Long time reading, first time threading, blablabla...

Ok, that's the business:

I'm going to run The temple of Elemental Evil for a pair of amigos. I have already DMed TToEE once in its "pure" form, a classic room-by-room dungeon crawling. And it rocked, of course. But now I want to try another aproach and use the Temple as a mainframe for a more complex story. My basic idea is that my players, a pair of boys from Hommlet, get themselves entangled in the web of intrigue and secrets surronding the Temple and Hommlet.

And now my question: how would you use The temple of Elemental Evil in a complex, dramatic story? Yeah, I know that it's D&D, not Vampire, but I always thought that those old modules were written as toolboxes or building blocks for the DM and players to flesh it. So, what do you think? What kind of background would be the Temple for a non-classical adventure?

Thanks in advance!

Quote from: Lizaur;417282Long time reading, first time threading, blablabla...

Ok, that's the business:

I'm going to run The temple of Elemental Evil for a pair of amigos. I have already DMed TToEE once in its "pure" form, a classic room-by-room dungeon crawling. And it rocked, of course. But now I want to try another aproach and use the Temple as a mainframe for a more complex story. My basic idea is that my players, a pair of boys from Hommlet, get themselves entangled in the web of intrigue and secrets surronding the Temple and Hommlet.

And now my question: how would you use The temple of Elemental Evil in a complex, dramatic story? Yeah, I know that it's D&D, not Vampire, but I always thought that those old modules were written as toolboxes or building blocks for the DM and players to flesh it. So, what do you think? What kind of background would be the Temple for a non-classical adventure?

Thanks in advance!

Maybe you could tie the local druids in with the Elemental Evil cult, saying they turned to dark forces in order to gain strength against religions like St. Cuthbert, etc. Might be especially interesting if one PC grew up in each background.

I would just let them start as adventurers and/or local boys coming to Hommlet to find out more about what's going on with the bandit raids around town.

That's it. All there is to it.

You run the game as a World in Motion, and you let them lead the show.
They'll trigger the adventures all on their own.

Quote from: Benoist;417292I would just let them start as adventurers and/or local boys coming to Hommlet to find out more about what's going on with the bandit raids around town.

That's it. All there is to it.

You run the game as a World in Motion, and you let them lead the show.
They'll trigger the adventures all on their own.

I'm with you here, Ben - but I do often say "you need more than sand in a sandbox." I like to mix in some extra NPC agendas, interconnections, etc.

I'd also recommend developing the regional map around the Hommlet/Nulb area a little more, with some extra sites, some of which can have clues and tie-ins to the history and factions of the region. But definitely let the PCs light the fuses.

Create a relationship map based on the existing material. Figure out how the PCs fit into it. Create additional actors as required.

Quote from: Cole;417293I'm with you here, Ben - but I do often say "you need more than sand in a sandbox." I like to mix in some extra NPC agendas, interconnections, etc.

These are already there, in the actual module. Now Uematsu's advice as well as your own actually work out great when combined with each other if you have a difficulty working things out from the text alone: just make a diagram of the different NPCs and how they are related to each other, and from there, flesh out the areas you think need more stuffing by adding NPCs, groups motivations, place them on the map, and so on, so forth.

*nod*

Quote from: Cole;417293"you need more than sand in a sandbox."

Wow, these are wise words.

I'm tempted to lower the starting age of the PCs and run the module as some kind of Mistery Kids adventure (a là Scooby Doo plus monsters and cultists). Maybe the PCs are recruited for the Temple. Maybe ALL the people in Hommlet are secret cultists of the Elemental Evil. Maybe the boys are taken prisioners to the bottom of the Temple and their goal is to make their way OUT of the dungeon... a nice inversion of the usual dungeon crawling.

Here's what I did a few years ago when I ran it (with the goal of incorporating several modules into a long campaign).

One of the players had a backstory of where they came from a circus background.  He had to leave the circus because an accident happened killing the circus leader.  The player, and one of the circus NPCs, both were rivals for a the same girl.  When the accident happened, the NPC blamed the player and ran him off.  That was years ago.  When the players finished the Moathouse and returned to Homlett, they found the circus was in town.  The player found out that the NPC actually planned the whole thing and used it as a way to get the girl and get rid of the player.  In a fit of rage, the player killed him.

Before any proof or anything else could have been done.

So the player was arrested.  At the trial, it was agreed upon that the church of St. Cuthbert would raise the NPC from the dead, but the player would have to pay 50,000 gp as a fine, and avoided life in prison because the party paladin vouched for him.

So they made their way to the temple, as expected.  While fighting in the temple, they found out that the NPC had joined forces with the bandits as a way to get revenge on the player.  The NPC rose in the ranks and became one of the top generals for Zuggtmoy, and was armed with Blackrazor.  At the end of TOEE when the party was successful, the paladin was instructed that he must destroy the unholy sword.  In order to do so, he would have to have it frozen by the breath of a white dragon and then immediately smashed with Whelm.  So that led to adventures into White Plume Mountain, etc.

That's how I tied ToEE into a larger campaign.

Well, if you're going to make the players a couple of born-and-raised local boyos from Hommlet, then go the Full Monty with them and the greater plots and story lines surrounding Hommlet and the ToEE.  They would've been older children, tweens, or even young teenagers during the Battle of Emridy Meadows so they would've seen their fathers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and cousins go to war against the ToEE with the others in their village.  Make them aware of everything going on with Otis, Elmo, Canon Y'dey, and everything going on in Nulb.

In other words, skip the Moat House ruins adventure altogether and insert the player characters directly into the secret operations going on in Nulb by some of the Hommlet elders and heroes.  The purpose of the Moat House ruins is to bring a group of disparate characters into a new village (Hommlet), and then expose them to web of evil in the area.  However, being born and raised in Hommlet and environs, the pair o' Boyos already know all of that stuff since they grew up with it.

I once ran a brief campaign (with intent to be longer, but I joined the Air Force and Basic Training got in the way) where the Temple was already sacked to high hell by a band of heroes who were long gone by the time the campaign started. So the Temple had become more of a bogeyman story than anything, but unbeknownst to most people evil forces were conspiring within the town to use the Temple to summon Zutgomoy (spelling?) again. The Druids were very aware that the taint of evil was growing around the Temple again, but the St. Cuthbert mofos were too involved with local politics to pay attention to anything.

The game was more about intrigue (who in the village is part of the new cult?), mystery (why are the local Goblinoids still afraid of the ruined temple?), and Call of Cthulhu-style investigation (evil cultists, potential elder evil, disbelieving populace, political machinations of the ignorant, etc.).

This way the focus isn't on looting the Temple of Elemental Evil - it's already been done! The focus is on the new evil, the purpose of the old Temple, revelations about what went on there, and so on.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Drohem;417428the greater plots and story lines surrounding Hommlet and the ToEE. (...) Make them aware of everything going on with Otis, Elmo, Canon Y'dey, and everything going on in Nulb.

Yes, the past history of Homlet and the Temple must be a backbone for the entire adventure. One of the PC is intended to be the son of a former fighter in the Emridy Meadows, and the adult people at Hommlet will be always talking criptically about "old bad times".

Also, Nulb is a great place for the PCs to get some patronage from the "cover agents" operating there.

Quote from: GrimJesta;417489The game was more about intrigue (who in the village is part of the new cult?), mystery (why are the local Goblinoids still afraid of the ruined temple?), and Call of Cthulhu-style investigation (evil cultists, potential elder evil, disbelieving populace, political machinations of the ignorant, etc.).

That's is exactly the mood I want for my ToEE: more Young Sherlock Holmes than kick-on-the-door.

I think that the Orb of Golden Death and the prophetic poem are two superb MacGuffins around wich the entire adventure can be wrapped, but they seem a bit underrated. Someone has given them more prevalence as "narrative axes"?