Temple of Elemental Evil: Recap 2.5 TPK Vengeance

Brace yourself this will be the longest recap yet for quite an exciting session.  The PC's tested their luck one time too many and death was in hot pursuit.

Large Fire Elemental by Julie Guthrie

We resumed our elemental gallivanting with all players in tow.  We picked up after the eerie green wind ghost was put to rest but before the player's could catch their breath another green glow lit the room. Fortunately this time it was their longtime companion Drake Phoenixbreath back from the dead.  His flames had become corrupted through his cycling demise at the hands of his former partner Nigel in the Fire Temples Alter.  His self-sacrifice on the Salamander altar pushed him over the edge and now his phoenix flames burned an eerie green (the player opted for a Low Essence of Hi/Lo fame which alters his personal element and Origin of Fire.).  Reunited once more the players decided what to do, princess Tilahi after hearing of her beloved Prince last seen on level 3 of this elemental hell-hole was dedicated to pressing onward rather than escaping.  With poem in hand the players thought it best they start rounding up elemental gems (in the original module the gems are all stored in nodes but throughout this campaign they have already been reclaimed or found).  They headed towards the fire temple who they knew were in possession of the fire gem and as an added bonus Nigel would be there and in possession of the Water gem which he had used to devastating effect on the party earlier.  In addition, Romaag High Priest of the Earth Temple sent them on a mission to kill two high ranking fire cultists who were stealing his followers; after he found out about the Salamander incident he instructed them to kill the High Priest of Fire Alvarnon as well.

Temple of Elemental Evil Campaign Recap 2.4

Snake sightings in every session so far.  Time to pretend these random encounters was foreshadowing all along

One of my players was running a 5k to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, and had I not been injured at the time so would I.  Fortunately, that player's character was still a pile of ash so we were able to continue the adventure with no hand-waving required.  We picked back up in the water temple passageway, the players had just achieved 5th level and were deciding what to do.  They were sent to take care of two junior fire temple priests but the way back was filled with vengeful Salamanders that neither of them wished to tussle with. 

Returning to the Temple of Elemental Evil (Campaign Recap # 2.3)

My final player made an appearance for the first time this session so we opened with his introductory scene.  Betrayed again by his one time friend Nigel, he was drowned and knocked unconscious and brought to the temple along with Bronan the Barbarian.  There they parted ways with Bronan moving to the Earth Temple and Drake moving to the Fire temple (this was based on their favored element chosen at character creation).

Drake awoke in a large entirely brass ornate goblet, big enough to fill a giant's thirst.  The chalice rested on a jet black alter in a well lit room, with saucers brimming with fire lining a red carpet walkway.  In between each pillar and flaming saucer were red robed and hooded fire cultists, their heads bowed in a slow rhythmic chant.  On either side of him were two fire archons, spirits of pure flame clad in black iron segmented armor wielding claymores poised to strike the poor sod stuck in the chalice.  Of course in front of him was none other than Nigel with a smug smile, hand crossbows at his belt as well as Drakes Whip and holding two staves.  One tipped with a blue gem that he had used previously to drown the two players, the other was the wind staff that Drake had found in his intro vignette and used to great effect on skeletons and gnolls alike throughout his career.

Remedying Action Hero Syndrome Part 3. Revelation

In this segment I'm going to talk about how I've been working with the party's Barbarian who takes great pride and pleasure in his continuing and intentional idiocy.  If you've been reading the Campaign Recaps for the Temple of Elemental Evil you may already be familiar with Bronan the Barbarian.  The surly Dwarf frequently gets himself in over his head (no pun intended) and has no expectation of getting himself pulled out of trouble.  It's not a death wish, just someone who wishes for a very comical series of hijinks.  A comedic guy myself I don't mind playing along but sometimes you need to reel them in.  I've accomplished this in two ways, a voice-of-reason scene recaps and in-game mechanics.  Disclaimer: This is and previous installments are not a one size-fits-all approach.  It merely works for me and you are welcome to use some of the philosophy behind this.

Reel em in, but don't pull so hard you break the line

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil Session Recap #2.2

Art by pungang of Deviantart

The other part of the session dealt with the continuing misadventures of Bronan the Barbarian and his crew of 'sidekicks'.  While Maxmilian was busy with the lethal tea drinking samurai Bronan and company were busy being sapped over the head repeatedly.  When the surly Dwarf refused to yield his head was encased in a bubble of water while a well dressed man with a spider silk vest and slicked back hair leveled a staff tipped with a blue gem at him and admonished his henchman in the worst British accent you can think of.

Bronan awoke beneath a rock cairn pulsating with the slow rhythmic chanting of the earth cultists surrounding him.  His joints stiffened and his skin turned rock solid and grey, eventually he passed through the stone and emerged through the other side looking not unlike a statue.  He confronted the high priest Romaag who explained that Bronan was the first successful experiment creating a durable stone soldier.  All the others, he motioned to the statues surrounding the altar, were failures.  He promised Bronan power, riches and leadership if he joined the cause and sent him on a mission to find a giant snake (twist on the conventional quest he gives) and to prove the strength of his sorceries by showing Bronan just how resilient he now was.  Thus began the wanderings of Bronan.

Returning to the Temple of Elemental Evil (Session Recap #2.1)

The first session after a long hiatus was an overwhelming success.  All in all it was good to be back in the saddle again; getting a chance to test out the numerous concepts and system changes I've made since we last played a year ago.  Character (re)creation was estimated to take 10 minutes for the group but instead approached 25 minutes.  The most time was spent selecting optional stats (as to be expected) but a surprising amount was invested in choosing a profession, a fairly minor choice that determines what you are capable of depending on your background.  Skills without a cumbersome skill system if you will.  Two portions of character creation were omitted, they would easily take the most time to decide so I planned on introducing them later.  Better to get a stable test bed on the foundations before adding in additional variables.  Other than that the system was swift and simple, players acclimated to it quickly and it still had enough nuances to keep things interesting rather than overly-simplistic.  I mentioned to them at the end that in the spirit of hard core OD&D we would be eschewing class features.  If you want to be a spy then lie, cheat deceive, subvert, conceal and double cross, your barbarian should be brash, insulting, table flipping mug spilling, machismo roughneck with a penchant for blood boiling rages.  Pull that off and you'll see something resembling class features.

Rewarding Roleplaying

My players have never been big on roleplaying and that's fine.  But I think there is a bare minimum required to separate the game from "Kill monsters, Get money."  That's a bit of an inflammatory statement, there's nothing wrong with kicking down doors, killing orcs and taking their pies.  For me it's one of the most fun parts of the game.  However, the game is more than that, and aside from 1, maybe 2 players most of them don't try to branch out past that giving a chilling effect towards newer players.  That's beginning to change and I'm very happy as a DM to design something more than an exciting combat.

Here's what I've been doing.  In this particular campaign I had each player play through an opening vignette that established their motivations and the reasons for how they ended up in Hommlet.  This was the first session for the player's present.  During these vignettes I took notes on the players actions and the mindset behind them.  I wrote down different character traits and jotted down a quick bit of reference for what it was referring to.  At the end of the session I had them write down these character traits and explained to them that these were based on how their character acted and were useful in developing a personality.

(I should clarify, about half my players have never developed a character personality separate from their own, I'm lucky that they even choose a name sometimes hah!)

I let them know that when they continued to exemplify these traits during play they would be rewarded with experience for each major occurrence.  Furthermore that they could earn new traits through roleplaying.  This creates a positive feedback loop, that by playing to a character personality that their actions created they would be rewarded with experience.  The more they do it the more experience they earn.  Since then, my one player who frequently falls into the trap of chaotic=sociopathic, has been my best roleplayer.  He pays close attention to his actions and does his best to make sure his actions coincide with his earlier displayed traits and has earned a few more as well.  As an example he recently added 'benevolent' to his traits as he took it upon himself to become foodclaus after being rewarded with a surplus of crop rather than traditional coin.

Here are a few traits (after the break) and the situation where they displayed them:

Class Kitting on the Fly Test Run

Last time I talked about drafting up AD&D-esque class kits on the fly to personalize your player's character.  Here is what my players came up with.  These kits are applied to the the revised three base classes I talked about here.

After the break I'll detail the kits used for Treasure Hunter, Berserker, and Double Agent.

Temple of Elemental Evil

I completed Cugel's Saga last month and now I'm going to start Rhialto the Marvelous.  When I've finished I'm going to sit down and work on a spellcasting section and finalize the magic using class, or at least its first level.


In the meantime I've been playing the Temple of Elemental Evil through Good Old Games (GOG).  This would be my third experience with a 3.x edition computer game.  I absolutely love Icewind Dales 2 (and it's predecessor) while I loathed Ruins of Myth Drannor due to it's flagrant disregard of XP rules and from what I could tell inability to flee from combat.  As you can imagine this can be quite fatal when your 1st level party accidentally walks near an incorporeal spectre.  Since both Ruins and ToEE were both turn based I was cautiously optimistic of what to expect.

I'm playing with the Circle of 8 modpack because like all Troika games it was unbelievably buggy.  I fell prey to the secret door bug about an hour and a half in and had to start from scratch.  The modpack has a wealth of new content which is nice since the content in the main game is rather sparse to put it nicely.  Plus it allows you to accrue a fair amount of experience without dealing with the monotony and excessive backtracking in the Hommlet, lazy town people's quests.

Of course that's not really the issue here, the game is called the Temple of Elemental Evil so let's talk about the actual Temple!  My first observation was how well thought out the actual dungeon was.  Escape tunnels, plenty of secret passages, massive combats, various critters, and an easy way for PC's to impersonate temple factions.  As I was exploring the dungeon I was beginning to regret playing a super good party because it looked like there was a lot of fun in store for the more nefarious party with the all the political backstabbing going on in the clerical hierarchy of the temples depths.

I'm enjoying the game but man are low levels lethal.  I haven't gone digging through books to verify this claim but it felt like you had a much harder time not getting in hit in AD&D (a la Baldur's Gate) then you did in the 3.x world.  Of course my experience with level 1 in AD&D mostly involved heavily armored characters (and occasionally supplemented with a good dexterity) while in 3.x most games I ran had lightly armored rogues, swashbucklers, druids and Wizards.  Not exactly the most stalwart bunch so I'll chalk that up to bias.

As a final closing thought I'd really like to point out the radial menu in ToEE that basically covers almost any action your character can possibly do.  At first I found it rather frustrating but as I grew used to I find it to be very intuitive.  My one major usability gripe though is finding more information on items in your inventory.  In Baldur's Gate/Ice Wind Dale a simple right click will tell you what you need to know AND have the option to identify it on the same screen.  In ToEE you must use the radial menu to identify an object, and if you are identifying more than a few objects/scrolls/potions at a time this can get very tedious.  Furthermore, you must shift+click to get more information on an item and some items won't even allow you to do so without first identifying the item.  This is rather frustrating when all you want to do is see what type of proficiency an item requires to be wielded.

All in all I've enjoyed my time in Greyhawk and the next time I run a D&D game I'll definitely be considering running it in Hommlet.  I can definitely see a lot of ways PC's can have fun with temple politics.  My first idea occurred after I had dispatched the Head Earth Priest while reading his journal and who he regarded as an ally and an enemy.  With that kind of information it would be trivial for the PC's to dress up in two sets of robes, stage a fight and have on member run in and declare the fire temple was attacking.  The group fighting would 'hold them off' while the actual temple forces would descend to attack their unguarded base.

Should be exciting.