of the module much like the rule books of 1E was written for a DM to populate and give life to it on his own. Many rules unwritten, only basic notes on personalities.

One thing I hated about Return to the ToEE was the fact there was a return. Namely because in one of my group's campaigns they had claimed it as their own. As it was decided to ignore the 'collapse rule' if you did certain things. (i.e. The DM forgot it till we were talking about it a month later.)

Now I so want to run this for my current group.

 

[Bullgrit]

Something I find interesting in this is how old-timers/grognards, who usually defend to the death things that are AD&D1 in general, and EGG especially, are either quiet on this product, or they agree with the negativity.

I remember big flamewars regarding the like/dislike of things like the Desert of Desolation series, Tomb of Horrors, and general "old school" aspects of D&D. Several posters would defend the old stuff vehemently, even disparaging multiple aspects of the "haters."

But with ToEE, there's no old-schooler defense? There are some posters conspicuosly missing from this thread, whom I expected to take severe issue with the idea that something Gygax wrote for AD&D1 isn't good. And there are some posters who are surprisingly agreeing with the idea that this module isn't good.

I'm really surprised.

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

Those who were disppointed with ToEE, where you also disappointed with things like Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, and Keep on the Borderland? Aren't they all in a very similar style -- writing style and organization and design style?

If not, what makes ToEE not like the others?

Bullgrit

 

[TheYeti1775]

Something I find interesting in this is how old-timers/grognards, who usually defend to the death things that are AD&D1 in general, and EGG especially, are either quiet on this product, or they agree with the negativity.
....snip....

I think mainly that is due to many have never run/played it in full or past the moathouse.

Think about it, T1-4 was designed to take you from 1st level all the way to 8th level. That is one short of name level in 1E.
That was a lot of time and effort progressing your characters that far. Unless you were young and played marathon sessions all the time, it could take you months to finish half of it.

In all I've started it many times as both player and DM, only 4 times (1 as DM) have I finished it as a concentrated campaign.

I do have a Zip File for the 3.5E conversion of it. It's about 7MB in size so while it's small enough according to the allowed file size of attachments, it includes some of the original stuff (mainly maps) so I don't know it would fly to share here anyways. (If any of the MODS wants to contact me for it for persual, I'll send it to them for their approval.)
I know I do have a copy of the word doc that was posted here with the 'EnWorld Conversion' as well. Should still be posted here somewhere I believe. Its a 1/2 MB and is hosted here already, so easy enough to share with ya'll as an attachment.

 

[billd91]

Something I find interesting in this is how old-timers/grognards, who usually defend to the death things that are AD&D1 in general, and EGG especially, are either quiet on this product, or they agree with the negativity.

I remember big flamewars regarding the like/dislike of things like the Desert of Desolation series, Tomb of Horrors, and general "old school" aspects of D&D. Several posters would defend the old stuff vehemently, even disparaging multiple aspects of the "haters."

But with ToEE, there's no old-schooler defense? There are some posters conspicuosly missing from this thread, whom I expected to take severe issue with the idea that something Gygax wrote for AD&D1 isn't good. And there are some posters who are surprisingly agreeing with the idea that this module isn't good.

I'm really surprised.

Bullgrit

I think I should disabuse you of the notion that us old-timers thought Gygax was somehow infallible. While the 1e DMG may be a fun read and offer useful advice, for example, there are some rule explanations that are terrible as far as promoting clarity and usability.

Simply, not every adventure written by Gygax (or even substantially written by him and finished by someone else) is going to appeal to everyone. I thought the 4th level's layout was silly, the module generally too tedious, and the elemental nodes completely dispensible. I thought it could have used a good editor to tighten it up so it could reach the potential it has. Others disagree.

I liked the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. There was so much variety that, even if things didn't make much sense, the dungeon never became tedious and never felt particularly silly, though it ran on the razor's edge of that sometimes. The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, I think, impressed me less than Tsojcanth, but it was shorter and less tedious than ToEE. The Keep on the Borderlands I never found to be written particularly well, but it's an environment easy to make dynamic and it's very easy to convey that to the players. By comparison, I found you really have to push the idea that the different elemental forces are violent rivals for the players to even notice there's a difference between them other than elemental specialty. So while the write-up covers the dynamism of the ToEE environment, it's a lot less evident to the players.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Something I find interesting in this is how old-timers/grognards, who usually defend to the death things that are AD&D1 in general, and EGG especially, are either quiet on this product, or they agree with the negativity.

I do wonder about that. I have to wonder if the more anticipation there is for a product the more disappointing it would be.

I told Gary before he died that I hoped CZ wouldn't be consider equivalent to the "Giant Rat of Sumatra", which should be familiar to 1e MM fans.

That is a referenced case in the AC Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories that never was written, but a lot of fans wish he did. The "legend" of the unpublished work surpasses the work itself.