Questions on Tomb of Horrors/Greyhawk/AD&D history

[Thanael]

Plus lots of cannon fodder orc servants. Those were different times and a completely different way to play the game.

You can find some details on the characters on Wikipedia (Robilar, Tenser) or even more detailed at Canonfire's Greyhawk wiki (Robilar, Tenser).

Here's an article by Rob Kuntz about Robilar (with some 1E? stat notes), which while not mentioning the tomb, has a few details about Robilar's adventures in Castle Greyhawk and in the Temple of Elemental Evil. Those give you an idea how they played these dungeon crawls.

Mike Johnson did some excellent 3E builds for each of them, though this would be well after going through the Tomb:
Robilar 3E stats (I'd definately have Robilar have the feat Robilar's Gambit though)
Tenser 3E stats


Grodog, let's hear your details, please... What level where they when they went in?

 

[Pbartender]

So my question is, who could they be?

My next campaign, set in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, will feature the new 4E Tomb of Horrors once the characters reach paragon levels. At some point as an innocuous "prequel" that happens long before the world is devastated, I'm going to run my players through the original adventure, using the original rules.

So, have you ever thought of doing something similar? Pause your regular campaign for a couple of sessions, and play through the original (in-game hundreds or thousands of years before the current campaign) using the AD&D rules it was meant for... Let your own players create the past legends that their future characters will be hearing about.

 

[grodog]

So it was just Robilar and Tenser? No more details on the characters? I find it hard to believe they beat it with just two.

No, they were both solo or small-group excursions into the dungeon---Tenser and Robilar weren't together. Robilar had ~5 orc servants when he entered, and they died in the real tomb entry hall. I'll ping some folks to see what, if anything, we know about Tenser's entry into the Tomb.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

So, have you ever thought of doing something similar? Pause your regular campaign for a couple of sessions, and play through the original (in-game hundreds or thousands of years before the current campaign) using the AD&D rules it was meant for... Let your own players create the past legends that their future characters will be hearing about.

I don't think my players are up to playing AD&D, tempting as it sounds. In the same note, I haven't been DMing for that long and not sure I can be up to the standards of that as I came off the back of Star Wars Saga.

So 3E mechanics mean nothing to me, to be honest.

One of these days I swear I will run it in all it's...horribleness.

Good news is while I'm taking a break from the chair one of the other DMs in the group is going to incorporate some of this law, while I keep the real facts hidden until they seek out the Tomb itself.

 

[Pbartender]

I don't think my players are up to playing AD&D, tempting as it sounds. In the same note, I haven't been DMing for that long and not sure I can be up to the standards of that as I came off the back of Star Wars Saga.

I'm not certain I follow your reasoning, here...

What makes you think that you're not up to the "standards" of DMing AD&D or that your players aren't up to playing it?

The thing to remember about the original is that there's not a whole lot of combat. It's mostly mind-bender tricks and traps and riddles that can be played out with out ever even really touching the rules.

In my instance, the Dark Sun Setting is going to be a post-apocalyptic ala Thundarr the Barbarian. One alternative I considered was to use some other simple rules-light system (like Risus or F#) and play through the original tomb of Horrors as a 1930s pulp action Indiana Jones type adventure... I still might, depending on how my players feel about it.

 

[TerraDave]

I had heard about Robilar, not Tensor. And that many of Mr. Gygax's players would not play it.

As was the standard of the time, background was scarce. KG, do you have access to the original ToH, you can see the tiny bit that is there. (also nice for the illustration book).

Return to by Bruce Cordell is certainly an expansion and adds quite of background (and skull city, wich you know from the new 4E hardback). Its fine. Its also quite some time after the fact and I don't love it.

Also, the RPGA rewards 4E conversion of the original (as opposed to the hardback, which is really a conversion of return to) looks great and has some definate fans.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

What makes you think that you're not up to the "standards" of DMing AD&D or that your players aren't up to playing it?

I'm still fairly new at this to be honest and I hardly know anything about AD&D aside from what I know from the computer games that were based off it (like Eye of the Beholder). But I do have a few splat books and the original ToH module, so I know how much of a different mindset it is from what the players are used to and what I'm used to as a DM.

So, learning AD&D and teaching it to my players just so we can play ToH is a big ask, to be honest. Particularly when they all have some idea how downright mean it is.

Running the 4E one, which is very well written I may add, I'm working a bit uphill to be honest and I'm finding it a challenge, but a challenge I know I need to go through to be a better DM. And judging how I handled the final encounter with several rulings, I wouldn't be ready to run it.

Plus, it's a scheduling thing. I'm not the only DM in my group, just the ToH DM and someone else wants to run Hunters and another player wants to try Stargate. And one of these days we'll be picking up Star Wars and Serenity again. Adding AD&D on top of that would put it to the back of the queue, as we're really reluctant to add new systems when we have so many pending. It's also not fair when something like that needs time.

Maybe when the players finish the 4E I'll pitch it to them and see how they are.

But I'm not an RPGA member and it's really not feasible for me to be one, so I don't have the adaptation.

 

[MerricB]

Also, the RPGA rewards 4E conversion of the original (as opposed to the hardback, which is really a conversion of return to) looks great and has some definate fans.

The hardcover isn't a conversion - it's a sequel. Or the third in a trilogy.

part 1: Tomb of Horrors
part 2: Return to the Tomb of Horrors
part 3: Tomb of Horrors (4e, hardcover)

Cheers!

 

[Pbartender]

So, learning AD&D and teaching it to my players just so we can play ToH is a big ask, to be honest. Particularly when they all have some idea how downright mean it is.

I gotcha... It's not so much that the ruleset or roleplaying mindset would too difficult, but that it's simply too much effort to get into properly for the sake of a single adventure. I can grok that.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

I want to get the conversion, but really don't see how.