Clues to the Original ToEE Campaign

Okay,

boy has it been a LONG time since I posted. So anyway, perusing the 'net for the musings of my fellow Greyhawk aficionados I came across some interesting information. Quite possibly, the original adventure that Gary Gygax based The Moathouse as published upon may have been sitting in front of our eyes for nearly the last 40 years. Like just about anything Gary did, apparently his home adventures were little more than a collection of notes and some scraps of paper with some basic information written on them. Anyone who has ever read (or owns) Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign can see the same sort of presentation with the original Castle Blackmoor. Hopefully no one else has beaten me to the punch and posted this already.

Anyway, there is in the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide a sample dungeon. Its a monastery wherein you seek a large Fire Opal (which is much like the Flaming Eye symbol) that was holy for the group of monks who originally inhabited the structure. Not only does the description of the exterior of the monastery read much like the published version of the Moathouse, the few bits of text about the dungeon features many things in common.

Personally, I'm gearing up for running a Castles & Crusades tabletop game in the coming months and am now considering doing Temple of Elemental Evil as the main campaign. I think I'm going to add the (what I'm calling) T0 - Monastery of the Fire Opal as the opening "module". It will be the jumping off point where the PCs go the abandoned monastery, clear the bandits and find (or at least learn about) the Fire Opal and how it relates to something in Hommlet. Incidentally, there was a fully fleshed out version published in for D&D 3.X written by Jonathan Tweet (but without a single mention of Gary Gygax, which is bothersome).



http://unfrozencavemandicechucker.blogspot.com/2012/01/dmg-sample-dungeon-part-1-background.html

 

Yea, I had to buy a Good old Games copy a few days ago since my original copy got cracked when I moved a few years ago. I did download the New Content Modpack and was suitably impressed with the changes from the old content. Specifically, I noticed more voice work than original. I'm assuming y'all were able to dig up more voice files that should have been put into the game? I also liked the revamped Store at the opening.

 

LOL! Funny enough, I had to get on to the writers for the Pugmire RPG Kickstarter (compatible w/D&D 5E) about the fact that Spears weren't 2-Pawed (aka 2-handed) weapons, but are classified as Versatile (meaning they can be used both 1 and 2-handed).

Anyway, I had wanted to share some info with members of the forums who may be unaware of some of the scholarship that is going on now about the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons (and even from before it was even Dungeons & Dragons) and how that changes some of our understanding of The Temple of Elemental Evil campaign that Gary Gygax designed. Someone managed to dig up the original map of what would become The World of Greyhawk back when it was just The Castles & Crusades Society Map of The Great Kingdom & Environs published in the old Domesday Book fanzine (pre-pre-cursor to Dragon Magazine).

(Courtesy of Allan Grohe, who colored this in and added some of the information that was blurry in the original JPEG)