D&D 5E Temple of Elemental Evil is the next Original Adventures Reincarnated

Goodman Games has announced the next in its line of Original Adventures Reincarnated - -and it's The Temple of Elemental Evil, in late 2020 or early 2021.

"Like all of the Original Adventures Reincarnated line, this release will contain both the original material scanned in and cleaned up to present it as it originally appeared, along with a full, new 5E translation in the second half of the book. The new material is being designed by a creative team led by Chris Doyle with contributions from Rick Maffei and others, all of whom are seasoned veterans of Dungeons and Dragons across its many incarnations.

Unlike the previous five volumes in the OAR line, the sheer size and scope of this module requires something new: OAR #6: The Temple of Elemental Evil will be released as a two-volume hardcover slipcase edition. The two volumes will also contain expert commentary about the original modules and their history."

Here's the back cover text:

EVIL BORN ANEW

The Village of Hommlet thrives again. Years ago, this quaint village nearly fell prey to a great, neighboring evil. The nearby Temple of Elemental Evil, a grand edifice of wickedness, was defeated after a great battle and thrown into ruin forever … or was it? Bandits have started to ride the roads again, and there are other ominous signs afoot. It is whispered that the demonic evil at the heart of the Temple was not truly conquered but merely imprisoned. Even now, agents of evil, malevolent beasts, and far worse creatures are conspiring to return the Temple to power and enslave the surrounding lands. Hommlet and the neighboring ruins may hold clues, but not everyone is to be trusted. Surely danger lies hidden in this idyllic region.

Sharpen your swords and axes. Purchase your iron rations and tinderboxes. And don’t forget at least one 10-foot pole. Great adventure awaits those that dare confront the Temple of Elemental Evil!

This book collection is an homage to the origins of an adventure that began decades ago with T1: The Village of Hommlet and T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Herein you will find high-quality scans from multiple printings of the original first edition adventure modules, plus commentary by gaming legends. Full fifth edition conversions of both adventure books are included, as well as brand new adventure material that adds new wilderness encounters, expands the Village of Nulb, fully details the evil Elemental Nodes, and provides fifth edition updates of many original magic items, monsters, and spells. This is a fully playable mega-dungeon and mini-campaign—many hours of classic-style adventure await you!​

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I have 1-2 sessions left of TOEE. This has been a highly memorable 2-year campaign, and I've gotten tons of positive feedback from my players. I convert it to 5e on the fly using a cheat sheet (or used to; I've practically got it memorized now). Here's my general advice.

1. Giving XP for loot is essential. It took a while for my players to adjust, but once they really understood that slogging through the killing fields is mostly a waste of time compared to finding a treasure hoard, it completely changed the dynamics of the game.

2. Slow down the leveling pace. I use the AD&D Thief XP chart for everyone. First of all, if you don't do this, they'll be going through the later areas like a hot knife through butter. Second of all, it changes the mentality from "We Leroy Jenkins through this in a couple sessions once we level up" to "We need to find a way to deal with this other than Leroy Jenkinsing our way through it."

Whoah. I hadn't really in my mind thought about the AD&D levels in relation to XP. The Thief is the fastest of all classes in AD&D; but compared to 5e, he's a snail. (And it was nice to re-open my AD&D PHB, it had been a while - ah nostalgia!). But #2 of your list makes sense if you are doing #1.

3. You really, really need to add your own color to the monsters. They shouldn't all just attack on sight. I used the Reaction roll from the AD&D DMG. Some monsters were friendly, some were cunning, some hostile, some dissatisfied with their employment and open to a better offer...the last thing Temple should be is one room after another of smash-door-kill-orc. And don't forget to have the denizens react rationally to incursions, recruiting new help, setting up traps and fortifications, moving treasure to more secure locations, etc.

This is a GREAT idea. But it will only work if you are willing and able to hie off on tangents, as you describe below. For 5e APs; and the style of 5e play as hinted at in the DMG and APs is to follow the script.

Regardless - the style of play you describe is exciting!

Here's an example from my run of the game: the Earth Node has a pair of adult dragons, and that's about all it says. I left them adult for the fun of it, named them Steve and Carol. Carol is an overbearing nag, and Steve is a hen-pecked husband who jumps on any excuse he can to get out of the cave. So when the party approached the cave, they could hear Carol barking at Steve to go outside and check out that noise...at which point Steve lazily flew out, clearly noticed the party, and called back that he couldn't find anybody, but he'll keep looking. The party cautiously approached Steve and, to make a long story short, negotiated not being killed and eaten in exchange for helping the dragons escape the node. They made their way out through the fourth floor, with the dragons making short work of the ogres and bugbears in their way. Steve and Carol, of course, are still evil dragons, so they attacked Burne's tower and grabbed some treasure, and they are now terrorizing a remote area of Veluna, and will need to be dealt with at some point. (If this story sounds familiar, I have told it with the details changed to throw my players off my online scent.)

The stories and events you hang on the tiniest hooks will be what makes this adventure memorable, and why no two runs of Temple are really anything alike. Your players will swear it's one of the best adventures ever played, and be astonished to learn that the past several sessions grew out of, "There are six bugbears in this room."

In my campaign, the last year has been almost wholly unscripted. They accidentally released Zuggtmoy, and there is no guidance in the book for what to do afterward. I have had her gradually taking over the Gnarley Forest, and the party has been working double time to try and stop her. Next session is the moment of truth: can they put this genie back in the bottle, or will the country succumb to fungal rot?

4. Don't worry about having too many magic items. Temple is hard. There are a lot of monsters. Even with everyone at this point having a Ring of Protection, a magic weapon, some kind of magic armor, and so on, the fights are still tough.

I don't think I own ToEE, at least not the 1st level one. But boy, depending on how employment goes after this CV19 stuff, I'll definitely be reserving the Goodman version at my FLGS. And I guess I can get T1-4 on DMs Guild? (Yes! and on sale for only $9.99!)

5. Yes, if somebody dies, they come back at level 1. Tough crap. Death needs to be a massive setback. I have found that in storybook adventures where you always come back at the same level, players get pretty reckless. In Temple, the cost of death makes them a lot more cautious, and a lot more interested in negotiating. The one thing I do majorly differently than AD&D is that you buy XP with gold; you do not just get it for finding the treasure. The gold stays with the player, not the PC, so if they die, they can use unspent gold to buy their way back up a few levels. A player who is broke tends to be a lot more cautious than a player with stacks of cash in the bank, believe me.

This is an interesting rule. I like it for this AP/module.

6. Prep? Ahahaahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaaaaahahahahahahaaahahahahaaaha! Get really good at flying by the seat of your pants, because the undirected layout of the Temple means your players can and will end up in places you absolutely did not expect, and turn back from the door to you carefully crafted experience at the last second. They'll do this approximately every single session.

This sounds like the way I like to run my games. I'm intrigued at this concept...

 

[Weiley31]

Yes, if somebody dies, they come back at level 1. Tough crap

So instead of the Character dying, you just restart them at Level 1 again.

Innnnnteresting. Very Rogue-lite. I maaaaaay steal this rule.

 

[fearsomepirate]

So instead of the Character dying, you just restart them at Level 1 again.

Innnnnteresting. Very Rogue-lite. I maaaaaay steal this rule.

I meant their new character is level 1. Stats are randomized. But certainly the way you suggest could be fun.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Whoah. I hadn't really in my mind thought about the AD&D levels in relation to XP. The Thief is the fastest of all classes in AD&D; but compared to 5e, he's a snail. (And it was nice to re-open my AD&D PHB, it had been a while - ah nostalgia!). But #2 of your list makes sense if you are doing #1.

You have to do this to make TOEE work. If you run it with 5e assumptions, the adventure will fail, because slaughtering every monster in the dungeon via a reasonably metered-out sequence of relatively balanced encounters is just not at all how the dungeon is designed or intended to be played. The basic assumption of AD&D 1e is that the party is trying to get loot, and killing monsters is secondary. In 5e, if you manage to gank a tapestry worth 20,000 gp...so what? In AD&D, the tapestry is the point, not so much the giant using it as a blanket.

To make the incentives and risks play out in TOEE the way they're supposed to, you flat out have to give XP for loot. You can't use milestones or just monster XP, or it won't play right.

This is a GREAT idea. But it will only work if you are willing and able to hie off on tangents, as you describe below. For 5e APs; and the style of 5e play as hinted at in the DMG and APs is to follow the script.

There's no script in TOEE to follow, so if you run TOEE by trying to read it as though it has one, the adventure will collapse after about 5 sessions, and your party will remember it as one of the most boring adventures they ever had. It is quite literally just a giant complex of rooms with descriptions. Your party might spend weeks in an area that has all of a single paragraph of description and a list of monsters they might encounter.

The point is, if you want to run this module and have any fun with it, you have to run the game like you're running AD&D, not in the sense of using its percentile charts or initiative system, but in the sense of taking on the job of breathing life into the descriptions and having the world react to what the players do. Otherwise, they're just slaughtering their way through one room after another until they run out of resources, which is really not how it's supposed to be run.

In fact, charging in with swords drawn should probably result in a TPK if you're running it right.

 

[Weiley31]

I meant their new character is level 1. Stats are randomized. But certainly the way you suggest could be fun.

It does sound like something I'd favor more than straight up character killing. But then that would require figuring out if characters still keep the same equipment or if it's lossed ala Dark Souls/Shovel Knight.

 

[fearsomepirate]

It does sound like something I'd favor more than straight up character killing. But then that would require figuring out if characters still keep the same equipment or if it's lossed ala Dark Souls/Shovel Knight.

Did their fellow party members grab it? Usually, if somebody with a +1 sword dies, and their body isn't brought back, there's a good chance they're going to run into a bugbear or something with a very nice weapon.

One time a character with +1 armor, a +1 shield, and an amulet of protection went down...the evil cleric they fought later was much harder to kill because of this.

 

[Weiley31]

Did their fellow party members grab it? Usually, if somebody with a +1 sword dies, and their body isn't brought back, there's a good chance they're going to run into a bugbear or something with a very nice weapon.

One time a character with +1 armor, a +1 shield, and an amulet of protection went down...the evil cleric they fought later was much harder to kill because of this.

Duuuude all of this stealable!! Idea, not stuff.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Hello Guys. I'm in a real problem with Goodman Games product because of absurd shipping rates to Italy. is there anybody who wants to help me acting as intermediate? Paid in advance of course.
Ciao

 

[Weiley31]

Anybody know if there is an update or heard when the Pre-Order button for this is gonna become available? I know it says possible early 2021, I'm wondering how that's gonna work.

 

[darjr]

if it’s like the others there will be a wait then a glorious debut that’ll catch everyone by surprise despite Goodman Games broadcasting it as much as they can.