Basicaly, to survive a Gygaxian module 1. Don't fight 2. Don't touch anything 3. Don't trust anyone 4. Don't choose any good alignment 5. Don't be the first one in line 6. Don't be the last one in line 7. Don't be a paladin 8. Seriously, don't be a paladin 9. Don't go downstairs 10. Don't miss any lucky rolls
@@russelljackson8153 gygax had a problem where he just loved to add unavoidable death traps in a system where saving throws where pretty shitty, there is a reason why modern DnD discourages "rocks fall everyone dies", he is pretty adversarial against his players
I wouldn't want to fight any Demonlord, or Archdevil. Much less, Zuggtmoy. I respect that she's the ruler of her place. She even stands up against Juiblex.
I will argue though this obviously was incomplete and wrongly trown together still despite what should have been the villain. A little jarring, but yes, evil mushrooms cool! Lets start a Cult and Temple of the Mushroom!
If you take a shot every time he says "in disguise" or "an illusion" in Temple of Elemental Evil, you'll be dead before the second floor. Oh, and uh, THE LITERAL CREATOR GOD Iuz is easier to hit than a Will-o-wisp if he isn't wearing what is basically his favorite shirt.
In Troika's computer game, even with the fixes by the Circle of Eight mod team, that last boss battle with Zuggtmoy often ended in the game crashing from too many demons and critters being summoned. Atari should be ashamed of itself for rushing that game out of the door before it was finished. So much work went into it and the developers should have been allowed to finish it the right way.
My group spent a summer playing through the Temple. As the GM I thought it was a tough module. The party was constantly stopping to heal up. For future DM’s of this module I would recommend that you break the module into multiple temples. An easy way is to take each level and make it its own temple. Here are a few things that I did to personalize the experience. To start the module I took a concept from the movie Conan the Barbarian, “my daughter has been swayed by the evil priests of ____”. After she is rescued a herald from a nearby city can ask for help in ridding their land of a similar temple of ____. You can always add intrigue between temples assaults by having another faction provide info or other assistance, or even have an opposing faction hire the party to defeat its rival. I always refused to use the instant death traps, instead I would nerf traps to deal damage or be a means to move the story along. “The entrance is sealed and now the party has to move deeper into the dungeon to find an exit.” I always removed the ridiculous monster like the trash eating Otyugh from all modules. I love Gary like an uncle, but those all the Fiend Folio type monsters never worked for me. Bottom line is a GM should always tailor the store bought modules. Make them fit your world and scale the encounters to be fair and fun for your group. You are only limited by your imagination and by all of the cool comic and, books you have read or the tv shows and movies that you have seen.
did you ran this adventure in 5e? im trying to find anything that will help me preparing this module for my buddies. i know this one only from troika's pc version, but i love it
The Temple levels are intertwined pretty tightly. As for constant healing, wandering monsters tend to put a brake on that. Temple and surrounding events don't stop I st because the players suffer from video game syndrome.
TEE is an amazing module, I've run it several times since it came out. I see/hear a lot of complaints about old school d&d modules not being fully fleshed out and in the early 80's I had the same complaint, "I'm paying for a product that isn't even finished?" But the fact of the matter is that modules were written like that to encourage the DM to put something of themselves into the stories. It prevents players grabbing modules and knowing what to expect as well.
@@danielgoldberg5357 I've been playing D&D since 1978; I've had multiple gaming groups over the years and I eventually, usually end up pulling it out once I'm sure my players are ready for it/and are up to the challenge. I've run it to completion I think 5 or 6 times and TPKd a few times but like the video states, the end feels extremely rushed and incomplete and so a bit needs to be added to it by the DM in order to flesh it out into a comprehensible, satisfying ending.
@@danielgoldberg5357 I have done so indeed. Although at this point I'm generally satisfied with my current additions and don't foresee changing it again.
If the party wants do go there with level 1, i would let them. I would place clear warnings in the environment. But i would never railroad them. This was not what D&D has sadly become.
@@Nhytewulf Fair enough. As a DM you should let players make mistakes, but when those mistakes are going to be fatal you need to be crystal clear this is not a good idea. Most players when it is made clear to them that this is going to fail will rethink. Unless of course they flat don't care about their characters at all, or just want to troll the party, which are totally different problems. That said, it is literally impossible to get past floors 1-2 of the Temple of Elemental Evil without earning enough exp to pass level 1. So my point stands.
@Karkarov Back in the day, “level up” required a training facility and several days or weeks training. Players could delay their level ups to finish an adventure or because they lacked gold to pay for it.
@@chrlpolk While technically true, those rules were ignored by every DM I played with but one. Even then you would definitely have enough exp and money to make it past level 1 before you got to floor 3. The party can simply refuse to spend the time on the training, but again, any decent DM would make it clear that doing that is a very very bad idea. If you are at level 1 on floor 3 of this dungeon you are going to die. If you say "I did it and lived" it's because your DM intentionally soft balled the dungeon to an extreme level.
Loved your video! I ran this module as a part of an epic campaign with classic modules using 2nd edition rules back in the 2000s. My players completed the module and had a great time doing it. The module took them from level 1 to 8 or 9 and there were lots of memorable encounters and character fatalities. A favorite thing was the big ugly troll chief that wore a ring of fire resistance. The party sliced him up and torched him only to have him rise up smoking. He ended chasing the entire party out of the temple they were so freaked out by an inflammable troll.
LOL.. I loved running that part. Was even more fun because at first my players had forgotten that trolls regenerate so they were freaking out about that until they finally remembered to burn the corpses. Then they met this guy :) "What do you mean he's getting back up?"
I started playing in 1980, first with encounters in D&D but soon getting to AD&D and with this book as my first "campaign". It was hard but so much fun. The hardest thing to do for my as the DM was to let the players know that they needed to play the factions on level 1 and 2 against each other, with them playing spy and double spy for factions. So it meant for them to really roleplay their character. It was all new for us, but this adventure thought me as a DM to roleplay the world to the players instead of just hack and slash room by room. This book will always be my first love for the game.
My most favourite Dungeon from 1st/2nd Edition. I ran this campaign back in High School the first year it came out. It took a whole school year, playing on average 3 hours a day after class before dinner. The party was a Barbarian, Cleric, Mage, Thief and Cavalier. It was the first time we used the Unearthed Arcana & Wilderness Rule Books.
Our DM had us choking and being constantly attacked by wandering monsters for 2 months in the nodes. We quit. As soon as we had an out, we left, so sick of the adventure that we didn't bother to finish it.
While I appreciate the effort put into a setting as complex as this, I can't help but notice that a LOT of the plot hooks or difficult encounters hinge on disguises of some sort or another. It seems like a bit of a cop out, like everyone just pulls their mask off at the end a la Scooby Doo.
I agree with Matt Colville on this one. ToEE is a poorly written example of why players turn into murder hobos. The descriptions in the original module are difficult to match with the map,?, and the rooms only share one thing in common: treachery. Once the players have been betrayed twice, expect them to cease negotiations and trust no one. They’ll simply either avoid participation in something if they don’t have to or kill anything that moves. Princes of the Apocalypse wasn’t much better, creating a “whack-a-mole” series of “find temple, attack temple, return to Red Larch. Rinse. Repeat.” It discussed how each temple hated the others, but never really amounted to much. It even had a dragon inserted on the map that did nothing but wait to be unlocked like some sort of Arcade era video game. Zuggtmoy, thankfully, evolved after this into a proper Demon Queen with her own machinations and followers, and no longer looks like poorly risen bread dough. Gygax’s achievements are many, and he is the grandfather of this hobby, but his writing is adversarial. It‘s arguably unsophisticated compared to modern offerings. I started gaming in the Gygax era, and I’m very thankful for his contributions. I am also thankful that others took up the reigns to try to avoid another hot mess like ToEE.
It certainly isn't brilliant, but I think that abundant treachery is one of ToEE's better sides - it surprises and keeps on edge, gamewise it promotes planning and more roleplaying. The party going postal signifies laziness of the players and the GM.
@LesserPlanes Well, it doesn't promote roleplay in a strictly straightforward way - I'll give you that. But if a vulnerable party enters an exceedintly deadly den of evil - full of intelligent and powerful monsters, traps and illusions, then the players need to think outside of the box - they gather itelligence - by infiltration, capturing enemies or in other ways. They look for allies - both inside the temple, in nearby centers of power and maybe even larger world. Great many opportunities to roleplay imo. Still - ToEE is definitely flawed, I don't deny that.
@@saldownik I think another person described it the best, this campaign having soo many "in reality i was an evil orc in disguise" feels like a Scooby Doo plot In the end having soo many betrayals the only thing that accomplishes is to completly destroy the player's trust and it's not "laziness" after a while it just becomes logical to distrust everything and everyone and attack first if seven people already betrayed you and tried to kill you beforehand
I was just about to comment the same this when I saw your comment … comments below are not true ad&d'rs … demon web pit is frigen awesome ! and the mechanical spider is her personal suv …
Same here. I don't remember or own many modules back when I was still playing D&D but Barrier Peaks was my hands down favorite. I loved the little bits of sci-fi in it and how players could acquire laser weapons.
Considering how verbal of a medium D&D is, it’s kind of insane how many disguises and double cross reveals there are here. It’s hard to believe anyone played this and actually enjoyed everything they heard being wrong in some way or form.
I played with a old school dnd player and it was no wonder he literally never trusted anything I said as a DM. My god... Gygax had more fake outs than M. Night Shamalan!
I got the module when it first came out in 1985 and only ran it once as a DM. I already had Village of Hommlet and most of the party was already level 3 or 4. It took more than a year before we "completed" the module. The players made headway through the start but once into the first and second level of the temple, NPC and player death and injury caused the party to retreat out of the temple to recover, refit, and reload. After going through the second and part of the third level, the party again fled the temple and had no interest in going back for many months. After many other adventures and modules, a couple of the players who were over 8th level decided to put together another expedition together to finish off the temple once and for all. They missed/bypassed some portions of the temple and just went on a destructive rampage. When they finally reached Zuggtnoy, they were enraged. Of all of the original modules, it was the most hated by the players, even more than White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors.
I love hearing about all these classical modules that I didn't know existed and that I'll probably never run. I do like the idea of an underground base with different evil factions that can be negociated with and played against eachother, but I would never run it as written
Haha. Coincidentally, I'm looking at this to incorporate a Prison for a Great Old One, as well as Zuggotmoy (never played Temple of Elemental Evil or heard about it TBH), so it's quite funny to me that this aligns as much as it does. Only problem is, I have a Guild ran by an evil cultist of Bhaal getting adventurers to suicide to contain Zuggotmoy, empowering his deity through murder, and containing the GOO that came to the place originally to slay Zuggotmoy and send her back to the Abyss. That Temple looks extremely intimidating to DM through.. I might just run it vanilla and then figure out how to adapt it. The trial and error is such a pain though, but I don't have 100 hours to make an equally complex module - let alone the experience to.
When you start to dig into Greyhawk, you discover that Iuz wants to use this World as a base to conquer others. He alone can add decades of adventure beyond the normal.
The over reliance on bait and switch style disguised and instant death situations reminds me why I always hated Gygax modules and adventures. They are symptoms of simple and lazy writing.
I played through this when it first came out. It was fun as hell. I am currently running the 5e update released by Goodman games. We play every other week, 4 hours or so a session. It does take a commitment to read it once, then reread ahead as the players explore. I recommend notes on how characters relate to the temple. My players and I are having a great time. And the confusion and uncertainty about what is going on is keeping the players reasonably paranoid, and more invested. I highly recommend tracking inventory and encumbrance. Also, the creature knows the dungeon, so guards should use it to there advantage .
Fantastic video! I’d love to see you guys cover other old school modules like this in the future. Maybe the Slavelord, Giants, Drow, and Queen series for that ultimate Greyhawk campaign?
The A series slavers series was the best next to the desert of desolation I modules . The slavers series had a very interesting and believable scenario . The last one where you start out as prisoners with nothing was the best .A5
I really enjoyed these! If you take requests, as an Elemental Evil buff, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (which you've used a lot of art from in these videos ;) ) and the Princes of the Apocalypse! I really enjoy running the former, and I still haven't tried the latter.
I'm kinda more interested in a narrative of how the thing plays than just a read-out of the contents. Like, the party is supposed to dip in & out of this place lots & lots of times to conquer it? do the unconquered factions not re-take the "cleared" areas, leading to just never-ending nonsense? they're supposed to develop *relationships* with the evil denizens here? The specifics beg questions, too. the elemental nodes, wherein players are supposed to re-use spells to learn their new function -- how is that even supposed to WORK with "vancian" magic? The party can't even rest to recuperate with 1/10turns damage, so they can't recover spells to reuse them, and they can't get back to safety without the shards.
I did enjoy the deep dive! These video give a unique look into how much goes into making the modules. I feel like someone interested in running this module will at least know what they are getting into. Personally the videos make me want to sit down and make my own towns and doungeons.
On a completely unrelated note, Zuggtmoy can be an awesome villainess as she is one of the Demon princess of the abyss, which puts her on par with the Demogorgon, Yenagu, and Jubelix. Also, arguably a greater threat than any regular evil god due to the permanent corruption unleashed on the material plane in the wake of a demonic incursion.
I ran this long ago with my wife and our group. She is an excellent roleplayer who took over running the creatures and I handled the rooms and mechanics. It took quite a bit of work and we ended up replacing the final boss with a trapped avatar of the elder elemental god and agents of Lolth were attempting to infiltrate and subvert the temple. With that group, we had a great time of it, but I would not do it again.
There's a huge difference between "temple of elemental evil 2" and "temple of elemental evil: part 2". I almost had a heart attack with the title of this video. Apart from that, the video is incredibly well-made
I have ran this twice now. Once in 2E AD&D and then in 5E. Both time it was a huge and long campaign. It took a huge amount of work on the GMs part to prep and overcome some of the short comings of the module. Both time it was very fun for the players and a definite learning experience for me as a GM. Great fun even if both groups did TPK before reaching Zuggtmoy
I remember this being a terrible adventure that systematically wipes out the entire team. There was far too much information to counter evil forces or items that you can't obtain in the game. You just have to know or have the ability to try a bunch of random actions which usually led to ultimate death for at least one character. This was way too hard for a high level team much less the recommended starting level.
The adventure doesn't seem seriously hard - unless the party wants to do everything by themselves. If I was playing ToEE, I'd gather some proof and intelligence, allied with a local power or two and organized a military expedition back to the temple.
We just played an edited/shortened version of this game using AD&D 2nd Ed rules. We just went through the first level of the temple and called it done. Wouldn't mind starting over and running the whole thing, but as you said, it would take a fairly large time commitment for sure.
I remember running & playing this back in the day. It's good but needs to be 'de-douched'. There are too many instakills and unwinnable situations. You should always have a chance. I created a secret priesthood who helped run & manipulate the area using charm spells & illusion magic on the mobs. It took a lot of re-writting but it went well.
You should always have a chance? Here's your chance: There are certain situations with ToEE that are patently unfair, when coming across a thing like that players are wise to remember that sometimes retreat is the better part of valor. It is the DMs job to not only entertain but also to challenge their players, additionally it is the DMs job to inform said players of potentially fatal encounters. Example: "The creature(s) standing before you look very formidable, and you get the feeling that you are (outclassed, outnumbered, etc.)" If the players don't take the hint to try something different, run away, etc. it's their fault. That said, sometimes escape isn't possible and people are going to die; they're adventurers they signed up for this. Besides, if one of them does die their, brother, cousin, sister, best friend can join the survivors and attempt to avenge their death or the surviving members can say eff this, someone else can deal with that. Note: I am not saying your solution to a percieved problem isn't a good one, everyone has their own take on how to deal with the difficulty of this campaign.
The only version of this module that I've played (but not finished) was the PC game, and I remember myself thinking 'this is BS!' over and over whilst playing... yup, I wasn't crazy after all.
I find a lot of Gygax dungeons are like that. I lost everything with a trick in Tomb of Horrors. The DM asked me if I wanted to return to my home base and stock up as best I could and continue. I said no. I still had some lower level magic items I didn't sell. So I was glad I wasn't starting at 0.
My group completed this back in the day, I was the DM and we did run it more hack and slash then I probably should have. I also did it under 2nd edition. I tried to carry the adventure into against the giants, but when the wizard started bombarding the hill giant fort with massive fireballs I was done. The zuggtmoy fight was particularly fun and my characters got super lucky finding the gems in the nodes. Funny story I met Gary Gygax during this time and asked him the proper pronunciation of some clastic greyhawk names and he say Iuz was actually pronounced like “is” ...crazy right.
Daniel Goldberg lol, I pronounced the same until I meet Gary... he could have been pulling my leg but I don’t think so he also said drow rhymes with cow... so that was a huge one for me also
I know this was way before the internet became readily available, but the villain structure of the adventure reads like they were trying to stay ahead of the audience’s fan theories and were frustrated that people kept guessing their twists.
I have played it as a character when first published in Uk an totally enjoyed it. Although it was ‘hard’. Then ran it as a dm with some changes. Great module 😀.
Some thoughts: * A lot of who did "run" it hacked it to pieces and made it our own, because the original module is a hot mess organizationally. * Goodman Games just released a special edition with a 5e conversion. So far that looks to be cleaner. I'm running this as my next campaign. * This was a GREAT video series! 5 stars!
The Elder Elemental God is in fact the prime motivating force behind the Temple. That is where the "Elemental" comes in, as in Primordial (and not necessarily Elemental as in the Classical 4 Elements). The problem is the final level was never actually published (where players could end up loosing BOTH Zuggtmoy and a portion of the Elder Elemental God). Funny enough, there are more and more clues that have been located over time by players trying to suss out the truth. The 4 Elemental Symbols (Triangle, Square, Star and Circle) ALL correspond to the items found in the "Platinum Egg" (Iron Pyramid, Pale Blue Cube, 8-Pointed Bronze Star and Silver Sphere) players acquire by defeating Lolth's avatar in D3: Vault of the Drow. There is some speculation going now that the "Egg" was, in fact, acquired by the Drow following the Elder Elemental God in an effort to free him (or at least portions of him) in The Sunless Sea. The idea being that the EEG Drow following Eclavdra are using the PCs to wreak havoc on Lolth's followers and faction. The problem is Q1 is totally at odds with the rest of the series, where the clues point to the EEG: Temple of Elemental Evil, The Slavelords and Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths.
@@hunpo1 - Gygax himself on forums like Dragonsfoot and the like. That and Paul Stromberg (I believe) has indicated he saw the actual T2 version Gygax kept for himself (as in the version he ran for his home campaign) and it does in fact have a level that connects the whole plot of the Temple and the Giants/Drow.
If you want further proof look at Timothy Cain’s video on YT ‘The fun of the Temple of Elemental Evil’. Cain (who did the Troika computer game) relates a conversation with Gygax where he said an aspect of the Elder Elemental God was on the unpublished level and it connected to the Drow modules.
Talk about an intentional attempt to screw the player. Ok, so if they touch the golden skull, then resist its evil power, giving it up at all makes the player automatically lose, and become a slave to the dungeon boss? Really dick move...Crap like this should never, EVER be pulled! This is an absolute "no-win" scenario... Honestly, if you are a DM, and want your group to instantly hate and mistrust you, do exactly this.
I ran this as a test of my method of converting TSR era adventures to 5e on the fly. It worked quite well. My players (now my play testers) were creeped out by the green shag carpet that was just a green rug in some room, I embellished it quite a bit, and scared the crap out of them. To this day, I get a middle finger if I put a green rug, carpet, cloak or any other fabric in a room.
Your a shallow thinking idiot. This module was designed for early DM's so they could start with a core concept and expand it allowing them to get more familiar with the tools needed to create there own from scratch. If Gygax is pretty crappy, and your to dam stupid to figure out basic teaching then you probably wont figure this out either.
@@deathmerchant8662 I played a Lot of those old modules. PCs have to be decked out like christmas trees because of how brutal the murder dungeons were.
This is definitely one of those modules that is fun to read or hear stories about and great to crib ideas and plot points from, but that would probably be hell to actually play through because of how Gygax it is. Also: Zuggtmoy is potentially one of the most terrifying Demon Lords ever if you give her concept more than a passing glance.
This is such a great review. It brings back SOOOOO many memories. ToEE is the quintessential dungeon crawl for classic D&D, and I encourage all DMs to try running it if you haven't already. As mentioned in the video, there's plenty of room to put your own spin on the game, and in some areas, it's required. Spoilers: Also, if you get to the nodes, change the Air node map into cloud material instead of caves and ground. Then, raise and lower the elevations for each cave and "tunnel" (cloud path). After that, do similar modifications for the other nodes to really push the elemental environments.
I am currently reworking the entire first module page by page into a fully fleshed out 2nd edition module so I can use hommlet to introduce my younger friends to 2nd edition! Since I’d need to prep it all anyway, I figured I would just rewrite T1 and do all my prep work at the same time 😉
The ToEE video game from 2003 is a good game, particularly after all the bugs were fixed. It’s actually not a long game and it’s designed to be played through multiple times with different alignments. There are quite a few different endings.
it's interesting to see that there IS a story in this xD since D&D wasn't played in my area (I'm German so we play Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye) and i've never heard of this game before the Videogame came out i've red the module and... well... yeah it was for me just "ok i have the descriptions and stuff.... but ... WHY should my players go to the temple and WHY it is so big, i mean how are the people survive down there"
For my next campaign I plan on running this next. I have run parts of it many times but I want to take a full run through. However I will be converting it to Pathfinder 2E. I also run 5E games but this group wants to try PF 2E and, while I have played PF 2E for some time now, I have yet to run in that system. I figured converting an old school classic would be a great way to get use to the system. I certainly hope I am not biting off more than I can chew LOL! Suggestions welcome. P.S. I will be setting it into my homebrew setting of Prythain so a lot of the gods involved will change so I will probably change Zuggtmoy to something more appropriate. P.P.S. If it goes well I hope to segue into Against the Slavelords and then into Queen of Spiders.
Yeah I think Modern Zuggtmoy is a pretty cool villain since she’s a very hive-minddy villain, which could make for an interesting adventure or campaign.
@@InquisitorThomas There's also some poetry in that for all the horrors she unleashes on mankind, she'll never be able to grow out of Lilith's shadow, the Spider Queen, heck, TIAMAT HERSELF, will always be higher on the stuff of nightmares hierarchy. She is left to grow and fester in her dark damp corners of creations.
Really good an thorough look at one of the hardest to run modules the DnD teams ever put out there. I think the main reason for the disappointment with old mummyfungus was probably more her goofy appearance than anything else. If I saw that as a DM I wouldn't be able to take it seriously either anymore. And while not all DnD adventures have to be serious (and let's face it even the more serious ones we as players will make fun of in some way) with a name like "Temple of Elemental Evil" you at least expect a modicum of seriousness. I'd love to see a rundown of some of the more WTF adventures like Palace of the Silver Princess or White Plume Mountain.
Maybe I entered ToEE through the 2003 game after playing Third Edition with my friends, but I find it kind of baffling that people hated the Zuggtmoy twist so much as to have her importance and her scheme retconned. It was really unique and gave a dark humor to the grand, epic adventure that was wrought with a sense of perverse strangeness. Personally, I'd love to see a 5th Edition remake of the original AD&D version of the dungeon, Demoness Lady of Fungi and all!
Well, think of it this way: The game promised you a fight with an elemental beast, and instead you get an old fat mushroom lady. It'd be like if you had to wait 12 years to get the sequel to some awesome action film, and the sequel turned out to be some comedy musical written and directed by rob shneider, only it kept promising the awesome action up until the first song twenty minutes into the film.
I thought that this video was for a part 2 of the video game. I got so excited!!! Even though the video game TOEE is a horrible mess, it is still one of my favorite video games.
I never played this module, but I did run the 3.0e Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil. We got about half-way through it before moving on to something else.
In reference to the NODE section, is it to be played like In Search of the Unknown where the DM needs to make it his own if the party ends up in one of the 4 nodes.....Also, do you recommend changing the big boss as the fungi queen seems a little weak when considering the entire module...along with the expectation of a much bigger and more dangerous ending.
I didn't read into why Zuggtmoy was there at all. She was clearly teamed up with Iuz in some fashion, and that was good enough for me. That she ended up being some imprisoned casualty of the temple is secondary. She's an evil thing that the PCs have a chance of doing away with. It was fine by me. It's a 1e dungeon. You find a big bad, you fight it. Good enough.
My group played through ToEE, Scourge of the Slave Lords and Queen of the Demonweb Pits every weekend and holiday from the start of our freshman year in high school until the end of senior year. I've never played in a better game than that even though we've since learned so much about running and playing rpg's.
Instant death traps.. Werewolves who steal your gear... Lvl 50 innately magical boss... Demi-god of lies willing to kill to keep his name out of it... Suitable for lvl 1 adventurers... Man, Gygax was a dick. lol Gotta love him...
I played in ToEE back in the 90s for a couple years. I think we lost 3 or 4 parties over the course. Lots of fun though. Never got to the end, I never knew who the main boss was until this video. I'm sorta glad I didn't. It really puts it in perspective how much Gary liked to troll his players and have them toil through a bunch of stuff and play through the ELEMENTAL EVIL angle just to get their ass whipped by grandma mushroom. The only thing worse would have been like an evil Ewok or clown that kills them in a kids playland with things like an evil ball pit, maze of mirrors, and acidic cream pies.
I'm planning on having it exist for my group when we start our campaign on Sunday, but not running it exactly. I'll probably use it as an inspiration and idea mine though. Renaming it The Temple of Monumental Evil. The town outside of it I'm planning on being similar adding in this new drug they've got that's a super powerful hallucinogenic. Continuing on in the floors will progressively have more and more bits of fungi. Mold, mildew, mushrooms and such. The air get thicker with spores and the stench of rot and decay. All the enemies and cultists will be in varying stages of covered in fungi until they're more fungi than whatever they once were. I'll cut out most of the elemental stuff. Until they finally reach the end and face Zttyg, the goddess of Rot, she'll try to convert or parley with the adventurers but if they fight her she'll transform into a Rot Dragon to fight them. Basically a Blackveil Vaal Hazaak from Monster Hunter.
Fake outs are good when used sparingly, but you can't have literally EVERYTHING be an illusion or disguise. If I were running the module I'd probably just have many of the encounters be straight forward or cool set pieces like the staked vampire. Gives the tower a "lived in" feel, like it has actual history and that you're not the first group of adventurers to come, and that vampires aren't even near the top of the food chain here.
I am making all the Temple of Elemental Evil maps in Talespire. Its a great DM and player program. Check out talespire website and the talesbazaar and Talestavern website for all the maps people made in Talespire. PS. I played this module several times, and after the first time i changed Zuggtmoy to an avatar of the elder elemental eye (or Tharizdun, as the true DM's know 😋), because then i could play the other master module "Queen of the Spiders", and have my first adventure path before this was a thing.
So how can a handful of level 8 (eventually) characters ever beat this dungeon, let alone half of it? Maybe I never played a Gygax inspired dungeon, but I did play alot of OG AD&D so how could I have not?
did people actually have fun with these as written?i probably wouldve just said f**k this after like the third cursed treasure item or insta death mechanic,so like...5 minutes in,how does even a masochist have fun here?
I ran this entire "module" from hommlet through to the conclusion with the same players for close to a calendar year. I've also played the Temple video game you have shown scenes of a couple of times, even creating a virtual environment for it. We had a very good time, and my players were higher than 8th by the time we finished. It was a great module to us, and as a DM I did NOT hand out casual character death as Gygax might have wanted. Instead we had a great story that kept us all entertained for quite a while. I also have the board game which is quite good. I noticed you showing that too. Thanks for the memories!
I've wondered if Gygax was as casual in handing out death as his modules suggest. You get the impression sometimes that he didn't actually DM a lot of this stuff, so the playtesting might have been ... lacking.
I got to play all 3 stories when they came out and converted toel to second edition and ran it. I love all three . Any plans to do the other two the same treatment? I hope so! Keep up the great work!
So what's next? Keep on the Borderlands? Scourge of the Slave Lords? I would honestly like to see you a look at the video game Pool of Radiance and its tie-in adventure Ruins of Adventure, which changes a lot from the video game (or is that the other way around) and makes some areas vastly different. Constrast that with the sequels to the game and adventure, Curse of the Azure Bonds, which is the exact same in both video game and adventure module.
Ive played it, and then I DM'd it. I would say it took over 100 gaming sessions of between 4 and 6 hours. Our groups highlight was being knighted after rescuing Thrommel, BUT, our knighting cerimony was crashed by a blue dragon. When I DM'd it. I actually worked on the premise that Zuggtmoy was actually not the main antagonist, but it was the agents of Tharizdun in the Scarlet Brotherhood, working to destableize the region, and that yellowskull was so rediculously powerful an artifact because it had ties to Tharizdun.
Loved the video. I remember being run through it, but that was in the 90's. I remember the pillar of electrum. We enjoyed it, but my clearest memories are of the Most House. We were run through that a 2nd time & misunderstood the town as Norb. We became the "Knights of Norb!"
Yea, We played this back when it first came out and went in with a crew. A dozen 15th level's, henchmen, a couple dozen well trained and equipped soldiers to guard us while we slept. Our goal was to clean the place out and then loot it. Needless to say, things did not go according to plan. We actually thought that the goal was to break open each of the four doors that kept Zug... in. Hell of a way to lose characters we really liked.
@@mikewilliams4443 Well, this was first edition (not ultra wimpy 5e) and we were pretty young and thought it was an old hack an slash. I not saying we played smart, I'm saying that we played pretty stupid. DM taught us a lesson. But I also seem to remember it was for 10th to 12th level on the cover.
Well done series. I enjoyed review ! As someone who has played the entire module on table top, It should be likely to meet a wandering human in the nodes. (My party met Taki playing through this the first time.) Random encounters in nodes " Roll 1d100 once PER TURN". Parties should by game design spend more than a few turns in the nodes playing this super module.
Princes of the Apocalypse was pretty bad, and my fellow players agreed. The "go from temple to temple and beat up dudes" got pretty old, and the cultists were cultists, so they didn't provide much roleplay opportunity.
I had once in this great module final episode my players engaged in a battle with Veluna, Furyondy and Verbobonc reinforcements, using the old Battle System rules. That's a pretty interesting outcom if you have a large-scale, political campaign in Greyhawk. Links with gdq campaign are also very enjoyable.
i would like to see more of the old classics like Jake Denny mentioned. And for what it's worth, I'm running this now - converted to Gamma World. I've never had a D&D group actually play through it past the first few rooms on the first level. If this group of mutants survive, I may come back and let you know how it ended - but that may be a while...
TOEE computer game: reminds me of how my party messed the fight with Iuz up. By killing him before St. Cuthbert could join the party. Got an ending vignette along the lines of "well, that was unexpected..."
@@mikewilliams4443 if I remember correctly; Fighter with Scather and greater cleaving, positioned in a way to be attacked by the mooks. Scather retaliates and hits Iuz as well. Craft Weapon to enchant swords with axiomatic/shock,shocking burst/ice, burst for everyone else who can take improved critical, else bring keen in. Arcane caster for crowd control, clerics shift between healing and smiteing. Don't forget every buff you can get and pray to the god of dice. And hope St Cuthbert takes his time, guess that's the hard part: getting enough actions before he shows up. Ie lots of crits and the bugbears playing nicely.
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Basicaly, to survive a Gygaxian module
1. Don't fight
2. Don't touch anything
3. Don't trust anyone
4. Don't choose any good alignment
5. Don't be the first one in line
6. Don't be the last one in line
7. Don't be a paladin
8. Seriously, don't be a paladin
9. Don't go downstairs
10. Don't miss any lucky rolls
11. Don't be a paladin
And people wonder why murderhoboes are so prominent when literally everything tries to stab you in the back
Gygax and early D&D more or less encouraged this mindset since betrayal was such a common theme.
@@russelljackson8153 gygax had a problem where he just loved to add unavoidable death traps in a system where saving throws where pretty shitty, there is a reason why modern DnD discourages "rocks fall everyone dies", he is pretty adversarial against his players
I mean..your not wrong 🤷🤷
True. But my friends were murder hoboes from day 1, without any Gygax modules. Actually, it was mostly one guy who was chaotic-evil irl.
That's why alignment is a critical aspect of the game.
Makes fun of the mushroom mommy, while just minutes before talking about a purple mushroom that rots your limbs off with a touch.
I wouldn't want to fight any Demonlord, or Archdevil. Much less, Zuggtmoy. I respect that she's the ruler of her place. She even stands up against Juiblex.
I will argue though this obviously was incomplete and wrongly trown together still despite what should have been the villain. A little jarring, but yes, evil mushrooms cool! Lets start a Cult and Temple of the Mushroom!
If you take a shot every time he says "in disguise" or "an illusion" in Temple of Elemental Evil, you'll be dead before the second floor.
Oh, and uh, THE LITERAL CREATOR GOD Iuz is easier to hit than a Will-o-wisp if he isn't wearing what is basically his favorite shirt.
They should call it the temple of Elemental Fake-Outs instead
In Troika's computer game, even with the fixes by the Circle of Eight mod team, that last boss battle with Zuggtmoy often ended in the game crashing from too many demons and critters being summoned. Atari should be ashamed of itself for rushing that game out of the door before it was finished. So much work went into it and the developers should have been allowed to finish it the right way.
Yes, but one can think of it as holding to the creative spirit of the original module. ;-)
By ending the game before the boss fight? Yeah, true@@GetterBurai
My group spent a summer playing through the Temple. As the GM I thought it was a tough module. The party was constantly stopping to heal up. For future DM’s of this module I would recommend that you break the module into multiple temples. An easy way is to take each level and make it its own temple.
Here are a few things that I did to personalize the experience. To start the module I took a concept from the movie Conan the Barbarian, “my daughter has been swayed by the evil priests of ____”. After she is rescued a herald from a nearby city can ask for help in ridding their land of a similar temple of ____. You can always add intrigue between temples assaults by having another faction provide info or other assistance, or even have an opposing faction hire the party to defeat its rival. I always refused to use the instant death traps, instead I would nerf traps to deal damage or be a means to move the story along. “The entrance is sealed and now the party has to move deeper into the dungeon to find an exit.” I always removed the ridiculous monster like the trash eating Otyugh from all modules. I love Gary like an uncle, but those all the Fiend Folio type monsters never worked for me.
Bottom line is a GM should always tailor the store bought modules. Make them fit your world and scale the encounters to be fair and fun for your group. You are only limited by your imagination and by all of the cool comic and, books you have read or the tv shows and movies that you have seen.
did you ran this adventure in 5e? im trying to find anything that will help me preparing this module for my buddies. i know this one only from troika's pc version, but i love it
Squaresoft broke it into 4 and it worked out really well for them so I agree.
The Temple levels are intertwined pretty tightly. As for constant healing, wandering monsters tend to put a brake on that.
Temple and surrounding events don't stop I st because the players suffer from video game syndrome.
TEE is an amazing module, I've run it several times since it came out. I see/hear a lot of complaints about old school d&d modules not being fully fleshed out and in the early 80's I had the same complaint, "I'm paying for a product that isn't even finished?" But the fact of the matter is that modules were written like that to encourage the DM to put something of themselves into the stories. It prevents players grabbing modules and knowing what to expect as well.
@@danielgoldberg5357 I've been playing D&D since 1978; I've had multiple gaming groups over the years and I eventually, usually end up pulling it out once I'm sure my players are ready for it/and are up to the challenge. I've run it to completion I think 5 or 6 times and TPKd a few times but like the video states, the end feels extremely rushed and incomplete and so a bit needs to be added to it by the DM in order to flesh it out into a comprehensible, satisfying ending.
@@danielgoldberg5357 I have done so indeed. Although at this point I'm generally satisfied with my current additions and don't foresee changing it again.
How do you/the party deal with all the (potential) party wipes?
lol if your party is still level 1 by the time you get to the third floor of this dungeon your dm is doing something horribly wrong.
If the party wants do go there with level 1, i would let them. I would place clear warnings in the environment. But i would never railroad them. This was not what D&D has sadly become.
@@Nhytewulf Fair enough. As a DM you should let players make mistakes, but when those mistakes are going to be fatal you need to be crystal clear this is not a good idea. Most players when it is made clear to them that this is going to fail will rethink. Unless of course they flat don't care about their characters at all, or just want to troll the party, which are totally different problems.
That said, it is literally impossible to get past floors 1-2 of the Temple of Elemental Evil without earning enough exp to pass level 1. So my point stands.
@Karkarov Back in the day, “level up” required a training facility and several days or weeks training. Players could delay their level ups to finish an adventure or because they lacked gold to pay for it.
@@chrlpolk While technically true, those rules were ignored by every DM I played with but one. Even then you would definitely have enough exp and money to make it past level 1 before you got to floor 3.
The party can simply refuse to spend the time on the training, but again, any decent DM would make it clear that doing that is a very very bad idea.
If you are at level 1 on floor 3 of this dungeon you are going to die. If you say "I did it and lived" it's because your DM intentionally soft balled the dungeon to an extreme level.
@@DKarkarovisn't there like a direct entrance to floor 3?
Loved your video! I ran this module as a part of an epic campaign with classic modules using 2nd edition rules back in the 2000s. My players completed the module and had a great time doing it. The module took them from level 1 to 8 or 9 and there were lots of memorable encounters and character fatalities.
A favorite thing was the big ugly troll chief that wore a ring of fire resistance. The party sliced him up and torched him only to have him rise up smoking. He ended chasing the entire party out of the temple they were so freaked out by an inflammable troll.
LOL.. I loved running that part. Was even more fun because at first my players had forgotten that trolls regenerate so they were freaking out about that until they finally remembered to burn the corpses. Then they met this guy :) "What do you mean he's getting back up?"
I started playing in 1980, first with encounters in D&D but soon getting to AD&D and with this book as my first "campaign". It was hard but so much fun. The hardest thing to do for my as the DM was to let the players know that they needed to play the factions on level 1 and 2 against each other, with them playing spy and double spy for factions. So it meant for them to really roleplay their character. It was all new for us, but this adventure thought me as a DM to roleplay the world to the players instead of just hack and slash room by room.
This book will always be my first love for the game.
My most favourite Dungeon from 1st/2nd Edition. I ran this campaign back in High School the first year it came out. It took a whole school year, playing on average 3 hours a day after class before dinner. The party was a Barbarian, Cleric, Mage, Thief and Cavalier. It was the first time we used the Unearthed Arcana & Wilderness Rule Books.
Our DM had us choking and being constantly attacked by wandering monsters for 2 months in the nodes. We quit. As soon as we had an out, we left, so sick of the adventure that we didn't bother to finish it.
@@danielgoldberg5357 Amen
It has that feel to it
While I appreciate the effort put into a setting as complex as this, I can't help but notice that a LOT of the plot hooks or difficult encounters hinge on disguises of some sort or another. It seems like a bit of a cop out, like everyone just pulls their mask off at the end a la Scooby Doo.
I agree with Matt Colville on this one. ToEE is a poorly written example of why players turn into murder hobos. The descriptions in the original module are difficult to match with the map,?, and the rooms only share one thing in common: treachery. Once the players have been betrayed twice, expect them to cease negotiations and trust no one.
They’ll simply either avoid participation in something if they don’t have to or kill anything that moves.
Princes of the Apocalypse wasn’t much better, creating a “whack-a-mole” series of “find temple, attack temple, return to Red Larch. Rinse. Repeat.” It discussed how each temple hated the others, but never really amounted to much.
It even had a dragon inserted on the map that did nothing but wait to be unlocked like some sort of Arcade era video game.
Zuggtmoy, thankfully, evolved after this into a proper Demon Queen with her own machinations and followers, and no longer looks like poorly risen bread dough.
Gygax’s achievements are many, and he is the grandfather of this hobby, but his writing is adversarial. It‘s arguably unsophisticated compared to modern offerings. I started gaming in the Gygax era, and I’m very thankful for his contributions. I am also thankful that others took up the reigns to try to avoid another hot mess like ToEE.
It certainly isn't brilliant, but I think that abundant treachery is one of ToEE's better sides - it surprises and keeps on edge, gamewise it promotes planning and more roleplaying. The party going postal signifies laziness of the players and the GM.
@LesserPlanes Well, it doesn't promote roleplay in a strictly straightforward way - I'll give you that. But if a vulnerable party enters an exceedintly deadly den of evil - full of intelligent and powerful monsters, traps and illusions, then the players need to think outside of the box - they gather itelligence - by infiltration, capturing enemies or in other ways. They look for allies - both inside the temple, in nearby centers of power and maybe even larger world. Great many opportunities to roleplay imo. Still - ToEE is definitely flawed, I don't deny that.
@@saldownik I think another person described it the best, this campaign having soo many "in reality i was an evil orc in disguise" feels like a Scooby Doo plot
In the end having soo many betrayals the only thing that accomplishes is to completly destroy the player's trust and it's not "laziness" after a while it just becomes logical to distrust everything and everyone and attack first if seven people already betrayed you and tried to kill you beforehand
I would love to see this style of video applied to the Spider Queen megamodule
Queen of the dem ok web pits had a similar let down finale
@@ronniejdio9411 Lolth turned out to be Lolz...lol.
Ghost tower of Inverness was a better and more logical ending
@@johngibson2884 giant mechanical spider. Wtf...
I was just about to comment the same this when I saw your comment … comments below are not true ad&d'rs … demon web pit is frigen awesome ! and the mechanical spider is her personal suv …
@@ronniejdio9411 well what else did you expect from the movie wild wild west.
I would like to Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Same here. I don't remember or own many modules back when I was still playing D&D but Barrier Peaks was my hands down favorite. I loved the little bits of sci-fi in it and how players could acquire laser weapons.
Considering how verbal of a medium D&D is, it’s kind of insane how many disguises and double cross reveals there are here. It’s hard to believe anyone played this and actually enjoyed everything they heard being wrong in some way or form.
I played with a old school dnd player and it was no wonder he literally never trusted anything I said as a DM. My god... Gygax had more fake outs than M. Night Shamalan!
I got the module when it first came out in 1985 and only ran it once as a DM. I already had Village of Hommlet and most of the party was already level 3 or 4. It took more than a year before we "completed" the module. The players made headway through the start but once into the first and second level of the temple, NPC and player death and injury caused the party to retreat out of the temple to recover, refit, and reload. After going through the second and part of the third level, the party again fled the temple and had no interest in going back for many months. After many other adventures and modules, a couple of the players who were over 8th level decided to put together another expedition together to finish off the temple once and for all. They missed/bypassed some portions of the temple and just went on a destructive rampage. When they finally reached Zuggtnoy, they were enraged. Of all of the original modules, it was the most hated by the players, even more than White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors.
I love hearing about all these classical modules that I didn't know existed and that I'll probably never run. I do like the idea of an underground base with different evil factions that can be negociated with and played against eachother, but I would never run it as written
Haha. Coincidentally, I'm looking at this to incorporate a Prison for a Great Old One, as well as Zuggotmoy (never played Temple of Elemental Evil or heard about it TBH), so it's quite funny to me that this aligns as much as it does.
Only problem is, I have a Guild ran by an evil cultist of Bhaal getting adventurers to suicide to contain Zuggotmoy, empowering his deity through murder, and containing the GOO that came to the place originally to slay Zuggotmoy and send her back to the Abyss.
That Temple looks extremely intimidating to DM through.. I might just run it vanilla and then figure out how to adapt it. The trial and error is such a pain though, but I don't have 100 hours to make an equally complex module - let alone the experience to.
When you start to dig into Greyhawk, you discover that Iuz wants to use this World as a base to conquer others. He alone can add decades of adventure beyond the normal.
The over reliance on bait and switch style disguised and instant death situations reminds me why I always hated Gygax modules and adventures.
They are symptoms of simple and lazy writing.
And the usual fuck you, treasures. The item that would have made the last encounter much easier, or even beatable. I especially hated those.
Just listening to a recap of this is second-hand infuriating.
I'm surprised (happily) that D&D ever got popular with this kind of modules in it.
Yeah it's pretty bad. Everything is an illusion or a trick or something pretending to be something else. It's like a 13 year old made them.
I played through this when it first came out. It was fun as hell. I am currently running the 5e update released by Goodman games. We play every other week, 4 hours or so a session.
It does take a commitment to read it once, then reread ahead as the players explore. I recommend notes on how characters relate to the temple.
My players and I are having a great time. And the confusion and uncertainty about what is going on is keeping the players reasonably paranoid, and more invested.
I highly recommend tracking inventory and encumbrance. Also, the creature knows the dungeon, so guards should use it to there advantage .
Fantastic video! I’d love to see you guys cover other old school modules like this in the future. Maybe the Slavelord, Giants, Drow, and Queen series for that ultimate Greyhawk campaign?
Slavelords would be cool. Already a lot of G1-3 and D1-3 out there.
The A series slavers series was the best next to the desert of desolation I modules .
The slavers series had a very interesting and believable scenario .
The last one where you start out as prisoners with nothing was the best .A5
@@danielgoldberg5357 Lost tomb of Martek was great ....The I series was capped off by Ravenloft I-9
I really enjoyed these! If you take requests, as an Elemental Evil buff, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (which you've used a lot of art from in these videos ;) ) and the Princes of the Apocalypse! I really enjoy running the former, and I still haven't tried the latter.
I'm kinda more interested in a narrative of how the thing plays than just a read-out of the contents. Like, the party is supposed to dip in & out of this place lots & lots of times to conquer it? do the unconquered factions not re-take the "cleared" areas, leading to just never-ending nonsense? they're supposed to develop *relationships* with the evil denizens here?
The specifics beg questions, too. the elemental nodes, wherein players are supposed to re-use spells to learn their new function -- how is that even supposed to WORK with "vancian" magic? The party can't even rest to recuperate with 1/10turns damage, so they can't recover spells to reuse them, and they can't get back to safety without the shards.
Old school D&D did a lot of hand-waving.
Excellent video! Great deep dive into the module! Looking forward to more!
I did enjoy the deep dive! These video give a unique look into how much goes into making the modules. I feel like someone interested in running this module will at least know what they are getting into. Personally the videos make me want to sit down and make my own towns and doungeons.
On a completely unrelated note, Zuggtmoy can be an awesome villainess as she is one of the Demon princess of the abyss, which puts her on par with the Demogorgon, Yenagu, and Jubelix. Also, arguably a greater threat than any regular evil god due to the permanent corruption unleashed on the material plane in the wake of a demonic incursion.
Thank You for bringing me back to a wonderful time in my life...That was awesome....
I’d love to see a video on The Apocalypse Stone! That one doesn’t get covered at all!
I ran that one, had to change ALOT to fit my setting.
Never played this module but I was excited when it came out. Awesome video series, loved learning all the details
Great study. Would love to see you do more classic D&D modules.
I ran this long ago with my wife and our group. She is an excellent roleplayer who took over running the creatures and I handled the rooms and mechanics. It took quite a bit of work and we ended up replacing the final boss with a trapped avatar of the elder elemental god and agents of Lolth were attempting to infiltrate and subvert the temple. With that group, we had a great time of it, but I would not do it again.
There's a huge difference between "temple of elemental evil 2" and "temple of elemental evil: part 2". I almost had a heart attack with the title of this video. Apart from that, the video is incredibly well-made
I have ran this twice now. Once in 2E AD&D and then in 5E. Both time it was a huge and long campaign. It took a huge amount of work on the GMs part to prep and overcome some of the short comings of the module. Both time it was very fun for the players and a definite learning experience for me as a GM. Great fun even if both groups did TPK before reaching Zuggtmoy
I remember this being a terrible adventure that systematically wipes out the entire team. There was far too much information to counter evil forces or items that you can't obtain in the game. You just have to know or have the ability to try a bunch of random actions which usually led to ultimate death for at least one character. This was way too hard for a high level team much less the recommended starting level.
The adventure doesn't seem seriously hard - unless the party wants to do everything by themselves. If I was playing ToEE, I'd gather some proof and intelligence, allied with a local power or two and organized a military expedition back to the temple.
We just played an edited/shortened version of this game using AD&D 2nd Ed rules. We just went through the first level of the temple and called it done. Wouldn't mind starting over and running the whole thing, but as you said, it would take a fairly large time commitment for sure.
I remember running & playing this back in the day. It's good but needs to be 'de-douched'. There are too many instakills and unwinnable situations. You should always have a chance. I created a secret priesthood who helped run & manipulate the area using charm spells & illusion magic on the mobs. It took a lot of re-writting but it went well.
You should always have a chance? Here's your chance: There are certain situations with ToEE that are patently unfair, when coming across a thing like that players are wise to remember that sometimes retreat is the better part of valor. It is the DMs job to not only entertain but also to challenge their players, additionally it is the DMs job to inform said players of potentially fatal encounters. Example: "The creature(s) standing before you look very formidable, and you get the feeling that you are (outclassed, outnumbered, etc.)" If the players don't take the hint to try something different, run away, etc. it's their fault. That said, sometimes escape isn't possible and people are going to die; they're adventurers they signed up for this. Besides, if one of them does die their, brother, cousin, sister, best friend can join the survivors and attempt to avenge their death or the surviving members can say eff this, someone else can deal with that. Note: I am not saying your solution to a percieved problem isn't a good one, everyone has their own take on how to deal with the difficulty of this campaign.
The only version of this module that I've played (but not finished) was the PC game, and I remember myself thinking 'this is BS!' over and over whilst playing... yup, I wasn't crazy after all.
I find a lot of Gygax dungeons are like that. I lost everything with a trick in Tomb of Horrors. The DM asked me if I wanted to return to my home base and stock up as best I could and continue. I said no. I still had some lower level magic items I didn't sell. So I was glad I wasn't starting at 0.
My group completed this back in the day, I was the DM and we did run it more hack and slash then I probably should have. I also did it under 2nd edition. I tried to carry the adventure into against the giants, but when the wizard started bombarding the hill giant fort with massive fireballs I was done. The zuggtmoy fight was particularly fun and my characters got super lucky finding the gems in the nodes. Funny story I met Gary Gygax during this time and asked him the proper pronunciation of some clastic greyhawk names and he say Iuz was actually pronounced like “is” ...crazy right.
Daniel Goldberg lol, I pronounced the same until I meet Gary... he could have been pulling my leg but I don’t think so he also said drow rhymes with cow... so that was a huge one for me also
Daniel Goldberg I’m my gaming group it was a huge debate ... droooo or dr~ow
Do Night Below:an underdark campaign. That would be a good one
I know this was way before the internet became readily available, but the villain structure of the adventure reads like they were trying to stay ahead of the audience’s fan theories and were frustrated that people kept guessing their twists.
I have played it as a character when first published in Uk an totally enjoyed it. Although it was ‘hard’. Then ran it as a dm with some changes. Great module 😀.
Are the black elves related to the dark elves?
No and they prefer the term Negro elves
Some thoughts:
* A lot of who did "run" it hacked it to pieces and made it our own, because the original module is a hot mess organizationally.
* Goodman Games just released a special edition with a 5e conversion. So far that looks to be cleaner. I'm running this as my next campaign.
* This was a GREAT video series! 5 stars!
That Zuggetmoy twist sounds kind of cool. Lame that WotC walked back on it.
Great work as always. I love the module videos but would you consider doing a class video like the one for the monk again? Maybe for psionic?
You guys know what to do, keep going with the multi-parters in the future. I cannot *wait* for undermountain~
The Elder Elemental God is in fact the prime motivating force behind the Temple. That is where the "Elemental" comes in, as in Primordial (and not necessarily Elemental as in the Classical 4 Elements). The problem is the final level was never actually published (where players could end up loosing BOTH Zuggtmoy and a portion of the Elder Elemental God). Funny enough, there are more and more clues that have been located over time by players trying to suss out the truth. The 4 Elemental Symbols (Triangle, Square, Star and Circle) ALL correspond to the items found in the "Platinum Egg" (Iron Pyramid, Pale Blue Cube, 8-Pointed Bronze Star and Silver Sphere) players acquire by defeating Lolth's avatar in D3: Vault of the Drow. There is some speculation going now that the "Egg" was, in fact, acquired by the Drow following the Elder Elemental God in an effort to free him (or at least portions of him) in The Sunless Sea. The idea being that the EEG Drow following Eclavdra are using the PCs to wreak havoc on Lolth's followers and faction. The problem is Q1 is totally at odds with the rest of the series, where the clues point to the EEG: Temple of Elemental Evil, The Slavelords and Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths.
"The problem is the final level was never actually published." Interesting. Source?
@@hunpo1 - Gygax himself on forums like Dragonsfoot and the like. That and Paul Stromberg (I believe) has indicated he saw the actual T2 version Gygax kept for himself (as in the version he ran for his home campaign) and it does in fact have a level that connects the whole plot of the Temple and the Giants/Drow.
If you want further proof look at Timothy Cain’s video on YT ‘The fun of the Temple of Elemental Evil’. Cain (who did the Troika computer game) relates a conversation with Gygax where he said an aspect of the Elder Elemental God was on the unpublished level and it connected to the Drow modules.
Talk about an intentional attempt to screw the player. Ok, so if they touch the golden skull, then resist its evil power, giving it up at all makes the player automatically lose, and become a slave to the dungeon boss? Really dick move...Crap like this should never, EVER be pulled! This is an absolute "no-win" scenario...
Honestly, if you are a DM, and want your group to instantly hate and mistrust you, do exactly this.
I ran this as a test of my method of converting TSR era adventures to 5e on the fly. It worked quite well. My players (now my play testers) were creeped out by the green shag carpet that was just a green rug in some room, I embellished it quite a bit, and scared the crap out of them. To this day, I get a middle finger if I put a green rug, carpet, cloak or any other fabric in a room.
Gygax was really pretty crappy in a lot of ways
Your a shallow thinking idiot. This module was designed for early DM's so they could start with a core concept and expand it allowing them to get more familiar with the tools needed to create there own from scratch. If Gygax is pretty crappy, and your to dam stupid to figure out basic teaching then you probably wont figure this out either.
@Wonko Sane Exactly. Gygax seemed to like killing PCs off. Like he was against the players.
@@deathmerchant8662 I played a Lot of those old modules. PCs have to be decked out like christmas trees because of how brutal the murder dungeons were.
This is definitely one of those modules that is fun to read or hear stories about and great to crib ideas and plot points from, but that would probably be hell to actually play through because of how Gygax it is.
Also: Zuggtmoy is potentially one of the most terrifying Demon Lords ever if you give her concept more than a passing glance.
This is such a great review. It brings back SOOOOO many memories. ToEE is the quintessential dungeon crawl for classic D&D, and I encourage all DMs to try running it if you haven't already. As mentioned in the video, there's plenty of room to put your own spin on the game, and in some areas, it's required.
Spoilers: Also, if you get to the nodes, change the Air node map into cloud material instead of caves and ground. Then, raise and lower the elevations for each cave and "tunnel" (cloud path). After that, do similar modifications for the other nodes to really push the elemental environments.
I ran this module many years ago. Took along time and we went through alot of charactors but it is well worth the time
I am currently reworking the entire first module page by page into a fully fleshed out 2nd edition module so I can use hommlet to introduce my younger friends to 2nd edition! Since I’d need to prep it all anyway, I figured I would just rewrite T1 and do all my prep work at the same time 😉
The ToEE video game from 2003 is a good game, particularly after all the bugs were fixed. It’s actually not a long game and it’s designed to be played through multiple times with different alignments. There are quite a few different endings.
Would I like to see more of this? ABSOLUTELY! Bring on the old school content! :D
Great series. I love your clean, and well done edits. Very descriptive and well thought out. Thank you for another great video.
Yet another absolutely impossible module from killer dm gygax. Anyone who says they got thru it, as written, is lying
it's interesting to see that there IS a story in this xD since D&D wasn't played in my area (I'm German so we play Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye) and i've never heard of this game before the Videogame came out i've red the module and... well... yeah it was for me just "ok i have the descriptions and stuff.... but ... WHY should my players go to the temple and WHY it is so big, i mean how are the people survive down there"
For my next campaign I plan on running this next. I have run parts of it many times but I want to take a full run through. However I will be converting it to Pathfinder 2E. I also run 5E games but this group wants to try PF 2E and, while I have played PF 2E for some time now, I have yet to run in that system. I figured converting an old school classic would be a great way to get use to the system. I certainly hope I am not biting off more than I can chew LOL! Suggestions welcome.
P.S. I will be setting it into my homebrew setting of Prythain so a lot of the gods involved will change so I will probably change Zuggtmoy to something more appropriate.
P.P.S. If it goes well I hope to segue into Against the Slavelords and then into Queen of Spiders.
16:33 "The Last of Us" I'd say have done a good job of making fungus utterly terrifying, and make Zuggtmoy herself even more scary.
Yeah I think Modern Zuggtmoy is a pretty cool villain since she’s a very hive-minddy villain, which could make for an interesting adventure or campaign.
@@InquisitorThomas There's also some poetry in that for all the horrors she unleashes on mankind, she'll never be able to grow out of Lilith's shadow, the Spider Queen, heck, TIAMAT HERSELF, will always be higher on the stuff of nightmares hierarchy. She is left to grow and fester in her dark damp corners of creations.
Really good an thorough look at one of the hardest to run modules the DnD teams ever put out there.
I think the main reason for the disappointment with old mummyfungus was probably more her goofy appearance than anything else. If I saw that as a DM I wouldn't be able to take it seriously either anymore. And while not all DnD adventures have to be serious (and let's face it even the more serious ones we as players will make fun of in some way) with a name like "Temple of Elemental Evil" you at least expect a modicum of seriousness.
I'd love to see a rundown of some of the more WTF adventures like Palace of the Silver Princess or White Plume Mountain.
Maybe I entered ToEE through the 2003 game after playing Third Edition with my friends, but I find it kind of baffling that people hated the Zuggtmoy twist so much as to have her importance and her scheme retconned. It was really unique and gave a dark humor to the grand, epic adventure that was wrought with a sense of perverse strangeness. Personally, I'd love to see a 5th Edition remake of the original AD&D version of the dungeon, Demoness Lady of Fungi and all!
Well, think of it this way: The game promised you a fight with an elemental beast, and instead you get an old fat mushroom lady.
It'd be like if you had to wait 12 years to get the sequel to some awesome action film, and the sequel turned out to be some comedy musical written and directed by rob shneider, only it kept promising the awesome action up until the first song twenty minutes into the film.
I thought that this video was for a part 2 of the video game. I got so excited!!! Even though the video game TOEE is a horrible mess, it is still one of my favorite video games.
I never played this module, but I did run the 3.0e Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil. We got about half-way through it before moving on to something else.
In reference to the NODE section, is it to be played like In Search of the Unknown where the DM needs to make it his own if the party ends up in one of the 4 nodes.....Also, do you recommend changing the big boss as the fungi queen seems a little weak when considering the entire module...along with the expectation of a much bigger and more dangerous ending.
I didn't read into why Zuggtmoy was there at all. She was clearly teamed up with Iuz in some fashion, and that was good enough for me. That she ended up being some imprisoned casualty of the temple is secondary. She's an evil thing that the PCs have a chance of doing away with. It was fine by me. It's a 1e dungeon. You find a big bad, you fight it. Good enough.
Shacked up with Iuz, more like. Although that detail comes from Gygax's Gord the Rogue novels.
My group played through ToEE, Scourge of the Slave Lords and Queen of the Demonweb Pits every weekend and holiday from the start of our freshman year in high school until the end of senior year. I've never played in a better game than that even though we've since learned so much about running and playing rpg's.
Instant death traps.. Werewolves who steal your gear... Lvl 50 innately magical boss... Demi-god of lies willing to kill to keep his name out of it... Suitable for lvl 1 adventurers... Man, Gygax was a dick. lol Gotta love him...
I played in ToEE back in the 90s for a couple years. I think we lost 3 or 4 parties over the course. Lots of fun though. Never got to the end, I never knew who the main boss was until this video. I'm sorta glad I didn't. It really puts it in perspective how much Gary liked to troll his players and have them toil through a bunch of stuff and play through the ELEMENTAL EVIL angle just to get their ass whipped by grandma mushroom. The only thing worse would have been like an evil Ewok or clown that kills them in a kids playland with things like an evil ball pit, maze of mirrors, and acidic cream pies.
I'm planning on having it exist for my group when we start our campaign on Sunday, but not running it exactly.
I'll probably use it as an inspiration and idea mine though. Renaming it The Temple of Monumental Evil.
The town outside of it I'm planning on being similar adding in this new drug they've got that's a super powerful hallucinogenic.
Continuing on in the floors will progressively have more and more bits of fungi. Mold, mildew, mushrooms and such. The air get thicker with spores and the stench of rot and decay.
All the enemies and cultists will be in varying stages of covered in fungi until they're more fungi than whatever they once were.
I'll cut out most of the elemental stuff.
Until they finally reach the end and face Zttyg, the goddess of Rot, she'll try to convert or parley with the adventurers but if they fight her she'll transform into a Rot Dragon to fight them.
Basically a Blackveil Vaal Hazaak from Monster Hunter.
Fake outs are good when used sparingly, but you can't have literally EVERYTHING be an illusion or disguise. If I were running the module I'd probably just have many of the encounters be straight forward or cool set pieces like the staked vampire. Gives the tower a "lived in" feel, like it has actual history and that you're not the first group of adventurers to come, and that vampires aren't even near the top of the food chain here.
I am making all the Temple of Elemental Evil maps in Talespire. Its a great DM and player program. Check out talespire website and the talesbazaar and Talestavern website for all the maps people made in Talespire.
PS. I played this module several times, and after the first time i changed Zuggtmoy to an avatar of the elder elemental eye (or Tharizdun, as the true DM's know 😋), because then i could play the other master module "Queen of the Spiders", and have my first adventure path before this was a thing.
So how can a handful of level 8 (eventually) characters ever beat this dungeon, let alone half of it? Maybe I never played a Gygax inspired dungeon, but I did play alot of OG AD&D so how could I have not?
Awesome video! I´ve just run it (succesfully) in 5E. Now im off to Scourge of the Slavelord.... Hope you can review that and Queen of the Spiders!!!
did people actually have fun with these as written?i probably wouldve just said f**k this after like the third cursed treasure item or insta death mechanic,so like...5 minutes in,how does even a masochist have fun here?
I ran this entire "module" from hommlet through to the conclusion with the same players for close to a calendar year. I've also played the Temple video game you have shown scenes of a couple of times, even creating a virtual environment for it. We had a very good time, and my players were higher than 8th by the time we finished. It was a great module to us, and as a DM I did NOT hand out casual character death as Gygax might have wanted. Instead we had a great story that kept us all entertained for quite a while. I also have the board game which is quite good. I noticed you showing that too. Thanks for the memories!
I've wondered if Gygax was as casual in handing out death as his modules suggest. You get the impression sometimes that he didn't actually DM a lot of this stuff, so the playtesting might have been ... lacking.
Again, yes I totally wpuld love to create and take a Halfling Bard and explore all three quests!
I got to play all 3 stories when they came out and converted toel to second edition and ran it. I love all three . Any plans to do the other two the same treatment? I hope so! Keep up the great work!
So what's next? Keep on the Borderlands? Scourge of the Slave Lords? I would honestly like to see you a look at the video game Pool of Radiance and its tie-in adventure Ruins of Adventure, which changes a lot from the video game (or is that the other way around) and makes some areas vastly different. Constrast that with the sequels to the game and adventure, Curse of the Azure Bonds, which is the exact same in both video game and adventure module.
Ive played it, and then I DM'd it. I would say it took over 100 gaming sessions of between 4 and 6 hours. Our groups highlight was being knighted after rescuing Thrommel, BUT, our knighting cerimony was crashed by a blue dragon. When I DM'd it. I actually worked on the premise that Zuggtmoy was actually not the main antagonist, but it was the agents of Tharizdun in the Scarlet Brotherhood, working to destableize the region, and that yellowskull was so rediculously powerful an artifact because it had ties to Tharizdun.
Thanks for the video.
4 years to finish this game, but we explored every single room and beat the living shit out of zuzu
Loved the video.
I remember being run through it, but that was in the 90's. I remember the pillar of electrum. We enjoyed it, but my clearest memories are of the Most House. We were run through that a 2nd time & misunderstood the town as Norb. We became the "Knights of Norb!"
Yea, We played this back when it first came out and went in with a crew. A dozen 15th level's, henchmen, a couple dozen well trained and equipped soldiers to guard us while we slept.
Our goal was to clean the place out and then loot it.
Needless to say, things did not go according to plan.
We actually thought that the goal was to break open each of the four doors that kept Zug... in.
Hell of a way to lose characters we really liked.
15th levels? Characters in TOEE should have been 5th-10th ...
@@mikewilliams4443 Well, this was first edition (not ultra wimpy 5e) and we were pretty young and thought it was an old hack an slash.
I not saying we played smart, I'm saying that we played pretty stupid.
DM taught us a lesson.
But I also seem to remember it was for 10th to 12th level on the cover.
Well done series. I enjoyed review ! As someone who has played the entire module on table top, It should be likely to meet a wandering human in the nodes. (My party met Taki playing through this the first time.) Random encounters in nodes " Roll 1d100 once PER TURN". Parties should by game design spend more than a few turns in the nodes playing this super module.
Princes of the Apocalypse was pretty bad, and my fellow players agreed. The "go from temple to temple and beat up dudes" got pretty old, and the cultists were cultists, so they didn't provide much roleplay opportunity.
Running it and it's going well, but its inspite of the book , they are great rps and I'm rebuilding the whole campaign.
this is a fantastic channel and I cant wait for more releases. you have rekindled my love of running a modular game.
Recent Subscriber. I appreciate your conciseness, and production value. Your efforts deserve more attention.
lvl 8 and you get to kill a "demon lord"... AND fight a GOD!
WTF! its multiple TPKs.
Iuz and Cuckberd? What did I just hear
Wasn't it Tharizdun who had been retconned as the real evil behind the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3rd edition?
Yes and in the module" Tharzidun" from UK had a lot of references to the T.O.E.E.
Tharzidun had all fiend folio monsters ...very cool
I had once in this great module final episode my players engaged in a battle with Veluna, Furyondy and Verbobonc reinforcements, using the old Battle System rules. That's a pretty interesting outcom if you have a large-scale, political campaign in Greyhawk. Links with gdq campaign are also very enjoyable.
Awesome channel! Any idea to make a video about old d&d settings like Birthright?
The Temple of Elemental Evil was my first dnd experience at age 13. Took 3 years real time to finish and I loved it. Great video btw.
i would like to see more of the old classics like Jake Denny mentioned. And for what it's worth, I'm running this now - converted to Gamma World. I've never had a D&D group actually play through it past the first few rooms on the first level. If this group of mutants survive, I may come back and let you know how it ended - but that may be a while...
TOEE computer game: reminds me of how my party messed the fight with Iuz up. By killing him before St. Cuthbert could join the party.
Got an ending vignette along the lines of "well, that was unexpected..."
What did you use to kill Iuz?
@@mikewilliams4443 if I remember correctly; Fighter with Scather and greater cleaving, positioned in a way to be attacked by the mooks. Scather retaliates and hits Iuz as well.
Craft Weapon to enchant swords with axiomatic/shock,shocking burst/ice, burst for everyone else who can take improved critical, else bring keen in. Arcane caster for crowd control, clerics shift between healing and smiteing. Don't forget every buff you can get and pray to the god of dice. And hope St Cuthbert takes his time, guess that's the hard part: getting enough actions before he shows up. Ie lots of crits and the bugbears playing nicely.