RPG Retro Review: T1-T4 Temple of Elemental Evil 

Yes Gary Gygax play tested some of his material for this module on our group of players. I was there back in the day in Lake Geneva. First met Gary playing WW2 naval miniatures at Parks college on the gym floor. Had no idea D&D was even a game until he invited a bunch of us to try it out. Then we got hooked. Have been playing it ever since.

For those who are planning to work with the 1st edition AD&D version of the module and might want to include the elemental princes, statistics for them can be found on pages 31-33 of the Fiend Folio (also 1st edition, naturally).

If you ask me, the Zuggtmoy angle makes a lot of sense. Because no one would follow her church of fungi, at least not in numbers to go against her hated rival Lolth, Zuggtmoy needed to trick people into worshipping her and thus giving her the power she needed. This is why no one knows it’s her running things, and explains why there isn’t much actual element stuff in the temple. It is also a nice twist; everyone expected it to be some elemental power, but instead it was something no one expected. If she had not have been trapped ten years prior, Zuggtmoy would be well on her way to having the power to take on Lolth. Iuz would intervene to his own ends, of course, but only so much as to keep them fighting so neither of them would win the fight, this giving him what he wanted, a nice buffer to keep Lolth from getting too powerful.

So in your version, the 4 cults work together? I like the Troika version, where you can work with cults, against the other cults.

There's a half orc that had a small collection of exotic weapons in his room. 1 of those weapons was a double slotted light crossbow. I loved that weapon & used it with an Urdunnir fighter that i created back in 2e. He specialized in it & solely used it within point blank range to cause double damage on top of the damage of 2 bolts hitting. My favorite tactic was hiding in a stone or earthen wall & partially coming out to fire it, then retreating back into the earth/ stone to reload in safety. Then move to a different spot to do it again to baffle the opponents as to where he will emerge from

Leaving a "like" now to watch it later!

I was the dm for this game for our group back in 1985. The game is best played with an evil party. They can interact with the monsters and learn all the subplots as is. The evil party must gain dominance over the monsters and learn how to use the golden skull as there personal tool. Once dominance is obtained they have an evil home base for other campaigns.

t1-t4 temple of elemental evil was a mess inside. but that cover 😲😲😲😲. amazing! wow. a rating of 16 for a module that you totally rewrote. you're a much, much more generous judge than i am.

We didn't have the temple module after doing hommlet so instead i sent the group to keep on the borderlands chasing routes servants of lareth, ending up changing cult of chaos into another outpost for the temple. I made 3 or 4 more adventures about temple outposts and plots so by the time we finally got the module for the Temple of Elemental evil....our expectations were kinda different than what it was. In the end I ended up changing it's plot to be tied into the D drow modules (which we ended up playing next) ...since lareth had been a cleric of Lloth the plot got changed to where while Zugtmoy was still present (albeit made weaker) the whole operation was a scheme of lloth and the drow. All of the large monsters like the giants and trolls and ogre has been smuggled in from the lower levels where I added a passage to the under dark; they would serve as the first wave of troops to assail the surface before the drow themselves marched forth. The elemental cults I kept mostly as is but gave them a purpose; by regular sacrifices and gather "Elemental Power", they were going to cast an unthinkable high level spell that would unleash a curse for miles around the temple, a magic magical haze that diminished the light of the sun so that the drow wouldn't fear its light. Only the high priest were in on this real scheme, going along with it as they were promised to have high ranking positions in the new drow surface kingdom, generalship over all the ogre and trolls and soldiers they'd gathered.

What? A fungus cult wouldn't be as popular? But I have heard that in at least one alternate universe, the entire galaxy has a 'mycelial network' running through it, that allows instantaneous transport from one place to another through..... well, magic I suppose, so maybe Zuggotmoy just moved there when her plan here failed? ^_^

You been hatin on Zuggtmoy! I think you in leagues with Lolth!

Yall better jump on this, the Captain has unleashed the Grand daddy. Thanks Cap!!

I love your intro music. It really sets the tone. Makes me nostalgic for those sleepy days of table top gaming. As always great review.

For the PC experience, you must look up Temple+. I've been through the TOEE many times and its just as fun every time as it was the last.

I really like your take on the temple of elemental evil, combining both the old-school and 5th edition modules and I'd love to see more videos combining the classics with their modern iterations, it's a great source of inspirations for new DMs such as myself.

In 2080, 80s modules wil become aincient.

seeing as how you pretty much rewrote the module to make it playable, I think your rating is much too high.

Dungeos & Dragins online has the Temple of Elemental Evil, and Goodmen Game also has a retro of this 1st e and in 5e.

Modding this is daunting too - just so much content. I like the Tharizdun replacement, makes a lot more sense.

Props for having a spoiler alert on a 35+ year old module!👻😁

Anyone who is a fan of Burzum should know that Det Som engang var albums cover is from The Temple of Elemental Evil.

Did not know about Keith Parkinson...

Well-done. Thank-you for doing this.

Later inspired the most underrated dungeons and dragons CRPG. More people played the dark Sun games.

hi capt-c...I watched this video twice now over the past couple weeks, and I know i have seen it before because I have watched your videos for a few years. I bought this book between viewings. Of course the main reason is because I wanted a good copy of Village of Hommlet, and I thought maybe I could get more value if I got this rather than the original Hommlet. Maybe I should be a little embarrassed, but I never really liked "mega-dungeons" as a player, and certainly not as a DM. Plus, I don't like pre-made plots, but sandboxes. So, I really liked your idea of using that map from the 4e dungeon, and it so happens I have all of those dungeons including the Shadowfell one (and that is plenty big for me)!! So I think using that map for what's behind that door to be enough!!!! Plus, now it don't need to have weird groups of monsters in there: bugbears, trolls, and other things that woudl probably kill each other in such close quarters. First, I would set up Hommlet (or some other town) as the homebase with a sandbox around it, and this crazy Temple would be maybe one adventure site that the characters could visit. Maybe that magic seal could keep them out until they do quests around the area and eventually find a special key or scroll that could open it. Then that could be the culmination of the sandbox. Meanwhile there would be rumors and occurrences that build up the hooks around it. Turns out there is a something in there causing all of it, and the characters job is to stop it to save their people in Hommlet. I think this would be a more appealing way for me to run a game than to make players slog through levels upon levels of "why is this monster here?" You gave me some good ideas that I could warp to suit my way of doing things. So, that makes the overall rating of this video..."Wowie!" PS...Maybe we just make that "something" just a bunch of pirates in the basement who have a smuggling operation going for an ultimate climax! Wicked plot twist...you were not in Hommlet, but Saltmarsh all along! Suckers!!!! WOOOOOOOOH!!!!

Thank you. Your adjustment was very interesting.

I don't see myself running this in the future

Leave a like if you were TPK'd by Imix, like my party was :sadface:

And now this has been fairly recently announced for Goodman Games's next module to get the reincarnated treatment. owo

Re Zuggtmoy as villain, misdirection in the module title was a thing back then, y'know. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks requires very little skill at mountaineering, for example. Half our party had brought skis and winter survival gear when I went through it the first time, and we would have brought sled dogs if we'd been able to find someone to sell us any. Pity we didn't in hindsight - they would have been great for distracting that bloody froghemoth.

Subbed. Quality content wow

Hi Captain! Huge fan! Thank you for all the awesome videos. This module has given me headaches for years, so I really loved your take on modifying it. I have never read the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, but I was wondering if I ran Temple of Elemental Evil with your modifications, would I still be able to connect it to the Tharizdun module?

Seriously? Presentation is like a 7. Maybe. That POS takes GOBS of work to run and then we end up changing most of it because our players will start to think it's stupid...because it is. Rappan Athuk is 10x's easier to run and it's way more complex. ToEE was obviously done to get a much needed cash infusion due to the ineptness at the top of TSR at the time. Hats off to Frank Mentzer for sifting through a cocaine addicts crazy notes and at least coming up with something.

Jon's Vlog is pretty cool. I think I've watched most of his. I DM'd just a very little bit in the 80s but have been DM'ing mostly over the last couple of years or so. I try to incorporate as much old-school-ology into the game as I can but I still need to get some of those modules from the 80s that were so much fun.

Yea it took us a whole year to get through the adventure

Hey Capt! Have you seen the Goodman Games ToEE for 5e? And if so, do you think it's worth it to get that one, even if you already own the old AD&D version?

Jon's RU-vid channel contains no videos, sadly. www.youtube.com/@JonsDDVlog

TOEE one of my personal favorites. Along with the Slavers, and Giants/Descent/Vault/Queen arcs. The older TOEE single player video game is really good also. DDO translated it into the MMO format. Did a pretty decent job with it also. Despite the inevitable mmo grinding in it.

Best channel on RU-vid

Your re-write is epic. Well done.

Zuggtmoy can have her own dungeon. Something which has been at the back of the mind for years. By the way, I used to pronounce it "Zoogtmoy" (short "oo" as in book) whereas it's apparently "Zugget-moy" ("nugget"). Whatever floats in your moat. I like the re-working of the Temple very much. Well done, Captcorajus!

I’m impressed with the way you’ve drawn from all sorts of additions and adventures to build on this! I’m also sorry to report that John’s Vlog no longer seems functioning-is there another resource you would suggest for a similar walkthrough?

You might want to replace "Presentation" with "Structure".

It's sad that Jon's D&D Vlog is gone. I really wanted to watch his video on the ToEE. 😞

One of those cases in which "more" wasn't necessarily "better." A year to play? Been there, done that with the GDQ series. And, as written, this sounds like it verged in places on being a "Disneyland" dungeon, full of a menagerie of critters selected as punching bags for the players, with no strong rationale for their presence or any explanation for how they got on in relative isolation. ='[.]'=

What a great module! I played this for hours and hours - fantastic. Although I think the Elemental Nodes were too tough.

Jon’s vlog is down 😢

I have run and played TOEE many times, and each time never completed it. The last time I played, our DM literally had us choking in the Elemental Nodes for months. As soon as we had a chance to leave, we left, never bothering with the last fight because we were sick of the adventure. We did alter the course of the river to flood the lower levels via the secret tunnel in the watchtower.

As far as I can see, Jon's Vlog is out. Can't access his videos. It looks like He deleted all of them. That's sad.

I don't get why people love this module. It's a random dungeon filled with monsters with no rhyme or reason; monsters who could never coexist. None of it makes any sense

A friend of mine had this and gave to me to run. I was 13 at the time. Couldn't quite understand what was going on! Would have loved a synopsis! 😅 Would love to run it now, but that's quite a commitment

I'd like to see your notes on your temple of elemental evil campaign. It sounds like a better themed module.

I wonder how Goodman Games version, coming out in September 2021, will differ from the original version. Also their version will be in 2 books in their OAR game.

Did TSR make a Greyhawk campaign setting?

Two thumbs way up!

i'm going to follow this and do up a rewrite as well. any chance you have any notes?!

hope to run this for my home group (relatively) soon. Insights are always welcome.

Hey Cap, what about the Lendore Island modules from Len Lakofka? One of the few module designers who knew how to place an adventure "plot" into a sandbox and make it work.

How about a review of the super module Night Below…..another classic

You and John are my 2 favorite old-school rpg channels. Didn't John stop and sell all his stuff now?

We needed 3 months (playing 1-2 times a week, studenttime was grerat) and I modified it too. The Orb of Golden Death (and it s different owners) was a recurrent part of our 10+ years campaign - a great module!

Ok, Jon's Vlog is no more... anyone have a link to a good playthrough that can stand in for the missing Vlog?

Read through the module, much needed adjustments. The original monsters don’t make sense to the theme, especially the mold goddess. Great review.

This Module drops very nicely into the Midderlands Setting. The Green Gloom is a very nice addition to the dungeon.

I do like the idea of Elemental power levels that make sense. I have incorporated similar ideas in other adventures.

I just started it playing, heard that sweet sweet R&B organ bass drums groove and it's time for another awesome review by the Captain! Old School Rocks!!!

Did you ever do a review of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil?

A shame you're starting up your Patreon just as I'm dramatically cutting back my funding of Patreon projects due to their censorship and political bias (specifically re: Sargon of Akkad). If you ever get a bitcoin address or some other cryptocurrency let us know and I may throw you a few bucks.

could you do videos like these on 5e books?

Ahh the memories and strong feelings of nostalgia of 1990/1 come flooding back with this campaign. It took our group almost 2 years to complete this campaign, with regular weekly sessions. It is a monster of a campaign, a massive dungeon crawl that if played carefully, will give your group many many sessions of pure awesome D&D delight. I recall losing my character on the first level when we made the tragic mistake of splitting the party. My character failed his morale check [can't recall why?] and ran from the melee the party was in, sprinting off down a hallway only to run into some Leucrotta which proceeded to turn him into a dog chew toy :( Still, my next character had far better stats [got lucky with the rolls during creation] and was just that bit more effective despite being at least 2 levels behind everyone else. I really like your concept of repurposing the module and it makes more sense. Once you do this then 4 dungeon levels, while being great fun, if somewhat a bit grindy, make not much sense thematically and so changing it up gives the dungeon a more authentic feel Thanks again :).

Do you have a video covering Against the Slave Lords?

One of the best for sure!

Thanks for doing TOEE ! I've loved this massive adventure since I bought new off the shelves back in the 80s. I've run it many times and I have never had a party actually finish it. Several have come close but ended in TPKs. Great fun for a DM... not as much for the players. Your suggestions are great and I'll incorporate them into my next attempt to run Temple in 5e. Keep up the good work!

Good review. I like your modifications. Good job making them clear for us.

No one does what you do. You have found a great niche!

I love toee it's my favorite to run followed by castle ravenloft

jon's vlog doesnt have any videos anymore -_-

Have you considered covering the Battle System, infantry combat system?

You forgot to mention the NPC’s that the party can meet in the dungeon, Darley, Taki, etc. Also, the legendary sword Fragarach can be found as loot.

I'm new to d&d. I've bought the starter set, core rule books and Yawning portal Module compilation. I'm interested in eventually running this classic but im wondering how much of a headache this may be to tweak into 5e rules. ..

These "monster zoo" style dungeons didn't inspire me, so I didn't buy this at the time despite the much-anticipated title. I guess it's true to the 1970's style of early D&D dungeon crawl, and would interest people with nostalgia for that? It's interesting to learn what was in it, all these years later. ;D

God I love these retro reviews ☺ 🇮🇪

Thanks for the amazing content

Jon's vlog is gone

I am glad you give us some ideas, please keep doing that! I never DMed or played Temple because my group had already moved away from straight AD&D toward our own system by 1984 (it borrowed mainly from AD&D, Palladium, and Simon's Necronomicon) and our taste for dungeon crawls was gone by then. If I were to do so, the main thing I would try to get away from is the huge "dungeon crawl" by putting the levels of the temple in separate locations so they could be more like a bunch of related "one-shot-like" mini-quests that lead to completing the big quest. Maybe add a quest giver -- like an scholarly NPC who is trying to prevent something evil from happening and might require the party to gain information (e.g., by finding him books, communicating with people or ghosts, etc.) the would lead them to the other places to root out evil things (i.e., the dungeon levels in the published module would not be accessed simply by walking down the stairs from the one above, but found in different locations on the world map). So there would be travel, exploration & research required, rather than just go in to one convenient location with all the levels laid out and no real monster ecology. I am not convinced by the flow of going down another level and there you are in the cult lair, another level you get something else, etc. That just sounds like too rough of a neighborhood for any of the monsters to survive. Thanks captain!!! :D

Great video! I really like how you modified the adventure using RttToEE and PotA to give it a more consistent feeling. Say, you wouldn't have your conversion notes in a handy document, would you? 😉

Wow! Bravo! Great stuff!

aww yiss. weekend secured!

These ratings for the adventure seems excessively high for the critique that calls for them, when so much of the adventure fails to deliver proper coherence. Though I'm also a person who finds it an incredible overstatement to place the adventure (as written, without DM changes) as one of the greatest adventures ever. Regardless of that though, here is my take on your changes: Getting rid of Zuggtmoy entirely from the narrative doesn't seem necessary: The plot outlined by your editing is epic in scale and makes far more thematic sense, but is also almost identical to the narrative of "Princes of Apocalypse" with the addition of an extra contextualizing, threat at the end, explaining why the temple exists in the state that it does at all. However, with this narrative structure being like this, it finds itself being a somewhat predictable story that easily could lose Player-and/or-DM-Engagement over time. Zuggtmoy's presence in the adventure is an interesting surprise for Players to come upon, and I'd say that it is the real quality-factor of the adventure as it was written. Subverting expectations is a strong way to make an adventure memorable. I, however, don't think that Zuggtmoy's presence has been handled correctly by the adventure, nor by what came afterward. Making a Demonlord a puppet figure is an awful move, unless due to a different Demonlord. No, I'd personally keep Zuggtmoy in the adventure, and point people toward the note at the end of "Princes of the Apocalypse" noting that the Elemental Eye has other allies; which is a reference to the later adventure "Out of the Abyss," as Tharizdûn was the creator of that horrid place (as described in the "Demonomicon"). Zuggtmoy's presence in the adventure, I think, should be tied to Tharizdûn's connections to demons. Either by having her be an agent of the Elemental Eye, or perhaps even better, have her be in the temple due to trying to combat the presence of another aspect of Tharizdûn; Juiblex the Faceless Lord, the Demonlord of Oozes, and known to be Zuggtmoy's greatest enemy. The cult and temple of Elemental Evil could in truth be a "less horrid" front for a cult of Juiblex, at the bottom of the temple. A cult aware of Tharizdûn's ties to both Juiblex and the Elemental Eye. Zuggtmoy being sealed away would in this case simply be her having temporarily failed in her invasion of her enemy's stronghold, having been sealed away by the cult itself. This, in turn, could result in particularly wacky D&D-groups trying to perform the insane act of allying themselves with Zuggtmoy against the cult.

Could you do a review of Escape from the Meenlock Prison? That was a favorite creepy adventure for me.

Love the idea for a modified version. Do you by chance happen to sell copies of such anywhere?

Greyhawk got a mention!!! take a drink

New cap!

There is no Beholder on level 3

The CRPG of this adventure is pretty good - it isn't perfect, there are a host of bugs, like if you kill an enemy wizard while you're inside his globe of invulnerability, the effect remains on you and potions no longer work, etc. But I probably played through that game 4-5 times. The endgame was changed up to make it more video gamey, too. I ran Return to the TOEE, and I had a similar problem with huge blocks of test revealing an obscure important piece of information that I needed to help bring a map area together.

This was Great! I'd been wanting to run TOEE for years. Started playing in '79 but missed out on this one BITD. I bought the Goodman Games conversion to 5e and thought I'd run our group through it. Enter Shadowdark and my long burning fuse on OSR finally exploded. Now ironically I'm using the Goodman Games books not for the 5e conversion, but for the way they've cleaned up, organized and expanded the content. I read the 5e text for the improved organization and we play using essentially the 1e stat blocks. As you commented, there are decades of reflection on this module out there on the interwebs and I've been watching and reading tons of it. After weeks of consuming this content I can say that, Very Broadly there seems to be consensus that 1) ToEE is great but 2) it really takes work to make it sing. And while there are ideas out there for how to do that, none that I've come across come as close to what you've described here to my own thoughts on the matter. The modifications you describe are remarkably close to what I've been groping my way toward--but you've already thought it all the way through! I'm not going to mod completely the way you have but there were plenty of great ideas that I'm going to steal. It is really strange how little elemental evil there is in the original. I've been thinking about all the ways to play that up. And the plot as presented seems overly convoluted. The power behind the ToEE is actually a god of fungus? competing with Lolth how exactly? with help from Iuz? And the actual Elemental Evil is completely missing?? I see in the comments that some folks like this as a twist but me, not so much. Most of the cool bits will only really make sense (if you can call it "sense") to the DM. I just don't see players really "getting it" without massive monologuing from villains. Repeatedly. And then only maybe. Your mods draw forth the promise of the premise laid out in Hommlet. I have a strong preference for things to make clear sense. There is a whiff of blasphemy to say that Gygaxian style across all of his modules is eclectic to the point of absurdity, but YMMV. For me, his stuff needs reworking. In the real estate biz looking at an older house that's a solid value but needs work you might say that it has "good bones". ToEE has good bones. Gary's massive creativity gave us a hobby that can take you from childhood into old age. He always strongly encouraged making things your own. That's one of the things I love the most about old school DnD. My group is going to have an epic time with ToEE for the next 18 months. Thanks for the ideas!

Disclaimer: I love your videos, so please don't take this the wrong way. I have criticism: If you change the game too much, your players never actually played ToEE. It's like watching a movie that takes the name of a book but changes the entire plot. If your players understand that they aren't playing the actual ToEE game, then go forth and DM! I"ve ran this module in 1e, 2e twice, and 3e, but I never found the conversion challenging for some reason. I made very few adjustments to make it work. I have too much to mention in a comment, but if you DM the game correctly, this can be an extremely challenging and rewarding adventure. Run this game only if you have a group that wants to truly do an in-depth, old-school dungeon crawl.

Your rework by combining the two sources is masterful.

I gotta say this Module is an 8 for me. The version I got was expensive and I find it confusing and probably unplayable by any group I've ever been involved with. Fungus Queen?!??! Really ? I'm imaging the changes I'd have to make and I must admit it makes me tired.

I love the video game. We have done this module several times and have left a trail of dead PC's in the ruins each time. I would like to see the actual Gygax version. This is the only published module I am aware of that has things a dwarf's skills work on, like the sloping underground passage. More recently I have had a bit of apprehension when it concerns Frank Mentzer. Several well established original TSR employees have expressed doubts about his ethics and ability.