The Temple of Elemental Evil - your experiences?

[Evilhalfling]

I ran the modual in midschool - they did the moathouse, although I left out the gaint frogs that everyone else seems to rember. They skipped Nulb and headed to the ruins directly, they got baddly beaten by the badits in the north tower, and the campaign ended before going on.
As a DM i had gotten way ahead of myself and had already laid out 2 of the nodes -
what was wrong with the nodes ? my memory is pretty weak in that area.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

I was one of the waiters. You know, buy T1. Wait for T2. Wait. Wait. Wait.

By the time it came out, I was no longer playing D&D. But I bought it anyway when I ran across it in a big chain book store.

I think I'll run it for my kids this fall. They'll love it, I'm sure.

 

[DragonLancer]

The Temple of Elemental Evil was the first ever module I ever bought for AD&D 1st ed.

I have run it several times throug both 1st and 2nd edition, but never as yet for 3rd. Its is purely a dungeon hack, but back thenit was fun.

One day I plan on running this and Return to... back to back.

 

[JohnnFour]

I've run the module several times and like it a lot. Half those times we were in munchkin mode, so the killing and looting matched our style perfectly. Last time I ran it in 1999 I used T1 and T2 as settings. The PCs were too low level to take on the Temple's inhabitants directly, so they posed as mercenaries. They performed various quests above ground for the earth priest and slowly rose in power within the temple. They got into the faction stuff and made a few forays into enemy territory within the Temple as well. Eventually, they came to enjoy their power and position within the Temple's hierarchy and chose to abondon their original mission. Gotta love CN PCs. The game ended when the PCs were around 8th level and the group broke up.

 

[Klaus]

My very first experience as a DM, back in the day we still thought clerics needed spellbooks and humans could multi-class (as ranger/paladin, no less!).

Only had two players, so each had two characters. A third player's character got killed time and again, and he just brought back the same character, only with a different name.

And what the heck was a grue?

What a mess...

A fun, but a mess...

Gotta love having all the maps in a separate booklet, though!

 

[Sejs]

Cleric (me - The Bishop!)

The Bishop!
*DUN da-dun!*

Anyway, my experiences with the Temple. It had staying power. Loads and loads and loads of staying power. Overall, it was fun. However, in my oppinion the module as printed needed some modifications in order to have things hang together in a believeable fashion. Some finesse and smoothing-out on the part of the DM was required. And yes.


Moathouse.


Grrr.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I love Hommlet and the moathouse (though Monte's Moathouse in the Return is, if anything, an improvement. Gotta love a campaign that may start with a TPK!). The Temple itself is a bit dull, though the warring factions spice it up a bit.

If you've ever thought about running it in 3.0/3.5, pick up the CRPG. I've enjoyed it thoroughly.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Hey, I had a 1E cleric named The Bishop! too.


Actually, I don't remember much about ToEE. I ran it in '85 or '86. Players had fun. About the only thing I remember for sure is almost having a TPK. I think one guy ended up carrying out another and everyone else was dead. Don't remember where that happened, though. I also remember the players' jaws dropping when I mentioned

Spoiler

an earth elemental rising from EACH corner of the Earth Temple when they were at the center.

That's about all I remember though.

 

[Big Jake]

I was a player. My character was a human fighter TANK... the DM watched as I rolled an 18 00!! (He said it was the first time he actually saw anyone roll a 00.)

I had just arrived in Korea, December 1992, so we were playing 2 ed. The party had already completed the moathouse, so I missed that. (I have vague memories of a frog encounter in a game back in 1986... that might have be VoH, but I never knew the names of the adventures back then.)

The most memorable experiences for me:

I set off a trap that killed one of our rogues and the party magic-user. (No one got mad... I think they wanted new characters anyways.) So we split up their stuff, and I ended up with an evil-aligned intelligent longsword that fairly quickly turned me to evil (the only evil character I ever played).

I almost got killed by a purple curtain thingy. The cleric prepared remove disease and saved my life (but not my left arm).

I almost killed our party Kender, whom I affectionately called a midget elf... the player kept getting really mad at me, but he kept taking my stuff... I mean, he kept, um finding my things that I must have left unattended and could have been stolen by someone who meant to do us harm, and what a good thing that he happened to find it just sitting there (in my backpack, but don't change the subject) before anyone else did, so I should be more careful. Don't worry, you don't have to say thanks!

Come to think of it, he role-played the Kender better than anyone else I've ever seen.

 

[xazil]

Ah, DM'd this twice and played part of it once. First time the party completed it in a real "kill them and take their stuff" non-roleplaying way while I was in High school. The second time was with a party that was over two thirds part thief. The second game was fest of rolling hijacks and great role-playing fun.

Examples include:
The people on watch at night slipping off for some looting while everyone else slept unguarded in the dungeon.
Keeping the party Paladin in the dark constantly while trying to steal as much as possible.
A greedy, amoral player selling poison to pirates and getting shocked OOC when he realised he just poisoned a beggar to prove the effectiveness of said poison.
Beggars in Nulb referred to him as 'the evil one' afterwards leading to an interesting conversation with the paladin.
One thief leaving behind calling cards and got the rest of the party and the temple denizens convinced of a new faction starting up in the temple.
One mage who hit at least one party member with fireball backlash over twenty times in a row. (Got to love 1st Ed Fireballs in confined spaces. )
A halfling with a handcrossbow killing a hill giant in one bolt with poison he got from pirates, then fast talking his way out of trouble, the poor paladins player was just outclassed by fast-talking thief players.
One player acting massively paranoid about trying things so as not to get hurt, but every time greed beat fear it was a cursed item he grabbed or a very nasty trap.

The second time running was a very popular campaign that unfortuantly had to bow to RL splitting all the players while they were in the nodes.