Did you just call the A-Team and Dukes of Hazard bad tv shows?
....
Yes. They are not good shows. They are cheesy and cartoonish and very formulaic. But with the right amount of nostalgia and your brain turned off, they can be very enjoyable.
I ran it eight years ago with veteran gamers and it was fun as hell.
Stop projecting your own notion of fun on everyone.
I didn't say it was impossible to be fun. A skilled DM could make it into an enjoyable experience. Running the Tomb well requires a skilled DM as much as skilled players.
It's because not everyone finds fun the same way that I started this post. Because I want people to find a way to have fun with the classics, even if they don't enjoy losing characters or have zero experience with Gotcha! dungeons or OSR gameplay.
(After all, as originally designed, this was part of the original Greyhawk campaign. Tenser and Robilar went into it, and had they died those characters would have been dead forever. Just like Luke Gygax's character, who was used in the playtesting and ended up naked and dead forever. I believe that was Melf...)
Well, if you run the module as presented in 1e (the pink cover version), it leads off with this:
So, as presented in 1e, there is context to be found.
That's not context. That's the elevator pitch for the module. A description that belongs as much on the back cover. It's the introduction for the DM.
And, that would be covered by "change the details". The "tomb" becomes a "barrow mount" and the "demilich" becomes a "spawn of Vecna". The nouns shift a bit and expectations change. If gamers don't know what they're getting into (and its reputation) then it changes the experience.
Now, it doesn't have the literal exact narrative text separated out in a gray box for the DM to read out loud, so it requires a bit of preparation, imagination, and discretion on the DM's part.
Well, preparation and a 6th level spell from the players. Not that you can prepare as the only description is "traps and monsters" which is as vague as you can get. (The only useful information gleamed are the references to poison and bit about "even those who avoid the pitfalls", and really requires the DM to just read the section verbatim.)
If your party role plays like a seasoned group of adventurers, then they will have at least part of a session of investigation, spell casting, research, face time with sages, and the like. They will learn what they'e getting into, just how my group did.
If you want to (dishonestly) prove your point, then ignore that text and unceremoniously drop them in front of the hill.
You use the term "seasoned group of adventurers" and "veteran gamers" twice in your replies. Odd, considering when the module was first run a "veteran gamer" would have been someone with two years of experience. When it was published, people would have had four or five years experience with D&D.
Most of us at ENWorld have twice the time at the table as the gamers who originally faced the Tomb. And the benefit of decades of advice, trips, and tricks regarding dungeon crawling and dealing with traps.
Plus, how can you devote "part of a session" to investigation and spell-casting when you're on the clock in a tournament? That's how the module was originally run. You have minutes to do your research and get what you need. Giving the party plenty of time to plan and research and prepare is far more "dishonest" as you put it.
I couldn't laugh in their faces, because we were all laughing so much from the ways their summoned creatures - their impromptu crash test dummies - all died. I started having fun with it, and making the conjured beings aware of what was coming, as if it was just another day at work. "Oh, this place again. I suppose you want me to walk ahead of you, right?"
Which is the point. Everyone was laughing together and you, as an experienced DM, (and potentially with two or three times as much experience behind the screen as Gary) were making it fun and not approaching it as an adversarial challenge. You hadn't explicitly created the dungeon to humble your players. You were adding levity and enjoyment not found in the text.
