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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fearsomepirate" data-source="post: 8192226" data-attributes="member: 7021420">What I ran:I all-but-finished Temple of Elemental Evil before COVID hit. Like, we were quite literally about to play the last session before everything got locked down.The system I used:I ran D&D 5e modified to play & pace somewhat like AD&D. That means the following:-Everyone used the AD&D Thief experience table-Spending gold back at Hommlet to train gained you experience-Non-combat is run in 10-minute intervals, with a wandering monster check every 2 intervals.-Rogues don't get to retry lockpicks or whatever over and over.-Investigation to search for traps on locks & other devices, Perception otherwise.-STR-based open door checks, surprise check upon successfully slamming open a door.-Reaction rolls for monsters-Temple is otherwise run as-is. No attempt to "balance" anything, LEARN NOT TO DIE.I have a doc written up somewhere for the full rules mod.What worked:-Reaction rolls completely changed the tenor of things. If monsters just default to drawing weapons when they see humans, dungeons get pretty boring. When you roll reactions, you have to think about what the monsters are doing. F'rex, on a favorable reaction roll, I might have a group of bugbears playing a game of knucklebones and invite the party to join, see how things work from there.-Gold for XP and a steeper curve meant players finally stopped focusing on the skinner box of killing things to level up and focused more on engaging with the actual adventure. Everyone was around level 7 or 8 when we almost-finished.-Treating the dungeon as a constantly evolving thing with rational denizens. There was no "plot." That means the folks who live in the creepy underground tunnels don't follow any set beat. If you kill everybody guarding a high cleric's room and go home before taking him out, he doesn't just wait there for a week for you to come back and kill him.-Once you get into the swing of filling in personality and details for the monsters, it gets really fun. -When the wandering monster table comes up with Zuggtmoy (yes, they let her out), she runs a game show and does something horrible to the loser.What made it tedious:-Letting the players get trapped in a combat slog. This happened a couple times, but I mostly avoided it. In TOEE, the elemental nodes are basically unfinished, so when you fill them in, you have to make them interesting. My prep:I basically did not prep in the traditional sense, because the few times I did, the party took a left turn and ignored whatever I had written. The only time I did was when Falrinth escaped. I prepared a minidungeon for them to go find him. Sadly, the party did not press the advantage when they had it, allowing Falrinth to escape again! What I did was come loaded with charts and books and a pretty solid knowledge of what was in them so I could respond in an agile way to whatever hilarious nonsense the players concocted.  When you have a dungeon with hundreds of rooms, being responsive is more important than having crafted backstories and dialogue ahead of time IMO.</blockquote>

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