Concluding the Temple of Elemental Evil

Yes, it is finished.  Faced with the distinct possibility of going out with a whimper, I always prefer a bang, instead.  My home gaming group was disintegrating before me, my only hope was to conclude The Temple of Elemental Evil next session.  That being last Saturday, I have a session report for you...

• Prior to the session's start, Daniel (playing Sir Basil) explained his odd behavior last session.  Taken aback by Xar's disregard for human life, Sir Basil uncomfortably "went along with" proceedings even though the holy knight had deep reservations about slitting the throat of that woman cultist/vessel encountered last time.  Basil decided against confronting Xar for the sake of party cohesion and the greater quest of dispatching the foul remnants of the temple.
• As there was a player shortage, the extra characters who didn't have players to run them (X'fritl and Tidillo, specifically) simply vanished before the remaining characters' eyes.  Left with nothing more than a faint, disembodied evil laugh, the "survivors" marched forward to the unexplored areas of the 3rd level.
• Having an hour's preparation, I planned for two special things, unique aspects of my own devising that would make the Temple stand out... that would make it truly mine.  
• 1) a hexagonal room with six doors.  Four of them led to a jungle.  Upon opening those doors, the PCs saw bits of dungeon floor and walls here and there, slowly giving way to an entirely new environment - a mysterious jungle.  Just in case they got curious or needed a break from the dungeon crawl, I provided an escape.  Those doors led to none other than the islands of purple-haunted putrescence.  After their discovery, the players opted not to venture out into the jungle.  That was fine by me, though I had my book full of weird science-fantasy encounters handy just in case.
• 2) towards the end, I wanted a couple of dimensional travelers to interrupt the party's progress.  We'll get to that later.
• A powerful demon guarded this section of the dungeon.  One or more PCs could have died, but near-constant magic missiles and Sir Basil's frostbrand made short work of him.
• More prisoners discovered:  human, humanoid, and elf.  One of the elves became the party thief.  The rest just wanted to go home or stay in the dungeon.
• An illusion made for interesting combat as the characters were almost totally taken-in by were-jackals.
• A bronze pit for a bugbear was easily scouted by Markus the ragged - a templar revenant who joined the party last session.  The revenant is a character class provided in FH&W.  Tricky to play and DM, I let a lot of stuff fly that wasn't specially mentioned in the rule book.  
• A potentially huge encounter with bugbears, ogres, and a hill giant was cut short by Xar's well-placed fireball.  
• Some evocative and Lovecraftian descriptions provided a dank and dreary atmosphere - perfect for dungeoneering.  
• Stairways showed level 4 having collapsed some time ago.  That kept everyone on level 3 where the action was.  This being the last session, it made sense.
  
  
  
• Finally, a purple throne, an inner-sanctum, and a towering spider demon with cyclopean 9th eye shooting burning rays of fire.  Luckily, two out of the three PCs wore rings of fire resistance.  I got most of the stats from Fiend Folio and converted the rest to be the big bad at the temple's end.  When not using its eye ray, it had four attacks.  I pulled out all the descriptive stops for this one.  I mentioned the viscera and slimy entrails yanked out of its abdomen when Sir Basil scored a critical hit - max damage on both dice!  When he finally struck it down, after almost dying (luckily he had a potion of extra healing), I detailed its severed head twitching and wounds oozing a yellow-green substance, etc.  There was nearly an hour left after the creature's destruction.
• Back to Vengerizing the temple, the party decided to rest up before looting the spider demon's treasure.  Nothing happened while they slept.  Upon waking, however, the party heard voices and clanging noises coming from the inner-sanctum (they slept in the throne room adjacent).  They investigated.  Two humans and a magic portal.  The humans told of their mission - to retrieve a sacred object containing the essence or soul of their unpronounceable god.  Using one of the special abilities of his class, Sir Basil detected that the god contained within the silver container was evil.  The party forced the two dimensional travelers to give up the container.  Before leaving through the portal, they promised to return... with reinforcements.  
  
• This led to an amusing, though brief, chase through the third level.  The PCs hid in a large crack where they left off at the end of last session.  After a DM reminder (I usually refrain from that sort of thing, but couldn't resist), Xar used his limited wish scroll to destroy the evil god trapped in the silver vessel.  Not finding any easy loopholes, his wish was granted.  And not having any way to see if their god was still in the container, the dimensional intruders took back the container.
• Amongst the spider demon's horde of gold and gemstones, the PCs claimed a dragon orb and a few other random magic items from the 1st edition DMG.  At that point, they marched back up to the surface, away from the misery-infused stone of this particular dungeon.  
• Not that it mattered, but everyone leveled before going home.

I was pleased with this session and The Temple of Elemental Evil as a whole.  However, I'm confident that next time I run it, things will go three times as awesome!

VS

Temple of Elemental Evil continued

I'm just going to put all these stray thoughts into bullet points.

• I'm almost finished reading through Dungeon World.  I'm sure I'll write an actual review of it soon.  My overall opinion: interesting.  One thing I like is the rolling 2d6, adding ability score modifier, maybe a +1 or -1 depending on miscellaneous factors, and comparing the result with 10 and above success, 7 - 9 partial success or success but with some additional drawback, and 6 and below yielding failure.  This might trump my roll 3d6 vs. ability score and VSd6 for efficiency and simplicity.  
• Even though we're all enjoying FH&W, I think we might switch over to 5e when the DMG finally comes out.  The extra HD of healing for short rests, PC abilities/do-dads, and everything else a monster RPG franchise can bring to the table will probably be worth the extra 10 minutes per player at character creation.
• Instead of giving out inspiration on a per roleplaying per scene basis, I've been giving everyone a point of inspiration (just a re-roll, actually) at the start of each session.  If they don't use it, they can add it to next session.  Personally, I think any kind of inspiration or action point should accumulate.  
  
• However, I did grant Sir Basil an extra point because of his elaborate and daring maneuver of jumping over a pit, kicking in an open door, and slashing at the enemy with his sword.  
• By now, I'm sure the players have realized that much of the campaign is driven by percentile dice rolls.  Well, guys, here's the secret.  If there's an unlikely but possible chance of something awesome, terrible, and/or interesting happening, then I'll roll.  If the result is between 01 and 33%, that unlikely possibility occurs!  That's pretty much it.  Solves a lot of the background probability grey areas that can wear a GM (or campaign) down.
• I seem to fall into a pattern.  Every other session, there's a deluge of magic items.  Those alternating sessions, hardly anything at all.  Does it just work out like that or am I subconsciously making it happen?  In any case, see below...
• Scroll of mirror image, ice storm, and slow.  Ring of fire resistance (5 points).  Evisceration dagger +1 that does exploding damage.  Wand of illusions (12 charges).  Axe of regeneration (doubles the normal rate of healing for the wielder).  Ring of free movement.  Lightning Javelin.  Yeah, I added some cool loot to the temple.  A couple gamers warned me it was a bit stingy on the magic items.
  
• Speaking of that last one, when badass magic items are first acquired, caution goes out the window.  Luckily, X'fritl only killed the high priest!
• NPCs started dying like flies.  One was planned, the other three happened by accident.
• The party's elf died.  Moloch was an eldritch archer by trade.  Mostly an archer.  I think he only cast one spell in two sessions.  Yeah, it was a good day for Kaazor.  
• Gnolls and human guards were pedestrian enough that I felt the need to break out TWO different demons from Fiend Folio.
• Roleplaying and subterfuge won the day rather than brute force.  Well played... and sorry about your untimely death, Grog Barg (one of the unlucky NPCs, a half-orc).
• The first dungeon level of the temple has been cleared out and now the PCs have a key which probably unlocks the bronze door to level two.  
• Everyone leveled and I think the next session on Nov. 15th will be epic!
• Oops, one last thing... Ben created a new character to replace his assassin.  This session, he started playing a wizard named Zar.  The name was remarkably similar to his tiefling (half-demon) warlock Zatar here, so I asked if the two magic-users were related.  His response was: "Maybe, but not that they're aware of."  That led to us theorizing that Zatar's father was a demon while Zar's father was human and they were separated at birth - Zatar sent to Torth and Zar to Greyhawk.

Ok, that's about it.  Will be running Purple at a local con this Saturday.  Wish me weird!

VS

Temple of Elemental Evil with FH&W

So, this past Saturday, continuing from last week, I decided to bring out the big guns - one of the awesomest dungeons of old school D&D.  Yes, The Temple of Elemental Evil!  A little history first...

The first time I played this, I really can't remember much - just bits and pieces.  I was probably in 6th or 7th grade and my favorite non-paper and pencil RPG was The Bard's Tale.  It was just the DM (who was more experienced with D&D than I was) and me over the course of a couple weekends (days and nights).  I was playing at least six PCs and my magic-user had some kind of demon familiar like a Quasit.  All the characters were high level and though there were dangers faced, I don't recall any TPK moments or even getting close to that.

The second time was about 15 years ago.  For some strange reason, the DM decided to soup everything up, beefing the encounters and generally making all the monsters nigh unkillable.  In exchange, he gave our characters a plethora of "resurrection moss" (patent is most definitely not pending).  This moss allowed our characters to pretty much get right back up after being slaughtered over and over again.

As I explained to Daniel before Saturday's session started, if your PC only died once per session in that game, you were doing something right.  After the 4th session or so in The Temple of Elemental Evil, all the players had had enough.  Eventually, we just started attacking each other because then at least we had a fighting chance of surviving the combat!  After the inter-party brawl, we all had a long talk.  The upshot: our DM got all butt-hurt because we wanted him to adopt a different style of running ToEE and the entire gaming group broke up.  What I remember most about that trip to the Temple was the archaic and grim descriptions at its start.  Reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft meets The House of Seven Gables or something equally 19th century in language.

I had never run ToEE myself and I knew that would have to change.  Especially since +Frank Mentzer signed my copy about this time last year at the first Game Hole Con in Madison, WI.

As I worked on getting the new player up to speed with his character, I asked each of last session's players (except for Ben, who was out enjoying one of the few really nice days in this accursed state) to come up with the following...

• a motivation - basically, what's their reason for adventuring.
• an allegiance - who or what do they care about or owe, specifically.
• one unique thing about their character - something special about their PC that is theirs alone.
• and a henchman, follower, apprentice, or some other traveling companion.

X'fritl wanted revenge on the witchlings who abandoned her to the monks.  She also wanted to find out about the magical event that caused her parents' disappearance.  She planned on a physically impressive bodyguard to protect her.  But X'fritl also wanted a magical bow that was not readily available in the town.  So, she made a bargain with the bowmaker, agreeing to take his son along so he could "learn the ropes".  

Sir Basil had been a knight for 5 years, a member of the Order of the Red Tower.  They recruit and promote knights based on skill rather than noble birth or money like most orders.  The Order of the Red Tower fights unnatural magicks, demons, and otherworldly creatures.

Sir Basil has had his squire for only a short time.  His name is Milo.  Milo served a knight that was killed in the line of duty and then Milo stole his dead master's coin purse before running away.  Sir Basil didn't want a squire because of the burden, the responsibility - he really didn't want Milo because of his dishonorable conduct.  However, Sir Basil was impressed with Milo's ability to elude capture for so long.

Verdilo is a cavern gnome with pale skin.  He's extremely handsome with a wild, unkempt black beard.  His motivation is pleasure... wine, women, and song.  He used to be a circus performer and his "henchman" is his baby's momma (Olive) along with her sister (Charlotte).  On the verge of ridiculous, but then that's Verdilo and his player, Harold, for you. 

The new player decided to play an elf eldritch-archer.  Probably not the best class considering the party was about to embark on the world's oldest mega-dungeon.  I told him to let me know if he wanted to swap the eldritch-archer for any one of the dozens of character classes in Fantastic Heroes & Witchery.

As Daniel's knight of the Red Tower was so strongly drawn, I used Sir Basil and his backstory as the adventuring hook.  He received a letter telling him about the possibility of evil growing anew within the Temple.  Also, the Order of the Red Tower sent one of their own, Lord Gregory, to guide the party.

As for the first session of ToEE, the boxed text did most of the work for me.  The leprous grey exterior, the croaking of unwholesome toads, vegetation looking either withered and lifeless or unnaturally bloated and grotesque, leering demonic faces, bas reliefs depicting vile acts... I just can't get enough of it.  Straight out of Lovecraft!

Anyways, they freed some human prisoners and fought off a bunch of undead.  Not much else happened besides wading through debris - debris that tells an awesome story all on its own!  I'm biding my time before cranking things up to 11.  This coming Saturday should be very interesting.  Haahahhaaahaaahaaa! I'm going to throw a few surprises their way.  Rather than waiting until a couple hours before, I'll dig deep early, allowing stray, mutant thoughts to coagulate and seep into my  fevered subconscious.  

When I suggested running an abridged version (just the hits) of ToEE, Daniel made it clear that I should do the whole thing.  No shortcuts!  So, there you have it.  More session reports of ToEE for weeks to come.

VS

p.s.  A week from this Saturday, Nov. 8th, I'll be back at the Game Hole Con running The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence.  On sale now, actually.  It'll be my first time running it since the book was published.  Can't wait!

Game Knight Reviews tackles LotDS

Brian Fitzpatrick from Game Knight Reviews agreed to review Liberation of the Demon Slayer here.  I'm grateful and honored by such high praise.  All the positive feedback I've received this month has inspired me to start working on module #2.

Thanks, everyone!

VS