Is TOMB OF HORRORS the Worst Adventure Of All Time?

Prevailing opinion here in the EN World community has traditionally held that the worst adventure module of all time is 1984's The Forest Oracle. 7th Sea designer John Wick (whose upcoming edition of 7th Sea is the third most anticipated tabletop RPG of 2016) vehemently disagrees; he nominates the classic adventure Tomb of Horrors for that position, contending that it "represents all the wrong, backward thinking that people have about being a GM." In an article on his blog (warning: this uses a lot of strong language), he goes into great detail as to why he hold this opinion, stating that the adventure is the "worst, &#@&$&@est, most disgusting piece of pig vomit ever published".

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[lQ]"My players picked the entrance with the long corridor rather than the two other entrances which are instant kills. That’s right, out of the three ways to enter the tomb, two of them are designed to give the GM the authority for a TPK."[/lQ]

Very strong words, and you can read them all here. As I mentioned before, there's lots of NSFW language there.

The article also includes an anecdote about a convention game in which he participated. In that game, being already familiar with the adventure and its traps (and having advised the DM of this), he played a thief and attempted to discover or deactivate the traps, up until a near TPK occurred and he left the game.

Wick is, of course, no stranger to controversy. A couple of years ago, he created widespread internet arguments when he stated that "The first four editions of D&D are not roleplaying games."

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Hiya!

I pretty much disagree with all of what Mr.Wick wrote. I think there are some key points he isn't considering...

First...yeah, what everyone else in this thread said; it's a module designed to kill PC's, and, more importantly, it is designed as a tournament module.

Second, "old skool" (or "a regular AD&D game in 1980's") had the assumption that the players were the ones making the life-or-death decisions. It was the players who came up with how to detect a trap and defeat it. It was the players who were the prime determining factor of how successful a character was. Back in those days, I didn't say "Make a Spot Trap check, DC 22", I said "You see a wooden door, with iron bands...but the iron bands don't look nearly as rusty as the others you've seen. Almost like someone is trying to keep them clean". That's when the players start to use their own brains to detect and overcome any traps. The Key Thing Wick seems to be missing is this. His players obviously were either not up to the task, or were used to some other form of play style. As a player, when you see something in a deadly dungeon, you don't just jump in and hope you can roll good if you need to. The Tomb of Horrors was specifically designed to prey on that kind of "Freelick Maneuver" (re: "Freelick, the Fernetic of Glossamere jumps into the pit to gather up all the treasure! How much does Freelick get?"...kudos to any who know what movie I'm quoting that from). Throw things at it (iron spikes, water, oil, a rat/lizard/snake/small-animal, etc). Cast knowledge-type spells like Divination, Commune with Other Plane, or even Speak with Dead if one of your companions goes through and doesn't come back or scream or give any other indication. A party of 7 or 8 (that was the 'average' party size in those days), the clerics, druids, magic-users and illusionists should have a sack full of spell scrolls between them...they are all 10th to 14th level, after all! No small feat in 1e AD&D! That's one to two years of 8-hour weekly sessions...surely the players have learned how deadly stuff can be at those levels.

Third, and I think this is the MOST TELLING reason why he lost friends... he stood up and laughed at them. The module didn't do that...he did. He gloated. He was a world-class 12 year old a-hole in that moment. His fiends just lost all their hard-earned (I'm assuming here...) characters because they didn't think it was a trap, or at least a trap that would kill them if they were stupid enough to let it. And he, in his 12 year old wisdom, felt it was appropriate to jump up from the table, point his finger and laugh heartily at his 'friends', straight in the face. THAT is why he lost friends...not the module.

Anyway, thats my 2¢. I've also killed PC's...TPK's...with that module. Usually at the mouth, but I've also killed a "25th level paladin with 25 in all stats, with a two-handed holy avenger vorpal sword and a huge ancient gold dragon as his mount"...I think he made it in 20 or 30'. Followed the red path, fell in pit, failed save...died. That was rather funny to me...but I didn't jump up, point my finger at him, and laugh.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

The more I think of this the more I want to run this again.

I was looking through it and its pretty clear what type of module it is. Gary even says this module will not be for every group.

"As clever players will gather from a reading of the Legend of the
Tomb, this dungeon has more tricks and traps than it has monsters
to fight. THIS IS A THINKING PERSON’S MODULE. AND IF YOUR
GROUP IS A HACK AND SLAY GATHERING, THEY WILL BE
UNHAPPY! In the latter case, it is better to skip the whole thing than
come out and tell them that there are few monsters. It is this writer’s
belief that brainwork is good for all players, and they will certainly
benefit from playing this module, for individual levels of skill will be
improved by reasoning and experience - if you regularly pose prob-
lems to be solved by brains and not brawl, your players will find this
module immediately to their liking." ToH pg 2

Its about challenging a player, as in the guy in the seat not his search bonus or other skill on the character sheet. Of course 1e had no skills so to speak.

And as you say, it wasn't EGG's fault the blog writer was acting like a jackass.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I agree ToH is a terrible adventure. For a real campaign, with precious PCs, it is downright mean to run it as is. It's a simple, awful, deathtrap, nothing more. For a one-shot, with players who know they're going into ToH, it's a bit fun, but not much? Why - coz the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you dont need to. Which gets boring very quick unless you throw in some monsters (ToH has almost no monsters, it's all traps, if you dont already know).

 

[Zak S]

I love uber-cautious death trap games.

ESPECIALLY mid-campaign when I super-love my character and have invested so much in them over the years and so every decision and every die roll is heavy with consequence and super tense.

It's delicious, it's like tiramisu. Every second, every thought, every preparation counts.

If you don't: ok. But unless you think other people don't count, you can't call it a bad adventure (at least not just on account of being super deadly and caution inspiring), just not to your taste.

It's a bit like saying "THIS IS THE WORST BOOK! WHY? IT'S IN FRENCH!!!! AND I DON'T READ FRENCH!!!"

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I agree ToH is a terrible adventure. For a real campaign, with precious PCs, it is downright mean to run it as is. It's a simple, awful, deathtrap, nothing more. For a one-shot, with players who know they're going into ToH, it's a bit fun, but not much? Why - coz the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you dont need to. Which gets boring very quick unless you throw in some monsters (ToH has almost no monsters, it's all traps, if you dont already know).

But it's not a terrible module at all...I would say that it is, however, "a terrible module for you". For me and all but one of my players...it would be very memorable, in a good way. When you say "Why - [because] the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you don't need to"...you say it like it's a bad thing. For me and almost all of my group, this would be a good thing. Something that would bring home the point that this is a lich who designed his tomb to KILL INTERLOPERS. He didn't design it to "be a bit of a bother" and he most certainly didn't design it to be "a reasonable challenge, but not too hard, for adventurers to steal his treasure and desecrate his tomb". HE'S TRYING TO KILL YOU AND EVERYONE WITH YOU! So, IMHO, if you, as a player, are informed enough to realize that this is a true deathtrap dungeon, designed to trick and screw you over so that you die quickly and horribly...then you should be informed enough to say "Uh, no. We'll just use that map we got from the wizard as fire-starter for tonight's camp", and go take on some 'lesser', or 'more reasonable' challenges. Fair enough. Part of being a successful adventurer is knowing when to hold 'em, and knowing when to fold 'em.

Oh, lastly, "throwing in some monsters" doesn't equate to "more exciting". If the players enjoy X, throwing in Y isn't going to mean much. In fact, it can seriously detract from the "fun and excitement" of a given adventure. Again, this is wholey an assumption on your part for your particular play style. One that the Tomb of Horrors doesn't support.

IMHO, Mr.Wick basically said "Broccoli is the worst vegetable of all time!", and then tried to back it up with anecdotes about how it was two shades of green when you buy it, two different shades when you steam it, and it reminds him of trees and that time he climbed a tall one, fell out, broke his arm and hip, and had to do painful physio for a year...so, "obviously" broccoli is the worst. *sigh*

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Zak S]

Mr.Wick basically said "Broccoli is the worst vegetable of all time!", and then tried to back it up with anecdotes about how it was two shades of green when you buy it, two different shades when you steam it, and it reminds him of trees and that time he climbed a tall one, fell out, broke his arm and hip, and had to do painful physio for a year...so, "obviously" broccoli is the worst. *sigh*

Yep.

And it's amazing that, even in 2016:

1. People still read folks who do that opinion-as-fact thing
and
2. People decided it was worth talking about with other humans.

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, of course ToH isn't the worst adventure module of all times. I know it, you know it, and Mr. Wick knows it, too. It's just a ploy to get you to read his article(s) because it's a really well-known and (in)famous module. I'm not falling for it after reading his previous nonsense about D&D not being an RPG. The guy's suffering from a severe case of tunnel-vision.

Personally, I'm not a fan of ToH, despite (or because of?) my using it as a campaign-ending device in the past. As many have already pointed out, it wasn't really meant to played in an ongoing campaign. It was created as a tournament module, a very specific way to play an RPG that surely isn't for everyone.

 

[Zak S]

Well, of course ToH isn't the worst adventure module of all times. I know it, you know it, and Mr. Wick knows it, too. It's just a ploy to get you to read his article(s) because it's a really well-known and (in)famous module.

But, again:

It's really sad that someone who would do that is getting listened to.

The RPG community is riven with arguments from people with GENUINE fundamental disagreements about real stuff. Like there are not only people who genuinely believe that x edition will make society worse, but less crazy things like arguments about how to make the RPG community more diverse, etc. Just the arguments we should be having, and is already like 200,000 arguments. Why add extra unnecessary un-substantive argument on top of that?

And all that argument makes it _really_ hard for people to access straight-up information on how to run their game or how best to design one for the audience they're after or to get tools to play their game with other people have made.

So to just sort of write a clickbaity title and add entropy to the already desperately uninviting stew of argument that is the online RPG community seems unimaginably selfish. And to actually read and then take seriously an article by someone who'd do that seems unimaginably gullible.

 

[Li Shenron]

Designing a dungeon to kill the players is child's play, not clever.

Tomb of Horror was written in an era where the standard of videogames was to be designed to kill the players. There's an abyssal distance between coin-op games of the 80s and today's normality of games where you never ever really die. They are different kinds of fun, and yet those old ones designed to kill you quickly and repeatedly were a huge success back then (and still have a reasonable fanbase today, although they don't generate much revenue), which means they were indeed very clever.

As others also pointed out, ToH was meant to be a tournament adventure, where there is no point for the characters to exist after the end of it. It might make it even easier to determine the winner(s) of the tournament: if nobody can really get to the end of the adventure, there is less chance for ex-aequo, and less ambiguity, which could be the case for example for one group to survive the tomb but get few XP VS another group to TPK but earn more XP. Everyone is expected to die sooner or later, just like in 99% of any arcade videogame, and the winner is simply who scores more points.

In addition, Tomb of Horror has pretty much obviously a horror tone. Similarly to watching a horror movie, where you know everyone is going to die, and the fun of it is watching the how. You are supposed to like the genre, or watch/play something else.

Naturally, is someone is expecting a looong TV series with serious character development, and is not keen on seeing interesting characters die off at random times (GoT), you shouldn't try horror. And you shouldn't blame those who actually told you so...

 

[The Human Target]

Even as a tournament style module I think it sucks.

It's full of trial and error death.

The dungeon design is wonky.

There isn't anything intresting in it that isn't a "gotcha you died!"

 

[trancejeremy]

I think there are two misconceptions.

Firstly, I don't think it really was a tournament module. Oh sure, it got used at conventions. But it lacks the scoring system found in other tournament modules and I don't think it was run as a tournament, where the best players would win prizes.

Secondly, it's actually not that tough. EGG ran it for Rob Kuntz, who didn't beat it, but looted the place, and then his son Ernie, who did beat it. Random people he ran it for at conventions beat it.

That it is perceived to be tough is mostly because a lot of modern players don't really play for well, keeps. They know they won't die unless there is a very special combat. And traps are just a nuisance, not something that could kill you. So why bother to poke something first to see if it disintegrates anything it touches, just leap in.