The Trials of The Temple of Elemental Evil 

"We don't like playing Bard so we didn't test them" had me like 😮😠

I have never been so enthralled by a kidney stone story.

"Ron Pearlman can read a phonebook and it'll be good" 😂😂😂

Don't feel bad about the reviews, the Circle of Eight mod makes the game incredibly good.

That kidney stone should have been immortalised in some kind of a CRPG museum.

I had a kidney stone that passed in a single evening and it was some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Four months is absolutely insane.

Don't be reluctant about posting negative videos, they're all fascinating! It's so frustrating after all that work put in to Temple there wasn't another D&D game made with that engine; it could have been the basis for a bunch of modules using lessons learned previously.

FOUR MONTHS

FWIW Temple is still hands down my favorite D&D computer game. Whatever its issues, it does something no other game has. It captures the feel of those early Gygax Greyhawk modules that I grew up with. And it meets the only important criteria for any game. It's fun to play.

For what it's worth, Temple of Elemental Evil is my favorite D&D based CRPG of all time. Thank you for the work you did on it.

I love ToEE. I know it's not perfect, but it is a fantastic representation of 3.5. IMO it's still worth playing today.

Don't be too harsh on yourself for Temple. When I played it as a kid I LOVED it. Maybe if I replayed it today, I would see the flaws, but there are none in my memory. So thank you for that. As a bonus note, Temple was my first D&D experience, so when I played normal D&D later in life I was surprised that party alignment is not a default feature. Because it is a brilliant idea.

Hi Tim! I met you at Gaymer X in Sydney a few years ago. You played a game I was working on back then, a top down cthulu-inspired twinstick shooter. You had fun and I remember you warned me before you played that you were colorblind and asked if there were any color based gameplay elements. Sadly that game ended up getting cancelled, but it was great meeting you and it’s great hearing all this behind the scenes secrets. All the best!

Been playing and running D&D games since I was a kid in the mid 90's. I first played Fallout when I was 13 and I've played every released game that your name was attached to. I have never met Gygax, but I assure you you've done him proud!!

Just have to say that I'm playing this now in 2023 with the Co8 mods and absolutely loving it. I'm so thankful that Temple was made. If you hadn't chosen that module then there's a good chance no one would have.

You do not give yourself enough credit. TOEE is an all time great game. Played through it several times as have my brother and best friend. We talk about it all the time. I'll still go back to it. Great game. You did a fine job.

damn, even back then WotC were crummy... props on being able to deliver as much as you could with all those last minute back and forths! not to mention the kidney stone!

For what it’s worth quest design for the village of Hommlet was excellent. I really enjoyed how each quest was intertwined and even the simplest tasks expanded upon the lore piece by piece.

As much as I like your insights about fallout and vtmb, this is hands down the best story you had yet. Please, keep them coming.

"I was also pretty zooted on painkillers" is not part of the explanation for ToEE I expected, but it is pretty funny. Glad you survived that ordeal.

RPG players will always owe you for Fallout. It was the first real RPG with modern character creation and multiple choice dialogues I played, and one of my best personal experiences in 30+ years of videogames. I also read you had a hand in Vampire Bloodlines, IMHO another RPG legendary masterpiece. It's easy to see you've passion and talent, man. We will never thank you enough for what you have done.

This was a fascinating talk. But TOEE is one of my favorite game, from one of my most beloved studio.

I got Temple today after learning it was your project from your other videos! 3.5e is my favorite edition of dnd, so learning there was a turn-based crpg using its system was awesome! I haven't gotten to do much with it yet besides make my party and install the unofficial patches, but I am certainly looking forward to it! I did get to Homlett though! I immediately won a drinking contest, then got caught trying to pickpocket the black-out drunk patrons! Great first experience

I remember ToEE very fondly, and I was impressed at the direct translation of 3.5 into a video game because until then all I knew was the 'real time with pause' of the infinity engine games. These days I look back on ToEE and I'm really quite thankful of the precedent it set because I think the spirit of it went on to inform Owlcat's Pathfinder games.

I want you to know that when I've played Temple my only experience with D&D in videogame format was Neverwinter Nights. And I loved Temple because its combat felt like D&D combat. And Temple had amazing visuals. However I don't remember even a single NPC character, not a single quest apart from the main one which I think I resolved by stealing some artifact inside of a temaple and sealing the evil for the next X years.

Thank you Tim for talking about TOEE production! The lighting in Temple, from morning to dusk to night, was just gorgeous. Just one element among many that I loved about TOEE. I remember taking many composed screenshots at different hours in the game, and especially at night time by Jaroo Ashstaff's abode.

I think you are a great writer tbh. Intro to Fallout is iconic for its content, not just Ron's delivery.

ToEE was the one title from Troika that never clicked with me. I love the game design. I really really tried to like it. However, it wasn't the bugs or the dialogue that keeps me away. I really just hate 3e D&D. "It's not for me." There is just too much in terms of details and modifiers. I don't like the idea of multiclassing and especially not the I'm a Fighter 3/Druid 4/Cleric 6 style of 3e and especially not the "Why would you take more than 4 levels of fighter, LOL" attitude of many people twenty years ago. I really loved the concept of party alignment in that game. I think the aesthetic style is also really appealing, like you said. I really enjoy these videos and, WOW, you put them out really quickly. I've just been watching them non-stop. It's fun.

Hi Tim, loved ToEE. I was so psyched about a Greyhawk module being made into a game. (Although I'd choose my favorite, Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth lol) TOEE was fun, I enjoyed it. I didn't find the dialog distracting or terrible. Side note, I have had kidney stones in the past as well. The last one I was admitted into the hospital on Friday, and had to wait for the only urologist in town to enjoy his weekend so he could play golf. He finally got to me late Monday, they put me on a metal table and blasted them....no matter how much pain medicine they gave me I was still in pain. So much pain, I would throw up at times. Side note: I worked for the railroad, a few years ago, 2017 and they ran over me while I was at work, without warning. I lost my left leg, the incident was the worst pain in my life of course. However when I first got the pain meds on my way being carried to the ambulance, It was 10x better then kidney stone pain lol.

I wish I'd have something profound to say, but I'm temporarily off my ADHD meds to restore my tolerance after giving up smoking, so... I can relate. Being either on or off meds can be difficult to navigate. Don't sweat it. Sometimes we put our blood sweat and tears into something that turns out to be a stinker, but there are people that love this game. And even if it "could be better", I admire people that can get themselves organized enough to ship something. That's already amazing, compared to many other projects that never get off the ground or die on the vine. Be proud of yourself for creating something of value during difficult times. :) Thanks for telling us those stories. They are very inspiring and insightful. Cheers!

I do really appreciate your insight as a creative mind and the importance of learning from your failures. Thanks for sharing Tim!

Loved this fireside chat. I like all the background stories both good and bad. Really puts things in perspective.

Hi Tim, really cool that you talk so openly about the process and where it went wrong. Respect

QA testers: Yah we don't LIKE that part, so we're not gonna TEST it... That is your LITERAL JOB! I do QA, freelance sort of thing via DAQA. I don't get to choose what I test or don't test, I follow the guidelines laid out by whoever is telling us what we need to do.

Been playing your games since Fallout. Love you, man.

Tim, "war never changes..." was really greatly written. Because it works on every language. So brilliance of voice actor is definately secondary in that case.

What's weird to me is, I must have been in an information bubble growing up, I loved ToEE almost as much as I loved Arcanum, I had *no idea* the struggles or malarkey your team went through. Damn good lesson, though: Never Split The Party!

I’m a big fan of TOEE. It is one of the games that I played through several different times and revisited it across decades. I still think many of the design choices were great and you managed to really capture the “fun”. I do use the co8 patches, but the core is what makes it all work. I would have bought and played any other D&D modules built on that engine. Thanks for bringing that to us.

The vignette was a good idea and is a great way to set TT style context in crpgs. Dragon Age Orgins also did this well, as well as Larian Origin chars and I expect to see this more and even more differentiated in the design of crpgs in the future to set players in context similar to how dms incorporate player backgrounds in campaigns.

I have always love this game because I can see the potential of what you all put a ton of work into accomplishing. My only regret is the mods that "fix it" still have issues. Honestly I dream of a day when this get remade and released as the creators envisioned. But in a world of profit over quality the baldur's gate 3 type games are rare. That. Being said thank you Tim for making my childhood memorable with games like this and fallout.

I got TTOEE right when I started exploring PC video games outside of highly polished normie stuff. That's when I learned that games can be BUGGY for the first time. I still remember being confused by enemies inside walls and being unable to loot corpses. And I had no internet to look up stuff or download any patches. Man, good times. Although, the game definitely looked absolutely magical. Anyway, thanks for the fascinating story!

Tim, I just want to say, in the hopes that you might read this: I love this game. It might be--just might...be the only truly great classic D&D video game. I realize this is a controversial statement, but a few years ago, when my old group disintegrated and I was looking for a way to scratch that authentic d&d itch, Temple was the only thing that could do it. I tried Neverwinter, Oblivion, everything else that was around, both past and present (circa 2013). And as you know there are like literally at least 800 good computer RPGs that have been made, even then. Temple is the only one that came sufficiently close--for ME--to capturing what real, classical, First edition, Second Edition--ish, D&D truly felt like. Bugs or not. And I mean, Hommlet! Thank you for being you.

ToEE is a fantastic game - a truly authentic D&D experience.

Ok, did you really just say, "Pal-addin", Tim?

ToEE was an interesting game i wouldnt call my favorite for a few reasons but the standout thing about it was the music. The synth tunes really gave it that otherworldy quality

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the soundtrack was one of the best I've ever heard in a game. You just had to add a bunch of patches, and viola!

First of all, I´m so happy to see these videos and channel Tim, I really loved your work and past interviews, and for me, Temple of Elemental Evil is still of my favorite rpgs, with lots of things that make it special and different. And please, don´t worry about showing a more negative side of game development or life experiences. Thank you, for real.

I played ToEE a few years after it came out and I loved it. To this day i think it is the game i played that most approached what pen and paper rpg feels like for dnd in a good way. The only thing negative i can say about it is that the adaptation felt a bit too faithful somwtimes, like you had the skill informatjon gatherign, the only game i ever saw it on. But that feels more odd than a flaw. I really loved the game back then and never understood why it was not generally acclaimed. I dont even remember bugs or anything like it. Thanks for your channel Tim. Great stories and insights. Troika was awesome and I love the old Fallout so much, it was such a gem. I never comment but I had to. Kuddos and I wish you the best.

These videos have been great!

It seems like you speak with sadness about Temple. It sounds like a very tough time for you. If it makes you feel any better, I think it really is a beautiful game like you said, and a better game than some of the other tabletop-to-pc RPGs floating around these days. :)

Hi Tim - Great videos! I’ve finally found someone else who understands - I had my first kidney stone at 19 and still get them occasionally over 30 yrs later! We could trade stories, I have a horror experience from ‘98 I won’t share on here!😆😅 Anyway, thank you for sharing your stories of development. I ❤ Temple even more after hearing behind-the-scenes of its development! I wanted to add that I ❤ Arcanum and wish we could’ve seen 2 as it’s one of my favourite games of all time!🥰 (Hope you’ve been managing to keep your stones under control through the years! I know your pain😫!!✌️

This videos are straight fire. I could listen to you talk about this stuff all day. In fact... Drawing a red line through my schedule right now...

For what its worth, this is one of my favorite games of all time. In fact, my earliest memory on this planet was playing this game with my dad. He called it "Good Guys and Bad Guys" because I was too little to understand what it was actually called lol.

I remember playing TOEE. I really wanted to like it but I struggled too much with it. I've wanted to revisit the game now. Anyways, I kept getting my ass kicked in fights. Finally, one time I got into the temple, a character fell down a few levels, stumbled into a room with a chair. I interacted with the chair and the game ended. I had no clue what happened or was happening, but I beat the game.

Anazing game btw and Co8 really helped it shine.

Ah, ToEE! This was one of the few games in my life that I bought at launch. I was in two tabletop D&D campaigns at the time, and was loving 3rd Edition (and 3.5 edition even more). I was consuming everything D&D, so ToEE was the perfect product for me, and I was the perfect target audience. I got it home (I still have the box), and even the stuff in the box looked great! I installed it, and... It didn't run. This started my epic quest combing through patches and message boards, patching, re-installing, re-patching, all while the bugs were being smooshed in real time on-line. I can't remember now how many hours or how many days it took, but I never felt more like a genius computer person than I did when I FINALLY got ToEE to run on my PC. I may have even jumped out of my chair and pumped my fist in the air, like I had just won the Super Bowl MVP or something. I enjoyed the game very much, and I would have loved nothing more than to have been in the trenches with you and your crew making this game. Thank you for it, and for this video! (Oh, I hope that you named your kidney stone 'Lil' Gygax')

I loved TOEE. I had multiple playthroughs. I always wanted to try mods but never did. Just hearing you talk about it makes me want to try another run. Thank you for this channel and your insight!

Thanks for the explanation, Tim! Temple is my favorite dnd video game and even though it's far from perfect, I just love the look of it, its ambient feel, and the combat system. ♥

The Temple of Elemental Evil was the first CRPG I ever played - I was too young at the time to really have a good idea what I was doing or even what flaws there were to spot, having no basis for comparison, but I still have fond memories of it.

Temple remains to date one of the best looking games I have ever played.

Although I've never played Temple (not really my genre), I watched a Let's Play of it many years ago and I thought it was really fun! Also, FOUR MONTHS, WTF?! I don't know if I would've been able to go through that...

Absolutely fascinating insight into game dev highs and lows!! Thank you so much for sharing, I hope this was cathartic for you too!

Love the videos you're making, Tim. In keeping with the topic of D&D, I was wondering if you had a hand in the development of Planescape Torment? Is Temple your first foray in making a D&D CRPG?

Managed to beat the game with the two orcs Pitak and Tuelk in team without them betraying me. And in the big hall near the end (where there were a shit ton of enemies) some enemy mages casted AOE and injured some other enemies and they started to fight each other... It was a fun experience.

TIL I have something in common with Tim Cain, apart from being an RPG fan and game designer: 7mm kidney stones, baby! Your anecdotes are amusingly similar to mine: seemingly all men with kidney stones have met a woman who compares childbirth favorably to stones, and apparently I’m not the only one who had the perverse desire to keep the damn thing after all the suffering it caused. :p

I loved the group alignment starts. It was one of the things i loved the most about the game. If they were an hour long or so, it would have been incredible.

Hah, well, plenty of people seem to like it, despite the flaws you stated. One thing I've noticed about the games in the RPG space, from FO1 to Bethesda's FO and everything in between, and after, the fans end up making mods, unofficial patches, re-balanced for whatever reason, item add-ons/changes/removals. It's a testament to the games actually being _fun_. Not to mention people love the ability to do those sorts of things, and share them. Tell you the truth, watching your video series has inspired me to install the first two FO games. Lo and behold, ok FO1 unofficial patch was a while ago, 2016, but FO2 unofficial patches and mods are from this year or last year, I really hadn't expected that, figured they'd all be much older than 2016. Again, a testament to the games being fundamentally great, and allowing the community to more or less easily modify your game, welp, people love the games, will are still playing your games 20-25 years after they were released. THAT is an accomplishment. I have a stack of 'crack baggies' with kidney stones in them. I'd name the bad ones. Photos, yep. Most people don't want to see them either. Drink lots of water, do not get dehydrated. 4 months, that's an abnormally long time, wow, my longest stretch was a couple weeks, but usually a week or so. I accepted the pain killers when the CT tech said "Good news and bad news, you'll probably pass this 8mm stone, but you have 15 more to go." oof.

Knew nothing about these games until today.

Could you make a video talking about the Tell Me About system in Fallout?

The vignettes for the start of Temple were incredible. I still remember burning that church as a chaotic evil party

ToEE is an all time favourite game of mine. Super fun.

I am sorry for the pain you had, and I apologize, but the kidney stone story cracked me up :D!

For the record. I loved your ToEE PC game.

Some of these talks about Troika times give me a vibe that you wanted to be destroyed by some competition or something else, as they knew your actual potential given enough time and resources.

Tim, привет. Главное будь здоров! Игры это замечательно, но здоровье важнее. Может в будущем расскажешь о Nuka Cola и о том как пришла идея создать такой аналог? И о том как пришла идея сделать бутылочные крышки валютой) спасибо.

I can see why Temple was in the state that it was. But I did enjoy it, started my addiction to Iron Man rpgs.

As a 3rd Edition fan, I'd rather pass a kidney stone than play Temple again. GREAT VIDEO!

The potential is still there, maybe maybe maybe...

More amazing content. Love it.

I need to play the uncut version with the brothel, expanded town, and vulnerable children. I remember how offended I was when news circulated that children were to be made unkillable in TOEE. Removing them was the right move under the circumstances, and a good way to protest the stupidity. What kind of company takes *away* player choice and agency in an RPG? Way to break immersion! That goes completely against my game design philosophy.

I have 1 very important question. In regards to Arcanum Whose Banana bread recipe was that?

I loved TofEE! Was it perfect? Oh no. But it WAS fun and made me want to play anything and everything you had a hand in. Thank you Tim.

What is your relationship with Leonard like nowadays?

You made me want to play Temple now (never played it before)!

Yeah f*** kidney stones, had it in 2020 and 2021. There were sudden waves (when the stones moved) that were so painful you just wriggle on the floor like a worm in search for a position where it hurts less. There is no position where it hurts less. I shared a room with a soldier at the hospital who got shot twice in his life, he also said the kidney stone was more painful. Like yours, mine took forever to flush out, i pissed for weeks into filters. I remember I really loved the art in TOEE, additional the music in Hommlet complimented that area even more. I think I played it through two or three times and enjoyed TOEE for what it was back in the day.

From the first time I played Temple a few years ago I liked it a lot, and I still often think if a troika team had been able make an arcanum sequel with that engine and turn-based system (Somehow without the D&D ruleset obviously), or even a more story rich game within the D&D licence, like a Baldurs Gate, that would be dream territory for me. I'm not in game development or anything, so maybe what I'm saying is literally impossibly or off-base, but I will always be bummed out that I can't play another turn-based CRPG quite like Temple.

Thank you for this inside baseball look into game development. You mention that a lot of the problems with Temple was the publisher asked for certain things in the build you weren’t sure your team could deliver. You say that it was ultimately your fault because you agreed to these certain contract stipulations, but did you have the ability to say no to the publisher? Coming from an outside observer of the games industry it seems that the publisher can always outright demand things in the project regardless if the developer thinks it’s a good idea or not. Does the developer have a little more leeway in the contract negotiation phase of the project?

ToEE is my favorite one of your games (though I know I played with some unofficial patches). Probably it has the best combat I've experienced in a PC/western CRPG, and even though the story and quests are simple, they don't detract from that huge strength at all. I also feel like it would be difficult for anybody to do much more in those areas without substantially deviating from the original module, so I don't think you should blame yourself for that.

I actually liked Temple of Elemental Evil when I played it)

15:00 Your Kidney stone was like a "baby" to you. XD

Hey Tim, are there any style of games on your “bucketlist” of games youd like to make or do you feel like you’ve made most of the style of games that interest you. I mean this in the realm of isometric style games/rpg/first person, etc.

Bro I would love to see a list of quest ideas you've had for various games. I think I could sit and watch an hour long video while you just talk about stuff you liked but wasn't used.

4 months on painkillers? Holy shit, I don't think I was on them that long after my foot got crushed.

Funnily enough my mum said the same thing about her gallstones

I love TToEE!! I play it every few years with a new party setup. Going to have to try all bards next time!

Hey, I have a question about Fallout. Will you be appearing in the upcoming fallout TV show?

I remember finding Temple at a Big Lots for $4 and being really excited to play it, but when I opened it, it was 2 disc 2s and no disc 1

Ron Perlman could read a phone book and be good XD. Thank you haha.

Possibly unrelated question but I'm curious Tim - I love TTRPGs but my current brain just can't handle the strain of DMing and doing live improv, despite adoring it. I can make this stuff in Neverwinter Nights I guess but sometimes I just want to draw a map and lose myself in designing a little diorama of mountains and quests without the pressure of needing to perform in front of players. Is there anything nowadays that can facilitate this? Like different hobbies or something? Gamedev is the obvious answer but so far my enthusiasm dies way faster than my work speed and it's demoralising XD Anyway great work here, if these were lectures in a course I'd wanna do it. You just have invaluable experiences we all wanna learn from ^_^

Temple is a great game. Best implementation of D&D on a video game to date! I don't pay attention to Metacritic. I always go by my own personal experiences.