Goodman Games: Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: The Temple of Elemental Evil, Fully Playable Mega-Dungeon and Mini-Campaign

The pages are nice and thick. Most of the content is in monochrome less the cover reprinted module scans and a beautiful inside cover illustration. And of course the classic blue map foldout. Actually, not fully monochrome, each page has a grey footer. More on this later. I saw a video review of this book that complained about the foldout maps having the map portion of those sheets center-bound through the map itself, but my copy of this book didn't have that problem at all. The map is entirely on the foldout and no central binding cuts through any of them. The editorial notes are an interesting read that provides a greater appreciation of what's included. The 5E conversion is pretty solid and adds a lot of stuff in the same flavor of the original. One thing to keep in mind is that, while this is for levels 3 through 6, it's for between 6 and 10 players which is IMO an awful lot for 5E. A total of 26 - 34 levels is indicated for the original adventure and, while old levels aren't strictly the same current levels 1:1, I would consider that about right. You're definitely going to want a dedicated Cleric and Wizard in the party. The introduction text on the original module suggests this would take anywhere between one and four sessions to complete. This prediction is preserved in the 5E version, but with all the new content and that 5E can get pretty slow sometimes, I would say no way to those estimates. Monsters, at least for the 5E conversion, are helpfully one per page with an illustration of each. You also get details on the Amber family which is also nice. There is another conversion out there (that still requires a purchase of the original module) that has some pretty bad reviews for swapping a lot of the unique monsters out for generic ones found in the MM. I think Goodman Games paid the adventure the reverence it deserves. One major downside is that the bottom footer on each page has the page number and the name of the book and nothing else. No indication on what chapter / appendix you're on, no indication between the original reprint and the conversion, no side indexes which I think ever the core rulebooks could benefit from. The footer then is just wasted space. And, speaking of, the font size of the conversion is IMO excessively large, especially when you compare to the pages that contained the reprinted original, inflating the page count and cost / price. That said, it sure is impressive on a shelf. About the same size as the core rulebooks but twice the thickness (for fewer pages!) Overall, I quite like it and I'm excited to be able to run this as a new DM.

This two book boxed set is wonderful. Very thorough and well put together. Great fun for nostalgic old school players who remember this adventure from way back when. Well worth the price. It’s a now a prized book on my rpg book shelves.

One of the absolute coolest and underrated modules of the era. Contains both the AD&D adventure and the one for 5e.

I decided to grab a copy of this text after watching Professor Dungeon Master over on YouTube. He uses it as the basis for a campaign that he's running called the "Caves of Carnage", and I have to say, it's exactly what he touts it to be: a goldmine of ideas and small dungeons for beginning players. I had a copy of this back when I was a kid, but I never played it. That's a shame really! The Keep on the Borderlands is a classic module that serves as the bedrock for a new campaign and it's chalked with plenty of adventures. So why get this particular version? True, you can get a similar amount of mileage out of the original modules (which you can still find at reasonable prices on the web), but you get so much more with this book by Goodman games. First off are the interesting articles written by some of the figures of classic D&D, including Gary's son Luke. Next is you get four (sort of) different modules! You get the original copies of B1 In Search of the Unknown. two versions of the Keep on the Borderlands, and then you get 5E versions of both modules! So you get to see the original texts of these classic Basic D&D modules and you get to see up-to-date versions of this modules that keep the original text from the modules but use the modern mechanics of 5E. Players and DMs like me who prefer the classic mechanics also benefit from the larger maps, and bigger text in the classic modules (us old gamers need it now-a-days!). Honestly, the only down size in my opinion is the sheer size of the book! It weighs in at 382 pages and is the size of your old college textbooks. It would be a unwieldy companion for your gaming table, but it is an excellent reference to use while planning. It's best friend is a journal that you use to plan your adventures in. Jot down descriptions and stats from the book and use the maps to create your own maps and flow charts that you can use at the table. When it's game time use your notes from your journal and keep this tome on the book shelf where it belongs. I honestly can't recommend this book enough.

I bought this to mod the module a bit for my own uses, incorporating aspects of the built in story setup and the dungeons mysteries into the larger narrative of my homebrew's long term campaign. Serving that cause it was a success and my adventurers seemed to love it. We dove this dungeon for at least 4 3-4hr sessions as they learned the truth about the structure and encountered its mysteries. It is thorough and mostly well laid out with the original version included before the 5e conversion in the second half of the tome. Even throwing away the running of it, there are a lot of cool ideas, monsters, items and more to juice up your campaigns in general. This was my first time running an older module and it was a lot of fun and definitely recommend it.

The first TSR module that I ever played or ran was T1, The Village of Hommlet, published in the old orange monochrome cover with iconic cover art by Dave Trampier back in 1979. I was twelve years old and the idea of a (mostly) above-ground adventure largely taking place in a medieval peasant village was a mind-blower. This was probably the first sandbox scenario I'd ever come across-- the first place where the GM had to imagine an entire world beyond the dungeon-- the first place where the GM had to improvise and adapt because the plot as written wasn't entirely linear. And I didn't just run Hommlet for others-- I ran it five or six times in a matter of weeks. I was obsessed with D&D, and Hommlet was a real place where I could turn that obsession loose. Yeah. It's fair to say that this module holds a special place in my heart. I returned to Hommlet just once in the years since, in 1984, when the long-awaited follow-up adventure was finally published. The Temple of Elemental Evil was a grand, sweeping tunnel-crawl. I had to play T1-4 from beginning to end, so I recruited a friend to run the game, and it was satisfying enough-- but it was really that village where the story began which had so captured my imagination as a child. This massive two-volume set reproduces the original TSR modules in their entirety and also provides an updated version for 5th edition D&D, so you basically get two copies of more or less the same material with revised game rules and current game statistics. Paying for two versions of the same adventure might not be as appealing for people without the nostalgia for the originals, but I enjoyed revisiting Hommlet and rereading the text that I knew so well in 1984. Goodman Games has done a great job with this update to The Temple of Elemental Evil. They didn't strictly limit themselves to converting the material to 5e, either, and also added several new minor encounters to smooth the story out a bit. Creatures from 1st edition AD&D who aren't currently canon in 5e D&D are suitably statted, giving the game a very 1984 feel. The game's layout was, I think, intended to preserve the appearance of an old-school adventure module, and this is perhaps the one criticism I have of the product. Bringing the adventure's format into the 21st century with text boxes, sidebars, and indexing would have made the material a bit more useful and user-friendly, especially considering the massive size of these two tomes. Even as a longtime fan of this material, my heart sunk a little as I flipped through its hundreds of pages, knowing that my first task, after skimming, would be to figure out how to organize and make use of its voluminous contents. The quality of the physical product is outstanding. Both books are solidly bound in a sturdy cover, with a thick heavy-duty slipcase to protect them. This published adventure should survive just about anything short of being immersed in fire or water. My only quibble here goes back to my complaint about the outdated layout-- some new art to update the feel of the adventure would have been really cool-- but the black-and-white drawings contained within are certainly appropriate for the 1980s old-school vibe that Goodman Games was clearly going for. I think I could have done without the reprint of the original module, as much as I enjoyed revisiting my past through those pages. Still, this is a classic adventure module, easily on my short list for best-ever adventure modules, and it's worth having both versions.

I'm not a big D&D fan. But I enjoy the hell out of weird, genre bending Fantasy. The kind of thing that was a lot more popular before the 1980s, when Fantasy Literature started to mean Tolkien-esque/Medieval European-based. This module was sort of famous or infamous when I was growing up in the 80s, before I ever even tried D&D. The Goodman Games version has lots of cool stuff in it, including reproductions of the original. But for me, the star is the 5e conversion & expansion. Not because I am going to run it in 5e, but because it's much easier to read thanks to modern layout. And I've gotten pretty good at converting 5e stuff over to Dungeon Crawl Classics. I seeded this on a regional map for a campaign I was putting together, but sadly, things went sideways. Life (and death) got in the way. So, that's on the backburner. Still, a very entertaining read.

Into the Borderlands has both the original and reincarnated game. This is where all the fun begins and a glimpse of an original adventure that can be as hard hitting as it was 40 years ago. The book isn't all rules and games, it also contains a lot of behind the scenes material to include some pictures of hand written notes. I see a lot of elements my DM used for our Shadowdark game. Has some great character introduction and beginnings that covers all the basic tropes from prison break, tavern meet or just guards making their way to frontier.