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."

 

[martinlochsen]

Interesting that the guy kills his players and laugh in their faces and then blames the module for the loss of his friends.

 

[Morrus]

Interesting that the guy kills his players

Yikes. Harsh game.

 

[Zelofcad]

Funny: it's the second time in a few day that I read a negative opinion on the Tomb of Horrors, and I quite don't understand.
I incorporated the 3.5 version of the Tomb in my campaign and my players liked it. A little more than a year has passed since the battle with Acererak, and they sometimes still quote the initial poem or recall some funny episodes: even if they lost some characters in there, they gladly remember the Tomb.
I have to say my players entered the Tomb with extreme caution and they used a lot of... let's say creativity to manage it, but that's what I expect from a group of adventurers entering an old ruin filled with traps protecting what was inside (they were aware of that: it was part of the story).

 

[martinlochsen]

Yikes. Harsh game.

What? You never played like that before? That's TRUE old school playin'. ;-)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Not familiar with John Wick's work or why his opinion means a lot but I think many have stated it already, its a tournament module to challenge the players more with traps and tricks and often "unfair" encounters that lead to instant TPK. Its without a doubt not the more modern challenge the character sheet type game, or even a game for those looking for hack and slashing as its mostly traps. You could play it in an ongoing campaign but you better be the type of player who doesn't mind losing a long term PC. ON a note, we had an off night in my gaming group so I was going to run it in 1e with the pre-gens. It was last minute and I didn't have time to put all the PC stuff together which was a problem but I quickly realized that we had been playing 3e/5e for so long that we really forgot how to run 1e. We are long term players from the late 70's to mid-80's and were struggling with things like "why is there no search skill under the thief....". Its a different gaming mindset with old 70's D&D products. Bad module no, but not everyone's style especially if they are looking for deep storytelling.

And I don't understand the statement "two of them are designed to give the GM the authority for a TPK".

Read his blog post. Just made me go "awwwwww the poor baby". Gary's comment echo my feelings honestly. Then again I'm more into D&D as a game rather than a shared storytelling experience.

 

[Nagol]

What? You never played like that before? That's TRUE old school playin'. ;-)

Killing your players goes well old-school and veers off into "D&D is the tool of the devil"/"All D&D players are sociopaths" ways of thinking. Old-school stops short of real world violence; we only kill characters.

 

[Jiggawatts]

I wonder what he has to say about Rappan Athuk.

 

[MwaO]

Funny: it's the second time in a few day that I read a negative opinion on the Tomb of Horrors, and I quite don't understand.

I think a lot of it is about expectations. Do your players expect their PCs to die on a regular basis? Is staying dead a problem? Is the how the DM reacts to a TPK a problem? If the players come up with an interesting/funny/smart/clever idea that isn't anticipated by the mod, will the DM let them bypass it? If the players do something apparently stupid(such as step into a pure black area that light doesn't bounce off of nor does it reflect...), does the DM assume that the PCs might do something to stop it?

Depending on what your group decides how the world works, it can be a very different adventure...

An example of the problem is what Wick describes when he's playing the Rogue - he establishes that he knows where the traps are, so the players logically assume that when he doesn't tell them to do something, it must be safe. That's a really bad thing that the DM let happen and if I were DM, I'd say immediately, hey, we need to re-define what the rules of a trap are before something like that happens(if I were going to allow Wick's know-everything Rogue in the first place)

These vary a lot in terms of campaign by campaign.

 

[Zelofcad]

I think a lot of it is about expectations. Do your players expect their PCs to die on a regular basis? Is staying dead a problem? Is the how the DM reacts to a TPK a problem? If the players come up with an interesting/funny/smart/clever idea that isn't anticipated by the mod, will the DM let them bypass it? If the players do something apparently stupid(such as step into a pure black area that light doesn't bounce off of nor does it reflect...), does the DM assume that the PCs might do something to stop it?

Depending on what your group decides how the world works, it can be a very different adventure...

I think you are right.
My players know that the world their PCs live in is dangerous, that death is an option and that if they decide to enter a clearly dangerous place they should reasonably expect they could die.
That said, I like when my players come up with a clever or a funny idea: that's the way they avoided some of the dangers, or reduced the damages. The sphere of annihilation is a good example: they analyzed it (detect magic and so on), and didn't simply jump in. That way, they survived.

An example of the problem is what Wick describes when he's playing the Rogue - he establishes that he knows where the traps are, so the players logically assume that when he doesn't tell them to do something, it must be safe. That's a really bad thing that the DM let happen and if I were DM, I'd say immediately, hey, we need to re-define what the rules of a trap are before something like that happens(if I were going to allow Wick's know-everything Rogue in the first place)

These vary a lot in terms of campaign by campaign.

I completely agree.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Its kind of sad to see a grown man still angry at a module he played when he was 12.