ooooh i like that! very nice indeedy!

the pic looks familiar, but i cant think where i might even know if from....

Al

AC5 - Player Character Record Sheets:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpag ... acter.html

Though it actually depicts the moathouse from T1:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/super.html

I have always liked that illustration. Even the giant frog hiding in the tree

grodog wrote:Until the recent T1-4 thread, I hadn't ever seen this pic before.  I like

yeah i agree - its pretty fab imo. perfect image of adventure

Al

Xaxaxe wrote:That is such a cool piece ... it's totally wasted on AC5. It could have been a featured part of a T1-4 re-release or something like that.

absolutely. totally wasted on that particular item - well deserved to be on a much better item - yeah a T1-4 would have been so cool wouldnt it?

Al

zhowar wrote:AC5 - Player Character Record Sheets:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpag ... acter.html

Though it actually depicts the moathouse from T1:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/super.html

  And, with the incredibly detailed memories that can go along with gaming....

   Aren't there very large frogs lurking just under that drawbridge, waiting to snag player characters who walk across it?

    It has been at least 20 years since I read T1 Village of Hommlet, but I am sure there were giant frogs in that moat, right there.

   That might explain the giant frog lurking behind the party in the picture.

Mark  

Mars wrote:Yep that's where they are.  I just ran through them a few weeks back in my current gaming group.  It's my first time through the temple.  We had that mod 20 years ago but never played it so I've been a temple virgin until now.

  Well, the module probably makes more sense if you are running it as part of the Temple of Elemental Evil.

   Back in the day, there was a multi-year gap between the appearance of T1 Village of Hommlet and any follow-up adventures.  The World of Greyhawk product got published and years of stony silence ensued before Temple of Elemental Evil appeared.  The mysterious references to other forces at work in the area all led to dead ends.  (And, I doubt that anyone was ever brought to justice for the murder of Otis' brother.)

   I heard from a store owner that Temple of Elemental Evil was due to be published when another game company published a very similar idea to the one on the TSR drawing board.  I have come to suspect that Dark Tower might have been that "similar idea."  The timing would have been right...does anyone here know?

   Consequently, Llioth the Beautiful (is that the right name?) who was described as "the dark hope of evil," was only a paper tiger.  He went down easy along with his compatriots in an adventure that could have been labeled, Moathouse of the Ludicrously Weak Brigands Who Had No Treasure To Speak Of.  

   Most player-character parties I have heard of ended up looting and burning Hommlet...whose villagers had lots and lots of treasure.  They set themselves up in the guard tower after massacring the soldiers and its lord.  My own group, in fact, did it dressed as the bandits we had just killed.  

  Although...I did hear of one party that got wiped out by those frogs in the moat....  

Mark  

MShipley88 wrote:Well, the module probably makes more sense if you are running it as part of the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Actually, some of the things I was expecting in the to-be-published T2 was a lot more wilderness area around Hommlet to be detailed, as well as more info on the area/roads to/from Wild Coast and Dyvers (both of which were postulated as the headquarters for the cult, which may have merely been rumor, of course).  

MShipley88 wrote:   Back in the day, there was a multi-year gap between the appearance of T1 Village of Hommlet and any follow-up adventures.  The World of Greyhawk product got published and years of stony silence ensued before Temple of Elemental Evil appeared.  The mysterious references to other forces at work in the area all led to dead ends.  (And, I doubt that anyone was ever brought to justice for the murder of Otis' brother.)

Some layers of the mysterious ToEE onion have been peeled, Mark, if you're interested in some additional Greyhawk research and such.  Unfortunately some of the info has been lost due to board crashes/hacks (on Scott Gregg's and Gene Weigel's two boards as well as Rob's), but other data has survived in interviews in the Oerth Journal and among other GH resources.

MShipley88 wrote:   I heard from a store owner that Temple of Elemental Evil was due to be published when another game company published a very similar idea to the one on the TSR drawing board.  I have come to suspect that Dark Tower might have been that "similar idea."  The timing would have been right...does anyone here know?

.  Gygax states in the intro to Q1 that T2 was too similar to that design, which was one of the reasons T2 was delayed and that Q1 was published as the conclusion to the G/D series; FWIW, I've never heard that Dark Tower or any other non-TSR products influenced the publication of T2.

MShipley88 wrote:Consequently, Llioth the Beautiful (is that the right name?) who was described as "the dark hope of evil," was only a paper tiger.  He went down easy along with his compatriots in an adventure that could have been labeled, Moathouse of the Ludicrously Weak Brigands Who Had No Treasure To Speak Of.  

T1 is an incredibly dangerous adventure for 1st level PCs---I've never ran a group through it that didn't suffer PC deaths, given how powerful the monsters are in the dungeon level in particular.  

MShipley88 wrote:Most player-character parties I have heard of ended up looting and burning Hommlet...whose villagers had lots and lots of treasure.  They set themselves up in the guard tower after massacring the soldiers and its lord.  My own group, in fact, did it dressed as the bandits we had just killed.  

I've heard similar tales, but given the number of higher-level good NPCs in the area, much like the moathouse, Hommlet can be pretty tough on PCs intent on sacking the town....

MShipley88 wrote:Although...I did hear of one party that got wiped out by those frogs in the moat....  

The group I started through T1 back in January and March fared relatively well in the moathouse, but nearly lost a PC to the giant frogs; more would have fallen if I had been rolling better  Details in the session logs at http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh ... _game.html if you're curious.