Reading & Running old D&D adventure/delves... Am I missing something?

[Joe Sumfin]

I ran ToEE as a weekly game. It took a little over 9 months, but that is with significant additions to make the plot a little more cohesive, and with the players insisting on clearing every single room. Keeping it from getting boring was high on my priority list.

Can I ask for just a brief summary of what you changed? It was late at night when I got to the secret history of the temple and it was just to much. I read a post on critical hits that they'd make the elementals be conflicting with each other and gave them goals they'd play to.

I like the idea of a neutral evil town that has its eyes on the players.

If you don't want to sum up what you changed could you maybe at least let me know why it got boring? Just turned into a room to room treasure quest? I'd want to avoid playing that and running that. I've played Rappan Athuk with a player killer DM and the exploration was cool but having to roll a new guy every week or two got old and I don't like just stinging combat together without a nice break from it or something. Spending a week back in town or something.

Celebrim;

I appreciate all the good feedback you've given me and I do plan to take you up and steal your ideas on many of those. I like adding people to town and expanding the woods. This thread is making me kind of excited to get something setup.

 

[Halivar]

Can I ask for just a brief summary of what you changed?

I actually wrote it all up in these two threads:

Lolth and the Temple of Elemental Evil

ToEE: Help me flesh out the elemental caverns! (Celebrim was a HUGE help in this thread; I just blanketly stole his suggestions and implemented them)

It really was blast and the players enjoyed themselves.

EDIT: If you fill in the gaps and set yourself on expository, reactive DM'ing (including letting go of the "story" if the players preempt it), then ToEE really can be a really fun module to run. Just repeat yourself, "This is my game, and Frank Mentzer and Gary Gygax can't tell me what to do."

EDIT EDIT: Make use of henchmen, and give them personalities! This is a very easy way to introduce plot points, side quests, or intra-party conflict. I used a web app I wrote (linked in my sig) to print out hundreds of henchmen, and the players used AD&D rules for attracting candidates and interviewed them in Verbebonc. Among them were some henchmen than actually became replacement PC's and party favorites after some original PC's were KIA.