ToEE vs RtToEE...

[Ozreth]

How well does Return to the Temple fair when put up against the original? Was thinking about running it for my 3.5 group. Also, how much conversion does it need from 3.0?

Thanks : )

[stainboy]

Contains RtToEE spoilers.

I don't know the original very well, but RtToEE is great fun. That grell pit in the first dungeon is pure comedy.

Some random notes:

-Draw out the Obex and all the other little symbols on 3x5 cards and hand them to the players. Also make cards with names and critical information about the major factions and hand them out as the PCs learn about them. Tharizdun and the Elder Eye are the same entity, earth cultists wear orange robes, Tsuggmoy is the Abyssal lord of mold and fungus, stuff like that. There's a LOT of important information to absorb, which would be easy for players to gloss over or the DM to accidentally skip. You don't want them to get to the end and say "who's this fire guy again?"

-Likewise, beat the players over the head with the importance of the collection quest, because otherwise they will screw it up. There are minor magic items scattered all over the dungeons that the players need at the end, and there aren't many clues to how important these items are.

-The module assumes a couple of full caster PCs. Our casters were a bard and an underoptimized cleric with a couple CL hits (me) and some parts were really difficult. Clerics shine in this module. Wizards are good, but suffer from not having much downtime or resources. A cleric/druid or cleric/beguiler team would probably be strongest.

-There's no Magic Mart in Hommlet, even for simple stuff like cure sticks. Expect players to want to use Lesser Planar Binding to contact a planar merchant, or teleport/plane shift somewhere to go shopping.

[hamlet]

All that stainboy said is relatively true.

I would add that in terms of a basic module, Return to the TOEE is a major dungeon grind. Much more so than the original TOEE. If major dungeons aren't your thing, then you could be in trouble. But this isn't to say that it's boring. It's not, there's lots of good stuff happening inside the mines and the restored Temple and the Black Spire. You as the DM will have to know all about it and be able to implement and adapt it on the fly, though. It'll be pretty demanding.

There are a few problems with the module, at least from the perspective of the crustiest of Greyhawk Grognards. Primarily, aside from system choice, is Monte Cook's conflation of Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental Eye. Originally, back in the old days, the two were not the same thing. Or at least not intended to be the same thing. Bad editing and overeager 2nd string writers tended to merge the two into the same thing and a lot of folks gripe about it even in the days of the T1-4 supermodule.

A couple of the other issues revolve around the way things are organized. Within the mines, thigns are set up rather intelligently for the DM, but major assumptions are made that the players will follow the trail at times. If they go too far off the rails, and are too stupid to wander back when the hitting stick starts to fall, then they'll die quickly and brutally. It can be as simple as turning left when they should turn right. You have to be wary of that and find sublter ways, perhaps, to navigate the players back to where they "should" be.

As mentioned above, lots of important little clues that are very understated and not obvious from the players' side of things. They will miss many of them and find themselves not sure what they're doing or where they're going. You may have to provide extra info resources, perhaps in the form of interrogated captives, or defectors, or even something as blunt as a "misplaced memo."

It's implied within the module that there's a lot of conflict between the various sects, but the balance of encounters somewhat relies on the staticness of things. If you put things in motion and let some of the conflicts occur, the rest of the encounters can become either too hard or too easy as casualties are realized. Be sure to use that dungeon restocking table you'll find in the module to recoup losses incurred both by PC's and infighting. And don't be afraid to stir things up with your own inventions, too. Hell, one of the best recaps of the module that I read involved an invasion of Drow from the underdark since there is an opening to the underground there.

Conversion of RtTOEE to 3.5 is already done and there's a great document out there with all the stats converted over with a lot of good commentary in it about how it was done and with variations based on "apples to apples" conversions, and a more pragmatic conversion as appropriate. Just engage your google-fu and you will find it.

As for how it compares to the original . . . that's another complicated story. Originally, the module T1 had just the moathouse and some vague rumors about the actual Temple. Gary Gygax was never able to fully realize his version of the Temple, and what was produced as T1-4 was actually the work of a staff writer and doesn't really reflect original conception, or so the story goes. Many old school folks are keenly aware of this, and I believe that there are some efforts out there to re-write the Temple as an OSRIC module and more in keeping with original plans. Problem is, nobody's entirely aware of what those original plans were.

The original was very much a grind module as well, but it felt less so than the new remake if only because of the different sensibilities of old school. Specifically, you weren't intended to actually fight all the monsters room by room and "clear" the dungeon. You were in it to steal the treasure with a minimal of fighting and risk.

[Thurbane]

Having played the original ToEE extensively back in my 1E days, and having read through the my copy of RttToEE with the intention of running it one day with the 3.5 conversion docs, the stories are vastly different. Seeing as ToEE is my all time favorite module, I'd have to say it's a bit better than RttToEE (with extreme personal bias, obviously). :smallwink: