Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
Temple of Elemental Evil.
I know, it's heretical to say this but it's true.
After waiting 5+ years I was expecting at least two things:
1. That it would be a completed product. It was not.
2. Some effort would be made to actually make it feel "elemental". We got generic clerics and randomly generated level-appropriate monsters.
Personally, I loved - and still love! - T1 and, in particular, the Moathouse. That's an almost perfect dungeon, IMO. After that, I love some of the Gygaxian prose describing the effects of the titular temple on the environment:
"When the Temple of Elemental Evil flourished, earthquakes, storms of all sorts, great fires, and flash floods struck areas nearby with seeming capriciousness. All that ceased when the Temple was assaulted and sealed." (page 27)
but then no effort is made to connect those sorts of events with the temple. There's is little to distinguish it from a randomly-generated dungeon.
And what a horrible slog.
ToEE was bait-and-switch: we got promised something that was finished (OK, that's an implied promise) and something elemental. It failed to deliver on both counts.
And, Luz, totally agree with you about the Avatar triology. I just re-read them last week. There are some great pieces of Realmslore in there if you're a bit of a hardcore FR fan but they're absolute disasters as adventures. Ed has a different way of DMing that most people. It seems his groups are almost like hardcore improv actors - he refers to the fact that they rarely roll dice or use rules. While that's great if you like the way he creates Realmslore - and I do - that doesn't really translate into the sort of adventures most of us want to play.
Sadly, when he does write something more D&D-esque, you get the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar which is Gygaxian in its incompleteness... because the then-TSR removed about two-thirds of what Ed wrote.
I know, it's heretical to say this but it's true.
After waiting 5+ years I was expecting at least two things:
1. That it would be a completed product. It was not.
2. Some effort would be made to actually make it feel "elemental". We got generic clerics and randomly generated level-appropriate monsters.
Personally, I loved - and still love! - T1 and, in particular, the Moathouse. That's an almost perfect dungeon, IMO. After that, I love some of the Gygaxian prose describing the effects of the titular temple on the environment:
"When the Temple of Elemental Evil flourished, earthquakes, storms of all sorts, great fires, and flash floods struck areas nearby with seeming capriciousness. All that ceased when the Temple was assaulted and sealed." (page 27)
but then no effort is made to connect those sorts of events with the temple. There's is little to distinguish it from a randomly-generated dungeon.
And what a horrible slog.
ToEE was bait-and-switch: we got promised something that was finished (OK, that's an implied promise) and something elemental. It failed to deliver on both counts.
And, Luz, totally agree with you about the Avatar triology. I just re-read them last week. There are some great pieces of Realmslore in there if you're a bit of a hardcore FR fan but they're absolute disasters as adventures. Ed has a different way of DMing that most people. It seems his groups are almost like hardcore improv actors - he refers to the fact that they rarely roll dice or use rules. While that's great if you like the way he creates Realmslore - and I do - that doesn't really translate into the sort of adventures most of us want to play.
Sadly, when he does write something more D&D-esque, you get the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar which is Gygaxian in its incompleteness... because the then-TSR removed about two-thirds of what Ed wrote.
