Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

[Illuminati]

I have to say I thought this product was poor overall. When I originally bought it I was full of high expectations (it really looks neat, ordered, and attractive), and really only after playing it did it fall short.

To put it simply, this adventure seems to have been written to become a computer game, not to perform as a traditional pen-and-pencil scenario. It is full of too many monsters, too many potentially large-scale encounters, and almost impossible odds at every turn. The party I took through this adventure consisted of six well-balanced characters, and still must have died four or five times. The survivors always ended up fleeing to the nearest big city after each high point of the adventure, casting True Resurrect ad nauseum until the illusory excitement of the adventure's deadliness just became tedious.

I definitely got the feeling there is supposed to be a "Save game" feature in this adventure. God knows you'll need it...

This isn't a classic "deathtrap" dungeon like Tomb of Horrors or other old favorites (though certainly in retrospect many of these really weren't all that great either); this adventure is just designed to be HUGE - and it loses a LOT because of it. The focus at times seems to just be "Hey, you thought the old Temple of EE was bad? Take a look at this even BIGGER temple complex we've made a few score miles away." This shouldn't have been titled "Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil" - it's misleading. The real focus and meat of the adventure doesn't even take place in the temple from the original adventure, it takes place in a newer, even more grandiose dungeon complex that tries to be classic but ends up feeling more like an imitation of Castle Greyhawk's worst incarnations.

Specific points I disliked: the introduction of a blue dragon so early in the adventure (with, no surprise, no real treasure for the colossal effort). Green dragon in the mines. Red dragon as part of the temple's on-call "air force". Half-dragon T-Rexes (come on now, that's just silly). Too many dragons.

What else? The lightning bolt towers surrounding the Outer Fane were absolutely ridiculous deus ex inventions. If such super-powerful apparatus existed in the world, why would there be castles? These things could easily be made as siege weapons, destroying entire armies, not to mention fortifications. Or, why build walls when you could just have a perimeter of lightning towers to defend you. Awful. Very poorly conceived, way too powerful, and obviously just the writer's way of preventing PCs from flying over the ring of 200+ encounter areas to the heart of the island complex. Terrible!

I was also disappointed in the way Tharizdun (who in my opinion was portrayed perfectly in Gary Gygax's old Gord The Rogue series as THE ULTIMATE evil) seems to have "absorbed" all the elements that made Ghanadaur what he is. Tentacles, ugly colors, all that. I could be wrong on who came first or whatnot, but in Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil you could easily switch out Tharizdun for Ghanadaur and never know the difference. Then again, maybe that was the idea...

Positive aspects of the adventure include a touching upon the old village of Hommlet, and the same attention to small details that made (in my opinion) the old Village of Hommlet such a great module (though the new computer-generated map of Hommlet leaves a lot to be desired). It also has some interesting NPCs that the characters will undoubtedly end up working with/for. If you want a gigantic dungeon complex to lose yourself in for literally weeks of game play, this module has it.

All in all, though, these elements just weren't worth it for me. As I said in the beginning, I expected a lot from a "Return to..." scenario, and this just didn't do it.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

For those of you who do not know, this is a WoTC product that was designed as a mega adventure or campaign size adventure taking characters from approximately 4th level to 14th over the course of the full adventure. At first glance as a DM this product seemed pricey by well stocked with rich full color maps, 200+ room detailed with encounters, full rosters of NPC's and Villains, etc. My glance proved correct and then some, boy did I underestimate the size and undertaking of this massive adventure. What I thought my group (7 players, once a week, 8 hour sessions) could finish in a couple of months turned into a monster campaign that lasted near six months of real time sessions. Quite an epic that was more than worth every penny that grew a small group of 3rd level nobodies to an epic group of 14th level heroes ready to do battle with dark gods and elemental princes!

This adventure really caters to DM's who prefer to have every detail really flushed out for them. Like I said above, this adventure has 200 + rooms, encounters, etc wrapped into a massive dungeon crawl (the Mines and the Moathouse Ruins) as well full color maps, temple of elemental evil, flushed out towns (Hommlet, Nulb, Rastor, etc), and evil outer planar strongholds of evil elemental princes! Dont worry about adventure or excitement, this adventure is massively loaded with tons of both. It is definitely more stacked towardshack and slash melee rather than roleplaying, but that carries over well in this action oriented adventure.

The tough thing to add in is the backstory of the original adventure. For me, 3 of my 7 players had played it and the other 4 had not even heard of the adventure. That complicated things just a bit and to make it tougher, we use the Forgotten Realms setting. This adventure as well as its predecessor were more designed to fit the Grayhawk campaign world. Although do not be disheartened by any of these facts, all things are easily explained, flushed out, and easily adaptable to any campaign world. The plot is as easy to follow in any world as this . . . an evil cult of priests look to set up a powerful base of evil minions in the land to sacrifice people and do evil in an attempt to gain a release of their banned or imprisoned elder dark god! The heores must come to the aid of this small land, find out about the cult, track them down to their base of operations, and prevent them from releasing their dark god from his prison. It boils down to just that simple of a storyline. Yes, there are some twists and turns, so dont be worried reading the above simplification of the story.

Strong points:

1. Details, this adventure has more encounters than your party would even possibly want to do. Maps, encoutners, NPC's, villains, plot, reactions, tactics, etc, its all here, somehow!

2. Battle, taking your party of characters from 4th to 14th or so should show you just how much battle is tucked in between those two covers. Anything from evil cultist priests, to demons, to dragons, to assassin NPC's, to elder elmentals, to giants, to ogres, to hobgoblins, etc!

3. Story, I dont want to give to much away in this review, but the story is exciting and well paced. It doesnt lose anything in the middle and ends with a strong climactic battle, an all out good versus evil for all the marbles! Stuff that makes characters into heroes and legends!

4. Bad Guys, I love the variety of class and monster race they dish out in this game. Half Fiend Stone Giant Warriors. Undead Aboleth High Priests. Half Elemental Assassins and Priests. The list goes on and on. Very creative and rich bad guys that really open your eyes to 3rd editions flexibility.

Weak Points:

1. The dungeon crawl at the mines becomes a grind at best if your party is a tedious one that can leave no door unchecked (such as mine was). Your talking about, in a worst case scenario, 150 encounters right smack dab in the middle of the storyline. This could take months of real time and with enough unlucky nights or poor team work, can really grind into and rip at the core sanity of your group of players. If Little Danny the rogue dies 3 times in 5 sessions and goes from 10th level down to 7th, and then through those experience gains, back to 9th, then things begin to look like chutes and ladders more than DnD. My advice is to thin out the encounters a bit by having some of the larger rooms and allies join forces against the heroes, breaking apart some of the 30 plus encounters per temple section.

2. Treasure, its massive as many (maybe 50%) of the main encounters involce battles against NPC's instead of monsters. And all of the NPC's from 5th level to 15th level have a minimum of 2 to 5 magic items each! Towards the last few sessions many of my players had 3 or 4 rings of protections each, granted, they were all +!, but it seemed a bit over kill.

3. Villians potency, it really catered to those that played the first adventure, thats for sure. The players who know of Lareth and the others were really happy to meet and beat them again. To those that had not played before, they were just some more high priests of the evil cult, not anywhere near as dangerous as the First, Second, and Third were.

Overall this adventure was a gem! Much more flavor rich and chalk full of adventure than the adventure path series (Sunless Citidale, Forge of Fury, etc) has been. Monte Cook and Company really out did themselves putting this impressive adventure together and tying it into the past story line. Dont think about the price tag of this adventure, you and your group will surely get much more than you payed for with thise epic campaign like adventure!

Arreon, Lord of the Dragon Slayers
Sean McDaniel

 

[Andorax]

First, I will preface by saying that I'm not going to go into the plotline much, nor descriptions of the adventure track, the plot, the artwork, and so forth. If this were one of the first few reviews, I would assuredly do so. However, that ground has already been well covered by those who DID post the first few reviews.

From back in 2nd edition, there were two different versions of adventures, the regular "thin" module, for a fairly small price and good for a level or two, and the occasional "book" module, of which Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is not only an example, but also a heir. The original Temple of Elemental Evil was not only a book module, it was the first in a set of three, a full campaign of epic proportions with links to carry it on into Scourge of the Slavelord and Queen of Spiders for a grand, 15 module tour of Greyhawk in all it's glory.

While I will openly admit that I am not as knowledgable about Greyhawk, the specifics of it's history and traditions, as some who have reviewed this adventure, I will say that Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil captures that same Epic feel.

There are two definitions of Campaigns commonly in use. One is the ongoing adventures of a coherent group of adventures from low level to high, with replacement characters coming in as others fall. In this sense, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is superb. True to it's back cover, it will take 4th level PCs and transform them (or the survivors, anyways) into 14th level adventurers who have had a dramatic effect on the world around them.

The other definition of a campaign is one that presents a consistant, ongoing world. One that persists from adventuring group to adventuring group, through several runs of PCs from 1st on up only to start again. Taking years to evolve, such a campaign is a work of art, but it's a work of art based on a mountain of assumptions and events that have already taken place one particular way or another. In this sort of setting, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil cannot possably hope to be a "perfect fit", as events have already taken place in a different manner.

As with any "return" adventure, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil must of necessity be based on it's own set of assumptions. This NPC died in this manner, that one escaped, etc. If you've run the Temple of Elemental Evil, and intend for this adventure to treat your own run through that one as "canon", then it won't match up, and it will take some legwork to untangle it. If you've run Temple of Elemental Evil in the distant past, and gone on to other things...if your experience is left for just what it is, an enjoyable experience, then Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil has some phenominal nostalga value and will strike all the right cords with your gamers.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil had the advantage of being one of the first-to-market "major" adventures of 3rd edition. However, now that we're well past it's original publication, it's still the only epic adventure (no, not Epic...epic in scale. It's for 4th to 14th) I've seen well worth this sort of price. Don't pick it up to be part of your campaign...pick it up for it to BE your campaign, and don't be surprised to get a good, solid year of gaming out of it. For that kind of story, it's well worth the price.

Yes, it does have flaws. It suffers somewhat from being a showcase of the Monstrous Manual (if you count that a flaw). It has a number of minor mechanical errors (as does anything of this size). Still, with all it's faults, I find it to be the best 3E adventure on the market today, long after it's initial publication. Thus the 5/5 rating.

And besides, where else will you find an adventure with it's own support board? www.montecook.com, in their message board section, has an entire forum dedicated to Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. If these reviews haven't answered all your questions, come visit and ask around...the DMs there will be glad to answer them for you. As with any review, I'd love to see you, the DM, make an informed decision about this product. If you've picked it up already, then come visit. We'd love to have more DMs to swap stories, tactics, and ideas with. We've also put together a FAQ and Errata for it.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Let me preface by saying, I have owned this product since it was released and have read it several times over. I have NOT playtested it. I usually don’t review non-playtested products and that I don’t review much here, so take this as you may. I have read the other reviews and do see the “love it” or “hate it” type relationship “The Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil” fosters.
This review contains SPOILERS so read at your own risk.

Title: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
"an adventure taking characters from 4th -14th level"

Author: Monte Cook

Appearance: A 192 perfect bound soft-cover book with excellent illustrations and a full set of perforated detailed color maps.

Overview: A Campaign module of epic size and scope chronicling the third rise of the Temple of Elemental Evil in the World of Greyhawk.

Synopsis: The book is broken down in 8 chapters each of which details a specific section of the three part story arc., There 4 detailed appendix detailing various, Items, NPC’s, Monsters, and Classes.

PART 1) The players have returned to the now renown Village, (now a small town) of Hommlet, ( The provided motivations of “why” they return here are weak, The best of those listed being the PC’s are essentially “bored” and there is always something going on in Hommlet, right?) Local inquiries soon lead adventures back to the old Moathouse, the now ghost town of Nulb and the ruins of the original Temple of Elemental Evil.

PRO’s: I found this first section of book to be excellent, Starting with a good background history of the area and how events came to be as they are in the 15 years since the original. Part 1 is filled with colorful NPC’s, past and present, exciting encounters which all accurately fall within the context of the new story.

CON’s There are silly errors that contridict other Greyhawk published matierials.
For instance both here and in the original, The Free City of Verbononc is listed as 10 leagues from Hommlet while in every published Greyhawk product (including maps within) It is plainly shown as being 30 leagues distant. While this isn’t a big deal, it is annoying and shows a lack of knowledge of the editors. Also clues given on reasons why or how to continue on to part 2 are tentative at best and will require some serious DM prodding and/or major hint giving to get players in the right direction.

PART 2) The players travel to Hamlet of Rastor in search of the Temple of All-Consumption, which is in a dormant Volcanic crater in the Lortmil mountians around 200 miles to east .There they find out what (or whom) is really behind the new rise of the Temple and somehow figure out how to put a stop to it.

CON’s: This is where things really go bad for this book. First of all, The Crater Ridge Mines are just too big and they are filled with too many overpowered encounters.
It’s suggested that players are supposed to come up with a way to play various factions against each other (as each section represents a temple of the four elemental nodes) However by the time the PC’s figure that out and they already have a good taste of what’s there, I would think any thinking PC’s would be headed to Veluna or Verbononc in order to solicit a small army to help finish the task.
Any DM will have a lot of work to do to make this area run smoothly, while it can done
(Namely by pulling out a lot of encounters, Dinosaurs???) Someone mentioned this plays out like a video game- I concur.

PRO’s: There are some excellent encounters here: The player’s discover the fate of Prince Thrommel, D’gran The Half Ogre/Half-Demon is a nice touch and the return of Zert is great if you played the original (and got some mileage out of him). I also like the story the players uncover. The secret cult of the evilest of evil god’s “Tharizdun” is the true culprit behind all this and that his minions are trying to free him from his eternal imprisonment to wreak havoc in the world. Finally the maps of these areas are well detailed and simply great.

PART 3) Players discover the Cult has re-excavated the fire node at the original Temple and must travel back 250 miles to the dungeon of the recovered temple and stop the cults evil plans.

PRO’s: Good synchronicity with the story, that prevents players from finding the re-excavated temple when the visit the upper temple the first time they are there.. (As it simply hasn’t happened yet). The players have plenty of opportunity to gain NPC allies for this assault. And I like the structuring and organizational detail of each area as well as the re-visiting if the original areas.

CON’s: First of all, the 500+ mile journey that players take to go to find the Temple of All-Consumption and then to travel back to the original is just too far and leaves the player’s way too much room to lose focus or get side tracked. Granted they should realize that this is a matter of great urgency and should Tharizdun actually be freed, it would literally mean the end of the world. That being said, as heroic as they surely are. This becomes a job for a small army. Not a job that a smart bunch of adventures would dare to risk failing. It is going to take a DM a lot of creativity to stifle the player’s correct assumptions and get them back to the Recovered Temple in a hurry, while only stopping in Hommlet to pick up a few NPC’s as muscle. As in part 2, there are too many creatures that just seem out of place within the context of the story environment. (Ex: The purple worm, no matter how creative the story to why its there, it is just silly). Finally the end game with Prince Imix, is pretty hard to swallow even with 4- 14th level PC’s and some powerful NPC’s. Chances of winning this fight would be near zero, If the DM plays Imix properly. Even a 14th level “buffed-up” fighter would be hard pressed to go head to head with him for more than round or two.

CONCLUSION: I don’t think trying to run this module “As Is”, is even remotely feasible. Even the most skilled DM, has not only an incredible amount of work to do in managing all the characters, monsters and environments, but has way too much PC hand-holding and hint dropping, all the while not working the players adversaries to their true potential is required. However,this book is an excellent source book for a classic style Greyhawk campaign and with some minor modifications can be easily be awesome “Return To” adventure/campaign.

If you are a fan of the source material this book is totally mandatory,
If not it’s still worth the read and quite usable if broken up into several small adventures or as part of any larger Greyhawk campaign. Finally as an adventure I would rate this book a “3”,As a source book I would rate it a “5”. For an overall score of “4”.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

After 7 months of mostly-weekly playing sessions, we're about half way through. Hommlet is long forgotten (and probably razed by the forces of evil). Forces of evil have probably detonated the world by now, actually, having managed to send the characters -- none of which have any ranks in sense motive -- off on countless goose chases. So on the one hand, the score is very much influenced by my players. On the other, who's to say your players will fare any better?

Ultimately, however, my rating comes down to this: If there's so much "on the line," then how do we cross the line? The campaign never lines that up (City of the Spider Queen does this very nicely, for comparison) and as a result, the PCs have no urgent need to save the world. That's an unforgiveable flaw in my book -- evil cults aren't supposed to wait for heroes to come try to foil them. Period. Didn't they ever read the list of things to never ever do when being evil?

Now for the serious spoilers...
- My players did not do well in Hommlet. Two of them got arrested for murdering a cultist and the whole party spent over half a month investigating the doppelganger's accusations that his assistant was acting strangely. Oh, and they told the wizard they rescued to piss off, they didn't need his help. While having a detailed city is nice and all, I expect that many newer players will be caught off-guard by the spots of action in sleeply little Hommlet. Of course, my players spent two hours looking at a chair (with nothing special about it; it was broken) and an entire session with a shocking button puzzle that the rogue could have taken 20 on because the required reflex save was so low, so your milage may vary.
- I had to force-feed my players a mission in the direction of the middle part of the campaign because they missed the (as near as I can tell) random encounter that points players to the big elder evil mines. They saw the person skulking about, but they decided to go off the other way and catch up to her later. 'Cept she was a random encounter, so she wandered off.
- The round dungeon is kind of flimsy. It's an interesting concept, but the ultimate result is that a very thourough party will encounter a whole lot of encounters that aren't really challenging for them at all (as the EL ratings are somewhat balanced between the top and bottom of the circle. Oh, and the Blade Spirit (looks like something out of the original Star Trek) is also a bit trippy -- be sure you know exactly how it works before starting.
- Temple politics are poorly defined, and they only get worse with random non-temple forces in the mines. Who hates who? Who tolerates who? That sort of thing.
- There's a lot of information that simply doesn't appear to be available to players -- like the actual name of the evil deity which has all sorts of cool effects if used at appropriate times throughout the adventure. I think they'll pick up on it when they're 2/3rds of the way through... assuming they make their will saves...
- The middle of the mines springs a whole lot of nastiness on the players, much of it in the form of "Now you need to make a Will save against this altar here... 18? Too bad, it ate your soul so now you need to make a new character." (I've had the party Shaman warn the other characters that areas of strong negative energy will require strong wills to survive and introduced a weenie version of Oriental Adventures' "Taint.")
- The map scale is 10' little squares instead of 5' little squares -- so every door is 10' wide? It just doesn't make much sense, let alone transferring well to a battle mat.
- There's an editing error that mentions the name of one of the villians that's in the room just beyond where the players are in the Earth section of the temple. The players have never heard of this NPC and wouldn't know him from Tharuzdin -- at least not without a valid photo id. Nitpick, but the players spent a good 10 minutes discussing the implications before the wizard yelled "Fireball" and wiped out the bugs that were the focus of conversation. (Thank God!) But now I'm getting nit-picky.
- It appears that the characters are going to get themselves annihilated again before the end of the campaign because there's a segment with a couple of iron golems in it. Nicely tucked away as part of an ambush near the end. They're gonna hate me.
- But the worst part of it is that the characters could go off and join the circus and the world would never end because the cultists are waiting for the characters to try to foil them, as I mentioned before. In City of the Spider Queen, there's a timetable for world domination, and any characters in need of a vacation had better think again. Here, there's no such thing -- it's all set at the characters pace, where they want to go, what they want to do, yadda yadda yadda. It's not an evil cult of world destruction, it's a freakin' tourist trap!

Overall, I get the general impression that so much of this adventure was spent in Planning that they forgot to ensure that all of the foundations were there when they went to execute it: Who are the players working on locking away forever and ever; When do they need to get it done; How does the cult of lunatics grow and prosper; Why has nobody wiped them out yet; and Where the heck are they, anyway?

Compare this to the low-level Freeport series -- yeah, Freeport was predictable, but at least my players never spent an entire session frustratedly wandering about the countryside because a cultist doppelganger told them to.

 

[Kenmis]

Well, it’s been a little over a year and three months since my party started Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. We’ve got about one more session to go, but it’s all wrap up, the main parts of the adventure are over. I have to say it’s been a good year and three months for the most part.

My party started the module as 4th level characters and ended around 14th-15th, with about 9 party deaths (mostly the rogues, my players have terrible luck with rogues). My players thoroughly enjoyed the adventure, and were quite proud of their accomplishments when everything was said and done.

Production: Standard WoTC production quality here; soft back, fairly large borders, decent art. I have to say I was pretty impressed with the durability of the book, as it got pretty heavy use for over a year and stayed in good shape. It was a week ago when I finally used tape to reinforce the cover and binding, I was expecting to have to do that far sooner. The book also came with a full color map booklet, which was excellent quality. My players really enjoyed looking at the maps of the different dungeons they had already explored. The Temple of All Consumption was especially well done.

An adventure of this size could have really used an index of some kind, however, or some way to organize the dozens of different NPC’s. There are a few parts of the book that are frustratingly disorganized, and it’s difficult to find the evil cult’s plans or strategies sometimes.

Content: While at first I was very intimidated by the gargantuan size of this adventure, I found that after a bit of adjustment, it was surprisingly easy to handle most of what was going on. The pace moves slow enough that it’s fairly simple to keep track of both the immediate future and the big picture. One challenge, however, is the denizens of the dungeons themselves. Most are intelligent (albeit insane) humanoids, and it can be rather difficult to calculate the cascading chain of events that results when the party makes an assault on a base.

For example, if the party attacks the main gate of the Crater Ridge Mines (and they most likely will) the DM has to take into consideration the reactions of more than 6 different groups of guards and minor NPC’s. Each will have their armor donned in a different amount of time, will take up different positions, defend certain areas, try to set up flanks, support certain officers, so on and so forth. It is absolutely mandatory that the DM spend a significant amount of time before the session planning this out, or the encounter is far too easy and not very believable. If done right, however, it’s a very entertaining and memorable fight.

This can be a pro or a con, depending on how you look at it. Almost every location in the adventure is a living, breathing place: people move around, react to what the party does, and in some cases certain members of the cult actually fight each other. On more than one occasion I had to role-play out some events that the players weren’t even there for: one faction of the cult launching an assault on another, NPC’s sending spies or assassins after the PC’s or even other NPC’s, lots of crazy things are going on in the background. Depending on how much work you’re willing to put into it (and I know some that put a lot more into it than I did) this adventure can be a fantastic example of a dynamic dungeon.

Fortunately for those of you who may be intimidated by the amount of work that has to go into this module, there is help out there. I really must say that my campaign would not have been nearly as entertaining without all the fantastic help from the Return to the Temple of Evil Message board found at www.montecook.com. (http://pub102.ezboard.com/fokayyourturnfrm17) The DM’s there are always willing to answer questions, discuss strategies, and brainstorm new and terrible ways to harry the players (silenced Invisible Stalkers attacking while the party sleeps...<shudder>).

If the workload doesn’t put you off, then your players are in for quite a ride. Make no bones about it, this isn’t much more than a huge and rather complicated dungeon crawl. Dynamic or no, it still pretty much boils down to a very long hack-and-slash adventure. If that’s what your players are looking for, there are some very rewarding fights to be had with a wide variety of creative and nasty creatures. Particularly memorable is the half-demon ogre mage (acid and fire resistance 20 plus regeneration? aiiieeeee!) and the half-dragon T-Rexes. On more than one occasion my players had to really pull out all the stops to survive some of the encounters. At the end of the day, when the dust settled, they were all terribly pleased with themselves and eager for more.

There are a few problems with Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil however. First off, an adventure of this size is draining on the DM and Players. Especially the area called the Crater Ridge Mines, which is so large it eventually becomes quite tedious. My players only explored half of it before they decided to move on to the next part. Also, there is a predominance of evil clerics in the party. During the lower level portions of the module, the clerics are effectively worthless as enemies, with little in the way of offensive melee or spell casting abilities. Later on of course they become terrifying, but by then my players were sick of fighting clerics. It got so bad during the Crater Ridge Mines that we actually put things on hold and did an entirely different adventure (The Heart of Nightfang Spire) for a change of pace. Not surprisingly, there’s not a single cleric in the adventure we chose.

Also, the “main” town of the adventure, Hommlet is essentially useless to the party. This is unfortunate, too, because Monte Cook spends a fantastic amount of time detailing the people and places of the sleepy village, and lots of great opportunities for role-playing can be had there. But the town has a gold piece limit of 800. When the starting level of the characters is 4th level for the adventure, you can see how this becomes a problem. A major city lies only 20 leagues away, and I found that my players quickly opted to ignore Hommlet all together and set up base at the major city where they could buy and sell all their equipment. At the end of the adventure there is supposed to be this grand, dramatic meeting of all the leaders of Hommlet and the players as they try to decide what to do about this horrible threat nearby, but my players skipped it entirely. In fact, they haven’t set foot in the village since they were 7th level.

Overall, I have to say I really enjoyed Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. It’s a lot of work and a long haul, but in the end your players feel like they really accomplished something grand and epic. It’s full of interesting villains and some great encounters. With hard work and a lot of time (expect no less than a year of play time, assuming once-a-week games) it can turn into one of the most memorable and enjoyable portions of any campaign, if not becoming a full campaign unto itself.

 

[anhar]

If I wanted to play Dungeon Siege....

First thing I've ever posted here, so feel free to call me a noob or flame me or whatever.

Background

I have never played any other specific GH adventure, generally play FR but not a fanboy of anything. I don't know anything about GH history except what I've read in the other reviews.

I started playing this module about a week after it came out. After about a month and a half we just all came together with the DM one night, and said "we aren't having fun." the DM replied: "I'm glad you guys said something, I've hated this ever since we got to the mines." Then we started a campaign in HERO system. {which is, sadly, much more fun to build characters with than to actually play, though it can still be fun to play}. RTOEE actually started out promising, I liked Hommlet, it had a good level of detail and interesting things to do. The moathouse was a bit annoying, but still overall fun, then came the mines. the soul-crushingly boring mines.

Specific complaints. Possible spoilers

Some of these we never actually encountered, I only discovered them when reading through the book. If I make any factual errors, please remember the last time I saw this book was more than a year ago.

-Too many dragons, too early
Pointless, unexplained blue dragon in the moathouse, red dragon in the mines, half dragon t-rexes {I disagree that this is a stupid idea, I actually like it, but it's too many dragons}. Honestly I've never been a fan of 3.0 dragons, hover+blindsight is overpowered. {I know they kinda fixed in in 3.5, with dragons now having blindsense rather than blindsight, but the module was written in 3.0}

-Too many encounters with 20-30 minions at once.
I remember this happening at least 3 or 4 times, at first it was long and boring, then our sorcerer hit 6th level and got fireball and they became pointlessly easy and gave way too much experience/treasure.

-Too many low level minions in full plate
Do they have a full plate factory in the mines somewhere that I missed? Seriously, we were lucky and the DM gave us a bag of holding at some point and so we cashed in on something like 20-30 suits of full plate from various hobgoblins/trogldytes before we hit 6th level. From the full plate alone we were way too rich for our level. {I think we may have gotten {un?}lucky in our random encounters}

-Speaking of Trogldytes...
It is not a good idea to put a Trogldyte cleric in full plate with a large steel shield and shield of faith up against the 5th-6th level PC's when they are going to be mostly out of spells. He has a natural armor bonus of +6, this means he has a 28 AC and you end up surrounding him and having three people aid another on your fighter so he has a good chance to hit on his first attack for 6-10 rounds. {it would have been easier if someone had improved trip. I took disarm unfortunately, so he was left trying to ineffectually bite} It's very boring/annoying. In general there were too many Trogs in this adventure, especially too many in full plate. Don't get me started on the half-earth elemental trog-fighter in full plate. The sorcerer did all the work in that fight, let me tell you.

-The doomdreamer prestige classs
in 3.0 a marilith had very few hit dice for it's CR. The doomdreamer prestige class {if I remember correctly} had the ability to command the services of a demon of the number of hit dice a marilith had. Being that the doomdreamers were crazy, they wouldn't care that the marilith would be plotting their eventual demise for being ordered around. I think we had a situation where a CR 9 doomdreamer could have {effectively} a CR 17 pet. When we read this we decided it was the dumbest thing ever and the DM declared that the doomdreamer couldn't command a demon with a higher CR than himself. perhaps we read the prestige class wrong. If so, please enlighten me.

-Why are we here again?
This is the biggest one. As pointed out in other reviews, We had no sense of urgency, the cult didn't seem to have a master plan or anything. it was just a big diablo-style dungeon with random pointless monsters and interesting things to look at and be killed by.


There we go. If I think of anything else I'll add it in the comments. I wrote this because I see how polarized the reviews are and I think I have valid reasons why this shouldn't ever have been given a 5 star rating. I don't think it's a one star, I've seen worse, but even if your DM is the best ever and completely re-works this before serving it to you, it shouldn't be 5-stars.


{btw please don't tell me this is my DM's fault, any module needs a personal touch, but this one needs a complete makeover, and if you're going to completely re-do a 150+ page module then why did you buy the damn thing?}