Many of these people are still alive.
Since you're accusing them of lying in a public place, the least you could do is track them down and ask them before doing that. Also: [MENTION=55178]Nytmare[/MENTION], Eric V.
I'm not accusing them of lying one whit. I'm saying that there may be other details being left out of the story which would explain things better. Which often happens in anecdote. See below.
Allegedly the world record for running the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a mile in 3:43.13.
But really, what are the chances that someone could run a mile that fast? I mean, most people can't. I mean: almost nobody.
So, really, what's more likely: someone ran a mile in 3:43.13 or they didn't?
Occam's Razor, man, he obviously didn't, I mean, come on...
Since there is video tape evidence of this, it would be pretty hard to fake. Never minding thousands of spectators who witnessed the event. Now, if
I claimed to have run that fast, would you not expect me to provide pretty clear proof? Or would you take me at solely my word? If so, I have this amazing deal in Nigeria for you.
Gary Gygax, inventor of D&D and Tomb of Horrors, was the guy who judged the tactic beating the demilich was legit.
If he's not an authority on the tournament version of ToH and D&D, who is?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors
I found that by googling "Tomb of Horrors" and "tv tropes", so I'm guessing if you want more testimonials, google a wee bit harder.
SPOILERS:
"
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Gary Gygax, in the introduction to Return of the Tomb of Horrors, tells the story of how at one GenCon, one team actually succeeded in the adventure by using one of the no-saving-throw instant death traps against Acererak. "I put the crown on the demilich's head while my buddy taps it with the wrong end of the scepter." Made doubly awesome by the fact that the tournament's DM called in Gary Gygax himself for backup, and Gary admitted that it would work, and ruled that Acererak instantly died. First prize!
"
Robin Laws also wrote a history of Gen Con, so you could ask him--he answers his mail.
Dragonsfoot is a great resource if you want to hear testimonials about people dealing with old modules for the first time.
Now, think about this for a second. How did they know about the two ends of the sceptre? The story on TV tropes does not specify. Now, again, it's possible that in the 4 hours they had to resolve the module that they experimented with the sceptre somehow and learned how it worked. That would require at least one PC dying first, but, possible. Or, it's entirely possible that they knew about the crown beforehand, from other accounts, and used that knowledge in the game.
In both cases, the group "won" the adventure, but, which one is more likely? The group, knowing that everything in the dungeon is very bad, would have had to try on the obviously magical crown, kill that PC - for no reason since the curse of the crown only activates after you leave the dungeon - and then think to put that crown on the head of the demi-lich.
Again, it's possible. I totally agree. Just exceedingly unlikely.
-----
Look, the problem with anecdote, as I said before, is that anecdotes by their very nature are rarely the whole story. Once upon a time, I used to follow bridge in the newspaper. The card game. I haven't lived in an English speaking country for a long time, but, I assume that papers still cover bridge clubs. Thing is, bridge clubs report perfect hands far, far more often than is statistically expected. A perfect hand in bridge is so mind bogglingly unlikely that a person could play their entire life and not see one. Yet, here we have witnessed accounts of it occurring on a fairly regular basis.
Are people lying? Is there a conspiracy? Nope, not in the slightest. However, there is more going on than simply playing the game.
Since we certainly don't use a new deck and a Vegas style card shuffler for each hand, the cards themselves are being biased in play. People shuffle, of course, after each hand, but, because the cards themselves are re-entered into the deck in a semi-non random fashion (you collect the "tricks" after each round of play, meaning that suits will be stuck together) and the shuffling itself is rarely thorough enough when done by a human to guarantee a random distribution, the longer a group plays with a given deck, the higher the chance becomes that a perfect hand will be dealt.
Are they cheating? Are they lying? Not in the slightest. It's very unlikely that anyone even considers this during play. It's just normal play. Anyone who has played a lot of cards will see similar events occurring in any card game. Play enough hands of gin with the same deck and the deck becomes significantly biased.
This, IMO, is exactly what's going on here. Tournament games are not private. Anyone can watch, and it's not like there's an NDA governing play after the fact. Gamers talk. Gamers tell gaming stories. "Hey, I put on this crown and Bob disintegrated me with the silver end of the scepter" is a pretty cool gaming story. And thus, forearmed, the next group goes into the scenario with a fair degree of outside help.
If the FIRST group to play the module had done this, I'd be spectacularly impressed. But, again, I sincerely doubt that's the case.
Look, you can beat the module. I did. I stated earlier that I did. We had played through the G series first and had the sword that detected secret doors and the Hammer of Thunderbolts - makes the module a heck of a lot easier.
But, no, I'm not going to take anecdotes at face value. Not when perfectly reasonable explanations are sitting right there. What's the saying? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof? Gaming stories from a tournament forty years ago isn't exactly brimming with fact checking is it?
