Getting it on saturday. Very excited about it. Have all the Goodman Modules (1-5) in my shelves and each and everyone was quite impressive sofar. Hope you enjoy your copy!
The awesome and unwieldy ToEE, a definite favourite of mine! The Greater Temple on the 4th level always captivated my imagination. I picture it being (grudgingly) shared by the 4 Elemental Temples to perform dark rituals and summon monsters to populate their respective Elemental Nodes, marching them from the Elemental Plane portal to the Elemental Node portal. Such seeds right there for sinister goings on by the 4 priesthoods in the wider world! Perhaps they must gather sacrificial victims for their dark rituals, perhaps they have plans to release their summoned elemental monsters against their enemies, and always they must outshine the other Factions. ToEE is no longer a place I expect my party to clear room by room and floor by floor but rather a place for selective quests to get in and get out!
OMG, Your Queen of the Spiders Module I'm beyond Jealous. That Book is like 900 Bucks on Amazon. What's it like to own a copy? Feel It, Touch It, Hold It.? Not a Chick, but that Book, LOL 👽👽👻😉
Thanks for the review. I've recently ended running the original ToEE for my group, and knowing that this version has Nulb and the Nodes fleshed out is great. As for the stairs conflict, I don't see any conflict and agree with Scott's take on the subject. Looking forward to a more in depth review on the modules.
As I have replied to a couple of comments here as well, there is no actual issue with that staircase, only the poorly hand drawn map they used for the original module confusing people. Those stairs connect room 148 (the earth temple hallway) on the 1st subterranean level to room 210 (the octagonal room/air temple) on the 2nd level. The poor drawing doesn't make it at all clear that the stairs do not connect in any way to the 2nd level hallway numbered 227. But it sure looks like it does, doesn't it? It's confused so many people. In any event, the text for room 148 (in the original T1-4) makes this sort-of clear. But further clouding the issue is the problem that the text for room 210 (in the original T1-4) indicates that the stairs in question do connect to a room on level 1, but says it's the Earth Temple, room 145, which I believe to be incorrect. Because the description of area 7 on the surface level indicates that the great staircase there descends down to the north, which would require that it connect to the earth temple (room 145), leaving the stairs descending south from room (hallway) 148 to connect to room 210 (which is described as the octagonal room or the air temple). ... whew ... Confusing, I know. Anyway, they needed a cartographer like the one that did the Ravenloft module to make tiny adjustments and clean it up in many places. Whoever did Ravenloft took a very complex area and made it simple to understand how it fit together. Whoever thought they should use Gygax's hand drawn maps was not a good editor.
Great discussion, as always. My head canon is that Lareth, being a Lolth priest, made the elemental eye symbol mistake in-character and that's why he and his men have the wrong symbol. :)
I got Into the Borderlands when it came out but none of the others. I'm now collecting the books I haven't gotten. I wondered about this one and balked a little because of the cost. Now, I'm going to suck it up and get it...
I'm actually transcribing this into Roll20 starting with chapter 3. It's taking a lot of time and I'll hit up GG and ask them if they'll throw some money my way to adapt it officially. If not, let me know and we can do an under the table thing to get you set up with it Maps, dynamic lighting, roll tables, music, character pages... everything is being put into it. I mean EVERYTHING.
thank you so much for your love of this great game that has totally rubbed off on so many of us like a pox :) I have been stuck in GrayHawk basically 40 years now i started playing in around 1980 as a kid, played for about 10 years. Then i had my own kids and i took them on a few adventures but they never loved the game like i did, it was a different era. And i forgot ..... a few years ago i found my D&D stash and wow i have some treasures lol at least to me. Grayhawk drew me in again, i have been running games and pretty much use 1e rules. Recently i found you and others like the greycast podcast guys, so many of us appreciate you guys keeping the torches lit all this time.
I have the Lost City and The Isle of Dread from them and I really enjoy them a lot. The Lost City is especially great, with the details of the city provided. Whatever version you use, you just change out monsters and how the traps work.
Im doing a solo run of this module but using DCC as my game of choice. Just got captured by the bandits in the moathouse so its not going so hot so far.
I don't see the conflict with the stairs. The stairs from 148 go down to the standard depth of level 2 and run into the set of inoperable doors at the north end of the Air Temple. They look to line up on the maps to me. I'm curious if the address one of the errors that has always intrigued me, in the text for area 307 there is a mention of a branched staff in area 427 that can be used to control the leucrotta. Well, there is no branch staff there, or anywhere else I can find. It makes me think of the tentacle rods of the drow, and I wonder if this was another tidbit that slipped through from an earlier conception. Is that addressed in the corrections?
Entirely correct. The issue is that the map is poorly drawn for level 2, and it does not make it clear that the stairs do not connect room 210 to the hallway 227, but from room 210 to room 148 (the hallway south of the earth temple) on the above level, as the text to room (hallway) 148 fortunately makes (sort-of) clear. But further clouding the issue is the problem that the text for room 210 (the octagonal room, or air temple) indicates that the stairs in question do connect to a room on level 1, but says it's the Earth Temple, room 145. This poor drawing and typo combined confused so many people. ...smh... Anyway, this could have been easily solved by drawing at least the northern two squares as half filled on top, and drawing the stairs showing the up and down directions. Which is a mistake made several times in the hand drawn pre-production map they ended up using for some reason. I wish they had hired someone like the person or people that did the original Ravenloft module's cartography. It made a complex area simple to understand.
There is no branched staff in the original module T1-4. It was mentioned in that room description but does not appear anywhere else in the module. Searching using OCR finds several staffs, but none matching that description at all.
The reference to the Branched Staff is apparently a carryover from the first draft in which Lolth was the trapped demon and the ‘staff’ was in fact a drow tentacle rod - that was supposedly intended to have been removed when Gygax changed the protagonist to Tzuggtmoy following Q1 (which I understand he was not happy with as a conclusion to the Giants/Drow series and not what he had planned).
@@GreyhawkGrognard That's good, takes me back to the old days. I started playing in 1994 and our DM ran a mix of 1st & 2nd edition in mostly Greyhawk. He was very serious about immersion and role play. It wasn't a light-hearted kid-friendly romp like all the WotC content seems to be these days. Even Curse of Strahd is hard to take seriously, and I prefer a serious more adult-oriented setting.
The video was pretty clear on that. But... Book 1 is the reprints of the originals and the 5e version of Hommlet, the moathouse, Nulb, and ground level of the temple. Book 2 is the 5e version of the lower temple levels and associated areas.
The Temple rises again. I was recently paging through the Goodman Games edition. Initially I did not care for, and pretty much dismissed the Prelude Encounter. The writing is kind of ham fisted and it conflicts with the original set ip in multiple ways. But. this time It clicked, not as intended, but I do think you can get some value out of it. When I've run the adventure in the past, my players have usually made trips to Verbobonc, Greenway Valley, etc. shortly after returning from the Moathouse. I think this would be a very appropriate encounter for a party returning to Hommlet at some point after the adventure has started. After the Moathouse the ToEE forces may be pissed off. Secrecy may no longer be a priority if they feel their activities have been discovered. Etc. I think the premise of the encounter works much better under these conditions. But it would need beefed up a little for a 1E game. Five brigands is a much different encounter in 1E vs 5E.
That's the Hall of Bones where a grand staircase comes down from the Ground Floor, which is blocked by the first set of magically sealed double doors, extended from the grand staircase from the ground level above. Yes?
My understanding of the 2nd level staircase. It was one of the sealed staircases that was meant to connect to the 3rd level. Going under the air temple not connecting to it. In the old Atari ToEE computer game that Co8 spent years fixing and modding, it's a hallway.
Those stairs connect room 148 (the earth temple hallway) on the 1st subterranean level to room 210 (the octagonal room) on the 2nd level. The text for room 210 makes this somewhat clear. However, the text for room 210 (the octagonal room, or air temple) on level 2 indicates that the stairs connect to room 145 (the earth temple) and not room 148 (the connecting hallway), which I believe to be incorrect based on the directions the various staircases are stated to be descending. In any event, the map is drawn very poorly and needed a cartographer like the one that did the Ravenloft module to clean it up in many places.
I just got mine thinking it was a DCC conversion but it turned out unfortunately that it was a 5E conversion, I tried to alleviate my disappointment telling myself that it got the original adventure and I play OSR systems and AD&D. I sold it to a friend fortunately, but the quality of the book is so good that I'm now second guessing myself about selling it 😅
I have no idea about the video game, or how closely it sticks to the printed module (it certainly wouldn't have anything to do with the new material, since the video game came out 18 years ago...).
I was never very familiar with the original module. I actually owned ToEE, though I'm not sure where I got it from (someone gave it to me), but it didn't have the map, and I ended up just selling it. I never ran it, and never played in it. I bought the GG boxed set for two reasons - one, I was mostly just curious about the module itself, since it does have so much lore around it, and two; I just like supporting these kinds of endeavors. I don't own the other modules in this line, but this one seemed like a good foray into that. My thoughts on it are that the boxed set is very high quality. My main complaint is that I wished the original reprint was in a separate book. Like, the anthology stuff could be in a separate, small book, and then the original modules in a separate book (or two), and then the 5th edition rewrite in its own book. As it is, if I actually ran this, I have to bring out two ginormous books. That's pretty unwieldy. I'd also be very keen to know how runnable this thing actually is. I've heard anecdotal evidence that the module itself just isn't very good. At face value, it just seems like an enormous dungeon crawl, but it looks like getting the party even interested in doing that would be difficult. Gygax was famously flippant about providing character motivation. Most of his games started off with "You find yourself at the entrance to a dungeon", and then it was just full on dungeon-crawl from there. The Village of Hommlet piece seems pretty sparse in terms of character motivation. Obviously, there's a bunch of junk in there I absolutely do not need (like where the baker keeps their coin stash). So, it seems like to run it, I'd have to bake in a bunch of character hooks to get them interested in actually digging into the story, otherwise getting them invested in it might be a bit of a stretch. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
My plan, since I'm starting to run this Tuesday, would be to look at some of the starting stuff from the computer game. I intend to adapt the opening vignettes into quick scenarios, maybe even divide the party by alignment so the party has reason to BE a party, as a way to get a few motivations going
Yay, loved that game! Grayhawk was a very good world for these games. Was very challenging and interesting. A 10th level assassin was sent against us because of our groups interference! Evil is not stupid and made things difficult. We died somewhere deep in the temple levels, don't remember where, but it was fun and i don't think we could have defeated a Demi- God anyway! I ran it as a DM, the group died, a played the computer game and it was difficult but fun. I also liked the quests you can do in Homlet, made it more real world!
They interviewed anyone except Frank. What a disappointment.
I didn't realize that when I first glanced through it.
Getting it on saturday. Very excited about it. Have all the Goodman Modules (1-5) in my shelves and each and everyone was quite impressive sofar.
Hope you enjoy your copy!
The awesome and unwieldy ToEE, a definite favourite of mine! The Greater Temple on the 4th level always captivated my imagination. I picture it being (grudgingly) shared by the 4 Elemental Temples to perform dark rituals and summon monsters to populate their respective Elemental Nodes, marching them from the Elemental Plane portal to the Elemental Node portal. Such seeds right there for sinister goings on by the 4 priesthoods in the wider world! Perhaps they must gather sacrificial victims for their dark rituals, perhaps they have plans to release their summoned elemental monsters against their enemies, and always they must outshine the other Factions. ToEE is no longer a place I expect my party to clear room by room and floor by floor but rather a place for selective quests to get in and get out!
OMG, Your Queen of the Spiders Module I'm beyond Jealous. That Book is like 900 Bucks on Amazon. What's it like to own a copy? Feel It, Touch It, Hold It.? Not a Chick, but that Book, LOL 👽👽👻😉
Thanks for the review. I've recently ended running the original ToEE for my group, and knowing that this version has Nulb and the Nodes fleshed out is great. As for the stairs conflict, I don't see any conflict and agree with Scott's take on the subject. Looking forward to a more in depth review on the modules.
As I have replied to a couple of comments here as well, there is no actual issue with that staircase, only the poorly hand drawn map they used for the original module confusing people.
Those stairs connect room 148 (the earth temple hallway) on the 1st subterranean level to room 210 (the octagonal room/air temple) on the 2nd level.
The poor drawing doesn't make it at all clear that the stairs do not connect in any way to the 2nd level hallway numbered 227. But it sure looks like it does, doesn't it? It's confused so many people.
In any event, the text for room 148 (in the original T1-4) makes this sort-of clear. But further clouding the issue is the problem that the text for room 210 (in the original T1-4) indicates that the stairs in question do connect to a room on level 1, but says it's the Earth Temple, room 145, which I believe to be incorrect. Because the description of area 7 on the surface level indicates that the great staircase there descends down to the north, which would require that it connect to the earth temple (room 145), leaving the stairs descending south from room (hallway) 148 to connect to room 210 (which is described as the octagonal room or the air temple).
...
whew
...
Confusing, I know.
Anyway, they needed a cartographer like the one that did the Ravenloft module to make tiny adjustments and clean it up in many places. Whoever did Ravenloft took a very complex area and made it simple to understand how it fit together. Whoever thought they should use Gygax's hand drawn maps was not a good editor.
Great discussion, as always. My head canon is that Lareth, being a Lolth priest, made the elemental eye symbol mistake in-character and that's why he and his men have the wrong symbol. :)
I got Into the Borderlands when it came out but none of the others. I'm now collecting the books I haven't gotten. I wondered about this one and balked a little because of the cost. Now, I'm going to suck it up and get it...
I'm actually transcribing this into Roll20 starting with chapter 3. It's taking a lot of time and I'll hit up GG and ask them if they'll throw some money my way to adapt it officially. If not, let me know and we can do an under the table thing to get you set up with it
Maps, dynamic lighting, roll tables, music, character pages... everything is being put into it. I mean EVERYTHING.
thank you so much for your love of this great game that has totally rubbed off on so many of us like a pox :) I have been stuck in GrayHawk basically 40 years now i started playing in around 1980 as a kid, played for about 10 years. Then i had my own kids and i took them on a few adventures but they never loved the game like i did, it was a different era. And i forgot ..... a few years ago i found my D&D stash and wow i have some treasures lol at least to me. Grayhawk drew me in again, i have been running games and pretty much use 1e rules. Recently i found you and others like the greycast podcast guys, so many of us appreciate you guys keeping the torches lit all this time.
I got it myself, mostly because we believe that Homlet is the eternal city existing on every plane. 😁
I have the Lost City and The Isle of Dread from them and I really enjoy them a lot. The Lost City is especially great, with the details of the city provided. Whatever version you use, you just change out monsters and how the traps work.
I have only purchased Into the Borderlands and The Isle of Dread, but I find them of excellent quality.
@@Jeff-cn9up I've become a big fan of Goodman Games. DCC is amazing and all their products I've purchased have been well done and high quality.
Im doing a solo run of this module but using DCC as my game of choice. Just got captured by the bandits in the moathouse so its not going so hot so far.
I kept book 1 and sold book 2 to someone wanting to play the Temple in 5e.
Who got the slipcase?
@@GreyhawkGrognard I kept it. 😁
Weighs in at 8.5 lbs, there was an unboxing video where they weighed it, so that is the only reason I know.
Had no idea you were behind Journey to Hommlet lol I bought that one and love it.
Bought it? I hope you mean "got it for free on the blog", because it's a free download.
@@GreyhawkGrognard oh is it? I don't remember I know I just have it haha
I don't see the conflict with the stairs. The stairs from 148 go down to the standard depth of level 2 and run into the set of inoperable doors at the north end of the Air Temple. They look to line up on the maps to me. I'm curious if the address one of the errors that has always intrigued me, in the text for area 307 there is a mention of a branched staff in area 427 that can be used to control the leucrotta. Well, there is no branch staff there, or anywhere else I can find. It makes me think of the tentacle rods of the drow, and I wonder if this was another tidbit that slipped through from an earlier conception. Is that addressed in the corrections?
Entirely correct. The issue is that the map is poorly drawn for level 2, and it does not make it clear that the stairs do not connect room 210 to the hallway 227, but from room 210 to room 148 (the hallway south of the earth temple) on the above level, as the text to room (hallway) 148 fortunately makes (sort-of) clear. But further clouding the issue is the problem that the text for room 210 (the octagonal room, or air temple) indicates that the stairs in question do connect to a room on level 1, but says it's the Earth Temple, room 145.
This poor drawing and typo combined confused so many people.
...smh...
Anyway, this could have been easily solved by drawing at least the northern two squares as half filled on top, and drawing the stairs showing the up and down directions. Which is a mistake made several times in the hand drawn pre-production map they ended up using for some reason.
I wish they had hired someone like the person or people that did the original Ravenloft module's cartography. It made a complex area simple to understand.
There is no branched staff in the original module T1-4. It was mentioned in that room description but does not appear anywhere else in the module. Searching using OCR finds several staffs, but none matching that description at all.
The reference to the Branched Staff is apparently a carryover from the first draft in which Lolth was the trapped demon and the ‘staff’ was in fact a drow tentacle rod - that was supposedly intended to have been removed when Gygax changed the protagonist to Tzuggtmoy following Q1 (which I understand he was not happy with as a conclusion to the Giants/Drow series and not what he had planned).
Maybe I missed it, but is this set in Greyhawk or ported to Forgotten Realms?
Nope, still Greyhawk. This isn't WotC, so they don't really promote the Realms in particular.
@@GreyhawkGrognard That's good, takes me back to the old days. I started playing in 1994 and our DM ran a mix of 1st & 2nd edition in mostly Greyhawk. He was very serious about immersion and role play. It wasn't a light-hearted kid-friendly romp like all the WotC content seems to be these days. Even Curse of Strahd is hard to take seriously, and I prefer a serious more adult-oriented setting.
Does anyone do a review of the contents of both books? Whats in book 1 and book 2? Do they reprint the original module AND the 5e version or just 5e?
The video was pretty clear on that. But...
Book 1 is the reprints of the originals and the 5e version of Hommlet, the moathouse, Nulb, and ground level of the temple.
Book 2 is the 5e version of the lower temple levels and associated areas.
@@Jeff-cn9up Thanks, Sorry I didn't get that from the vid but appreciate the clarification.
The Temple rises again. I was recently paging through the Goodman Games edition. Initially I did not care for, and pretty much dismissed the Prelude Encounter. The writing is kind of ham fisted and it conflicts with the original set ip in multiple ways. But. this time It clicked, not as intended, but I do think you can get some value out of it. When I've run the adventure in the past, my players have usually made trips to Verbobonc, Greenway Valley, etc. shortly after returning from the Moathouse. I think this would be a very appropriate encounter for a party returning to Hommlet at some point after the adventure has started. After the Moathouse the ToEE forces may be pissed off. Secrecy may no longer be a priority if they feel their activities have been discovered. Etc. I think the premise of the encounter works much better under these conditions. But it would need beefed up a little for a 1E game. Five brigands is a much different encounter in 1E vs 5E.
You should do an extended review video of it after you've dove deeper into those tomes.
I third it!
Yes and please!
I'll add my request with these gentlemen below as well, sir!
Just saw this at my local game store, and thought it looked awesome.
I have the caves of chaos one, and it has almost too much stuff. 😅
Excellent review, GG!
That's the Hall of Bones where a grand staircase comes down from the Ground Floor, which is blocked by the first set of magically sealed double doors, extended from the grand staircase from the ground level above. Yes?
Extremely Awesome & Amazing Elemental Evil First Impressions Video by you Sir. Very Articulate & Detailed you are.....👽👽👻😉
About 20 years ago I took my T 1-4 paper mods and made a PDF out of them.
My understanding of the 2nd level staircase.
It was one of the sealed staircases that was meant to connect to the 3rd level.
Going under the air temple not connecting to it.
In the old Atari ToEE computer game that Co8 spent years fixing and modding, it's a hallway.
But looking at the map that makes no sense. There's clearly a set of the same double-doors in the north leading to the octagonal chamber.
As you stated, that particular piece of the map is buggered.
It's up to the DM to correct it for themselves.
Those stairs connect room 148 (the earth temple hallway) on the 1st subterranean level to room 210 (the octagonal room) on the 2nd level.
The text for room 210 makes this somewhat clear. However, the text for room 210 (the octagonal room, or air temple) on level 2 indicates that the stairs connect to room 145 (the earth temple) and not room 148 (the connecting hallway), which I believe to be incorrect based on the directions the various staircases are stated to be descending.
In any event, the map is drawn very poorly and needed a cartographer like the one that did the Ravenloft module to clean it up in many places.
@@Jeff-cn9up ohhhh... it connects to the first floor not the third.
It's been so long I had it ass backwards.
Thanks for the correction.
I have adventures 1-3,5-6. I’d been trying to get my hands on 4, but I don’t think it’ll ever happen with how much they’re going for used now.
I just got mine thinking it was a DCC conversion but it turned out unfortunately that it was a 5E conversion, I tried to alleviate my disappointment telling myself that it got the original adventure and I play OSR systems and AD&D. I sold it to a friend fortunately, but the quality of the book is so good that I'm now second guessing myself about selling it 😅
Got it. Had the original two as well. Goodman makes some nice stuff. Great work on your channel, please keep it up.
Are there spoilers in this video? I don’t want to listen to videos that give away the plot until I’ve played the video game of TOEE.
I have no idea about the video game, or how closely it sticks to the printed module (it certainly wouldn't have anything to do with the new material, since the video game came out 18 years ago...).
Technically there are a few spoilers, yes.
The game is a very faithful recreation of the module.
Just got mine this weekend. I was running it in 3.5E, then 4E (ugh) and now in 5E.
Does the 5e conversion feel faithful? I'm thinking of getting it to then convert it to pf2e.
It's hard to make a comprehensive statement one way or the other, but based on their previous effort I'd say it would be a valid assumption.
Havent looked at it myself, but my room mate said if anything it was too faithful, not really updating anything at all.
Ordered mine. Gonna run it with some stuff from princes of the Apocalypse mixed in along with some cool new elementals from kobold
Thanks for reviewing this. Its hard to find reviews of third party d&d content.
I like that Nulb got fleshed out more.
thanks for T0!
I was never very familiar with the original module. I actually owned ToEE, though I'm not sure where I got it from (someone gave it to me), but it didn't have the map, and I ended up just selling it. I never ran it, and never played in it. I bought the GG boxed set for two reasons - one, I was mostly just curious about the module itself, since it does have so much lore around it, and two; I just like supporting these kinds of endeavors. I don't own the other modules in this line, but this one seemed like a good foray into that.
My thoughts on it are that the boxed set is very high quality. My main complaint is that I wished the original reprint was in a separate book. Like, the anthology stuff could be in a separate, small book, and then the original modules in a separate book (or two), and then the 5th edition rewrite in its own book. As it is, if I actually ran this, I have to bring out two ginormous books. That's pretty unwieldy.
I'd also be very keen to know how runnable this thing actually is. I've heard anecdotal evidence that the module itself just isn't very good. At face value, it just seems like an enormous dungeon crawl, but it looks like getting the party even interested in doing that would be difficult. Gygax was famously flippant about providing character motivation. Most of his games started off with "You find yourself at the entrance to a dungeon", and then it was just full on dungeon-crawl from there. The Village of Hommlet piece seems pretty sparse in terms of character motivation. Obviously, there's a bunch of junk in there I absolutely do not need (like where the baker keeps their coin stash). So, it seems like to run it, I'd have to bake in a bunch of character hooks to get them interested in actually digging into the story, otherwise getting them invested in it might be a bit of a stretch. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
My plan, since I'm starting to run this Tuesday, would be to look at some of the starting stuff from the computer game. I intend to adapt the opening vignettes into quick scenarios, maybe even divide the party by alignment so the party has reason to BE a party, as a way to get a few motivations going
As always, the surest way to ruin a classic module is to convert it to 5e. Such a shame they don't do expanded material in 1e.
Convert the expanded 5e material back to 1e? Should be do-able...
@@antonymcewan9987 That's probably what I would end up doing.
Yay, loved that game! Grayhawk was a very good world for these games. Was very challenging and interesting. A 10th level assassin was sent against us because of our groups interference! Evil is not stupid and made things difficult. We died somewhere deep in the temple levels, don't remember where, but it was fun and i don't think we could have defeated a Demi- God anyway! I ran it as a DM, the group died, a played the computer game and it was difficult but fun. I also liked the quests you can do in Homlet, made it more real world!