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".

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[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."

 

[Psikerlord#]

Even as a tournament style module I think it sucks.

It's full of trial and error death.

The dungeon design is wonky.

There isn't anything intresting in it that isn't a "gotcha you died!"

Best case scenario: it's a suicide mission for disposable PCs (as a tournament adventure, as it appears it was originally conceived), to see how far you can get before TPK.

 

[shager]

In the article he reveals quite plainly why he hates this thing so much - running it as written caused him to lose his small number of friends for a whole year, and suffer all the effects of that which followed. That's pretty heavy stuff.

 

[DEFCON 1]

To figure out whether something is objectively "bad" (or even more to the point "the worst of all time")... you first need to establish what exactly it is trying to do (or what the author contends they were trying to accomplish with it.) You then can look at the resulting item and begin to figure how how well or how poorly this item actually is what the author/creator was going for.

The Tomb of Horrors has a very specific purpose as a module. It has a very specific style it is going for. It has a very specific thing it is trying to accomplish. Thus it behooves all of us to then look at the module and ask ourselves whether it does what it sets out to do. If it comes even slightly close to it, then it cannot be considered "bad" and most certainly cannot be considered "the worst of all time".

Notice here that I've put absolutely no moral or personal judgement on whether someone should enjoy the item. Whether or not the item floats the boat of the person looking at it has no consequence when trying to make an objective determination whether it is bad or good. If you don't like or appreciate the aesthetic of horror movies, you quite possibly might look at the original 'Halloween' and say "that's a terrible film!" (especially if you're putting it up against things like 'The Godfather' or other film of that ilk that you love.) But it's not. We all know it's not. In fact, it regularly voted as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Thus, it cannot ever be called an objectively "bad" film... and ABSOLUTELY cannot be called "the worst film of all time". And if someone does that, they obviously have little to no qualifications to making objective analysis.

The same holds true for The Tomb of Horrors. You might not like, appreciated, or enjoy the aesthetic of the module and what was the author's intent... but if you want to have your criticism taken seriously, you have to put your distaste to the side and figure out "Does this module accomplish what it set out to do?" And if you look at all the artwork, the maps, the creativity, the writing, the deviousness of the traps, the going against the grain of the tropes of the time, and also the possibility and style required to actually succeed... I don't know if there's any of us who could honestly say "Nope, it doesn't accomplish what it's trying to do."

And therefore it isn't objectively "the worst module of all time."

 

[delericho]

To figure out whether something is objectively "bad" (or even more to the point "the worst of all time")... you first need to establish what exactly it is trying to do (or what the author contends they were trying to accomplish with it.) You then can look at the resulting item and begin to figure how how well or how poorly this item actually is what the author/creator was going for.

I agree, with one caveat.

If "what the author was going for" is actually contrary to what makes for a good adventure module (in this case) then you could end up with something that achieves its goal but can't be considered a good example.

To give an absurd example, if I declare my goal to be "make a bunch of pancakes" but then sell those pancakes as "a new adventure module", I would have achieved my goal but obviously not created a good adventure module!

Or, to give a slightly less absurd example, something like The World's Worst Dungeon Crawl is clearly an adventure module, and it equally clearly achieves its goal, but it's deliberately not a good adventure module - it tried for "so bad it's good", which isn't quite the same thing.

...

None of which applies to "Tomb of Horrors".

 

[Morrus]

To give an absurd example, if I declare my goal to be "make a bunch of pancakes" but then sell those pancakes as "a new adventure module", I would have achieved my goal but obviously not created a good adventure module!

Well, in that situation your actual goal is in conflict with your advertised goal.

 

[delericho]

Well, in that situation your actual goal is in conflict with your advertised goal.

I did say it was an absurd example.

 

[Pauper]

For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.

In that context, Tomb of Horrors as 'worst' makes perfect sense, because it's pretty much the exact opposite of Ravenloft -- Tomb says 'you will go through this module in exactly the way I specify or you will all die! repeatedly!', while Ravenloft says, 'hey, go through this mod however you like, I can adapt, oh and by the way I can do a lot worse than kill you'.

--
Pauper

 

[Celebrim]

For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.

Which is just absurd, because while I am a great admirer of Ravenloft and would vote for it for "Best Adventure of All Times" the one big issue I do have with the module is that it is an absolute meat grinder that is in many ways far more lethal than Tomb of Horrors.

Ravenloft gives suggested level guidelines that are probably too low for the difficulties presented, and is in the hands of a DM given to ego gaming probably even worse than Tomb of Horrors because Strahd can be treated as if he validates toying with the PC's unfairly. If anything, I6 gets my vote for most difficult adventure of all time if played as written by a capable DM. Sixth level characters just don't have a chance against a monster like Strahd who can drain energy levels (and there is nothing they can do to stop him), and easily retreat to regenerate before attacking say 10 minutes later. They can't even hide, because he can scry them unfailingly, and he has enormous resources to bring to bear in terms of minions along with 10th level spellcasting abilities.

And the module absolutely wrecks a party for trying to retreat, so you can't even run away. And traps? While the traps aren't normally immediately lethal, they do split the party up so that Strahd can prey on them all the more easily. Inevitably, players get split up, get lost, get isolated, and either die to vampire or find themselves being punished by one of the absolute lethal "you dared to run away?" devices.

It's a slaughter, and played as written, it's not even a fun slaughter. Getting I6 to play well requires enormous DM effort and surviving it requires extremely experienced players. I've never run it except as a one shot because it is literally more dangerous than Tomb of Horrors.

And there are some minor issues as well. For example, the catacombs level has a lot in common with Tomb of Horrors save that unlike Tomb of Horrors it tends to create a lot of boring, pointless, and undirected play because it commits the cardinal sin of module design in being repetitious and symmetrical. If 'pixel bitching' is bad in Tomb of Horrors, it's far worse in the catacombs of Ravenloft.

UPDATE: The cynic in me just realized that this is perhaps not nearly as incoherent as it may seem once you realize that it is Wick doing to the voting. Tomb of Horrors puts the DM in a very passive role of responding to PC actions. If you are a DM given to ego gaming, the only satisfaction that Tomb of Horrors can provide is killing your PC off rather suddenly. But Ravenloft all but openly validates an ego driven GM toying with and tormenting the players endlessly. You've got a highly active god-like NPC that can do just about anything he likes, is basically unkillable if run well, has mind control powers, can strip the PC's of their ability to defend themselves, and lives in a giant maze like dungeon which is designed to control, steer, confuse, and ultimately drive PC's to despair without immediately killing them. If you get your kicks off of controlling your players and are the sort of person that gets disgusted with a game once the players are able to gain some system mastery and begin steering play, then Ravenloft is practically an ego gaming DMs nirvana. Taken in this light, it gives you this ultimate DM pet NPC that can literally force the PCs to do his bidding. Why wouldn't a DM with a huge ego love this module? By comparison, ToH gives the DM nothing to steer play with.

 

[delericho]

For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.

Having read both, I'm now more convinced that [MENTION=98938]DeF[/MENTION]CON1 made the right assessment - John Wick seems to have a very specific set of requirements for what he wants in an adventure and has made the mistake of considering his tastes to be a marker of universal truth.

(Consider food: you can have a good pizza and a good curry, and both are good meals but they're different good meals. And a person who loves pizza and hates curry will of course prefer the one over the other. But that doesn't make the curry a bad meal - it just means it's not to his taste.)

And, unlike "Tomb of Horrors", I actually have run "I6 Ravenloft", and do indeed count it as probably the best single adventure I've ever run. But I wouldn't hold it up as the one true way to design a good adventure - and indeed in some ways it's got a lot to answer for, ushering in as it did an era of story-heavy adventures, many of which were pretty damn poor.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In the article he reveals quite plainly why he hates this thing so much - running it as written caused him to lose his small number of friends for a whole year, and suffer all the effects of that which followed. That's pretty heavy stuff.

Its not the modules fault he was a jerk.