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

Removed.

Raven Crowking said:

Sorry I can't XP you, Celebrim. That was a beautiful analysis.

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Covered.

Well let's see....

--Gygax devised some version of the module in 1975.
--The official version didn't get published until 1978 as an AD&D module (the first)
--It was not a mega-dungeon like Castle Greyhawk or what the AD&D DMG talked about in its appendices.
--It requires player skill, not character abilities, to beat. And a lot of patience to search everything.
--When I ran it 12 years ago in 2e, all of the characters died. And the players got mad at Gary Gygax instead of me, the DM.


So yes, its a standard old school module.


Or rather, it set the standards.

Celebrim said:

IMO, Tomb of Horrors isn't even the most deadly of the old school dungeons. 'Ravenloft', 'Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' and 'Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan' ...

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So you are saying my players are right to complain?

Its the ultimate puzzle/challenge the player dungeon. So as others have pointed out, its not typical, but its a good example of a certain style of play.

I am running the RPGA 4E conversion right now. Great, great stuff. Yes, some rough edges have been sanded down, but its safe to say the players are challegned...and puzzled.

ToH is iconic to old school play. It's a puzzle with many elements.

However, in common Gygaxian practice it is for high level characters, while being one of the first modules designed for the system. No one should play it without loads of prior experience with the game.

Within are some truly awesome tricks and traps, some truly lousy ones, and a few just right out DM-kills-your-character moments. No one should run it straight out of the booklet, it needs modifying.

To generalize how people gamed in the past would do them a disservice. We played it back in my college days for a lark and managed to get pretty far one afternoon. It's far from the only module type in D&D or old school gaming.

TerraDave said:

So you are saying my players are right to complain?

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I'm not sure what you are saying.

I'm saying however that most of the old school modules run with a party of 4-6 midway in the suggested character levels or with the pregenerated characters and ran by an experience DM who takes his kid gloves off will result in a TPK most of the time and EVERY time for a less than extremely experienced party.

In the case of C1, I6, and S4, success depends not only on playing well, but also on getting lucky with the dice. In the case of S1, luck with the dice has relatively little impact.

It's very illustrative to compare the challenges of "Tomb of Horrors" with those of "Return to the Tomb of Horrors". The original "Tomb of Horrors" is a puzzle dungeon that rewards careful play and tangental thinking. "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" is a hack and slash dungeon that heavily rewards character optimization and system mastery. In Tomb of Horrors, there are many examples of "Die, No Save" as a result of some player proposition. In one case even as little as, "We move cautiously down the corridor checking for traps." results in a TPK (Note, not 'may' result in a TPK, does result in a TPK; after the proposition is made the party dies). This is fair, because by the time this trap is encountered, hopefully the players have already realized the normal cautious approach won't work very well and the blunder ahead approach is suicidal. And if not, ToH claims another set of victims.

But in Return to the Tomb of Horrors there are many examples of "Die, No Save" that don't depend on player proposition at all, but on such things as the random chance that an unavoidable monster successfully hits a party member before being killed. The former is entirely a test of player skill and the 'trap' is avoided solely by being more cautious than the usual stock answer of "We move cautiously down the corridor checking for traps." The later is entirely a test of character skill. It can't be avoided; all you can do is try to mitigate the luck by having very high AC and overwhelming offensive capabilities. This is not fair, as the player can now die regardless of what his choices were. (Granted, the odds of death might be lower than the odds of death in the aforementioned corridor trap, but one is controllable risk and the other is not.) There are no such encounters in the original, although arguably player choice can turn the final encounter into one.

howandwhy99 said:

ToH is iconic to old school play. It's a puzzle with many elements.

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So, are you saying that B2, WG4, T1, S3, S4, GDQ, A1-4, and ToEE all basically amount puzzles with many elements and are clearly variations on the theme ToH presents? S1 has very little in common with other iconic old school modules, and the play of S1 is very different than that of other old school modules. Were are the hordes of humanoids in S1, the typical gaurds and sentries, and the expected set peice battles? So, we've got a problem here - we've got more than one kind of old school and the sort that S1 is seems to be the less common.

Within are some truly awesome tricks and traps, some truly lousy ones

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You are entitled to your opinion, but to slake my curiousity, name one.

and a few just right out DM-kills-your-character moments. No one should run it straight out of the booklet, it needs modifying.

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I disagree. It's perfect as is and modifications at best won't improve it and at worst will degrade its unique traits and flavor. No one should run it for a party of characters that are the product of loving creation over years of campaigning, except perhaps as a deliberate going away party, but it should by all means be ran as written.

And I say that as a guy who pretty much never runs things as written or would advise people too.

It is unique in that it takes a DM of extraordinary skill to run it in such a way as to not severely influence the outcome. Being slightly off on a description can be the difference between successfully navigating a room or becoming a pile of ash.

It is old school in that the player's description of how their characters are doing things really matters in how they do or do not succeed.

As for particular traps/puzzles being truly lousy - I would have to agree, but would have to look through my copy again to list them.

I have always wished that I had seen one of the groups that succeeded (using the pre-generated characters - take a look at them sometime and their gear) when it was run as a tournament module when it first came out - just to see how much of that success was actually clever play vs dumb luck. In particular, I would liked to have seen the group that figured out how to use the crown and sceptre to destroy the demilich.

As pointed out S2 - White Plume Mountain and S4 - Lost of Caverns of Tsojcanth were also sausage factories. However, the challenges were more varied, as opposed to the constant tricks'n'traps of Tomb of Horrors. I almost had a player walkout over Tsojcanth - had to tone down some of the more biased encounters and the requirements to enter the central chamber.

You also need to remember that in the early days, everything was potentially deadly. Survival rates of 1st level characters were 50% if you were lucky. At higher levels, you had a better chance of survival due to more hit points, better saves and actual magic items. What Tomb of Horrors (and, to lesser extent, the other S-series and oddities like Isle of the Ape) did was subvert this by making level largely irrelevant.

Celebrim said:

I'm not sure what you are saying.

STUFF

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Rude and repetitive. OK.