Return to the Tomb of Horrors - your experiences?

Fourth thread of a series on the younger classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. It is interesting to see how everyone's experiences compared and differed.

Return to the Tomb of Horrors


Synopsis: A return trip to the deadliest dungeon of them all, this epic adventure takes the PCs far beyond the original Tomb and unearths the truth about Acererak's legacy - and his terrible plans for the future.

Did you Play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

(With thanks and a tip of the hat to Quasqueton for his ground-breaking series of classic adventure discussions.)

I used this boxed set, or should I say 'abused' it. The whole Tome of Horrors thing was lost on many of my players of 2002. Whoever DM'd them back in the early 80's either killed and humiliated them pretty quickly in the original, or they DM'd it themselves, read what a deathtrap it was, and put it back down. They had no interest in it.

While I enjoyed going through the original back in the day, it holds no special place in the hearts of my players excapt as a killer module. So when it came time to make use of this boxed set, I threw out most of the backstory, did away with the city on top, and cannibalized the dungeon itself for a finale game for my Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign at the time.

So, sadly, this box became a grabbag of interesting rooms, traps and puzzles to me that I converted to 3e, and soonafter netted me a small profit on EBay.

-DM Jeff

I;ve run this box set a few times actually, and with the same results. Back in 2e, the party died. In 3e, the party died. They fear it, but they also relish the chance to prove themselves and beat the darn thing.

The thing was, they would have never won anyway. But it's great as a meat grinder, and it has some awesome ways to die. It is actually really memorable, and the plot is pretty good.

I ran it afew years ago. Loved it. We never finished, the party was ABOUT to enter the final lair of Acererak, but the game group sort of fragmented. Still, it's one of my all time fav modules.

I read it but knew my players would not go for it. Maybe one day.

My experience is that it was a great read, a very challenging looking game, and Moil seethes with cool moodiness. It's several times the adventure the original is IMO. It took the classic meat grinder munchkin-slayer and made it into a meaningful fantasy adventure.

But I've never been able to run it because the players shied away from it on the rep of the original.

I bought this boxed set at Origins just before 3e hit, and never got a chance to run it. However, I do remember staying up all night reading, and reading, and being amazed as how fantastical the Return seemed. Hats off to Bruce Cordell for writing a compelling module.

(As an aside, one of the Dungeon magazine editors -- either Erik Mona or James Jacobs -- once wrote that when accepting submissions, they ask not only "Does this seem like a fun adventure to play?" but also "Does this seem like a fun adventure to read?" A lot of adventures get read and never played, and some people subscribe to the magazine just to read the adventures with no intention of ever using them.)

So, back to the Return, I think the setup is a little slow, especially the part with the . After the party gets to Skull City, however, the action picks up. It helps that Skull City is home to several of the adventure's coolest villains (the ) and some of its best scenery.

Then we get to the City that Waits (Moil), which as others have noted, just oozes an atmosphere of dread. The lethal puzzles in Moil are a fitting tribute to the original Tomb, and the new monsters like the and the are equally high quality. There's also yet another great villain, , who does what more villains should do: .

Finally we come to Acererak's Fortress of Conclusion (another evocative name; Cordell is really good at coming up with them). I honestly don't see how this can end in anything but a TPK for the vast majority of parties. Big A is just too well entrenched and has too many , plus he's still got his array of save-or-die effects if the party gets far enough to face him in his floating skull form.

However, the fact that the party can fail spectacularly, in a way to means the entire multiverse is f-cked, is great. No matter what happens, it's sure to be a memorable final battle.

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Note: Return to the Tomb of Horrors is the subject of one of my favorite story hours here on EN World -- the first story hour I ever read, in fact. It's by James McMurray and is located here.

It's great to just build a party for this one module. You can go crazy and still TPK them without breaking a sweat.

Also the (then) new monsters were a great addition to my campaign.

I started this box back in '98 with my high-level 2E group. We had already enjoyed the Eye Tyrant series, a lengthy Ravenloft sojourn, followed by The Rod of Seven Parts box.

We played through the hill giants, the vampires (who almost turned one PC into a vampire), right up to the Black Academy, at which point the PCs (consisting mostly of mages and specialists, and one cleric) obliterated all of the instructors and students in a huge spell duel. It's a memorable moment to this day.

They explored the original Tomb but did not continue into the City of Moil, for during a time of rest and reflection on recent finds in the Tomb, the elf wizard of the party (Kalex) attempted to read the spellbook of a Black Academy scholar and high-level necromancer. To this day I remember him carelessly opening the text, casting no spells of protection or dispelling. Into his very laboratory was gated a nalfeshnee demon, who promptly incapacitated Kalex and gated in countless hordes of demons, leading to a planar nightmare where the wizard had to fight through his entire keep, through undead, demons, and other horrors, to reclaim his tower... The Tomb of Horrors was forgotten, Kalex (along with many allies) reclaimed his crystal tower, and that campaign soon faded into 3E.

I dusted off RttToH during the githyanki Incursion campaign. Githyanki Lich-Queen Vlaakith learned of the existence of a portal leading to Acererak's Fortress of Conclusion, found beneath a school of necromancers known as the Black Academy. PCs (mentored by Kalex, now a powerful NPC) had to deal with the necromancers there and the githyanki, who had already struck a deal with the wizards. The wizards let the PCs into the Tomb without much fuss, as the headmaster of the Academy was a former PC necromancer from the 2E game, an ally of Kalex's. Behind Sarvac's back, other wizards who feared Vlaakith also let a team of githyanki bounty hunters into the Tomb to shadow the PCs so they can either find Acererak or kill themselves trying.

Long story short, all through Moil and into the Fortress the PCs were hounded by a team of eight githyanki bounty hunters, each with 16HD, each with its own classes and prcs, each with its own niche (assassin, monk, ranger, rogue, arcane archer, order of the bow, invisible blade/master thrower, and a sorcerer). Only two of the bounty hunters, the arcane archer and the order of the bow, survived following the PCs through Moil and the Fortress, though they were both killed later in the campaign.

In the end, the last two surviving bounty hunters fled, and the PCs confronted Acererak, knocking his phylactery into the Negative. The demi-lich managed to drop a Mord's disjunction on them before being destroyed.

After Vlaakith was confronted in her Palace of Whispers and destroyed, I brought back Acererak in the form of an atropal, as my chief NPC foe (an elder vampire epic sorcerer) called back the spirit of the half-fiend demi-lich, harnessing the negative energy in the atropal to create a vast army of undead.

When HE was destroyed, the atropal Acererak fled to whereabouts unknown. The campaign has since ended, giving rise to the Age of Worms.

Whether Acererak returns or not remains to be seen.

IMO, this is the best of the "let's re-lease the classics" crowd. It includes the original module as-is, but adds a lot of cool story and elements around it that are true to the themes of the original.

Very deadly. Very moody. A real blast to play, IMO. Just thinking about it makes me want to run it.