The Temple of Elemental Evil Wrap Report

At first glance, Hommlet seems like many another village. It lies nestled within the Kron Hills, 10 leagues south of the city of Verbobonc, somewhat east of the Lortmil Mountains and just west of the Gnarley Forest. This region is peaceful, fertile countryside suited to such pursuits as farming, herding, woodcutting, hunting and trapping, so it was only natural that a prosperous little settlement should arise, located on a crossroads leading to the Wild Coast. Alas, many sinister characters and vile creatures were drawn there too, establishing a nearby community called Nulb. In this iniquitous place, a chapel was erected, one dedicated to vice, damnation and the worship of various immoral and malevolent deities. Over time, as more loathsome beings came to visit, it grew into the Temple of Elemental Evil, filled with dark priests and their corrupted servants.

This was the setting for the very first module within the pen and paper Greyhawk campaign, which was introduced with the release of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule set in 1985. Now, it's serving as the backdrop for The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure, an RPG created by California-based Troika Games. The team initially touted it as providing the most faithful implementation possible of 3rd Edition D&D, combining up to date versions of the character system, feats, skills et al with locations and enemies from the original dungeon crawl plus traditional turn-based combat. The title was subsequently adapted to the newer 3.5 version rules prior to its release in September by publisher Atari. Recently, we had the good fortune to catch up with Producer Tom Decker who provided this thoughtful, thought-provoking and extremely interesting self-evaluation.

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The Project The Temple of Elemental Evil is a classic, turn-based, role-playing computer game using one of the original D&D modules from Gary Gygax as its core, while updating it for the 3.5 D&D rule set. The premise is pretty simple: your party arrives in the small town of Hommlet for a variety reasons (depending on alignment) and discovers an evil thought to be destroyed is rising once again nearby. Through various interactions with NPC's in Hommlet, the party picks a reason to go find this evil and pursue their goals. It's meant to be open-ended so that players can build whatever story they want, or none at all. We just give you the building blocks to create your own story.

When I joined Troika, the project was already into its first three or four milestones, so I wasn't around when the deal was made between Troika and Atari (then Infogrames). But certainly Troika was thrilled with the prospect of working on such a great license as Dungeons and Dragons and the talented group of artists and programmers that were assembled were some of the most enthusiastic, positive people I've ever been around. It was a great atmosphere and a great team to be working with.

The Team Troika is located in Irvine, California. The three founders, Jason Anderson, Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain left Interplay after concluding work on Fallout and built the team that created our first project, Arcanum. From the success of Arcanum, two teams were formed, one to work on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (in production), and the other to work on The Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE).

When I came on board, there were nine people on the ToEE team. Eventually, our team rose to 14 full-time members, with additional assistance from some interns and part-time contractors. In addition, our opening cinematic was done through contract by Tigar Hare Studios, our music and sound effects by Ron Fish (contracted through Scott Snyder at Atari), and our voice over direction by Therese MacLaughlin through contract with Martin Denning.

High-Level Goals At the core, I think we wanted to create a Dungeons and Dragons game that would be true to the core rule books, and to accomplish that, it had to be turn-based. Being party- based allowed the player to build a balanced group (or not), and be more true to some of the classic computer RPGs such as The Bard's Tale and Wizardry. Graphically, we were looking to make richly animated backdrops and characters in a way that a full 3D game could not, and yet much more so than previous 2D RPGs had been. Creating 3D models to interact with our painted 2D backdrops allowed us the perfect mix to achieve our art goals. The game was meant to pay homage to both classic computer RPGs and a classic pencil and paper D&D module, while bringing the technology and art up to today's standards, and in that sense, the game would be unique.

We wanted players to have memorable encounters and combat experiences that make good stories in and of themselves - challenging and rewarding for players who know and use the rules to their fullest, and yet possible to get through just using basic skills and spells.