Rating: 
Summary: Evil is Back, and Badder than Ever!
Review: Ah, memories...I ran the original Temple of Elemental Evil back in the eighties, and never was I more pleased with how badly a game can crash my school grades and keep me up until the wee hours of the morning. The Temple of Evil was one of the most popular and lauded adventures ever for the popular Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) game. Well, Monte Cook is sure to make the "Module Hall of Fame" with this new epic set in the original lands of the evil elemental cult. Unlike some of the previous "return-to" modules, "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" is not a simple re-hashing of old material. Rather, it is a true sequel, and a worthy successor to the Elemental Evil legacy. Set about fifteen years after the original adventure, "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" contains descriptions of several of the original people and places, so those familiar with the original material will find much to reminisce over. However, the tiny Village of Hommlet and its bulwark of heroes and villains have "grown up" now, and Monte Cook does an excellent job portraying the passage of time and fleshing out the new order of things in the quiet, wooded hills at the edge of the Viscounty of Verbobonc. Furthermore, Monte Cook provides a compelling, rich history of the past events in the area, serving to bring new Dungeon Masters "up to speed" with the cult of Elemental Evil, but also providing new material and insight into events and forces only hinted at in the original work. After about fifteen minutes of reading, the prospective Dungeon Master, even if new to the game, can rest assured that she will not be missing any information vital to running this epic adventure. The adventure itself is a truly monstrous undertaking, beginning with players retracing the steps of the original adventurers of fifteen years ago, but quickly taking them off the beaten path into an entirely new edifice of Evil, where they will find themselves pitted against several rival cults in a massive, several-hundred-keyed-locations dungeon that should provide hours and hours (if not months and months) of entertainment for all. To be fair, though, this is not a simple hack 'n' slash dungeon - rather, it is a complex, dynamic community, and Dungeon Masters are warned to prepare thoroughly before attempting to run players through this complex. The climax to this grand adventure truly befits the monumental work which precedes it, and characters who begin play as 4th level characters can finish as high as level 14!! The presentation and artwork are consistent with other products published by Wizards of the Coast, that is, superb. A 16-page full-color map booklet brings the many locations to life vibrantly, while settings, encounters, creatures, and magic items are organized in a consistent, logical manner. Major villains are separated from the keyed locations and placed into their own section, to remind Dungeon Masters that they do not simply stay put and wait for players to discover and slay them. In conclusion, why are you still reading this review?? BUY THIS BOOK NOW!! "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" is arguably the best adventure ever written for any fantasy role-playing game. You won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Adventure, Spotty campaign
Review: Although I agree with most of the feedback that this is a great module (the dungeon levels are excellent and well-documented). I would point out that the overland maps, while beautiful, are NOT TO SCALE and DO NOT MESH with the Living Grayhawk material. Also the maps and sketch of Hommlet DO NOT MATCH the old AD&D module (esp regarding terrain). Unfortunately this is typical of the Dungeons and Dragons product line. For example, the text says it's 30 miles to Verbobonc, but the overland map shows 90. There are no details about the river that flows past Hommlet, nor the one that flows past the moathouse. Nor are there any roads shown for the route to Rastor. While this is fine for hack and slash GMs who don't care about realistic whole-world detail, the more discerning GM will spend hours remapping and/or rescaling all the overland areas. Because there are no published detail maps for the world of Grayhawk, the GM must make his own maps, and face the prospect of reworking them later to fit future modules into the campaign. All-in-all, this is really just a case of poor editing. I would suggest dropping this module into your own campaign world and forgetting the World of Grayhawk altogether, since it so inconsistent and patchy. You may have to redo one or both of the two overland maps, but at least you can make it mesh.
Rating:
Summary: Super Dungeon Campaign
Review: Better than the first one? No. But excellent in its own right. This book is kind of expensive but worth the buy. ... It is organized well, and contains information about the original story Temple of Elemental Evil. It is very well written, and extensive in so many ways from background to encounter detail. ... Also, to add merit and fun to the dungeonmastering of this adventure, seek out and find the new book "Temple of Elemental Evil." I am reading the book while preparing to DM the adventure. It's added life to my upcoming sessions.
Rating:
Summary: an adventure all nighter
Review: First of all, let me say that this is easily the best module I have ever gotten my hands on for Dungeons and Dragons. It is very well written, provides everything in great detail, and is a hell of a lot of fun to run. As the DM of my home campaign, i must issue a few warnings to those who want to use this adventure. My campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms and thus I needed to do a fair bit of conversion to set the adventure in Faerun, but in the end it was well worth it.
DMs should remember before running this adventure that it is intended to be the backbone of an entire campaign, and if you run the entire thing, it most certainly will be just that. After conquering the Temple, your PCs will have saved the world (hope I'm not spoiling this for anybody), and the question for the DM is simply: Where do I go from here? Frankly my PCs are a bit disenchanted with the entire "Save the world, um, again" theme. I'll still give it five stars since it is the best module available as far as content is concerned, just make sure you want your campaign to be remembered as "When we did the Temple of Elemental Evil".
Rating:
Summary: Excellent product, but be careful
Review: First of all, let me say that this is easily the best module I have ever gotten my hands on for Dungeons and Dragons. It is very well written, provides everything in great detail, and is a hell of a lot of fun to run. As the DM of my home campaign, i must issue a few warnings to those who want to use this adventure. My campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms and thus I needed to do a fair bit of conversion to set the adventure in Faerun, but in the end it was well worth it.
DMs should remember before running this adventure that it is intended to be the backbone of an entire campaign, and if you run the entire thing, it most certainly will be just that. After conquering the Temple, your PCs will have saved the world (hope I'm not spoiling this for anybody), and the question for the DM is simply: Where do I go from here? Frankly my PCs are a bit disenchanted with the entire "Save the world, um, again" theme. I'll still give it five stars since it is the best module available as far as content is concerned, just make sure you want your campaign to be remembered as "When we did the Temple of Elemental Evil".
Rating:
Summary: Excellent campaign adventure module
Review: I have always been a World of Greyhawk fan, through both 1st and 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons... this 3rd edition adventure is a great successor to the previous written material on Greyhawk. This adventure module is bigger than the original T1-4 adventure by about 100 pages, talk about a monster of an adventure! Essentially, this is one huge dungeon crawl (with lots of side stuff thrown in too) that ties into the older module that was written in 1985. Really, it can be looked at as just more than an adventure module (it's more of a campaign sourcebook because of its size and what it covers) I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Grehawk, dungeon adventures, or just well written material. I wouldn't bother with any other adventure published by Wizards of the Coast (they all seem uninspired and somewhat lacking...) I highly recommend the modules produced by Necromander Games instead (Rappan Athuk, Crucible of Freya, etc...) They are all excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent campaign adventure module
Review: I have always been a World of Greyhawk fan, through both 1st and 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons... this 3rd edition adventure is a great successor to the previous written material on Greyhawk. This adventure module is bigger than the original T1-4 adventure by about 100 pages, talk about a monster of an adventure! Essentially, this is one huge dungeon crawl (with lots of side stuff thrown in too) that ties into the older module that was written in 1985. Really, it can be looked at as just more than an adventure module (it's more of a campaign sourcebook because of its size and what it covers) I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Grehawk, dungeon adventures, or just well written material. I wouldn't bother with any other adventure published by Wizards of the Coast (they all seem uninspired and somewhat lacking...) I highly recommend the modules produced by Necromander Games instead (Rappan Athuk, Crucible of Freya, etc...) They are all excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth The Time
Review: I recently finished the original 1985 version of the Temple of Elemental Evil. For a DM who only plays for about 10 days total per year, this took years for us to complete. Near the end, we were like, man, when is this going to be over!? HOWEVER... this was definitely the coolest adventure I've ever been involved with. If you love solving puzzles, exploring rooms, killing weird monsters, and finding excellent treasure, this is without a doubt the greatest adventure you could possibly get. It's not too bad on a DM, either, since everything is well laid out and explained in marvelous detail. Keep in mind, this adventure will take you from low level way up the ladder, so there won't be much room for side adventures, although you might want to make a couple side adventures anyway to break some of the monotony, which may occur at times. Overall, assuming the new adventure is basically the same thing as the original (which I'll bet it is), I think you will be very pleased.
Rating:
Summary: Great Adventure Of all time for the D&D game
Review: I was a player in the original d&D temple of elemental adventure and i loved it and now there is another one? It kind of makes me mad because my old DM called me up the other day and said hey you need to come quick because the temple has risin agean and you need to help stop it!!! and then i got over there and shure enufff the temple was back! If you are new to D&D DMing than this is the thing for you!!! I (as a player) i love this adventure. and it will take a long time to finish It is a very good adventure and the best price on the net!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent module
Review: I'm a little old, so I actually went through the Village of Hommlet when it was new. It's nice to be back in the Kron Hills. It's also nice that the temple wasn't ruined with a shoddy module. I do have a few complaints, some understandable, some a bit odd. The first is the price (obvious). The second is the appendices. The third is one particular NPC. I know that surveys have been done asking where people like the information in a module. Invariably, the majority of people like to have all of the information for an NPC or encounter printed on the page where the encounter occurs. I don't mind an appendix with NPC information. However, I would rather it point to the encounter location rather than the encounter location point to the appendix. Invariably, you are forced to hold the book open at the appendix so you can see the AC and attacks of the NPC. Just put the info in the place the DM will be looking when the encounter occurs, I say. The monsters should be handled in the same way. We're forking out about as much for this module as you would for a monster manual. May as well print the stats for the gnoll you are going to fight right there on the page where the encounter is written. The extra information will not cut into profits (though it could be argued the extra pages that will result might). My last complaint is Elmo. Elmo has 19, 16, 17, 15, 16, and 11 for stats. (We can assume the 19 was an 18 that he raised to 19 at 4th level.) Whereas a "normal" hero is worth 28 points and a power gamer character is worth 32 points if you use the point-buy method of character generation, Elmo (if you count it up) is worth 59 points. The super high ability scores are not even integral to the story line. It makes no difference that Elmo is the best at everything. Also, Elmo is wearing +1 chainmail. For good or ill, the 3e rules got rid of any reason for ever wearing chainmail after 1st or 2nd level and any reason to enchant it instead of a chain shirt or a breastplate. Random treasure no longer has +1 chainmail in it (in truth, it still has a 1% chance of showing up if you roll a random armor). So, why doesn't Elmo wear something more appropriate? He even loses some of his abilities for wearing chainmail instead of a chain shirt. You'd think he'd use some of his incredibly high intelligence to figure that out. Everything else is good, though. The maps are excellent (and in color). The things running around in the cave tunnels have a way to escape into the underdark (not written on the maps, but the authors give suggestions about where the passages should be). That adds a nice touch of realism to a decidedly (unrealistically) over-populated stretch of underground real estate. The NPCs (other than Elmo) are great. There are just enough identifying features that you can distinguish them from one another and come up with personalities and quirks so your players can as well. It's well worth reading through and thinking about the bad guys so you can take advantage of this little perk. Another nice thing about the module is you can start at any level. It says 4th to 14th on the cover, but you can probably start at 2nd if you are careful. And too high a level (like 8th or so) when first entering the really bad place juat allows you to clear out cannon fodder more quickly (and you can still get in big trouble if you get too cocky). So, I'd say you should get this if you don't mind the price tag. There are hours of enjoyment to be had with relatively few problems. In fact, some would probably say there are NO problems (appendix and Elmo might not bother them).
|
