One tidbit is metagame genre knowledge. Typical module design of the time didn't actually expect folks to engage in mining activities - if it was designed so a trap closed off one route, then another route usually existed.
WIR S1 Tomb of Horrors [SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!!]
One tidbit is metagame genre knowledge. Typical module design of the time didn't actually expect folks to engage in mining activities - if it was designed so a trap closed off one route, then another route usually existed.
As far as I can tell, there is are no clues at all in the module regarding the three entrances. The Legend of the Tomb makes it clear that the dungeon is difficult and trap-laden, but that's the closest thing I can find.
The doors in the false entrances are false. What that means is up to the DM. I assume either they don't open at all, or they open onto a bare rock wall.
My guess is that most parties find one of the false entrances first. The real entrance is in the middle of the hill, and I think most groups will start their search at one end of the hill or the other. I also guess that most groups will stop searching the hill and explore the the first "entrance" that they come to. They'll either trigger or discover the traps, and its up to them to decide to start poking around the hill again. I can imagine a group wasting a ton of time on either false entrance, particularly the second one.
I'm curious. For folks who actually played the module, how did this work out? Did you get to the real Tomb quickly or get bogged down playing with the false doors?
Bullgrit
Adventurer
Not to contradict you on this point, but the first thing to came to my mind upon reading this is the blocked corridor in the Caves of Chaos -- it specifically explains the effort necessary to clear and move beyond the blockage.Umbran said:
* * *
I'm going to throw out some information for your discussion. I'm not making judgment on these items; I'm just putting out the information for consideration. And since you are reading the adventure text, you can check what I say directly as you come to the relevant info.Stoat said:
The adventure seems to sometimes support persistence, and sometimes it punishes.
For instance:
The clue in the entrance path. Only if a Player has been examining the path all the way from the beginning to the end will they notice the long poem clue. Persistence to examining the path pays off with information about the Tomb.
Part of the clue mentions the color green is bad but black ("night's good color"?) is good.
Right in front of this mention is the black sphere of annihilation. The demon-face mount for the sphere is green.
Now, the clue in the path is actually referring to the next corridor over, which the Players have not yet found and don't know exists. It is easy for the Players to think the clue is referring to what is right before them. I've read instances of whole parties jumping into the sphere (not knowing what it truly is).
Later, the 3-armed gargoyle statue: The hands have depressions fit for 100gp gems. (What does a 100gp gem look like? Are they all the same?) If you put a gem in each hand of the statue, the hand will crush the gem and dump the powder to the floor. Now, some Players would think, "OK, I don't want to do that again." But here, persistence (destroying multiple valuable gems) will pay off. When the 10th gem is destroyed, (probably along with the 11th and 12th at the same time), a gem of true seeing will materialize. (But it's invisible and may actually be completely undiscovered.) So persistence against something that would be very stupid outside the Tomb gets rewarded. (The Players have no way of knowing anything will come of destroying 1,000 gp worth of gems -- as far as they know, the crushing might never stop -- why keep "feeding" gems to the statue?)
Later, the ring slot: There's a slot for inserting a magic ring that will open a secret door. Supposedly the slot looks right for inserting a magic ring, but what does a magic ring look like, and are they all the same? And how would the PCs know that the ring wouldn't be destroyed, (like the gems earlier)?
Later, there is a secret door hidden in a spiked-pit trap: The only way to find this secret door is to search down inside the pit trap. If a party has been flying to avoid floor traps, they'd never find this door and would not be able to advance further into the Tomb. (They'd probably head on to the TPK trap down the hall.)
Later, there is a door with slots for swords: The slots apparently look sized for swords to fit into. (Again, do all swords look alike?) Even if the Players figure out that they are to insert their (probably magical) swords into the slots, how do they know their items won't be destroyed (like the gems earlier)?
These examples, and others, are reasons why I think ToH is not the logical and reasonable trap maze that some say it is. In one place, an action is punished/rewarded, and then in another place, a similar action is rewarded/punished.
And the clues that some say are readily available in the path into the Tomb is only at the entrance of the place, and requires the Players to examine something closely for well past the duration that most Players would bother. (The DM is directly told that only if the Player has examined the path all the way from the door to the end of the hall, will they discover the message hidden there in.)
Also keep in mind that ToH was published at a time when the rules prevented repeat tries on many things -- you could only roll a search check once for a secret door or a trap. So many players would be used to accepting, "You don't find anything," from the DM as the one and only shot they had. Many would not think they could just continue searching beyond the first failure.
There are many things in the ToH that break the very pattern it seems to be trying to test.
"Be paranoiaingly cautious, but try many things."
"Don't make the same mistake twice, but keep trying things that go bad."
"Everything you do can kill you, including doing nothing, so do everything including nothing."
Whether this is good or bad, I guess, depends on the DM and Players.
Bullgrit
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Bullgrit
Adventurer
I would also like to throw in, here: Most every solution or explanation I've seen anyone ever give for overcoming the various ToH traps sound easy and straight-forward enough, but they all come from already knowing the answer.
Yes, it's pretty easy to conceive of a way to get past a trap when:
A- You know a trap is there.
B- You know what the trap is.
C- You know how the trap works.
D- You know what solutions are not allowed. (Like what spells won't work.)
For instance: "The cobwebs should be burned away as good dungeon hygeine" -- that's easy to say when you know that putting fire into the area won't set off the trap.
If the trap was something set off by open flame, someone who had read the module would then say, "The roof should be tapped with a pole, first, of course, because putting open flame into an unseen area is just foolish." And that would sound just as logical and wise.
It's like saying, "Listening at a door before you open it is always good dungeon exploration strategy," when you know there aren't any ear seekers infesting the door. But when you are exploring a notoriously devious dungeon created by a master of the game, who is well versed in all dungeon-invader tactics, (and who created essentially all the counters to those tactics), are you going to so quickly and "wisely" put your ear to the door?
Bullgrit
Yes, it's pretty easy to conceive of a way to get past a trap when:
A- You know a trap is there.
B- You know what the trap is.
C- You know how the trap works.
D- You know what solutions are not allowed. (Like what spells won't work.)
For instance: "The cobwebs should be burned away as good dungeon hygeine" -- that's easy to say when you know that putting fire into the area won't set off the trap.
If the trap was something set off by open flame, someone who had read the module would then say, "The roof should be tapped with a pole, first, of course, because putting open flame into an unseen area is just foolish." And that would sound just as logical and wise.
It's like saying, "Listening at a door before you open it is always good dungeon exploration strategy," when you know there aren't any ear seekers infesting the door. But when you are exploring a notoriously devious dungeon created by a master of the game, who is well versed in all dungeon-invader tactics, (and who created essentially all the counters to those tactics), are you going to so quickly and "wisely" put your ear to the door?
Bullgrit
A
amerigoV
Guest
Why, us Grognards have Ear Horns as standard gear, of course!
Your point is a good one - but in the end the ToH is for those that both like puzzles and are gluttons for punishment. I do not mind the killer aspect of it (it creates a nice change of pace, like playing Paranoia), but I am more of an action type-player. Room after room of puzzles and traps just wear on my attention span as a player.
Excellent point!
And that's basically how developing 'procedures' to explore dungeons turn into a metagame vs. the DM:
In our 1e days we created increasingly complex procedures for 'standard' situations, like making camp, setting watch, investigating doors, etc.
We defined it once and then simply told the DM we used this procedure every time, unless we told him something different.
So eventually, the DM used something that wasn't covered by the procedure which led to us players refining the procedure, etc., etc.
This can lead to a scenario where procedures become worthless, since you can never come up with a perfect procedure, and the DM can even 'improvise' to change things on the fly to make sure your procedure works (or more likely doesn't).
Area 3: Entrance to the Tomb of Horrors
Everybody is in such a hurry to get inside! But we've got a long way to go before we need to worry about Agitated Chambers or Valves of Mithril. In fact, we're just getting to the entrance hallway. It's 20 feet wide and 130 feet long with a 20 foot high ceiling.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ToH_Gallery/ToHGraphic3.jpg
As I noted above, the real entrance to the Tomb is immediately distinguishable from the false entrances. The walls, floor, and ceiling are covered with bright, brilliantly colored murals and mosaics. The murals on the walls show "all manner of things" -- grazing cattle, wolves skulking in the woods, slaves of all types going about "various tasks", and "chairs, windows, boxes, bales, doors, chests, birds, bats, [and] spiders." You also see pictures of a library filled with books, a torture chamber and a wizard's work room (although it doesn't really look like a work room to me). The "torture chamber" mural shows "a painting of [an] iron door which evidently confines some sort of a horrid creature . . . which can be loosed to torment prisoners." The exact wording is important here, and if your DM doesn't give it to you, you'll likely miss one of the ways out of this area.
A two-foot wide line of bright red tiles snakes its way down the hallway. It branches at the very end, heading either to the Arch of Mist or to the Face of the Great Green Devil.
There's a lot to talk about here (the module breaks the corridor up into four separately-numbered areas) and the most important is Acererak's riddle. But before we get there, I want to talk about two other things.
First, pit traps. There are five pit traps in the hallway. The Red Path will take you right into three of them. If you're poking ahead with a pole, you'll find a pit 2 out of 3 times. If you trigger one, there's a percentage chance (derived from your dexterity) that you won't fall in. At Dex 18, you have a 24% chance to avoid falling into a pit. The pits are only 10 feet deep, but they've got save or die poison spikes at the bottom of them.
My understanding is that the 1E thief can't make a Find Traps roll to detect the pits. The PHB says that the Find Traps ability "pertains to relatively small mechanical devices such as poison needles, spring blades and the like." Am I reading that correctly? If so, then there isn't an easy mechanical way to look for the pits. The party either (a) uses a 10 foot pole and blunders into 1 out of 3 pits; (b) uses a "goblin mine detector" (a goat, hireling or PC played by your little brother); (c) uses flight or levitation; (d) gets lucky or (e) falls in. At any rate, I ain't seeing no clues to avoid the pits here. The PC's will have to rely on luck and/or ingenuity.
Second, concealed doors. There's a door behind the "torture chamber" mural . It's marked as a "concealed door" on the map. Why is this not a secret door? As I understand it, you detect a concealed door by rolling dice. Elves get a 1 in 6 chance to detect concealed doors that they just walk by and a 50-50 chance to find them if they look. I assume there are similar numbers for non-elven PC's too?
The door in question is hidden behind plaster and lath. To open it, you have to bust down the wall. How many of you guys would really let an elf find it just by walking past?
IMO: There are no real "clues" to help the PC's find or avoid the pit traps. There are a number of pretty ordinary ways to detect pits, but Acererak isn't giving you any particular help. I think the clue for finding the concealed door is pretty clever -- it's behind the painting of a door! Duh!
Everybody is in such a hurry to get inside! But we've got a long way to go before we need to worry about Agitated Chambers or Valves of Mithril. In fact, we're just getting to the entrance hallway. It's 20 feet wide and 130 feet long with a 20 foot high ceiling.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ToH_Gallery/ToHGraphic3.jpg
As I noted above, the real entrance to the Tomb is immediately distinguishable from the false entrances. The walls, floor, and ceiling are covered with bright, brilliantly colored murals and mosaics. The murals on the walls show "all manner of things" -- grazing cattle, wolves skulking in the woods, slaves of all types going about "various tasks", and "chairs, windows, boxes, bales, doors, chests, birds, bats, [and] spiders." You also see pictures of a library filled with books, a torture chamber and a wizard's work room (although it doesn't really look like a work room to me). The "torture chamber" mural shows "a painting of [an] iron door which evidently confines some sort of a horrid creature . . . which can be loosed to torment prisoners." The exact wording is important here, and if your DM doesn't give it to you, you'll likely miss one of the ways out of this area.
A two-foot wide line of bright red tiles snakes its way down the hallway. It branches at the very end, heading either to the Arch of Mist or to the Face of the Great Green Devil.
There's a lot to talk about here (the module breaks the corridor up into four separately-numbered areas) and the most important is Acererak's riddle. But before we get there, I want to talk about two other things.
First, pit traps. There are five pit traps in the hallway. The Red Path will take you right into three of them. If you're poking ahead with a pole, you'll find a pit 2 out of 3 times. If you trigger one, there's a percentage chance (derived from your dexterity) that you won't fall in. At Dex 18, you have a 24% chance to avoid falling into a pit. The pits are only 10 feet deep, but they've got save or die poison spikes at the bottom of them.
My understanding is that the 1E thief can't make a Find Traps roll to detect the pits. The PHB says that the Find Traps ability "pertains to relatively small mechanical devices such as poison needles, spring blades and the like." Am I reading that correctly? If so, then there isn't an easy mechanical way to look for the pits. The party either (a) uses a 10 foot pole and blunders into 1 out of 3 pits; (b) uses a "goblin mine detector" (a goat, hireling or PC played by your little brother); (c) uses flight or levitation; (d) gets lucky or (e) falls in. At any rate, I ain't seeing no clues to avoid the pits here. The PC's will have to rely on luck and/or ingenuity.
Second, concealed doors. There's a door behind the "torture chamber" mural . It's marked as a "concealed door" on the map. Why is this not a secret door? As I understand it, you detect a concealed door by rolling dice. Elves get a 1 in 6 chance to detect concealed doors that they just walk by and a 50-50 chance to find them if they look. I assume there are similar numbers for non-elven PC's too?
The door in question is hidden behind plaster and lath. To open it, you have to bust down the wall. How many of you guys would really let an elf find it just by walking past?
IMO: There are no real "clues" to help the PC's find or avoid the pit traps. There are a number of pretty ordinary ways to detect pits, but Acererak isn't giving you any particular help. I think the clue for finding the concealed door is pretty clever -- it's behind the painting of a door! Duh!
Just wanted to chime in and say I'm enjoying this thread; I'm considering throwing ToH out into my campaign world, dropping some clues it exists and seeing if the players bite and want to break themselves upon the wheel of pain. I presume they will leave the thing alone more than likely but I like to give them the option.
Reading through the module itself, I have to agree that it does seem to reward and punish someone who uses one method to get through the thing. Sometimes action A will make sense, then next situation it was the wrong thing to do, despite looking correct. It reminds me of Dragon's Lair; better hit the button at the right time which is only evident after dying twenty times.
Reading through the module itself, I have to agree that it does seem to reward and punish someone who uses one method to get through the thing. Sometimes action A will make sense, then next situation it was the wrong thing to do, despite looking correct. It reminds me of Dragon's Lair; better hit the button at the right time which is only evident after dying twenty times.
A
amerigoV
Guest
I'm tempted to do the same. I may not make them partake, but let them know it is there. If they don't tackle it, then the shame is on them for their fear.
Bullgrit
Adventurer
This is a *very* important note for this entire adventure. A lot of live or die info is reliant on the DM's description, throughout this Tomb.Stoat said:
And unfortunately, the module text is written in the Gygax stream of consciousness style (which seemed his standard for module text, at the time) -- a lot of information crowded together in one very long paragraph. For instance, check out the text for something Stoat has already covered:
It would be too easy for a DM to miss some important item in that wall of text. A group's success or failure in this Tomb can have a lot to do with how well the DM handled the descriptions and clues -- how well the DM can pull out the important info from that dense mass of text.
This module really could use a good editor to organize how the information is presented better.
A funny anecdote: I knew a DM who went through his copy of this adventure with a yellow crayon, (before we had highlighters), marking the important text in the paragraphs. He stopped trying after a couple pages because he found that he had been marking pretty much every other sentence. He showed me one page of his work and it was nearly all yellow.
Bullgrit
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