ToEE: Help me flesh out the elemental caverns!

[Halivar]

I have huge party (up to 7 players + henchmen) absolutely annihilating the ToEE right now. They're going at a pretty glacial pace; they insist on clearing every single room, and I'm happy to let them do so because I am enjoying the game immensely. Until now they have exhibited great teamwork, but something has gone awry for them last session.

The party's nominal leader, a former ninja/fighter-turned-kensai (dual-classing, alignment change, and significant roleplay events involved) was alone in the air temple on the second floor. She plucked both braziers off their chains, and has been whisked away to the caverns of air!

Now, I was planning on plotting out these caverns in, say, three months or longer when the party finally got around to the 4th floor. I'm going to have to step it up a little bit. The kensai player would like to run a side solo campaign and explore her environs (she has no idea where she is at ALL). She doesn't know that there is no hope of escape without the golden skull (safely unfound on another floor of the ToEE). The notes on the caverns suggest that "whole campaigns" could take place there, but all I have is a vague map and a wandering monster table. One thing in particular that is missing is the location of the gems of power tied to the golden skull, and who or what is guarding them.

So what would you put in the elemental caverns? There is some suggestion that generations of people have made a living here. Are there settlements? Ruins?

A couple ideas I have are tied to how this particular campaign has played out: player actions have drawn Lolth deeply into the events of the campaign, and the players are unwittingly advancing her agenda in usurping Zuggtmoy as the power behind the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye. Would Lolth's agents (formerly under Lareth the Beautiful) have been banished to these very same caverns? Also, Otis, the Bachelor-Knight of Veluna from Nulb, has been "sacrificed" to these caverns (after being accidentally compromised due to the kensai's own actions), so she can possibly find at least one friend.

I also may need to dial back the encounters. The player is a level 6 kensai; but with double-specialization from UA she is a melee beast.

Another concern I have is the magic item table. The player has a ring of warmth (lucky!) so cold environments are not an issue. But she has nothing beyond a potion's duration for surviving the other planes. How should I handle this?

Any other ideas or suggestions people might have are welcome.

 

[Obryn]

I will be following this. I've run ToEE a few times and never once have gotten near to the Nodes.

-O

 

[Celebrim]

I am not at all a fan of the ToEE design, which is why I've never even considered running it.

The nodes in particular are really uninspiring, being little more than a random collection of monsters which vaguely fit the elemental theme, but which don't give us any reason to explore. Basically, I would want to begin by giving each node some conceptual exploration space. So for example, we have this node of evil air. Air symbolizes thought and imagination, so logically the node of evil elemental air is about evil thoughts and imagination and something within that space must embody or represent this problem. Instead we get a totally juvenile dungeon map with a list of things to kill.

One thing I'd be tempted to do is have something in node turn out to be something radically different than it seems to be. So for example, I might have a village in the node that is supposed to be where the survivors have gone, only for it to turn out that the village is replaying ground hog day like the same week of history over and over again, ending with this choking fog that causes everyone to lose conscious, and then wake up and repeat the same week again, and that all of the villagers are long since dead except for one whose evil brooding fantasies ultimately led to a terrible tragedy - say by poisoning the whole village. And maybe during the week I'd plant hints as to where the bodies are hidden, and were the villain is now. And oh, on tuesday, the village is attacked by a white dragon, and on wednesday Valarius asks the PC to help him kill the vapor rats that have gotten into the granery. And meanwhile maybe I'd scatter these vapor monsters around that would turn out to actually be evil thoughts (I'd use stats for a ghost, making a magic jar attack) and if possessed you'd live out some dark fantasy (murder, theft, whatever). Or something because this is all just stream of consciousness right now. Anything but the lameness that is the original design, because really its not even excuseable. By the time the supermodule comes out, TSR has already produced lots of cool conceptual stuff with narrative to it and symbolism and well meaning.

 

[Halivar]

Celebrim, that's an awesome idea. Thanks for that. You also have inspired me on having each node being themed more interestingly than, "ooh, fire burrrn." Air is ephemeral, shifting, fickle. Thought and imagination, as you say, but also (at least in tarot) swords and other blades, troubles of the mind, intelligence and wit. I like the idea that nothing is exactly what it seems. Everything is beguiling to some extent.

Groundhog Day Town is definitely being yanked, though.

 

[Halivar]

Another idea I have is chucking the maps of the nodes altogether. North, south, east and west have no meaning in the nodes. Characters wander in the mists, randomly encountering towns, lairs, monsters, etc.; often circling back unexpectedly. A mix of agoraphobia and claustrophobia.

 

[Celebrim]

Another idea I have is chucking the maps of the nodes altogether. North, south, east and west have no meaning in the nodes. Characters wander in the mists, randomly encountering towns, lairs, monsters, etc.; often circling back unexpectedly. A mix of agoraphobia and claustrophobia.

Considering how bad the maps are, I'd definately advise that. The big problem with ToEE is that its state of the art dungeon design for about 1975 rather than 1985. It's very much like something Gygax would have quickly drawn up when he was running D&D six nights a week and every session was a group going down into the ruins Castle Grayhawk and dungeon crawling was new and amazing because no one had ever played an RPG before. The maps are hastily concieved, somewhat randomly populated, and the whole design is geared toward efficiency in preparation time relative to play time. It's the last of the neolithic school of modules, with just a few poorly explored hints of where D&D had gone in the past 10 years before its publication much less where RPGs have gone in the past 30 years looking back from now.

There are definately some hints that the conception of the nodes is grand and cool. Each is basically a small asteroid, having about 100 square miles of surface area. Each is essentially a physical link between the Abyss and an elemental plane. But none of that is really explored. All we have is a very tiny dungeon level. The true grandeur of the nodes is impossible for a player to discover, much less described. Particularly in the Earth node, there is no explanation as to why the trapped beings don't try to escape by tunnelling out. The Earth node particular (symbolizing flesh, or in this case, tainted flesh) needs a tunnel to the outside, exploring that lunar surface with sympathetic elementals that want to make that leap from the node to the elemental plane hanging above them. Or something. There is a lot of possibility here, it's just given no room by the designer.

 

[Wycen]

I find this thread interesting more for Celebrim's interpretation of ToEE (sorry not to dump on Halivar's purposes). I almost want to dig out my copy and take a look at the maps, but I don't think I could find it, except the enlarge copy of Homlett.

 

[dagger]

Sorry for the thread jack but how are you running initiative? On another note my group will be hiting Nulb on Saturday night, they just finished the Moathouse (Paladin keeps calling it the Boathouse...).

Spoiler Alert:

Spoiler

They "parlayed" with Lareth and let him go.

 

[Halivar]

I am using OSRIC initiative for simplicity. Each side rolls a d6 and that's your opponents' segment.

incidentally, you might be interested in my game thread "Lolth and the Temple of Elemental Evil" which you can find by filtering on AD&D 1e.

 

[Celebrim]

So my earth node thought is that the node is overrun with undead, and there are two potentially friendly factions - humanoids and earth elementals. Both factions are afraid of the other one, but each secretly has what the other needs. Both factions are beset by 'undead', wights or similar creatures in the case of the humans, and 'undead elementals' in the case of the elementals (grues?). Each faction is immune to the energy draining attack of the other's chief foes, so the two factions could be of immediate assistance to the other if they didn't consider the other to be part of the hazards of the nodes. In particular, both factions could escape the node provided they could access the other's abilities. The elemental faction has tunneling technology that lets the move about the node, but lacks the flight technology needed to access the gems of power. The humanoid faction has levitation and other spell technology that lets them reach the gems of power, but lacks the tunneling technology needed to find the hidden vaults in which the gems are suspended. By befriending both factions, and finding a solution other than violence (violence here representing the defining attribute of corrupted flesh, with the undead representing its logical result), the node can be escaped.