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
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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 …
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.
@@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
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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!"
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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 .
Ran through it about thirty years ago. Was better reading material than a module. Good memories of at least two TPKs. Thanks for putting these together for a trip down memory lane.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Great job with this epic two parter on this epic module. I think your coverage was detailed and actually really fair. I've talked with a few folks who tried to run this one and had very limited success. Lots of great ideas in the adventure that they ended up borrowing for home-brew dungeons though. Keep up the great work!
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.
This campaign was one of my most memorable campaigns to play. Our DM had done it before several times with different groups and had a lot of work put into it. We also played it for close to a year. Our characters reached well beyond the level cap but that was ok because the DM ramped up the challenge commensurate with out levels. If you get a chance, Against the Giants was also another set of modules that were great fun from my AD&D days.
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.
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 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 😀.
I didn't get started until after 3.5 came out, so I never ran the temple of Elemental Evil, but I did attempt to run the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil that 3.5 did. It was a lot of fun what little we played. Also Pathfinder's Mummy's Mask Adventure Path was heavily inspired by The Temple of Elemental Evil and The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and I currently have players on module 6 of 6 in that, (basically the Elemental nodes section became no longer optional to access the final portion of the dungeon).
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
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.
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.
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!
Nicely done. I wish I had this to watch before making my attempt to run TToEE. I spent a lot of time running the game for a party and most of the game play was before they even made it to the Temple. They actually pacified and took over Nulb. They ended up bypassing a lot of stuff by gaining entrance via the crumbled tower. I ended up truncating the adventure by collapsing a large part of the temple through the party's foolish actions, leaving me time to revisit the module later or with another group since I connected its story into my own world mythos. Alas, the party still has the Gold Skull in its possession, but that group ended so they will probably become unfortunate NPC's in a backstory for another group. lol
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.
Once long ago after seeing Warriors of the Wind, and Robotech: Invid Invasion I had a reconceptualization of Zugtmoy, and so I just had an idea for any DMs wondering how to work with it. Try this: 1) I don't see her as a god with a home dimension. Rather she is herself basically the hive mind of a fungal network that can consume entire planes. Her spore invasions always begin with spores of yellow mold, green, slime, and especially shriekers. And remember that there is a slime in the first room of the old moathouse dungeon. These create swamps where puddings and oozes breed. Eventually Myconids spore. Then the Myconids can essentially summon Zygtmoy not as a god gating in but rather the hive mind manifesting through the fungal network as a giant Stay Puft mushroom Kaiju. 2) As the characters adventure through T1-3 drop hints that the Temple is controlled by Iuz, an ascended evil sorceror turned god who created his own demiplane afterlife in the astral for his worhisppers. ALSO as they approach the temple begin to add more fungus related random encounters. In the town Nulb add an attack by a small force of Myconids and puddings. 3) When the characters finally bust into the last boss fight and pull the mask off the Phantom and discover it was actually...Zuggtmoy? the whole time...really? Zuggtmoty. Well yes, because: The beings of the outer planes banded together and expelled Zuggtmoy's infestation from their planes. She escaped into Iuz's demi-plane which is basically the Elemental Nodes, where SHE defeated Iuz and with him gone has now spore into the Temple and hopes to consume the Temple from within and take over the world.
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 ran it twice back in the day and played through it prior to that. In two of the three cases, the party triumphed in their expedition into the Temple.
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.
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...
I just recently run it, but we basically just took the first level of the temple as one run and that's all, once the first level was cleared that was the end. We also just recently got the game, which so far has been very fun, and we've been playing a walkthrough on my gaming channel, we are maaaaybe halfway through the whole thing.
I remember playing the videogame and somehow bumbling my way through the crumbling tower shortcut, to the skull, past the barrier and to the final boss without ever encountering any of the elemental factions or an explanation of what was happening. I was SO confused. Good times.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
Major tank, off tank healer, healer, mage, rogue...excellent party build. Alignments allow for lively party interaction even if CN to LG...(no evil)
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
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!
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.
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
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 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 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.
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.
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 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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
Recent Subscriber. I appreciate your conciseness, and production value. Your efforts deserve more attention.
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
Great series. I love your clean, and well done edits. Very descriptive and well thought out. Thank you for another great video.
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 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.
You guys know what to do, keep going with the multi-parters in the future. I cannot *wait* for undermountain~
I ran this module many years ago. Took along time and we went through alot of charactors but it is well worth the time
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.
Would I like to see more of this? ABSOLUTELY! Bring on the old school content! :D
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 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.
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!"
this is a fantastic channel and I cant wait for more releases. you have rekindled my love of running a modular game.
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.
Stumbled across your channel by accident and have almost instantly fallen in love. Great work!
Excellent video! Great deep dive into the module! Looking forward to more!
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 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.
This is THE best dungeon review I've ever watched on UA-cam. Amazing my guy. Subscribed.
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.
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.
Great study. Would love to see you do more classic D&D modules.
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.
Never played this module but I was excited when it came out. Awesome video series, loved learning all the details
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 .
Damn...this was an amazingly insightful video series. Thank you!
Thank You for bringing me back to a wonderful time in my life...That was awesome....
Ran through it about thirty years ago. Was better reading material than a module. Good memories of at least two TPKs. Thanks for putting these together for a trip down memory lane.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
Great job with this epic two parter on this epic module. I think your coverage was detailed and actually really fair. I've talked with a few folks who tried to run this one and had very limited success. Lots of great ideas in the adventure that they ended up borrowing for home-brew dungeons though. Keep up the great work!
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 love these old module deep dives, keep up the great work!
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.
Man, your channel and content is awesome! Ive been listening to your videos for days in a row, love it, good job 🤩
This campaign was one of my most memorable campaigns to play. Our DM had done it before several times with different groups and had a lot of work put into it. We also played it for close to a year. Our characters reached well beyond the level cap but that was ok because the DM ramped up the challenge commensurate with out levels. If you get a chance, Against the Giants was also another set of modules that were great fun from my AD&D days.
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.
I am running it soon with my family campaign. It's going to be interesting for sure.
Yes I want more and i just want you guys to update more frequently as well
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.
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 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 😀.
I didn't get started until after 3.5 came out, so I never ran the temple of Elemental Evil, but I did attempt to run the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil that 3.5 did. It was a lot of fun what little we played. Also Pathfinder's Mummy's Mask Adventure Path was heavily inspired by The Temple of Elemental Evil and The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and I currently have players on module 6 of 6 in that, (basically the Elemental nodes section became no longer optional to access the final portion of the dungeon).
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 ran this many years ago. The party got to the third level before we stopped. I love this module and recommend it highly.
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.
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.
Great Job!!! Totally going to recommend your channel.
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!
Nicely done. I wish I had this to watch before making my attempt to run TToEE. I spent a lot of time running the game for a party and most of the game play was before they even made it to the Temple. They actually pacified and took over Nulb. They ended up bypassing a lot of stuff by gaining entrance via the crumbled tower. I ended up truncating the adventure by collapsing a large part of the temple through the party's foolish actions, leaving me time to revisit the module later or with another group since I connected its story into my own world mythos.
Alas, the party still has the Gold Skull in its possession, but that group ended so they will probably become unfortunate NPC's in a backstory for another group. lol
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.
Once long ago after seeing Warriors of the Wind, and Robotech: Invid Invasion I had a reconceptualization of Zugtmoy, and so I just had an idea for any DMs wondering how to work with it. Try this: 1) I don't see her as a god with a home dimension. Rather she is herself basically the hive mind of a fungal network that can consume entire planes. Her spore invasions always begin with spores of yellow mold, green, slime, and especially shriekers. And remember that there is a slime in the first room of the old moathouse dungeon. These create swamps where puddings and oozes breed. Eventually Myconids spore. Then the Myconids can essentially summon Zygtmoy not as a god gating in but rather the hive mind manifesting through the fungal network as a giant Stay Puft mushroom Kaiju. 2) As the characters adventure through T1-3 drop hints that the Temple is controlled by Iuz, an ascended evil sorceror turned god who created his own demiplane afterlife in the astral for his worhisppers. ALSO as they approach the temple begin to add more fungus related random encounters. In the town Nulb add an attack by a small force of Myconids and puddings. 3) When the characters finally bust into the last boss fight and pull the mask off the Phantom and discover it was actually...Zuggtmoy? the whole time...really? Zuggtmoty. Well yes, because: The beings of the outer planes banded together and expelled Zuggtmoy's infestation from their planes. She escaped into Iuz's demi-plane which is basically the Elemental Nodes, where SHE defeated Iuz and with him gone has now spore into the Temple and hopes to consume the Temple from within and take over the world.
never ran it. kind of want to try now, yes i would like to see more content from you
Count me in on wanting you to do the rest of the mega dungeons!
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 ran it twice back in the day and played through it prior to that. In two of the three cases, the party triumphed in their expedition into the Temple.
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.
I love how clean your videos . Keep it up. I am a huge fan
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...
I just recently run it, but we basically just took the first level of the temple as one run and that's all, once the first level was cleared that was the end. We also just recently got the game, which so far has been very fun, and we've been playing a walkthrough on my gaming channel, we are maaaaybe halfway through the whole thing.
Do Night Below:an underdark campaign. That would be a good one
I remember playing the videogame and somehow bumbling my way through the crumbling tower shortcut, to the skull, past the barrier and to the final boss without ever encountering any of the elemental factions or an explanation of what was happening. I was SO confused. Good times.
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.
That Zuggetmoy twist sounds kind of cool. Lame that WotC walked back on it.
I am in a party that just did the top level of the water cult in Prince's of the Apocalypse. That was tough for a barbarian, druid, cleric and a bard.
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.
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.
Again, yes I totally wpuld love to create and take a Halfling Bard and explore all three quests!
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.
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.
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?
Yes, please do more video series like this.
Awesome channel! Any idea to make a video about old d&d settings like Birthright?
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.
Great work! Please keep making more content like this! :)
Converting this to 3.5 and running it every Sunday, for over a year, was my magnum opus as a DM.
Yea it took us a whole year to make it through this playing every wensday and the fungus lady got away it was wild
These vids are such a treat to watch!
YES KEEP MAKING VIDEOS