A night below or Temple of elemental evil

punkorange · May 12, 2005

no, my main reason for going between one of these two is that we are playing a 2e game.

Brennin Magalus · May 12, 2005

punkorange said:
no, my main reason for going between one of these two is that we are playing a 2e game.

I ran a ToEE 2E game some years back. Some of it can be found at

http://anyboard.net/rec/games/roleplay/Adventurer/index.html

I did not run it in Oerth, though.

RangerWickett · May 12, 2005

I ran Night Below, and loved it. My only experience with the Temple was the Return adventure in 3.0, which was basically a hack and slug fest for the two sessions I went. It wasn't very fun, because it seemed like one of those video games that pits one hero against an entire army.

Night Below had politics, settings, and some interesting setpiece battles.

Seravin · May 12, 2005

Night Below would get my vote.
ToEE has some good points, but with all the encounters so (relatively) densely packed together it can be hard to pick them out and expand upon them - which is why I think it generally feels like and turns into a hackfest. The density is two-fold, there are a lot of encounters in the book for the DM to pick through, but it translate as many encounters for the characters to navigate through which are close together in space and time.
I think a good DM with time to prepare could do all sorts of fun things with the module though.

The encounters in Night Below can also be a hackfest (especially in book 2), but there are fewer of these encounters and they get a lot more description then in ToEE. For me it made it easier to expand upon the encounters I liked and the spacing between the encounters for the players gave them time to explore.

Your milage will vary of course.

GlassJaw · May 12, 2005

Night Below is great. It definitely doesn't get as much credit as it deserves. It's a very high-quality boxed set.

Thanee · May 12, 2005

We played Night Below in 3.0 and it was quite fun. Especially the different places are neat.

There is just a bit much in terms of treasure, our characters were so spoiled afterwards.

Bye
Thanee

Laman Stahros · May 12, 2005

Another vote for Night Below. I ran it (well, 2/3's at least) and it was great!

Belen · May 12, 2005

Night Below rocks!

I have run both in 2e and my preference is for the Night Below.

Psion · May 12, 2005

Seravin said:
The encounters in Night Below can also be a hackfest (especially in book 2),

To say the least.

Books 1 and 3 have some really cool stuff in them, book II is the blight of the set, claims of "diplomatic situations" notwithstanding. If you run the Night Below, I would heartily recommend that you arrange for some side quests or otherwise restructure it.