WIR S1 Tomb of Horrors [SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!!]‏

[Swedish Chef]

Originally Posted by Remus Lupin

I wonder if part of the issue is the difference between how it is experienced as a player vs. how it is experienced as a DM. If you're a player, and you've got a decent DM, and you've never actually read the module yourself, you may walk away thinking that the whole thing was "fair," because it was never apparent to you just how arbitrary it all was.

I think this sums it up completely. I've followed the thread right from the start. I ran the ToH for my 3ed group a few years ago and this is exactly how it played out. I read and re-read the module several times. I made notes of things that I felt needed to be changed as they weren't clear to me, so they'd be even less clear for the players. I decided what sort of searches would reveal what secrets/clues/traps in a given area. I was the one that helped make the module "fair" for the players. Whether I succeeded in that is up to my players to tell you, but I believe so, as no one complained about it at the end.

I think the majority of "classic" modules are viewed that way for two reasons. 1) There was a shared continuity at the time. There weren't many published modules available, so pretty much everyone played several of them at some point in time before DMs started scripting their own and 2) many DMs at the time relied more on their own judgement for written modules as many of them had such flaws in their descriptive text.

I'm not putting down today's modules. I enjoy running many of them, as it is just easier, especially with all the new rules. But a relatively simpler game back then resulted in relatively simpler modules which, conversely, required DMs to invest more creative thinking into running them. And I think that creative thinking is what makes the difference.

[Freakohollik]

Originally Posted by Bullgrit

Yes, meticulous bomb squad-style play is a sort of thinking play. But as I've mentioned several times through this thread, that is not the style of play many of ToH fans portray it as.

This is not a matter of some of us wanting ToH to be different than it is, it's a matter of so many ToH fans telling us it is different than it is.

For instance, read this description of ToH:This post, here on ENWorld, received a bunch of xp awards with comments like, "Great analysis," "Exactly right," "Very good explanation."

So many people think/believe/espouse the above as truth about ToH. But as we've seen in this thread, most of it is completely and demonstrably false.

Now, I'm not calling out the particular poster who said all the above, nor the people who gave the post xp. It is just one of many examples around here, (and from outside ENWorld), but it is a recent and extensive example, and it is from the thread that prompted Stoat to start this particular discussion.

No, it's that we have always been told that the module gives a solution to all the problems. But it doesn't. And we're left wondering why this has been misrepresented to us.

Again, this is not all to say that ToH isn't, or doesn't deserve to be, a legendary classic D&D module. It's just very odd that ToH's biggest fans describe it as something very different than what it actually is. The way the ToH's fans describe it, I would think I'd love it. I'd love to run/play a module with the style and features it is said to have. But when you read/play the actual module as written, it's very disappointing to see that it is not at all like how it is described.

It's like hearing that a particular movie is a deep mystery story, but when you watch it you see it's actually a thriller horror flick. When you complain that it's a horror flick, someone else comes back with, "What did you want? A mystery story?" Well, yeah, that's what I was told it would be.

Bullgrit

Fair enough. I agree with the majority of the quote you posted, but I can see how such descriptions would give the wrong impression of the module. The "Acererak follows a pattern and sticks to it, so that with care you really don't have to guess after you successfully enter the tomb." line is outwright wrong and is the most misleading part.