D&D 5E Running T1-4 (ToEE) for the first time. Any advice?

[Luz]

Those are the exact notes I've been leaning heavily on.

Those conversion notes are extremely helpful, they take care of most of the leg work. Brian C. Rideout did an outstanding job putting it all together for us.

This new group could do much better. They're more into the RP perspective than murderhobo.

This will go a long way to getting full enjoyment out of Hommlet.

Something else I'm curious about what others have done. The intro mentions the players should be broke and worn down when entering Hommlet. I debated staging a bunch of robbers on the road in to rough them up and take most of their coin. Kind of a means of getting them to invest in the town. Find some side work at the tavern, help some of the farmers out with heavy lifting, work with the smithy's. Try to make some coin in town so they can get back on their feet. I go by the book on gear usually. Take what your class offers or roll your gold and buy it.

A brigand roadside ambush is a classic way of getting things started. Another spin on that would be that the party stumbles upon an ambush-in-progress on a caravan bound for Hommlet. Either the PCs drive off the brigands or they get beaten up and robbed but, ultimately, enough of the brigands get away with the caravan goods: rare Velunan fireamber wine for Ostler Gundigoot at the Inn of the Welcome Wench. This could serve as a segue for the party and the inn (once they arrive in Hommlet), and possibly lead to a side quest from Ostler to recover the stolen wine before Brewfest (or some other festival). Then perhaps if the PCs track down and defeat the brigands, they learn (through interrogations) that one of the brigands is affiliated with another group of bandits at the moathouse. Wheels within wheels and all that...

Any information about the history of the temple in the Players Background (pgs.4-5) I withheld from my players until they learned it for themselves from townsfolk. Possible npcs who could provide this info are: Ostler (I'm pretty sure he is a veteran of the Battle of Emridy Meadows), Terjon, Burne, Rufus, Elmo, Jaroo, or possibly the Elderman or Mytch the Miller.

Other tidbits I use(d) in my campaign, in no particular order:

- I emphasized the dissidence between the Old Faith (druid) and New Faith (Cuthbert). This was demonstrated by sneers or jests by one or the other; strictly a way of painting the townsfolk with more than one brush.
- I played Terjon as extremely self-righteous LG, to the point that he flagellates (including himself) to purge sins. Again, this was to illustrate the differences between the two faiths, but could probably be used as some sort of scenario.
- I found some of the side quests in the conversion document (pg.19-23) to be very useful, particularly Helping the Tailor and Clearing Out the Darkwood Grove - both excellent ways to engage the party with some of the Hommlet locals. For the Darkwood Grove scenario I switched it to a meenlock (Volo's Guide, p.170), just because I've never used one against my players. It works just as well.

This organic flow is what I'm hoping for. I'm pretty sure Hommlet will just work once they get there, the gears will just start turning on their own. I definitely plan to do a lot of work with the Temple itself, I don't want it to turn into a long slog as you say. I'd love to see them use subterfuge or some other means to turn the varying factions within even more against each other. Maybe throw a PC's younger sibling in the mix, kidnapped by pirates, turned by the cult, no working against their brother/sister in the party.

Those are some terrific ideas. Yes, there are lots of different ways to use subterfuge or pit the temple occupants against one another. And wildcards like Falrinth (pg.87) or Smigmal Redhand and her bandits in the Broken Tower (pg.36) might also be used to sow dissension or establish uneasy alliances.

A word about Nulb: I find it to be as fun (if not more so) than Hommlet. Its basically the anti-Hommlet, with the PCs being disguised agents in a town of cutthroats, tramps, and thieves. I changed Dick Rentsch's role slightly so that he was not an agent of the Earth Temple, but an Al Swearengen-type character (from the tv series Deadwood) and a mole for Iuz to secretly keep an eye on the temple (I felt Iuz, being a CE paranoid demigod, would likely have an agent watching his other agents, so to speak). To add another wrinkle, Dick Rentsch has come to enjoy his role in Nulb (as a tavern and brothel keeper) and dislikes the cultists interference with the locals, so he occasionally sabotages their activities then reports their incompetence to Iuz. This makes him a little more flexible as an evil NPC who may find a use for the party. Besides, if the players suspect most of the town are cultists they may be tempted to ignore it altogether or attack everyone they meet.

Since Nulb has only a sketchy outline in the module, this link is extremely helpful for fleshing out the town a bit more:

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=72735

Lots of great ideas in it.

 

[Luz]

Also some of the bad guys plots seem odd. You need to figure them out.
What & who is Lareths interaction with the main temple - which cult, why?

Yeah, originally Gygax intended for Lolth to be the demoness behind the temple, so Lareth was made a priest of Lolth in T1. As the design plans changed between when T1 and T4 was published, this never got corrected. It has caused so much confusion over the years. What is a priest of Lolth doing serving the Temple of Elemental Evil? Some have come up with home brew justifications like he is a double-agent or Lolth is allied with Zuggtmoy, but the fact of the matter is its an editing oversight. For my game, I just switched him to be a priest of the Temple.

 

[Raith5]

I DMed this for 1e (a long, long time ago) and the temple becomes very grindy and takes a long time to play. You may need to consider the need to make it more realistic and adaptive by getting the bad guys to set up ambushes and even track the PCs down when they try to rest. On the other hand, I think you need to play with the politics of the various elemental factions in order to make the whole temple more dynamic and realistic. This is not a well oiled group of bad guys - but a rag tag group rebuilding their temple. I think playing up their differences open up RP options, deceit etc rather than a room by room murder spree.

 

[Shiroiken]

Yeah, originally Gygax intended for Lolth to be the demoness behind the temple, so Lareth was made a priest of Lolth in T1. As the design plans changed between when T1 and T4 was published, this never got corrected. It has caused so much confusion over the years. What is a priest of Lolth doing serving the Temple of Elemental Evil? Some have come up with home brew justifications like he is a double-agent or Lolth is allied with Zuggtmoy, but the fact of the matter is its an editing oversight. For my game, I just switched him to be a priest of the Temple.

I had him as a dupe for Eclvadra, thinking his was actually serving Lolth while really serving the Temple. Since I was leading up to GDQ1-7, this worked out very well.

If you want to fix the problem, just change him to a priest of Zuggtmoy or Iuz.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A few things.

Pedantic, but if you're playing 1e, then you're avoiding THAC0 anyway (1e used attack tables, and while the term THAC0 does appear in the 1e DMG, it wasn't a rule until 2e)

Don't worry about spending your time learning Greyhawk lore. Most of those adventures are drag and drop anyway, and you don't really need to lore to play it.

But the important thing so many players forget: Not all monsters are meant to be fought. ToEE especially, it is highly encouraged that the players utilize politics to get the various warring factions to fight each other.

And as others have mentioned, cut back the treasure by quite a bit if using 5e rules. It was there to get PCs up to level 8 by the end of it, and 1e used XP for treasure. 5e doesn't, and even if 5e didn't have bounded accuracy, you wouldn't need all that treasure. With BA just means you REALLY need to tone down a lot of the treasure.

 

[MackMcMacky]

I have run this a few times. The last time I re-worked the Temple into an even larger version of itself. This module series screams the need for note-taking, color-coding, and careful thought about what the various NPCs would be doing as the adventure progresses.

I have read suggestions of tossing the various caves in the Keep on the Borderlands about in the area to help characters gain enough experience to handle what's coming later. This would be very doable and is appealing to me at least.

Another thing: The Temple fell to the forces of good. Powerful good-guys sealed off portions of the dungeons which obviously means it would be rather easy for there to be some pretty solid rumors about what parts of the dungeon levels look like (not in any real detail) and even partial maps. The party hook could be as simple as having found a journal with a lead on a valuable treasure, a colorful story of a battle beneath the temple, and some information about the layout of a small portion of the dungeons.

In my campaign, back-stories were created for the party that tied family members to the discovery of the Temple threat, resultant skirmishes and the Battle of Emridy Meadows in 569 CY.

 

[MackMcMacky]

A few things.

Pedantic, but if you're playing 1e, then you're avoiding THAC0 anyway (1e used attack tables, and while the term THAC0 does appear in the 1e DMG, it wasn't a rule until 2e)

Don't worry about spending your time learning Greyhawk lore. Most of those adventures are drag and drop anyway, and you don't really need to lore to play it.

But the important thing so many players forget: Not all monsters are meant to be fought. ToEE especially, it is highly encouraged that the players utilize politics to get the various warring factions to fight each other.

And as others have mentioned, cut back the treasure by quite a bit if using 5e rules. It was there to get PCs up to level 8 by the end of it, and 1e used XP for treasure. 5e doesn't, and even if 5e didn't have bounded accuracy, you wouldn't need all that treasure. With BA just means you REALLY need to tone down a lot of the treasure.

In 2E, it is pretty easy to convert to to-hit bonuses for the character and add the armor class of their target with the goal of a score of 20 or more. 2nd Level fighter with a 17 strength has +1 to hit from level and +1 to hit from strength for a total mod of +2 and attacks a guy in chain mail with a 5 Armor Class so +5 +2 = +7. The fighter needs to roll a 13 or higher to reach 20 or more. All you gotta do is make one conversion of the THAC0 chart to a hit bonus chart and voila.

I really don't see the appeal of bothering with the Temple in 5E. It's huge and should have scads of creatures in it. If 5E doesn't serve well for that, I would go 1E or 2E. If I was playing 5E, I would run something else. Just my take on it.

 

[Luz]

Another thing: The Temple fell to the forces of good. Powerful good-guys sealed off portions of the dungeons which obviously means it would be rather easy for there to be some pretty solid rumors about what parts of the dungeon levels look like (not in any real detail) and even partial maps. The party hook could be as simple as having found a journal with a lead on a valuable treasure, a colorful story of a battle beneath the temple, and some information about the layout of a small portion of the dungeons.

I really like this idea. It could be cryptic message or partial map that hints at a hidden sublevel (the the interdicted prison of Zuggtmoy), perhaps suggesting (or warning) that it is behind the "four seals" or can only be accessed with the golden key (orb). Since we are well into the module now, I may place a mapseller in Nulb's black market who will try to pawn it off on the party.
[MENTION=6775477]Shiroiken[/MENTION]: that's an awesome way to tie Lareth and Lolth to the temple! I wish I had thought of that earlier.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I just skipped that entirely. It’s not like characters at that level will have that much gold on them anyway. If you really wanted to maintain that hook, I’d say just have them steal something important to the PC (but not mechanically so), like a trinket or heirloom, and place it somewhere in the temple.

Something else I'm curious about what others have done. The intro mentions the players should be broke and worn down when entering Hommlet. I debated staging a bunch of robbers on the road in to rough them up and take most of their coin. Kind of a means of getting them to invest in the town.

 

[twizty]

Serious thanks to everyone who's responded to this thread. It's definitely sparked a whole new line of creativity I was lacking for working on this. I was getting caught up in the reformatting of block upon block of text so that it was understandable (I use OneNote to run games). Definitely using a number of things mentioned here to build on it.