Is the original Tomb of Horrors a well-designed adventure module?

[painandgreed]

Unfortunately these are Tomb of Horror Lemons. When handed ToH Lemons, you die no save.

Only if you touch the raw juice. Draining the juice from the lemon without letting it touch you into a silver cup and then using holy water and sugar to make lemonade creates a heal potion. It's simple deduction.

 

[Umbran]

That's another thing about the EL system...it makes everything in the world seem tailored to the PCs and their level.

Well, folks forget the little chart of suggestions that go with the system that suggests a spread of encounter strengths from "rediculously easy" to "run away if you don't want to die".

 

[gizmo33]

I'm sure you and I can both tell the difference between an argument intended to appeal to your intellect and one intended to appeal to your emotions.

Actually IMO I don't think this is always easy to distinguish. IME people tend to mix in parts of intellect and emotion into most arguments.

What I was illustrating was that the Trojan Horse, as a solution for the Achaeans' dilemma in besieging Troy, actually is a sensible and clever approach.

Yes, and in order to illustrate that you had to describe the cultural context for that element of the story. Roleplaying games also take place within a cultural context. Stories and games might be different in some ways, but they also are similar in some ways, so that point in itself does not make the case IMO. Stories and RPGs share the characteristic that the listener/player has to understand the context of what's going on. Play DnD with someone whos never played before, or describe Lord of the Rings to someone who is unfamiliar with fantasy and I think you'd see what I mean.

Walking NPCs down corridors to trigger traps is not, IMHO.

Not sensible and clever? "Clever" is subjective, but I think the solution (though immoral) is sensible, especially if it conforms to the character's alignment.

(Incidentally, if you'll read back up this thread, you'll see that I happen to think the earth elemental approach is reasonably creative. The specific use of "ridiculous" is a response to Robilar's approach.)

I'll reread - but I'm inclined to think that a charge of "ridiculous" requires more explanation because it implicitly suggests that the person performing the action is either insane or stupid. Without knowing exactly what you mean, I still believe what you're saying has a low probability of being true on those grounds alone, and seems a somewhat rationalized coating on an essentially emotional response.

 

[gizmo33]

The thing is, before you talk about verisimilitude, you have to know to what you're trying to be true. My copy of the module is back home, but if I recall correctly, we aren't told a whole lot about the personality of the lich. So, rather than assume stuff about him, and say the dungeon is not in line with that, look at the dungeon, and derive some of the lich's personality from it...

QFT !

In fact, I think this is a BIG part of the old school module that people don't get. People look at an old school module and say "that doesn't make any sense", and think that's the module's problem. Given the uncountably infinite possibilities that can produce the results they see, and the fact that it's a fantasy world, I don't really see what the problem is.

The "Ecology of..." type articles IMO do a disservice to fantasy, in some ways, in that it makes it seem like everything that happens in a fantasy universe has to be based on scientific principles.

People think they need to have an explanation for what a dragon must be eating in order to maintain itself in an environment. A dragon is an imaginary creature, there's no reason that it has to sustain itself following the same rules as a cow. If you can conceive of a fantasy universal law that says "the gods gain power from their worshippers belief in them" then you can extrapolate that to say "dragons exist as a manifestation of humanities collective fear of them, and are sustained by that fear". (To think that if an adventurer is not afraid of a dragon that somehow that dragon will be weakened misunderstands what I mean by "collective").

 

[ruleslawyer]

Actually IMO I don't think this is always easy to distinguish. IME people tend to mix in parts of intellect and emotion into most arguments.

Yes, but the pieces parts are there to see.

Yes, and in order to illustrate that you had to describe the cultural context for that element of the story. Roleplaying games also take place within a cultural context. Stories and games might be different in some ways, but they also are similar in some ways, so that point in itself does not make the case IMO. Stories and RPGs share the characteristic that the listener/player has to understand the context of what's going on. Play DnD with someone whos never played before, or describe Lord of the Rings to someone who is unfamiliar with fantasy and I think you'd see what I mean.

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on this. It's a relatively straightforward action with little in the way of meaningful context. How does "context" add anything to the decision to have minions walk down halls to trigger traps?

Moreover, it's not like we don't share the intended "context." We're all gamers; I've been playing (A)D&D since ToH was released.

I don't think it's a matter of emotional response, either. There are imaginative approaches to these problems that require sophisticated reasoning, as merelycompetent's group example illustrates. Then there's the silly response, which is what I think sending minions down to trigger traps is. Why didn't they just turn on him anyway?

 

[merelycompetent]

...There are imaginative approaches to these problems that require sophisticated reasoning, as merelycompetent's group example illustrates. Then there's the silly response, which is what I think sending minions down to trigger traps is. Why didn't they just turn on him anyway?

Again, thank you for the compliments, but just to be clear: We weren't above sending minions down the halls to trigger traps for us. In 1E/2E, the groups I played with didn't see much value to the various monster summoning spells, short of Cacodemon or Gate. (By the time we could cast them, our main opposition would gack them in one round or less, and the durations were too short for other strategic use.) We burned a few scrolls of monster summoning that we'd collected on both trips through ToH, mostly as trap-detectors. Then we'd follow up with an appropriately-placed wall of stone/iron/force or other countermeasure. If we hadn't been playing good-aligned characters, I can easily see all of us following up on one player's suggestion to find a tribe of goblins, orcs, what-have-you, and either charming them or intimidating them into checking the corridors ahead of us. If you are a <4 HD critter facing certain extermination from evil adventurers vs. taking a chance (however remote) on surviving the traps, most would take the chance at survival. The ones that take option #2, well, there's always Animate Dead. That's one of the advantages of being evil in this game.

Come to think of it, I like the Animate Dead solution better. You don't have to feed them, they don't complain, they'll march all day, help you carry the loot out, and they won't try to steal it from you.

 

[lukelightning]

Come to think of it, I like the Animate Dead solution better. You don't have to feed them, they don't complain, they'll march all day, help you carry the loot out, and they won't try to steal it from you.

First you send your charmed or hired minions down the halls 'till they get killed by traps, and then you animate them. That way you get two uses/body.

 

[merelycompetent]

First you send your charmed or hired minions down the halls 'till they get killed by traps, and then you animate them. That way you get two uses/body.

Yeah, but then they start complaining about us creating a hostile working environment, the lack of medical benefits, lack of life insurance, and so forth. Plus you have to feed them, clothe them, they get tired... and then they go on strike. As an Evil Overlord (tm), I *hate* it when they go on strike. Much better to start by gacking them, then animating them. Plus the survivors become lots more cooperative.

 

[gizmo33]

Moreover, it's not like we don't share the intended "context." We're all gamers; I've been playing (A)D&D since ToH was released.

We might have played DnD over the same approximate span of years but I'm sure we have different expectations for the game. We probably have a different preference for a level of scientific/historical justification for game elements. I also tend to see "fantasy" as something with a pretty broad set of possibilities (like Umbran's post described). I really do think that culture and context is the issue, even if your group played 1E with a different set of expectations than mine did.

When you say something is "badly designed", it really makes it sound much more universal and objective than I think is justified.

Then there's the silly response, which is what I think sending minions down to trigger traps is. Why didn't they just turn on him anyway?

Why is it silly? Minions have a long tradition of sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Is the Secret Service silly? Is it even necessary for me to come up with real world analogies to justify what orcs could possibly do in a fantasy game? I wasn't there to adjucate the loyalty issues between Robilar and his henchmen, but I don't find anything impossible about what's been described. You might be assuming that the orcs read the module and knew how dangerous it was?

 

[Geoffrey]

While Tomb of Horrors was published under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons name, it is actually an OD&D adventure. It was originally played at Origins I, which was held July 25-27, 1975. Back in those days, all that existed was the original D&D game (published in January 1974) and the Greyhawk supplement (published in February 1975)--four little brown books. There were also one or two issues of The Strategic Review. (The Dragon hadn't been born yet.) There was no Judges Guild yet, either.

The module reflects those very early days of idiosyncratic, seat-of-the-pants rules. This is all to the good, so I voted "Yes".