Advice requested for Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

[MerricB]

G'day, all!

I wonder if anyone had any advice on running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil?

I'm running a scaled-up version for my 4E group, but I was wondering what people had down with the mines and fanes, especially to keep them from being a sequence of one battle after another.

Cheers!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

This is one of those adventures which, IMO, doesn't work that well in any edition of D&D.

Personally, I would reduce each of the elemental temples to a three encounter delve and then sprinkle in "walk-over" minion encounters en-route (easy to do when the PCs are level 15). Otherwise there's too much grind... there was in 3E and I reckon there would be even if you converted it to 1E or S&W as well.

To make up for it, I would throw in a lot more exploration-type encounters involving skill challenges to dismantle great series of warped runes that are designed to weaken the fabric of the world (and these become the real reason for the four elemental temples).

 

[amerigoV]

I ran this sucker for two groups under 3.0 and 3.5 back in the day. While there is a lot of great things about it, it does suffer from the same overall issue as the original ToEE -- it starts great, then fades into a slog.

RttToEE highlights the big issue under 3.x of basing XP on killing monsters -- if you want to have a story arc that includes skeletons, orcs, low level cultists, vampires, beholders, giants, and high level cultists, then you will have to kill a lot of stuff to get from the weak to the powerful! The Crater Ridge Mines (CRM) are 90% "get PCs from Level 6 to Level 10" and 10% plot advancement. During the CRM we only solidify the idea that the EEE is a front religion that is designed to feed worshiper energy to Tharizdun. That really is about it. In both my games, I pulled the CRM out and ran other material and tied it closer to the story.

Since you are running under a different system anyway, I recommend stepping back and just picking the stuff that tells the story. All the Hommlet/Moathouse stuff is great. I think the Recovered Temple stuff is good, so long as you make Hedrack and Lareth the focus (the Triad is so remote that they are "just another monster" - you can do a lot of stuff with Hedrack and Lareth, plus they have historical gravitas). Nulb is underused and can help fill in the story gap in some way. Maybe the interaction with Lareth fills in more about the situation - "that bastard dumped me here after he switch to worshiping Tharizdun". I do not know 4e well, but my recollection is that its pretty easy to scale monsters up and down - you very well may be able to scale up Hommlet and scale down the Recovered Temple such that you do not need much filler in between.

Finally, mine the thread below for ideas. Its the best of the boards thread from the RttToEE on Monte's old site. I have not seen any module with the type of fan support/interaction as this one, and a ton of great ideas got captured here.

http://okayyourturn.yuku.com/topic/5264/Best-of-the-Boards#.UjMDQsakob0

Good luck!

 

[delericho]

Yep, I have to agree with the others - RttToEE has too mich grind to it and way too much 'filler' material.

My recommendation would mirror others: keep the start and end of the adventure more or less as-is, replace the middle section with a few combat encounters but much more exploration/investigation, and drop the standard "advancement by killing things" approach (instead, have the PCs level up as needed for the adventure).

 

[TerraDave]

Merric, your more serious pick probably fits the module and what it will take.

I agree with a lot of the above. From my own 3E experience with RttToEE and 4E experience with converted adventures:

I made Hommlet more like the 1E version...no magic shops..and cut back on a few new NPCs. This was just a taste/style thing and also depends on how you use it (it was not a return to for most of the players).

But the NPCs are still key to the adventure. Elmo and Laereth got lots of play (of course), as did the main cleric in town (Terjon?) As with the 1E original, the moathouse is a shock...Blue Dragon!...and pushes the PCs to seek help, for better or worse. So keep some tough, tough encounters there and encourage them to get help.

This means you will need to do some NPC/Companion charecter conversions in anticipation of this. Easy in 4E, but worth noting.

The "steepness" of the math in 4E is a related issue. You may need to level some NPCs at points and want to think about that. The "naturalist" mix of opponents of various levels is a nice feature of the adventure, but you will probably just have to go the standard 4E route--lots and lots of minions, of ever higher level.

Its also an issue as the campaign, at its best, can be very sand-boxy, and you want to play this part up, but again the math part can be an issue. The original module does allow for reinforcing...so maybe more powerful cultist replaced the less powerful ones when back-tracking.

(as an aside, this would be a very natural match for Next...but anyways)

I would keep the CRM, but make it clear that its a bad idea to try to "clear them". They should be exploring for a way forward, this, plus some of the individual parts (which can be really good) can make them worthwhile. But the goal would be for a large part to be bypassed--something to think about as you convert. So you may want to give more hints and options to get to the center, and make progress there. (eventually my PCs used waterwalk...)

For fights, I would use the option of "a lot enemies come out of neighboring rooms" technique. We did this in my 3E game...and it fits 4E (again, minions, lots of minions). It also gives the non-combat option of trying to parlay or sneak past smaller groups, or the smart combat option of picking some off and bypassing the rest.

For the fane and the final node, I would also be looking to trim back. You will have had a lot of game to get there.

 

[MerricB]

Ran the first part of the crater mines today. It ended up playing as one big combat lasting in the order of 2-1/2 hours. 1 elite, 3 normal monsters, and about 30 minions. It was wild, and used a lot of the map as the party split up during the exploration, and ended up being a long way from each other when everything started going wrong. XP-wise, it was a 28th level encounter for a 24th level party and worked pretty well: no party member died, although a couple got close. It felt tough, and that meant a lot.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I pulled the CRM out and ran other material and tied it closer to the story.

I'm thinking of running rtee 3.5. What other material did you use? Cheers for the link, gonna check that out.

 

[amerigoV]

I'm thinking of running rtee 3.5. What other material did you use? Cheers for the link, gonna check that out.

You will lose a day of your life in that link - its trying to suck me back in


The first run we got through the gate and into the Fire Complex, and it bogged down after that. I ran my own material from that point (which included a PC getting cloned and replaced by an evil twin for awhile).

Second was to use Monte's Banewarrens with the cult trying to recover items needed to break Big T out. I had fun, but one of my players commented that the Banewarrens was an like a sick, inside joke between Monte and the GM. So maybe that is not the best either

I would do the same thing here - either think about a campaign that starts in Hommlet, appears to be resolved, then over the course of the campaign you reveal what really is going on. Then end with the Recovered Temple. Or just close the level gap between the two and add a modest bit of material.

The fundamental flaw with ToEE and RttToEE is the presumption that players will realize the Elemental Temples are in competition for favor. Realistically, how are you going to get a party with a number of Good alignments to infiltrate one of the Temples to set it against the others even if they realize what is going on? Plus, if you go around the CRM the proper way, everything is the proper CR (another 3.5 flaw - everything is kill-able due to balance). You are not going to convince the Paladin to join one of the factions when he can just smite everything outright. There is no need to pit one Temple against another when the party can just wipe them out directly. And without a viable abstract mass combat rules, you cannot play out a mass battle in 3.5 with any speed at all. While there probably are some saavy players that might do all this, the module and the system push you to pure massive dungeon crawl until you can get a key to the Fane.

 

[LostSoul]

I just finished running Return... last weekend. I set it up differently and documented my changes in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?328058-Return-to-the-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil That was for 3.5, so I don't know how well that translates to 4E. (edit: I think my math is off in that post. Whatever, it's not that big of a deal.)

(I see it took about a year; we probably would have finished it earlier, but in the past few months the PCs got involved in Greyhawk politics - breaking the siege of Chendl during the Greyhawk wars, killing a few of the Greater Boneheart, discovering Robilar & Rary's treachery...)

Basically, I gave the cultists a tangible goal (instead of video-game triggers), put that goal on a timeline, and gave the PCs a ton of bonus XP whenever they messed with that timeline. That allowed the players to choose any number of ways to complete their goal, instead of hacking & slashing their way to make sure they have enough XP to deal with what happens when you "unlock" the next section of the module.

(What was Monte thinking? When does the cult start digging out the original Temple? When the PCs reach room X in the Outer Fane. I don't think he was making good use of his medium.)

The only changes I'd make would be to drop Teleport and Dominate Person from Burne's spell list. Those two spells really changed how the game played out, and gave Burne too much influence over the game. I would have preferred that the players didn't rely on the NPCs so much. (I guess I could have just made Burne & Rufus evil warlords.)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

When I ran it, it really was a sequence of one battle after another. My players were perfectly happy with that so I didn't really make any changes.

The only real problems we ran into was after the Moathouse when the PCs had pretty much determined that the goal of the cult was to bring back Tharizdun. I gave people a couple of history rolls and they got most of the background that the TOEE was defeated in a large battle mounted by Furyondy and Verbobonc.

So, the PCs figured that they'd go to Furyondy and ask them for help since they were willing to mobilize an entire army to defeat the temple last time. The only way for the adventure to continue on track was for me to make everyone they talked to treat the entire thing as a joke, demand real proof and deny any proof the PCs came up with.

The PCs didn't really give up for a while until I finally had to step back and say "Look, nobody here will take you seriously, even after 3 days of begging anyone who will listen. The word is that the TOEE was defeated and doesn't exist anymore."

As for the Mines, I found there was very little reason for the PCs to do anything but fight. It's possible that they could try some intrigue and convince one side to attack another...but given the information the PCs have when they get here, it's extremely unlikely. I mean, what they know is that there's a huge base of the cult in a mountain and that they are likely trying to bring back Tharizdun which will destroy the world.

My real issue during this part of the adventure is that it degraded pretty quickly into attacking the doors, walking into one of the temples...killing as many people as possible and then running away and spending 2 days to a week resting before going back.

I had to run the battle of the guards at the door again and again as new guards were rehired by the temple and killed over and over again. The temples themselves were in way too much disarray to help each other or create an organized defense. I got the impression from the adventures that the guards at the door worked directly for the people in the Fanes, however.

My other issue during this time is that it caused the prime example of the 15MAD. They walked in, defeated 2 encounters then ran. I tried to create some urgency in the adventure by pointing out if they didn't move quick enough that it meant the end of the world. However, that didn't appear to work on them at all. They asked the same question: "Do we know how long this ritual will take?" I kept saying "No, you don't, it could be any day now" and they responded with "Oh...DAYS...well, then we won't worry about how long it will take."