Temple of Elemental Evil, Ravenloft, and the next thing

Looking Back on Temple of Elemental Evil

My table wrapped up T1-T4 Temple of Elemental Evil a few months ago, and I decided to take a break before moving on to I6 Ravenloft to play some video games for a bit. It's a good thing, too, because there's been several hospitalizations and deaths so far this year, but that's a topic for elsewhere.

After having finished it, I can confidently say that I don't really get all the hype T1-T4 gets in this day and age. Perhaps when it was new, but I still see people today lauding its greatness. It was... fine. T1 had a very strong start, no real complaints there, but as the book went on it meandered more and left a lot to be desired in the third and especially fourth floors of the dungeon. I've heard rumors that Gygax was unable to finish it in time due to being pulled away for TSR business often, so he gave all his notes to Mentzer to complete the work. I would believe it, personally. I've also since been told that the campaign book has an errata, so perhaps that fixes a lot of our issues with it, but I've not read it; no real interest in running this again.

The Upcoming Ravenloft Run

Moving past that, though, we'll be starting back up on April 11th with the group's first batch of characters going to the castle representing Ravenloft to have dinner with the Count; some of them received a letter inviting them over to congratulate them on their work within the region and on the power they've gained. The players know what they're getting into, but the characters don't. Joining us this go around are:

• Rowan Human Magic-User 7 (~66k XP)
  • Henchman Freya, Human Fighter 5 (~18k XP)
  • Henchman Rikka, Human Fighter 5 (~18k XP)
• Iskandar, Human Magic-User 8 (~106k XP)
  • Henchman Thorgisl, Human Fighter 2 (~2k XP)
• Ser Duncan, Human Paladin 6 (~55k XP)
• Melceth, Human Cleric 7 (~55k XP)
• Elowyn, Elf Fighter 5 / Magus 5 (~55k XP)

Looking Ahead to the New World

Regardless of what the results of the Ravenloft module are, there will then be a time skip of a couple or few years before a portal to a new setting, Jovian, will be made available to the group; a planet with two suns--a very large, incredibly bright one representing Bahamut and a much smaller, dimmer one representing Tiamat--that is bathed in an eternal twilight. Two major themes I aim to hit with this setting are reclamation and perseverance.

To go along with the change in setting, I am also planning on making other changes to the game. We are:

• finally getting rid of the gnome
• retaining the half-ogre
• adding the mul, which are a half-human/half-dwarf race from Dark Sun
• removing the Assassin class
• adding the Runecaster class
• replacing the base Cleric class with a specialty priest for each of our 17 deities
• allowing halflings to be Illusionist in the absence of the gnome
• allowing mul to be Occultists, a custom class of my making
• allowing half-orcs to be a Magus, another custom class of my making, in the absence of the Assassin