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Message: <blockquote data-quote="werecorpse" data-source="post: 7693277" data-attributes="member: 55491">Sure you can. You can play and lose or win in a good or bad module, and you can DM and slaughter player characters in a good or bad module. Those results do not establish the quality of the module.The question asked was does not liking the module make you a self entitled monty haul munchkin. IMO no. My earliest comment in this thread was saying ToH had some poor design issues. Despite (or perhaps because of) those issues that I considered poor clearly there are many who have enjoyed it just the way it is. So subjectively the answer is it's a fine dungeon for some play style and not for others. If you start saying some of those play styles are wrongbadfun you need to rethink - I slipped into that way of thinking a bit. It seems that the success or not in ToH rests a lot on the interpretation of the text and player statements by the DM. In 3.0+ where you have a more mechanical chance of finding the trap it's up to the dice. In pre 3 it's up to DM to decide if the players succeed and up to the words of the DM to guide them. The green devil face trap is a classic example - many DM's would describe it in such a way as there is no way anyone would climb into it, and if they started too they would either be sucked in telling everyone else that it's a hideous trap or they would lose a limb - same result. Yet apparently it causes a great many deaths. I suspect that is due to the dm's interpretation of the module - as happened with 12 year old John Wick.Nowhere is this more evident than in Gygax's statement at the start of the return to tomb of horrors. He describes how one team destroyed the demilich using a method that was not one of the methods stated in the module as being one of the methods able to harm it. They won first place in a tournament for coming up with an innovative and novel solution. So essentially more than in many modules success depends on your DM. According to the module you can only harm the skull in one of 8 ways, the DM (including the designer) allowed a way not stated in the 8 to not only effect the creature but destroy it and you defeat the enemy. Could I have dumped a tapestry on the skull and torn it? Would that work? Could I grab it, dimension door and lob it into the green devil mouth? On the text- no but maybe it's innovative enough to be worth a win by GM fiat?Same with the taking a bunch of newbies through it when the DM has chosen their magic items, trap detecting abilities and given them suitable spells. A good way to run it IMO but is it too much DM help? I don't know.The suggestion by Gygax that this style of play requires brains is fine, brains certainly help, but the suggestion by the supporters of ToH that other styles do not or if you dislike this style you are playing a dumbed down version of the game is not.In the end I can't decide what I think. As gamers my groups have always played campaigns and over the 15 or so years we played 1e after ToH came out we knew of its reputation but never seriously tried to take it on in campaign - our characters just weren't interested in poking around in a famously deadly tomb that posed no threat to anyone.  Maybe by ignoring it we won.I think I'd like to run it as it appears as much a test of the DM as the players. I might stick it in my latest 5e campaign and if the players ever go there convert it.</blockquote>

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