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Editorial RPG Codex Retrospective: Roguey dismantles white privilege in Tim Cain's Temple of Elemental Evil

Infinitron

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Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil; Troika Games

In the year 2003, if you were a serious RPG fan, and you weren't interested in playing Neverwinter Nights expansion packs and console ports from BioWare, or in playing slam dunks from Black Isle while watching all their good games get cancelled, Troika Games was your only hope.

Founded by the trio of developers behind the original Fallout, Tim Cain chief among them, Troika's obvious raison d'etre was the development of further roleplaying games of that type. That meant heavy on choice and consequence, extremely non-linear, and perhaps most importantly, possessing a fresh and original setting and premise - at least for an RPG. For that reason, it must have been odd when in that year, Troika released The Temple of Elemental Evil, a turn-based dungeon crawl based on the classic D&D module by Gary Gygax.

Although generally praised for its faithful implementation of the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset, to this day TToEE remains in the eyes of many the black sheep of Troika's oeuvre. But there is one man on the Codex with a keen interest in isometric dungeon crawls. One man whose idol would not get a chance to develop his own game to completion again until 2010. One man who is always eager to share his controversial opinions on video games. And although I would have preferred if he continued his survey of the career of J.E. Sawyer, we'll just have to make do with this.

That's right, it's time to gripe about...

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Read the full article: RPG Codex Retrospective: Roguey dismantles white privilege in Tim Cain's Temple of Elemental Evil
 

Overboard

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"Make do".

Also, I didn't bother reading past the first few lines, since that was enough to remind me of why I had him on ignore.
 

tuluse

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I think I had more fun reading this review than I would playing ToEE.



Responses are predictable and lame. Get some new material codex.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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tl;dr Someone having experienced Roguey here but knowing nothing about any of the mentioned games other than who made them and whether they feature TB or RTwP combat can give an accurate synopsis of this article without reading a word.

Why are rehashing months old forum rants as news items?
 

Crescent Hawk

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Nice article, still I think Icewind Dale and BG2 would have worked better as turn based games. But I have no problem with rtwp.
 

Roguey

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Why are rehashing months old forum rants as news items?
Because I added a lot more and I'm extremely annoyed at people expressing their wrong opinions about this awful, awful thing.

Props to the people who criticized my first draft since they were quite right to do so. I did purposely add more provocative material to be passive aggressive about it even if it was warranted. :P Had there been a third draft necessary I would have put

"ToEE was very difficult for the first few levels, but once I hit about 4th level, it was as easy as any of the IE games. I had more options than I did in the IE games, but that didn't suddenly make ToEE brutally difficult.*
...
I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles.*"--JE Sawyer, lead designer of Icewind Dale II and Pillars of Eternity; currently Tim Cain's boss​

underneath the Conclusion text. :D
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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You have this habit of pasting in Sawyer quotes like they are gospel and settle any matter on the subject at hand. You know this is not really a healthy axiom?

Anyhow good on you for taking the effort. Being a critic is all too easy as you know but in this case you are more than entitled to your opinion because at least you put some effort and thought into articulating your opinion - wrong as it may be.
:troll:

IMO, combat mechanics and art in ToEE are great IMO, character progression I liked. The rest is shit especially the encounters which are doubly sour because the mechanics are wasted on shit encounters.
 

RK47

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SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
 

Roguey

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I'm pretty sure this is also the only ToEE article in existence that references ethnocentric racism, behind-the-scenes RPG chat with a P&P D&D designer, Cathy, Type O Negative, comparisons/contrasts to the original module (I read all 128 pages earlier this year), and Tom Decker's post-mortem. Things I most certainly am: Unusual and comprehensive as hell.
 

Ovplain

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I'm pretty sure this is also the only ToEE article in existence that references ethnocentric racism, behind-the-scenes RPG chat with a P&P D&D designer, Cathy, Type O Negative, comparisons/contrasts to the original module (I read all 128 pages earlier this year), and Tom Decker's post-mortem. Things I most certainly am: Unusual and comprehensive as hell.

You should only get cancer! I hope you get cancer!
 

Twiglard

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News at 11. "Racist" replaced "bigot" already. And "ethnic discrimination". And "nationalist'. Just 1-word vocabulary for victim card pulling.
 

VioletShadow

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Interesting write-up. I haven't played the game so sadly can't comment on your criticism, but I appreciate you taking the time to write the retrospective. I've had the game on my backlog for a long time and after reading this... dunno, I usually give priority to games with good/decent writing so I'm sort of discouraged :| but if I ever manage to finish it I'll let you know what I think of it. Some of the replies are so immature, by the way.
Anyways :salute:
 

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