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

[Umbran]

Conan, Fafhrd and other pulp heroes didn't actually have to face any obstacles. They were all pre-written predicaments with pre-written solutions.

If you want to be that literal, you're still probably incorrect. From what I read from genre authors about their writing processes, they aren't that deterministic - having written the situation, then asks themselves, "Okay, so how is my hero going to get out of this one". Authors sometimes speak of "characters writing themselves", and stories frequently go places the authors didn't plan at the beginning. There's some role-playing going on there, but the rules involved include more of the rules of popular fictional structure and pacing than simulations of detailed combat actions.

Be that as it may, I'll rephrase the question: Why are the obstacles in the classic modules chosen so that the stories that result after play typically bear so little resemblance to the stories that were supposedly the inspiration for the game in the first place?

My proposed answer is that the game authors were more familiar with the fiddly bits of battle simulation rules, and less facile with the rules of fictional dramaic structure, content, tension and pacing. Rules that facilitate drama-focus came later, from other designers, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors.

Are you saying that only the type of obstacles from the stories should be included in game scenarios?

No. Moreover, I don't see how that logically or reasonably follows. It is as if I asked, "Why is there so much pepperoni on this pizza, and so little cheese?" and you respond with, "Are you saying no pizza should ever have any pepperoni?"

Classic modules, as goofy as some of them were, had one thing going for them; the authors were clever enough to know that any challenge worthy of being called such was meant for the player sitting at the table rather than a pile of doodles and numbers scribbled on a piece of paper.

I think the authors of today's modules are just as clever - it is just the fashion of what kind of challenges the players like has changed over time.

 

[Maggan]

I don't know if my players would be considered "good" (I sometimes consider them "evil"), but the ToH prompted them to bring lots of sheep, timber, hammers and nails.

Sheep for herding through the dungeon, timber and nails to build bridges and walkways, and for propping up roofs and stuff. Without a time limit, they managed to think of a lot of engineering-based solutions to the challenges.

They didn't sustain that many injuries.

But they bored me to tears. They took the same approach to White Plume Mountain. Come to think of it, they try a lot of the same strategies when we play Call of Cthulhu. But with more dynamite and far more casualties. Go figure.

/M

 

[ExploderWizard]

Be that as it may, I'll rephrase the question: Why are the obstacles in the classic modules chosen so that the stories that result after play typically bear so little resemblance to the stories that were supposedly the inspiration for the game in the first place?

Perhaps because actual play (at least in the scenarios being discussed) is not a story.

My proposed answer is that the game authors were more familiar with the fiddly bits of battle simulation rules, and less facile with the rules of fictional dramaic structure, content, tension and pacing. Rules that facilitate drama-focus came later, from other designers, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors.

Since the game was not designed or structured for storytelling in the first place I don't see how the absence of fictional dramatic structure elements was in any way a shortcoming. That would be like faulting Monopoly for not including rules to roleplay your little car or shoe.

 

[the Jester]

Perhaps because actual play (at least in the scenarios being discussed) is not a story.

This, a million times this.

Stories almost all end with the good guys victorious and intact. D&D games, especially in the early years, sometimes end with one survivor fleeing for his life. Sometimes nobody makes it back alive at all.

 

[Nagol]

For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?

Part of it is scene-framing. The actors of the story are generally competent and when being proactive, assumed to have "reasonable gear" such that the only time the gear needs to be mentioned in when it is lacking for the task on hand.

When Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser decide to steal a house, you can bet that there was rope, 10' poles, iron spikes, and no end of carpentry/engineering going on as well as logistical planning for the route the team of drunken blindfolded louts who were to transport the house were to take.

The author cuts it all out because it isn't important after the fact based on how the story unfolded. All that investigation, preparation, and work is important to how the story will unfold as the participants engage the world and the world reacts.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Roleplaying games that try to model fiction - James Bond 007, Champions and most other superhero games, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon - came later. To a great degree I think these games all fail, because they are stuck using the same underlying, Chainmail-derived model that D&D uses. They take the wargaming model and tweak it rather than looking carefully at the fiction and coming up with a new model from scratch.

Like I say, D&D never even tried to do what James Bond and others tried, it's a medieval wargame with the trappings of fantasy fiction. Gary didn't think, "How can I recreate the feel of a Conan story?" It was much simpler, he just thought, "People are getting bored of playing Chainmail, how can I spice it up?"

Though this article completely disagrees with me!

He was a fan of the Conan the Barbarian books by Robert E. Howard and wanted to try to capture that sort of swashbuckling action in a war game.

 

[Celebrim]

Roleplaying games that try to model fiction - James Bond 007, Champions and most other superhero games, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon - came later. To a great degree I think these games all fail, because they are stuck using the same underlying, Chainmail-derived model that D&D uses. They take the wargaming model and tweak it rather than looking carefully at the fiction and coming up with a new model from scratch.

Like I say, D&D never even tried to do what James Bond and others tried, it's a medieval wargame with the trappings of fantasy fiction. Gary didn't think, "How can I recreate the feel of a Conan story?" It was much simpler, he just thought, "People are getting bored of playing Chainmail, how can I spice it up?"

Though this article completely disagrees with me!

A good answer, but I think the full answer is somewhat simplier. Gary may have wanted to recreate the feel of a Conan story, but at this time RPGs were brand new. No one knew how to make a game that captured story feel. Gary however knew alot about wargames. So he adapted the wargames approach to RPGs and the result was often very entertaining and often a very good game, but it naturally didn't feel exactly like a Conan story.

And less we get too hubristic about this, it's worth noting that almost every game that has set out to make a game that feel exactly like experiencing a story has failed either in the market or else to succeed in doing so. It is not at all easy to create a good game that exactly mimics a story.

I think there are two reasons for this, and they both relate to a very good responce from earlier:

But games can have a variety of rules and victory conditions. One could create a game in which the players are rewarded for having their characters act like the protagonists in a particular genre of fiction. For example a horror game in which the players score points for splitting up and going to the cellar.

This is certainly true, but consider:

a) How many games have actually been built along those lines? As one example, 'Stunting' mechanics that make it more likely that you will succeed the less probable success as a result of your actions would be are a fairly new mechanic in games, and are I think counter intuitive. I wouldn't expect mechanics like that to be a part of the first or even second generation of RPGs. You just don't see a lot of mechanics in any game specificly designed to force a game to obey genera conventions. There are a few, and some of them - like Sanity Points in CoC - are old, but few games have embrassed that concept comprehensively.
b) How interesting would such a game be, given that it would seem that suceess amount to nothing more than adhering to a set of genera conventions? Player challenge is inherent to a game and not to literature, and that means that the game version of any story is likely to have differences.

 

[Ariosto]

Is Tomb of Horrors an example of standard old school gaming, or is it a single outlier, an exception from the standard? Is Tomb of Horrors what gaming used to be like? Or is it something unusual, even unique from old gaming?

It depends on what you really mean.

"Dungeon modules" in general were different from the usual foci of campaign play. Acerak's tomb was for one thing a very small edifice next to the sprawling dungeons of the Gygax-Kuntz Castle Greyhawk that were the model of "a good dungeon" in the original D&D sense.

"Meat grinders" were pretty common for tournament play, because they were easy to score on the basis of where the bodies fell. However, only an occasional small portion of a big dungeon would be such a packed linear gauntlet -- as an expedition such as that to the lich's repository would be but an occasional small portion of a campaign.

The aspect of testing players rather than characters was indeed very prevalent. However -- as I think Gygax suggested in the introduction to the module -- such an overwhelming emphasis on puzzles was unusual. The Tomb was a very notable change of pace in its shortage of creatures with which to interact, and not one likely to appeal to players whose joy was in "hack and slay" or "places to go, people to meet".

If memory serves, the sample dungeon in Holmes Basic was in many ways a fairly typical slice. There were monsters just to fight or avoid, characters ranging from villains to victims to potential allies, dangerous tricks and traps, mysteries to solve and maybe some enigmas.

 

[Ariosto]

This is something that makes discussing classic D&D so difficult.

There're a bunch of sacks full of something in the corner of the room. What's in them? You don't know until you check them.

If you check the sacks: It's a trap, and your PC dies! Ha! You shouldn't have bothered them. Old school Players were wise and knew not to mess with stuff unnecessarily.

If you don't check the sacks: There was treasure hidden in them, and you didn't get it! Ha! You should have thought to check them. Old school Players were wise and knew to investigate everything.

If you carefully check them using a 10' pole, or a summoned creature: They're just sacks of moldy grain and flour. Ha! You wasted time and magic messing with just some old bags, and got a wondering monster check and now have fewer spells for the boss encounter in the next area. Old school Players were wise and knew to conserve their time and resources for truly important things.

"Old school" D&D was and is a game, enjoyed by many people who are wise and know that a game is a series of risks, a series of choices involving weighing of potential gains and losses with uncertainty as to the actual outcomes.

That characteristic of unpredictability is a feature that they desire and appreciate as a change from exercises that involve obeying easily followed instructions to duplicate set sequences of events.

 

[Ariosto]

This is sort of my point: There are many examples both ways – things you shouldn’t mess with, and things you should mess with. And often there is no clue for which is the right action: leave it alone, or investigate it.


... But the lack of *any* clue, or especially the existence of a misleading clue, does make for bad design – unless you think requiring 50/50-chance guesses are good design. What makes things bad for discussions on this subject are when people claim that making the wrong/bad decision – based on *no* clue – means the Player is not good or skilled.

... Skilled or Poor claim based on nothing but a blind action by the Player. What if the Player rolled a die to make the decision?

Yes, it would be unskilled reasoning and poor rhetoric if one were to claim as something else what is evidently chance (or might as well be).

However, skill can enter a game involving chance when opportunities to gamble are not just isolated events but instead interact with a larger context. Is the potential treasure more important, or the potential trap?

Poker is a game of both chance and skill. Situations can arise in such games as Chess and Diplomacy in which actually random choice of which move to make would be superior strategy to risking the revelation of a subconscious pattern that the opponent might be able to use.

Depending on the dice appears to be what often gets hailed as "good" design these days! I have yet to see the chance of picking the right door of three be only 25% or worse because some joker decided to make it a certain DC, but it seems just a matter of time.

Even when there are clues to discover, it may be most unlikely that someone will think to look for them. A spear trap in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure comes to mind, and a Medusa in Keep on the Borderlands, as "gotcha" moments likely to get most player groups (albeit not so many characters in well deployed parties).

In such cases, not getting caught is a noteworthy accomplishment. Not unleashing a certain furious elemental in MFA is probably more a matter of experience suggesting the general inadvisability of some courses of action.

That one can have no iron-clad guarantee of either safety or treasure, though, is part of the game's interest. The strategic scope of the old game's design gave many types of probability more opportunity to play out and a context in which players were less dismayed by such turns of fortune.

I think there are weaknesses in, e.g., The Temple of Elemental Evil and In Search of the Unknown, things that might add spice if used sparingly but easily become tiresome when overused. I do not remember such a problem in the Tomb, and no doubt that is due partly to the different circumstances of the whole scenario.

I seem to recall a gargoyle in the Tomb that would require magic either to bypass or to defeat. That "challenges the characters" at least to the extent that low-level characters might need to be unusually well equipped -- but really only "name level" worthies should seek Acerak's resting place.