Tomb of Horrors - your experiences?

[T. Foster]

Heh. I ran this as a two-player game (which was really a one-player game because player #2 was player #1's girlfriend and didn't do much except watch) back around 1989 using low (1st?) level characters. I nerfed the combat-oriented encounters (the 4-armed gargoyle, the juggernaut, the mummies), but since there's so little combat and the vast majority of the module consists of level-independent "make the right choice or die" traps and puzzles that are more a test of the players than their characters, I didn't really have to change much. Both characters survived and made it to the end. I don't remember what was done about the demilich -- I'm not sure they even tried to fight it, they might've just grabbed the treasure and left without disturbing the skull (which is apparently what Robilar also did in the original test-run). In retrospect I suppose it's possible that the player had read the module behind my back and was snowing me (and I imagine all you sour-grapes folks will insist this must be what happened) but that wasn't the impression I got at the time. He was just a very good player -- cautious, clever, didn't take any unnecessary or stupid risks or chances.

 

[Spatula]

The party got into a fight in the first hallway about whether to go through the mist-filled archway or the black mouth of the devil face. I convinced half of the party (including my own character) to jump into the mouth. Ooops.

The remaining three characters somehow managed to get to the end and kill the demilich. I'm not sure how since I was playing Pools of Radiance on the computer in the next room, but reading the module later on I realized that my brother the DM must have toned things down so that they could win. The demilich is unbeatable unless you managed to reach it with more than 6 (or is it 8?) PCs remaining, since it kills a PC each round and is immune or highly resistant to conventional attacks.

And that was the end of the campaign.

 

[EvilGM]

Worst. Dungeon. Ever.

 

[Kalendraf]

Played it as a 1-shot during high school. Party started with 4 characters and we died off 1-by-1. My ranger was the last character to die. IIRC, he fell in a very deep pit near a 4-way intersection.

I now own a copy of it, but I've never felt mean enough to try running it.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Played it a couple of years ago, as a one-night 1e game.

I think we (five players) went through about 12 characters in about three hours. It's' really just a TPK waiting to happen. About half the stuff you investigate kills you (or makes you evil, which some interpret as "kill other party members on sight").

If you go into it prepared to die and don't care, it's fun (like a good gore film). Since it was a one-shot for us, we had some fun. If you care about your character (and actually played them from 1st level to the appropriate level for the mod), you'll hate it when your character dies. Which s/he probably will.

 

[purple knight]

I only made it all the way through the module once as a player (sort of since we killed the fake lich and never got to the real one). I was the only surviving character at that point and wouldn't have cared even if I knew it was a fake lich. I was more concerned about getting back out again.

I have ran it, partly, once since then, but the players all knew the module inside and out.

 

[Orius]

I have the reproduction of the original that was included in Return to the Tomb of Horrors (I was 2 years old when it was first published, so...) and I ran it as a one-shot adventure a couple of years ago on Halloween. The players used the pregenerated characters in the back. They tried the two fake entrances first, to my delight, and then headed into the dungeon. They made it as far as the room with the altar and the sex-changing portal, and we stopped there. I think two of the pregen character got killed. Later I asked my sister, who was playing the cleric, why she didn't bother using any healing spells. She said they were probably all going to die anyway, so what would the point be?

I stuck the Tomb into my campaign world and even cloned the Greyhawk area map included in RttToH, but I'm not sure if I'd ever run that whole campaign with a group of players. The original Tomb is a death trap, and when you add the Black Academy, the City of Moil, and the Fortress of Conclusion to that, it just gets worse. Also, when converting some of that stuff to 3e, you're talking Epic-level challenges here too. So, I really don't feel like wiping out a party of PCs in this meat grinder right now, especially when there's more important stuff in the campaign for them to take care of: a demon lord freed from a millenia long imprisonment who's trying to take over the world, and the drow destroying the elven homeland. Still, I have the Black Academy sitting there IMC as another group of bad guys to give the PCs problems.

 

[Express]

MY party tried years ago. Three attempts, three failures. I remember falling into pits alot for some reason.

 

[WayneLigon]

I played it two or three times. We never made it down the first corridor, the first time. The second time one guy that had read the module thought it would be funny to insinuate in character that the sphere of annihilation trap was a teleport. He ushered the entire party into the thing, then laughed about it.

 

[Ottergame]

THIS IS A THINKING PERSON’S MODULE. AND IF YOUR
GROUP IS A HACK AND SLAY GATHERING, THEY WILL BE
UNHAPPY!


WHAHAHAHAHA! He should have also said, "If your characters don't like to die and finish the module at 1st level when they went in at 10, they will be unhappy!"