Tomb of Horrors - example of many, or one of a kind?

Stoat · Sep 14, 2011

I'll leave any discussion of the ToH to the other thread (which I haven't forgotten). But I will say that I've never much liked the deadly sacks of grain in the 1E DMG's sample adventure. Here are a few reasons why:

1. The idea that rooting around in a sack of moldy grain might kill somebody instantly doesn't seem realistic to me and does nothing for my sense of verisimilitude. I don't imagine that moldy sacks of grain are actually instant death traps in the real world. I am somewhat surprised to find that they are in the game world.

2. IIRC, there are no clues or hints in the sample adventure that the moldy sacks of grain could be a deathtrap. There is no reason for a player (particularly a newbie player) to believe that investigating the sacks might kill their PC dead. It feels arbitrary to me. I'd be happier if some such a clue was present.

3. The encounter encourages a style of play that I don't care for. It teaches the players that even mundane objects can be insta-killers. Exploring common dungeon elements can lead to death with little to no warning. IMO, this approach risks inculcating a habit of excessive caution and a reluctance to explore and interact with the game world. I don't want players who are afraid to poke at some rotten sacks. I definitely don't want players to spend 30 minutes of game time dithering over the safest way to approach a pile of rotten sacks. I think the encounter in the sample adventure leads to both.

terrya · Sep 14, 2011

Stoat said:
I'll leave any discussion of the ToH to the other thread (which I haven't forgotten). But I will say that I've never much liked the deadly sacks of grain in the 1E DMG's sample adventure. Here are a few reasons why:

1. The idea that rooting around in a sack of moldy grain might kill somebody instantly doesn't seem realistic to me and does nothing for my sense of verisimilitude. I don't imagine that moldy sacks of grain are actually instant death traps in the real world. I am somewhat surprised to find that they are in the game world.

2. IIRC, there are no clues or hints in the sample adventure that the moldy sacks of grain could be a deathtrap. There is no reason for a player (particularly a newbie player) to believe that investigating the sacks might kill their PC dead. It feels arbitrary to me. I'd be happier if some such a clue was present.

3. The encounter encourages a style of play that I don't care for. It teaches the players that even mundane objects can be insta-killers. Exploring common dungeon elements can lead to death with little to no warning. IMO, this approach risks inculcating a habit of excessive caution and a reluctance to explore and interact with the game world. I don't want players who are afraid to poke at some rotten sacks. I definitely don't want players to spend 30 minutes of game time dithering over the safest way to approach a pile of rotten sacks. I think the encounter in the sample adventure leads to both.

Sacks of grain may be a bad example, but I would suggest to you that in a medevil setting sacks of grain may well have contained deadley plauge viruses. But trapped chests and doors would be another example of the exact same princable? What would your views be on does? As bullgrit is very negative about these also!

Excessive caution is a huge part of early D & Drole playing. I know if i was actually this charecter i would take every percuation to ensure i came out of there alive. I would carry my 10ft pole and tap the floor, have everyone tied togther with rope, use a mirror to look round corners, flour to combat invisibility and pepper to throw off tracking dogs! ALL OF IT! So why should i when role playing a charecter not do all these things?

amerigoV · Sep 14, 2011

terrya said:
Excessive caution is a huge part of early D & Drole playing. I know if i was actually this charecter i would take every percuation to ensure i came out of there alive. I would carry my 10ft pole and tap the floor, have everyone tied togther with rope, use a mirror to look round corners, flour to combat invisibility and pepper to throw off tracking dogs! ALL OF IT! So why should i when role playing a charecter not do all these things?

It just struck me as funny - one of the false entrances to the ToH has a trap that if you tap the ceiling it kills you in a rock fall. The other false entrance traps you if you hesitate as a wall blocks the party off. Another trap could send the whole party into a lava pit if are roped together and go too far down the hall. That's the whole contention around the module - in some places caution kills you, some places it saves you. Its not that "stuff happens" as in real life, its the module intentially has these extremes. To use your example, its if you ask the girl out she either kills you or you instantly marry a rich heiress (vs. get lucky or BF chases you off)

The ToH is a bad example - thus this thread. I really is not old skool - its just a nasty yet intriguing module. It has its reputation precisely because it is one of a kind.

At the end of the day, story vs. exploration is a personal preference by individuals and groups. Some people like one and sprinkle in the other.

terrya · Sep 14, 2011

A very good way at looking at it. As in Toh the contradiction from room to room is indeed more extreme but Bullgrit was arguing the princable more than the example. As your already saying Toh indeed just took the genre and ampted it up to 1000 but thats the point of it and why it prooved the be so popular! I would also agree with your final statement as thats what the whole argument comes down too, im just saying does who like story shouldnt discuss the design flaws of Toh or the module at all because it wasnt designed for them

Stoat · Sep 14, 2011

terrya said:
Sacks of grain may be a bad example, but I would suggest to you that in a medevil setting sacks of grain may well have contained deadley plauge viruses. But trapped chests and doors would be another example of the exact same princable? What would your views be on does? As bullgrit is very negative about these also!

I'd be much more comfortable with the sacks of grain if they contained some plague that weakened or killed the PC's over time. My problems with the encounter as it is written are (1) the risk posed by the rotted sacks seems unrealistically severe; (2) there is no real way for the players to recognize the risk posed by the rotted sacks; and (3) as a result players (particularly newbie players) are encouraged by the example dungeon to be unduly cautious.

As for chests and doors, I'm not opposed to insta-kill traps, but I tend to use them sparingly. Partly this is because I don't think it's realistic for such things to be common, and party its just because I don't want to run a table where simply opening a door is an exercise in painstaking caution that takes twenty minutes of real time to play out. I have run that type of game, and I got bored with it.

Bullgrit · Sep 16, 2011

terrya said:
When i started playing 1E (And somthing i personally have tryed to keep no matter what E) I was amazed at how it turned the simple things like a bag of grain into a life or death situation because THATS HOW IT WOULD BE IF I WAS STUCK IN A MUDDY DUNGEON LOOKING FOR TREASURE. The how point was to make it realistic, to make you feel like your charecter was an extension of your self and then tempt you with greed into what at times was reward and others death because ill say it again THATS HOW LIFE WORKS BUDDY.

That a particular activity could be dangerous or deadly, (realistic or not), was not my point in the post you quoted. You dropped the quotes I was responding to, so you lost the context of my statements. And then you say:

terrya said:
If you want a game that provides no real threat comitment or realistic design go play neverwinter or world of warcraft or 4E Modules because quite frankly your get alot more out of it

You not only start off claiming I mean something I’ve never said, but you tell me to go play something else. This suggests that you aren’t just innocently stating your opinion on the thread topic, but it seems you are trying to troll me. I don’t know why you choose to misrepresent my position – by either taking quotes out of context, or not even bothering with quotes and just stating that I mean something I’ve never said – but it doesn’t look like an honest attempt at discussion. So I won’t bother responding point by point to refute your mischaracterizations. That just wastes my time and feeds a troll. amerigoV and Stoat make good points that I agree with.

Bullgrit

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Scylla · Nov 19, 2012

I think the Tomb was old-school in its semi-random, cutthroat, not-all-encounters-need-be-balanced, and "Play stupid and you'll die" approach. It was short on backstory and long on crawl, also hallmarks of the day.

But it was also a step beyond, a real meatgrinder in a decade of meatgrinder adventures. The fact that the OP is inquiring about the Tomb specifically, as opposed to, say, Castle Amber or Tsojcanth or Lost City, is probably a result of its (well-deserved) infamy.

It should be noted that some traps therein were fairly arbitrary, even for 1e. It also had a lot more save or die type stuff.* Oh other adventures had that —the cloak of poisonousness in the Temple of Elemental Evil was merciless (no save, try it on & you were dead, period)—but the Tomb had so many more of them. Every room conquered was a victory, and characters that didn't become cautious soon did so to their sorrow.

*The funny thing about this is that I've run the Tomb with few modifications for very low-level characters without problems, because most of the traps depended more on player choices than high to-hit rolls. In fact, I used the Tomb to introduce no less than 3 groups of new players to D&D.

Curious how a more recent Tomb run went? Click HERE.