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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 7096094" data-attributes="member: 6688858">To give you a different perspective from the majority of replies here, you don't HAVE to put a ton of work into rationalizing and expanding T1-4 to have a good time with it. I ran the Temple pretty much off the page as a big roguelike dungeoncrawl and we had a lot of fun.As others have mentioned the plot has serious editorial goofs and doesn't make a lot of sense as written. Thankfully IME putting it all together and figuring out the motivations of everyone is not a key part of the playing experience. Just foreshadow Lareth a little bit before they get to the Moathouse and eventually make it clear that the Temple must be destroyed, and things will work out. The rest is just colour. It's important that it's there, but the appearance of underlying complexity is all that is required for effect. You don't have to actually work everything out.If the PCs are ever interrogating an NPC as to their motivations and you don't know what to say, just respond like the guy at the end of The Warriors: "No reason, I just like doing stuff like that." *creepy laughter*<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />In fact I think if you're worried about a big dungeon being grindy the worst thing you can do (other than reduce the loot in the dungeon) is to constantly divert the players away from it. The key to keeping it on track is to steer into the skid as it were and focus tightly on the dungeon until it's completed. It's of course fine to make the dungeon itself more interesting and dynamic (preferably by sharpening up your DM procedures than by scripting encounters), but it's usually a mistake to pad out the campaign with adventures outside the dungeon. The thing that makes it fun is the sense of growing power and progress through it. You interfere with that when you pull the players away from it. It makes the dungeon feel more grindy even though in theory the campaign is more varied and interesting.A good dungeoncrawl should be addictive...not in the sense of causing the players problems elsewhere in their lives but they should itching between sessions to get back into it and pull the lever again. Don't "detox" them constantly with loot-poor side quests and prolix NPCs.So I think the entirety of T1-4 is best run like a funnel: run Hommlet as a sandbox with other adventures thrown into the mix, but when the PCs get into the Temple let them grind through to conclusion. I think the only thing my PCs did in Nulb was talk with Mother Screng/Y'dey a few times.Around Hommlet I had Falcon's Peak (old Dungeon mag adventure) as a red herring for the Moathouse, and Ironwood Gorge, Hammers of the God and Tower of the Stargazer (OSR modules) in the area as side quests. An easy way to introduce other adventures into the campaign is to give the NPCs in the Welcome Wench rumors/motivations to pursue them.</blockquote>

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