[Review] T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil (AD&D); Archaic

[Kilodungeon]
T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil (1985)
Gary Gygax & Frank Metzer (TSR)
Lvl 1 – 8+

It’s time.

There’s something unique about the history of D&D in that it is littered not only with the creation of enduring classics (GD, S, B2 etc.) but also with blunders, near misses, could-have-beens and adventures that are now forever lost. One need only mention the tragically never completed Castle Greyhawk and hear the lamentations of a thousand grognards!
Today we tackle one such edifice, an amibitous follow-up to the greatest prologue of all time, the legendary T1, that possesses grand aspirations but also deep flaws. While most reviewers are likely to agree on the merits of, say, G1, any review of T1-4 is likely to be contentious, showcasing priorities.

Let’s dig in: T1-4 incorporates Hommlet into its ample 144 page length and proceeds to detail the legendary Temple of Elemental Evil and its four dungeon levels, expanding the mythos, fleshing out its history, defining its players and so on. In something of a retconn, the evil behind the temple does not come from the dreaded Elder Elemental Eye, but an alliance between the imprisoned demoness Zuggtmoy, Queen of all Fungi, and the evil demi-god Iuz. After the temple’s razing a decade past, evil once again
has gathered within its labyrinthine innards and plots to free the imprisoned Demoness from the seals of Good and Law. This is the beginning of PLOT D&D, where the characters are not mere grubby fortune seekers but players on a grand cosmic stage, embroiled in the conflict between good and evil, with the stakes being very high indeed. Gods walk the halls, gigantic battles await, hundreds upon hundreds of bugbears, ettins, trolls and hobgoblins await extermination, enough treasure to beggar the Archduchy of Furyody, Illusion, Foul Sorcery, evil shrines, fiendish traps…T1-4 pulls no punches in delivering upon the promise of T1.

And yet…

Behold, the Great Bulwark of Text, Sapper of Strength, Destroyer of Senses

As is the case with the inhabitants of the temple proper, age has changed them, and not for the better. The Gary Gygax that wrote the sublime T1 is now 6 years older since its date of publication. Role-playing is different from the halcyon days of GDQ.
One can see it in the vast stretches of boxed text that sprawl over the pages of T1-4. Entry upon entry of mundane detail, categorizing room dimensions, minor ornamentation, paragraph upon paragraph of treasure. Boxed text need not be an automatic evil and having a few terse sentences to convey the immediate shape and noteworthy details of the room need not be a fatal flaw but this, this is not the way.

Once I was of interest, weep for me poor Reader

Suffer with me as you hear my lament

Give me life, let me have warmth

You will rot eternally in these mundane halls

The first new addition is still quite fine. The village of Nulb, a ramshackle village squatting near one of the only fordable places near the river belonging to smugglers, brigands and assorted riffraff, stands within spitting distance of the temple proper.
There are considerable logistical advantages in using it as a base of operations, but there is also considerable risk that the PCs will get mugged by a band of greedy villagers. It tries to be a type of mirror-universe hommlet, a place of visible danger that nevertheless has a few concealed agents of good that can be of immense aid to the players if they manage to gain their trust.
It avoids the flaw of having everything revolve around the temple, there are both spies for the temple as well as entirely unrelated threats, like two crews of (quite formidable) river pirates that use the place to offmoor stolen supplies.
For 4 fleshed out buildings, with elaborate notes on how the village will react to anything from pitched battles to the party hauling in large sacks filled with treasure, it does a lot, but the decision to leave the rest of the village up to the GM might rub others the wrong way, as these elements are most effective when they are concealed within a backdrop of seeming normalcy.
The decision to outsource the fleshing out of the surrounding region mostly to the GM in question might be defensible, as a hex map with terrain features is generously provided, and an idea put forth, to use surrounding adventures as a means of closing any XP gaps that will inevitably occur.

The temple proper gets a stunning introduction, well worth sitting through the paragraphs of boxed text if delivered with appropriately gloomy severity, and once again we are confronted with a sort of eerie anticipation, a vast, partially ruined edifice, convered with all manner of obscene statuary, sealed with great bronze doors bound with sorcery and chains, the very vegetation around the place growing twisted and misshapen.
It sets a fucking scene. Several other decisions are made that immediately win the Prince Seal of Approval:
* The size is good, 420 by 360ish feet, proper fucking temple size.
* The upper level of the temple is entirely deserted and does proper foreshadowing
* There are a few ruined, ramshackle structure besides the temple proper to explore that are not immediately obvious, one of which contains one of the most brutal suprise attacks this side of Pearl Harbor that can very easily lead to a TPK, but there is also at least one secret door leading to a lower level of the dungeon.

Gary gygax knew the power of a good entry set-piece and in Temple this is no exception.

Temple proper is 4 levels of dungeon, approaching but not quite megadungeon territory, with over 200 areas not including the Elemental Nodes. The map is a sprawling, intricate webwork with secret doors, the odd unnoticeably inclined passage, It is also a bitch to run. Nothing this side of tenfootpole.org and the Utility Standard can prepare a man for the challenges that await.
There are several intricate features that influence the entire adventure and understanding what they are and how they interconnect is vital to the correct administration of the adventure but Temple will not foreshadow the importance of these features with the exception of the Sealed Doors.
As such, you the GM, will become aware of the importance of several of these features in the manner of a young woman reading an elizabethan mystery novel, with crucial details being mentioned in the rooms where they are located.
As such you must absorb the entire 144 page behemoth, including its boxed text, to get the complete picture, there is little in the way of information hierarchy. It is nightmarish.
There are exceptions in the case of the order of battle for the inhabitants of Level 4, which varies greatly depending on whether or not the alarm has been sounded, but overal you are up shit creek without a paddle.
On level 3 is the Inner Sanctum of the Daemoness Zuggtmoy, which you can only effectively reach (there are unlikely scenarios allowing you to break the sealed doors, unleashing Zuggtmoy onto the random encounter table, or figure out a way to descend to the level via a riddle) once you have obtained the Orb of Golden Death AT MINIMUM, which is located…in a secret door of room…348…but which you will need to use on a room of the Upper levels of the Temple. Don’t get me wrong, with proper organization, this cryptic shit is amazing and part of D&D, but Gygax help you if you forgot to take notes somewhere along the way and you missed a detail mid-play.
There are some pointers in the beginning trying to make SOME sense of the whole and I appreciate the complexity, i.e., the number of ways the adventure can unfold, with anything from the destruction of the Orb of Golden Death to a smackdown with Zuggtmoy in her layer, to getting tricked by Greed and freeing Zuggtmoy, leaving her to wander the earth or return to the Abyss as her heart desires. There is no consistency, you will find crucial details scattered about rooms, monster entries and artifact descriptions.

But this is the macro, there are problems with the micro of T1-4.

There is something missing since the glory days of GD. Some elements have been lost and the end result is still very well designed but it feels like it is reaching from a more limited bag of tricks. A leaner, older Gygax, still reeling from the drama, gets back into the fight because by golly he needs a winner and he needs one NOW.
T1-4 is composed of mostly nodes of rooms containing monsters in room B being alterted if there is noise in room A and then calling his buddies in room C to help out. There is generally no overview, so make notes of these interrelations if you want to run this, because unless you read the entire series of nodes, you are bound to miss some of them. I like tactical D&D, but this encompasses the bulk of the encounters in T1-4.
It’s not lazy, the monsters will use unconventional tactics, have the odd champion, set ambushes, have minor underlying differences that a party using Charm Person or ESP might be able to exploit, or use custom weapons, but this is the bulk of Temple of Elemental Evil. It comes across as more grindy then I am used to from Gygax. There are of course plentiful prisoners to free, some of them treacherous, others secretely Velunian nobility that will ensure great reward if they are returned (a fine detail that is used…twice?), and the Temple, to its credit, does immediately provide some robes of the Four priesthoods of the elements so it is quite possible PCs will resort to using disguises and gradually figure out the underlying power dynamics, which are prominent. But it is also bugbears, gnolls, ogres, trolls, giants, trolls, bugbears, ogres, giants, evil cleric, rinse repeat.
The thing that comes closest to a genuine special is occasional, at times brilliant, use of illusions. Two wolfweres in a bullshit magic mirror appear as angels and ask you to leave all your magic swank and silver weapons so they can empower them with light. If you do and you return, your treasure is now gone, and you are now fighting wolfweres without magic weapons.
Fantastic! Things that seem too good to be true. A pool is asking you to jump in and help free the Nereid, it is actually a sentient pool of Acid with suggestion powers! That’s great…but again the same trick is used repeatedly.
So you have a fairly limited set of monsters but there is considerable variation within the set. Occasional flourishes, like a bandit with a stationary Siege crossbow that can be dismantled and fires 4 bolts at once and takes a turn to reload watching a corridor. Part of this is fantastic but it is buried under THICC and voluminous description of mostly mundane detail.
You want another detail? An abandoned room filled with debris, with a minotaur statue sitting on a stone chair. IT IS ACTUALLY A MINOTAUR COVERED IN PLASTER, HIDING AND NOW ATTACKS YOU. EAT SHIT AND DIE!

The elemental temples and the various arcane defence mechanisms that must be overcome in order to get at the (very well concealed) treasure in the inner sanctums are also very good. The point is that you have a reason, like in many good Gygax adventures, to take and interrogate prisoners, or use ESP to read their minds, or charm them or whathaveyou otherwise a lot of these defences will likely prove all too formidable.
There are some absolutely brutal encounters in some of these elemental temples, from an altar to evil water that animates as a Juggernaut, to a floor of packed earth containing 4 16 HD earth elemental. When it is good, it is grand, brutal, TPK inducing savagery that pushes players to the limit, while being littered with hidden knowledge that must be gleaned from the inhabitants somehow.
There is always some information the players do not yet know, that is vital to success. Blundering through the Temple is generally punished brutally and it is very easy to become embroiled in a large pitched battle. But does the modern GM even see that when he reads this? Would I understand this if I had not been weaned on Gygax for the past year? I should try this out.

Level 4 is completely unlike the others, going for more of an eight-pointed star, with Iuz’s Inner sanctum in the centre and head. It drops all the boxed text that clogs up the earlier levels and instead gives us a full order of battle, with positions for everyone when at rest and on full alert.
Here too all the stops are effectively pulled, unless the PCs can completely clear out the entire floor (which seems incredibly unlikely), they will have to make a BEELINE for one of the elemental nodes, the GM having at least strongly hinted that unless they also possess the Orb of Golden Death this is essentially a death sentence, find the gemstone in that node so they can at least travel back (or bleed out from 1-2/4 damage per turn on the Node with no means of respite), then repeat the same procedure 3 more times to complete the orb of Golden Death, and probably destroy it, but maybe also wield its formidable power against one’s opponents. This entire 4th level is insane, with a fucking magic fungoid curtain composed of violet invincible fungi that the bad guys use for cover while you are bombarded with rocks and attacked by gargoyles. Nutso. Great addition. Approximate by playing Chess on Nightmare difficulty (set the house on fire).

Too many dungeons, especially megadungeons fall into the formulaic trap of making clearable monster hotels that the PCs can chip away at and emerge victorious. Doing so on level 4 seems very unlikely, given the numbers at which the Temple replenishes.
There are at least 4 opportunities for instant death if the PCs take the wrong gate (didn’t think to check? You just propelled yourself into the elemental plane of fire!). It impresses me how important information is in the Temple of Elmental Evil, and how one would actually be able to employ spells like ‘ESP’ or ‘Disguise self’ to fantastic effect.

You stand before the Ramparts of Elemental Evil

All this written in a format that would make the gods weep. THIS IS SO THICK. PLEASE DEVELOP TOOLS TO COMPRESS OR STREAMLINE THIS INFORMATION. It’s a 144 page Trouble at Embertrees.

Also worth noting, if you didn’t pick any Good characters and your party is composed of gritty loners seeking to turn their bitterness against the evil that ruined their lives, then now comes the penalty for that decision.
It is fully possible (though again unlikely) to meet Iuz on the 4th level since he keeps his inner sanctum here also, and if you do, there is a very large chance St. Cuthbert will show up and the two duke it out in some heavenly realm,
which is fucking awesome. If you have only N characters, you just get to meet Iuz and…well that’s it for you bucko. You get to be murdered by the Petty God of Evil.

The 4 elemental nodes that must be scoured for the 4 elemental gems are essentially outlines. Here we get ultra shortform Gary, terrain features only and a list of monsters which you, the sufferring GM, must fashion into an adventure.
I think a smart GM tries to put some way of returning to the Prime without the GM in at least one of the nodes, making use of the limited wish capability of the efreet, for example.
There’s a list of colorful NPCs that have been marooned there (wouldn’t they all be dead in a day though? This would also be a good opportunity to consider adding areas of limited shelter).
So yeah, big, sprawling open maps with mostly hostile monsters, where again, given the limited resources of the party, information gathering is used to good effect, whether it is by avoiding dangerous lairs (a possibility explicitly noted)
or by finding the Gemstones QUICKLY. There is a long list of spells that are altered in the nodes, written down in the most tedious fashion, not by node, but by character spell, so once again you must read through the entire list if you want to be prepared.
There are some interesting terrain features, the Air Node is mapped in 50ft. increments and makes use of great heights and flying monsters, the Water note is mostly island, the Earth note is caves etc. etc. Most nodes have at least one Dragon.

If you somehow made it through all of that, fought/teleported your way out of the 4th level, rested up, fought your way back in again (or made use of the convenient front door entrance), comes the confrontation with Zuggtmoy.
This section is utterly bizarre, in a good way, dropping all the trappings of Dungeon Level 1-3 to give you the inner sanctum of the fucking queen of fungi. Furniture that is actually molds, slimes, oozes and fungi.
Zuggtmoy shows up in the guise of a hag to tempt players with pillars made of precious metals, each of immense value, which have a great chance of setting her free to roam around the upper levels (or even beyond).
A throne set with 66 gemstones, if you take most of them you just attract terrible demonic attention later, if you take all of them, Zuggtmoy goes free. This element of giving the players something that seems too good to be true,
which prevails throughout the temple of elemental evil, now pays off one last time. If you made it through, you now have the opportunity to beat the shit out of Zuggtmoy, whose powers increase with each Seal that you have inadvertently broken, or you can elect to accept her surrender and accept her giant treasure hoard instead.

As I read and reread this thing I am torn. It is grand, ambitious, there are terrific classic encounters and vicious traps, there are the trappings of evil, of a quantity sufficient to fill ten other adventures. But they are mixed thickly, with mountains of mundane detail, bugbear barracks and primitive organization, meaning you will have to crawl through broken glass in order to get at it. I would have liked to see some hints regarding the location of the orb scattered about the dungeon, I think as written it is quite possible for PCs to pass it by completely.
There is legwork to be done before it can be made to function, but most of it would come from making careful notes. There are ample encounter and treasure tables to make the Nodes into something that is at least somewhat enjoyable, and you can always rip off Tjocanth for a good monster hotel.
I have heard some blame the yoke of the dreaded Frank Mentzer for the burden Temple imposes on the suffering GM? Is it possible this was written for an audience that was assumed to have been playing AD&D for years upon years, and would thus be able to navigate the at times encyclopedic lists of powers, abilities and treasures with instinctive ease.
I know it not, but I know this;

This is a flawed diamond. There are structures here, buried underneath the text, that are unseen even in the groggiest of OSR modules. There are wheels within wheels, tricks within tricks, subtle deaths in myriad guises, and those who declaim it as merely a hack-and-slashaton will find a deserved early grave.
This is not the D&D of not having everything be hostile, the boundless adventure of S1 or D1. This is the D&D of having everything be hostile, yet interaction, information, obfuscation is a tool of vast importance. There are gifts here that are poisoned, and easy victories must be shunned.

If you dare, if you have the fortitude, you can master the subtle secrets and holy madness of the Temple. You will be one of few today, for its secrets are not easily gleaned.

I am torn between a *** and a ****. I will look at Embertrees (which I should upgrade to ***) and deduct a whole star for utility, and blame the rest of its flaws on the evils of Frank Mentzer.