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Reign of Elemental Evil - Capturing an Old-School Dungeon Crawl

Robert Lashley Posted:
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Interviews 0

MMORPG: For those that are familiar with the original Temple of Elemental Evil module for AD&D the temple in game will be immediately recognizable as that from the cover art of the module. Does the dungeon play out like the pen and paper module or is the original just used for inspiration?

Charles Miles, Senior Content Designer: The dungeon is our adaptation of the classic pen and paper module from 1985. People who are familiar with the original Temple will find a whole lot they recognize in the DDO dungeon– the way the Temple looks, the physical layout of the Temple itself, Otis the blacksmith, many of the enemies you fight, and of course the major threat you confront at the end. It is our own DDO interpretation, though, so not everything is exactly the same. For example, our ongoing storyline about Mysterious Remnants has caused a bit of a shakeup at the Temple. It’s changed the way the dungeon flows in certain ways, opening up certain paths and closing off others.

Steve Rogers, Content Designer: I’d have to say some of both. Our main goal in bringing such a classic module to DDO was to include as much as possible of what made the pen-and-paper version so memorable. Many of the characters, maps, locations, and encounters of the original module can be found here! However, since DDO is an action-based game, certain maps have changed slightly, some encounters were adjusted to better fit the game, and some new encounters inspired by the module were created as well.

 MMORPG: What excited you the most to work on this classic adventure?

Charles: The thing I personally wanted to capture was the feeling of an old-school dungeon crawl, where you’d disappear into a dungeon for days and days, and not have the slightest idea what was around the next corner. Of course, it’s tricky to do that with a dungeon as well-known as the Temple of Elemental Evil! So what we did to capture that feeling is combine the highlights of the original module – certain specific fights with specific bosses  in specific locations– with random encounters. While exploring our dungeon you might turn a corner and run into a mini-boss who wasn’t in the original … and who you didn’t encounter the last time you ran the DDO version, either. The same applies to traps and loot. It won’t always be in the same place every time you play.

Steve: What excited me most about working on this adventure was the sheer scope of it all. From where players start on the Temple grounds, there are five or six large floors inside the Temple itself, as well as four Elemental Nodes, which are big enough to be dungeons of their own. Even splitting the adventure into a “Part 1” and a “Part 2”, they’re still the largest dungeons we’ve ever made in DDO, and players still haven’t found all of the secrets hidden inside. I realize Charles mentioned that as one of the challenges in making this dungeon, but it’s one of the parts I like best about it! I also really enjoyed building the final encounters for each of the two dungeons; they’re both inspired by the original module, and require some thought into how they’re approached if players want to succeed. Players exploring the Temple can find clues and tools that will help them survive these encounters, which ties into one of the big goals we had for this adventure: Exploration.

MMORPG: What difficulties did you face taking the Temple of Elemental Evil and bringing it into DDO? Were there challenges in converting a module that was originally designed for the Greyhawk campaign setting and importing it to Ebberon?

Charles: One of the major challenges was scale. The original Temple of Elemental Evil module was a campaign that spanned three or four different areas and would take your characters up several levels. We had to condense all that down into a dungeon pack that you could play in a couple of evenings. So we focused on the Temple itself and the elemental nodes it contains. Even restricting ourselves just to the Temple, we still had to cut things down a bit to make the dungeons a reasonable size. Even so, the two dungeons we ended up with are huge.

As for Eberron versus Greyhawk – well, that’s complicated. In our story, the Gatekeepers on Eberron have managed to open a magic portal to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but they’re not quite sure where the Temple is exactly. They only know two things: it’s somewhere on the Prime Material Plane and it’s so far away it can’t possibly be on Eberron itself. And that’s all they know at this point. We’ll be continuing to explore this mystery in the updates to come, which will take us to some very interesting places indeed!

Steve: One of the biggest challenges on my plate was figuring out how to make the module’s non-linear, exploratory style of dungeon fit into DDO, where our dungeons have required objectives as well as a concrete start and finish. In the end, we collapsed a few staircases and locked a few doors, but were ultimately able to keep most of the original dungeon’s layout the same, which I was happy about. In the end, we have a dungeon that players can explore for hours and hours if they want to, but also allows players with a little less time to just run the core “story” quickly if that’s what they want.

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Grakulen

Robert Lashley

Rob Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen or find him on YouTube @RobUnwraps.