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

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.

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.

First, full disclosure: I'm an older player who ran the Isle of Dread back in the day, and I have tons of nostalgia for it. I rarely ran pre-written modules, but the Isle of Dread was one exception. I LOVE it. So needless to say, I picked this up right away. If you are reading this listing you probably already know what these Goodman Games releases are: they take old D&D modules, reprint them in their original version or versions, then do a full and expanded 5th edition conversion that has the full original adventure plus a bunch of extra stuff to make it even bigger. Add in a bestiary in the back, NPCs, and more (plus a bunch of great articles & interviews at the front), and you've got a book PACKED with material. So you get new + nostalgia in one book. As for the Isle of Dread, here's why I recommend it: It's a great sandbox with tons of adventure to be had, and it's one that any DM can EASILY adapt for their own campaign world. You can either drop the whole island into your world, or you can just as easily grab any of the dozens of locations here and drop them into your campaign as needed. Old temples, ancient ruins, pirate lairs, caves filled with monsters, jungle villages, settlements of spider people, small dungeons, and lots, lots more, all of it easily adapted with next to no work needed by the DM. Plus, you can also run it as intended: as a big exploration-focused adventure. For that alone, this offers a good value for your money. You can milk this for many, many adventures. Need some one-shot standalone adventures? This has you covered. Want a campaign sandbox? You can use it like that, too. It doesn't even have a focused story, so the story options are limitless. Whether your group wants to seek out riches, solve mysteries, fight monsters, or some story of your own devising, it will all fit on the Isle of Dread. Basically, this is a campaign between two covers, with endless possibilities on how you use it. Big thumbs up.

Castle Amber was one of my favorite adventures when I started playing D&D as a kid in the 80s. Forty years later when I introduced our son to RPGs I did my own conversion of the original and he really loved it as well. The original was just a fun, quirky, easy to run adventure. Goodman Games does a perfect job of retaining all of that, and I appreciate the solid job they did in not just converting to 5e, but also of noting areas needing adjustment in the original. For example, the map scale in the original (10 feet per square) appears to have been a mistake, and 5 feet per square makes much more sense. I don't agree with commenters who don't like the page layout. The layout is easily readable (bonus: the font is large enough us aging gamers). The art and maps are perfect and have an old school vibe, which I prefer to the more-polished-but-less-inspired style typical in 5e. A common complaint of the Goodman Games "Original Adventures Reincarnated" series is that the books are just so big. So if bookshelf real estate is important to you, note the product dimensions. But I think it's absolutely worth it and this is one of my favorite items in my library. Note for OSR Folks: If you never run 5e, you'd be better off just buying the original version of Castle Amber, which now can be purchased POD from elsewhere.

I first ran into the ToEE in a secondhand bookstore back around 2000. I fell in love with the adventure, but it was for 2nd Edition. By the time I really started playing, 3rd Edition had come out, and that's what my friends and I were playing, so I never really got a chance to play it. Now, 20 years later, it's been reskinned for 5th Edition! The collection is two massive books. It includes quite a bit of commentary that honestly I have no interest in. It also includes reproduction of the original 2E adventure before it goes into the update. I only dug into the 5E portion, but when I glanced at the 2E repro, it looked just as I remembered. The update is extremely faithful to the original. Mechanics and stats were the primary things updated to make it playable in 5E. They also fleshed out the nodes to make them playable dungeon levels out of the box--in the 2E version, the node areas were just stubs, and it was up to the DM to make them work. Two cautions... party size & makeup and treasure. The encounters were originally scaled to 2E party size & makeup. Modern D&D doesn't necessarily follow the same standards, and the encounters weren't rescaled to match. That could cause encounters to be more dangerous in some situations. The developers did address the issue by giving guidance for the DMs on adjusting the encounters themselves. The other issue is treasure... in the olden days, treasure contributed to the XP the party earned, and it was of course to meant to be split (like the XP). Thus, treasure was integral to character advancement. Modern D&D doesn't directly consider treasure when calculating XP--especially if you're using milestone advancement. Some encounters have unreasonably large amounts of cache or other goods to be claimed... sometimes simply by finding it in a box under the bed. Other encounters may have epic fights with virtually no treasure reward afterwards. It seems a little inconsistent... but that's the way it was in the original adventure. Regardless, just be mindful of how much money is getting into your players' hands; you could break your economy or overpower the PCs. I can't wait to play this with my group :D :D :D

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.

OMGoddess, I paid $40 bucks give-or-take and the sheer volume of "BOOK" I got is simply criminal. Seriously, I feel ashamed for not paying more (Goodman Games must have FAMILIES to take care of, surely!) *THIS ASSESSMENT DOESN'T EVEN INCLUDE Content!! LIKE ART AND WORDS AND STUFF, lol! I'M SAYING THIS IS A BARGAN EVEN IF YOU ARE JUST GOING TO USE IT AS FUEL FOR THE FIREPLACE, THERE'S just Paper for weeks!* And the Content, like Artwork, is AMAZING. IF you haven't met this volume In-Person, once you DO, you WILL be rendered Impressed. If you are even kinda thinking about it: just GET it (for Forty Buck?!? See? I won't shut-up about it, because My Goddess, honestly "THEY" should be asking $100--I'm THAT IMPRESSED. Goodman Games has WON My Goodwill. (I bought "Dungeon Crawl Classics" CORE RULEBOOK too--that purchase led me to the ELEMENTAL EVIL listing, in fact.) Haven't Played yet, but I'm GLUED to the Content already. I bought all this to help break my YouTube Addiction (gonna transfer the Adventure yet again to the DCC-System, since WotC/Hasbro has gone insane...) I not only made a Great Choice, but: BARGAN! (if you see this for LESS than $60 bucks US, 2026, GET!! You'll be able to Quit Smoking, even, there's SO much Material here....GOOD Material--freaking LOVE even!!

Totalling more than thirty maps with hundreds of encounters, and some dozen new creatures and spells, this Original Adventures Reincarnated The Lost City did to B4 what the Curse of Strahd did to I6: current game designers expanded a small old school module into a large book, based on other publications about- and commentaries contained in- the original. You can easily spend a year playing here. Without spoiling much, if you enjoy rivaling factions (my only critique: these are pointlessly gendered), grotesque monsters, lost civilizations and an unknown, mysterious underground world, The Lost City is for you. Solid five-star adventure, art and book quality. Different from some of the other books in the same series, only about 50 out of the 320 pages is dedicated to the publication history and reproduction of the original module, which is just enough. Definitely worth buying. Thanks Goodman Games for such an amazing work.