Is TOMB OF HORRORS the Worst Adventure Of All Time?

Prevailing opinion here in the EN World community has traditionally held that the worst adventure module of all time is 1984's The Forest Oracle. 7th Sea designer John Wick (whose upcoming edition of 7th Sea is the third most anticipated tabletop RPG of 2016) vehemently disagrees; he nominates the classic adventure Tomb of Horrors for that position, contending that it "represents all the wrong, backward thinking that people have about being a GM." In an article on his blog (warning: this uses a lot of strong language), he goes into great detail as to why he hold this opinion, stating that the adventure is the "worst, &#@&$&@est, most disgusting piece of pig vomit ever published".

​

[lQ]"My players picked the entrance with the long corridor rather than the two other entrances which are instant kills. That’s right, out of the three ways to enter the tomb, two of them are designed to give the GM the authority for a TPK."[/lQ]

Very strong words, and you can read them all here. As I mentioned before, there's lots of NSFW language there.

The article also includes an anecdote about a convention game in which he participated. In that game, being already familiar with the adventure and its traps (and having advised the DM of this), he played a thief and attempted to discover or deactivate the traps, up until a near TPK occurred and he left the game.

Wick is, of course, no stranger to controversy. A couple of years ago, he created widespread internet arguments when he stated that "The first four editions of D&D are not roleplaying games."

 

[collin]

I enjoy the comments in this thread so far, and I agree that, although perhaps not meant to be a tournament module, it is probably best used as such. Gygax has stated in interviews that he created it because his players thought there was no dungeon he could come up with that would be challenging enough for them, so he met that challenge. And, TSR needed product in its early days, so this was as good an adventure scenario as any to publish. Also, comments he made over the years in interviews pretty much confirms that at least in those early days of D&D, the relationship between the DM and the players was more of an adversarial one. That is, it was more of a DM vs the players to see who would "win". Gygax had no problem with this concept, unlike more modern role-playing where the DM creates a story and helps guide the players while offering them various challenges. Along these lines, the novel that WotC published early in the 3rd edition years, written by Keith Strohm, does a nice job of telling a story that incorporates characters and plants the Tomb of Horrors in the story as a cumulative plot device for the characters to overcome for the sake of retrieving treasure to help a local government. So although the adventure itself seems like more of a one-shot tournament challenge, you can use the Tomb of Horrors in such a way as to expand the continuing story of an adventure party.

As for John Wick's comments, the disdain for ToH is understandable at first glance. But one has to take other factors into account before simply labeling it as the worst adventure ever and walking away. It's the context that's important.

 

[Morrus]

Gygax has stated in interviews that he created it because his players thought there was no dungeon he could come up with that would be challenging enough for them, so he met that challenge.

Sounds odd. Beating your players is a trivial matter for a GM. Put 99 Tarrasques and a herd of Orcuses in the first room, and you're done. If that doesn't work, blow the planet up.

Challenging players is not the hard thing. The hard thing is designing challenges which challenge them *just enough* while still being fun.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Irony.

Except those are things which we should rightly be dismissive of. This isnt a case of a bigot complaining about how no one tolerates his views. In D&D, I cant agree that "GM vs Player" is a valid playstyle, given that one side holds all the power in the game. Look, most of us were crappy and petty 12 year old DM's at one point (regardless of our chronological age at the time). Most of us grew out of it.

Unless you're actually advocating playing favorites, petty gotchas, and abusing the trust of the DM position are equal to one based on respect and fair rulings. Some things really kind of are badwrongfun.

 

[Celebrim]

Except those are things which we should rightly be dismissive of. This isnt a case of a bigot complaining about how no one tolerates his views. In D&D, I cant agree that "GM vs Player" is a valid playstyle, given that one side holds all the power in the game.

More irony. And now I'm going to start being dismissive.

Look, most of us were crappy and petty 12 year old DM's at one point (regardless of our chronological age at the time). Most of us grew out of it.

Because you aren't relenting on being insulting.

Unless you're actually advocating playing favorites, petty gotchas, and abusing the trust of the DM position are equal to one based on respect and fair rulings. Some things really kind of are badwrongfun.

No, but I will call out associating those things with inherent aspects of adversarial play as being the sort of dismissive, snearing, better than thou attitudes that are gaming bigotry.

 

[delericho]

Sounds odd. Beating your players is a trivial matter for a GM. Put 99 Tarrasques and a herd of Orcuses in the first room, and you're done. If that doesn't work, blow the planet up.

Challenging players is not the hard thing. The hard thing is designing challenges which challenge them *just enough* while still being fun.

Surely it's fair to assume that Gygax was aware of that, and that therefore what he was going for is a dungeon that was almost, but not actually, impossible?

(My evidence for that being the existence of "S1: Tomb of Horrors", of course. )

 

[GrahamWills]

Surely it's fair to assume that Gygax was aware of that, and that therefore what he was going for is a dungeon that was almost, but not actually, impossible?

(My evidence for that being the existence of "S1: Tomb of Horrors", of course. )

First up; It pretty much cannot be the worst, because it has some good illustrations. Therefore it is of some use and therefore it is a better module than many others I have read which have absolutely no use (outside of starting fires)

Second; yeah, you have to be strongly into that old-school adversarial style of play to like actually playing it. Now, it might be a fun power-trip to run it, and it might be fun to be able to sit around years later and discuss how awesome it was for everyone to die horribly, but fun to play? Don't think so.

As evidence -- I can't see any indication in this thread that anyone enjoyed playing it. The pro-ToH comments are pretty much all based on theory or thought or ideals. I think it'll be super-rare to have people say "I played this with my character with no idea what it was like and died instantly and it was way cool".

Of course, having said this, it now biases the responses and I expect I actually will get people saying how much they enjoyed arbitrary death....

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

In addition, Tomb of Horror has pretty much obviously a horror tone. Similarly to watching a horror movie, where you know everyone is going to die, and the fun of it is watching the how. You are supposed to like the genre, or watch/play something else.

I think that's really my issue with it, it really doesnt. If you watch any group play it "to win", its boring as hell. Just a long series of pixel bitching around, poking things with sticks, resting the moment you are out of augury/commune spells, etc. There's like 2 things to fight tops. Would anyone want to watch a movie where the protagonists did the stuff suggested in this thread? Send a train of mules in to trigger traps?

I mean, we all know Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been so much better if instead of racing the boulder and dodging darts, Indy meticulously puttied up each dart hole, placed a portable structurally sound bridge over the chasm with reinforced guard rails, left the dungeon to go consult some books, and heroically lead a bunch of pack animals to their death before pulling out a scale and calculator to properly calculate the idol's weight and use the necessary amount of sand.

To me, traps are mainly interesting when they are in action, which means the good ones should be triggered. Now some of the ones in Tomb ARE interesting - the bleeding wall for example allows people to interact once its set off, and is clever in how players defeat it. Others are random - the scepter to crown disintegration, if memory serves, has no hints, so its augury, or 50/50 chance of killing your comrade.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

More irony. And now I'm going to start being dismissive.



Because you aren't relenting on being insulting.



No, but I will call out associating those things with inherent aspects of adversarial play as being the sort of dismissive, snearing, better than thou attitudes that are gaming bigotry.

So you're actually advocating adversarial play as valid? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was essentially agreed upon as poor form in this day and age, given the disparity of power in D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

So you're actually advocating adversarial play as valid? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was essentially agreed upon as poor form in this day and age, given the disparity of power in D&D.

I'm saying that thousands of groups over the years have enjoyed D&D as a competitive activity where they faced off against a proud RBDM and sought to try to defeat the challenges he threw their way.

And yes, there is a decided power imbalance, and any DM worth his pizza can kill the PC's any time he wanted to just by being actually unfair rather than what is coddled noob would call unfair, but there is an art in bringing challenges that are just hard enough that it seems amazing when you get by them. There is a beauty in good play from a skilled group of veterans where everything comes together and they overcome odds that anyone would think they really shouldn't.

You can complain about ToH all you like, but the truth is that over the years lots of teams beat that module playing against DMs that weren't pulling any punches. I can't say that, but then I was just 13 at the time. But some groups have, and they ought to be rightly proud of such an accomplishment.

And it's trivially obvious that most had fun doing it.

So yeah, you are basically going 'badwrongfun' here while ironically berating others for it.

 

[Celebrim]

Would anyone want to watch a movie where the protagonists did the stuff suggested in this thread?

This comes up every time we do a John Wick thread.

RPG's are not movies. They are just not. Direct comparisons between the two are almost always invalid. The point of playing an RPG is not to create the script of a movie. Any transcript of an RPG would need to be adapted to be a good script for a non-interactive medium. Movies and RPGs are fundamentally different story telling mediums. Cinematic action in an RPG is fine, but it's not what an RPG is about and there are lots of things that you can do in an RPG that you can't do in a movie and vica versa there are things that make sense in movie logic that have no place in an RPG.

I mean, we all know Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been so much better if instead of racing the boulder and dodging darts, Indy meticulously puttied up each dart hole, placed a portable structurally sound bridge over the chasm with reinforced guard rails, left the dungeon to go consult some books, and heroically lead a bunch of pack animals to their death before pulling out a scale and calculator to properly calculate the idol's weight and use the necessary amount of sand.

It might not have been a better movie, but Indy would have been much smarter had he instead of racing boulders and dodging darts, puttied up the dart holes and used a grappling hook to exit the tombs through the hole in the roof rather than facing a bunch of death traps and getting captured by Bellock. Actually, once he triggered the first dart, he could have instead of tip toeing across those traps, easily have disarmed every trap by the same method. He didn't, because since this is a movie there is actually zero chance that the darts will hit him. It might not have been as exciting to a hypothetical audience to disarm each trap, but while you make movies for a passive audience, you don't play an RPG primarily for the audience. You play an RPG for the participants.

You see there is a fundamental problem with movie logic in an RPG. In a movie, there is literally no chance of the protagonist failing. There is nothing actually on the line. The protagonist can do anything, and the protagonist is ultimately going to win anyway - often through the selective stupidity of the antagonists. In an RPG, the protagonist really can lose. He's really risking defeat. So its natural that the protagonist is actually cunning rather than movie stupid.