So, what is "4th Edition's Tomb of Horrors"?

There's alot wrong with this idea. Most of it has been said already. Where's the horror in a mega-ToH I ask? The original did more to scare players in several dozen pages than an entire boxed set ever could, that's why its often imitated.
There was no horror in the original. The horror genre, when successful, takes time to make its protagonists real - to make you care about them. They have personalities and history and motivation. Not so with S1. This is old school play. It's a relentless treadmill of death. The players have a dozen PCs generated, they probably don't even bother to give them names. Your PC dies. So what? He didn't exist in any sense, anyway. Death is meaningless. It's a deeply videogame-y playstyle, reminiscent of learning a boss in World of Warcraft. The wipes don't mean that much, all you've lost is time.
 

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That was one adventure that was everything that was BAD about D&D, as others noted, ugh.
look, if you want to be open about it and say "Let's have a slaughterfest dungeon romp, make 5 characters each!" ok! :)

That is why it was originally a tournament/convention module.

We had fun with it. The DM sent in clones of ourselves that had mental links to the clones outside..so we kept updated. I think the cleverest player only suffered 2 deaths.

On a side note was when the clones completed the module and came out, there was a "difference of opinion" on who was the real character.
 
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I don't really get the sentiment of "I hope they completely change it and remove all the save or die aspects!"

That's...sort of the whole purpose.

Yeah, you don't like it. But a lot of people did. And if you get rid of that, the Tomb becomes...just another dungeon. With nothing special other then the fact that it shares the name of a radically different dungeon from older editions.

If you don't like that type of gameplay, don't play the dungeon. Don't demand it be changed to fit your tastes :hmm:
 

I don't really get the sentiment of "I hope they completely change it and remove all the save or die aspects!"

That's...sort of the whole purpose.

Yeah, you don't like it. But a lot of people did. And if you get rid of that, the Tomb becomes...just another dungeon. With nothing special other then the fact that it shares the name of a radically different dungeon from older editions.

If you don't like that type of gameplay, don't play the dungeon. Don't demand it be changed to fit your tastes :hmm:
Is the Tomb famous for being a dungeon full of traps, or for being an excuse for DMs to kill characters without explanation?
 

Is the Tomb famous for being a dungeon full of traps, or for being an excuse for DMs to kill characters without explanation?

Mostly the second. I rarely hear people discuss it in the context of a simple trap-filled dungeon. Conversely, I almost always hear people talk about it in terms of PC deaths. That said, it's a great convention scenario for that very reason.
 

Mostly the second. I rarely hear people discuss it in the context of a simple trap-filled dungeon. Conversely, I almost always hear people talk about it in terms of PC deaths. That said, it's a great convention scenario for that very reason.
In that case, was that the intention of the dungeon: to be an excuse for DMs to slaughter characters?

Obviously it's lethality is a big part of the "mystique" of this dungeon, and thus a part of what made it classic; you were free to play it without expectations, other than the expectation of character death. But is that really where the potential of this dungeon ends?
 

In that case, was that the intention of the dungeon: to be an excuse for DMs to slaughter characters?

Kind of. Back in the day, if I understand my grognard friends correctly, convention modules were run as competitive affairs with multiple groups trying to assail a given dungeon, the goal of each group being to penetrate deeper into the dungeon than their opponents. The winner would receive some kind of prize.

The easiest way to measure success for such competitions without resorting to complicated points tracking was simply to make the dungeons as deadly as possible. Then it was simply a matter of tracking of how far each group made it into the dungeon and how many characters they had left in their party when they made it there.

This is why you rarely see the kind of arbitrary deathtraps characteristic of convention modules elsewhere.
 

Kind of. Back in the day, if I understand my grognard friends correctly, convention modules were run as competitive affairs with multiple groups trying to assail a given dungeon, the goal of each group being to penetrate deeper into the dungeon than their opponents. The winner would receive some kind of prize.

The easiest way to measure success for such competitions without resorting to complicated points tracking was simply to make the dungeons as deadly as possible. Then it was simply a matter of tracking of how far each group made it into the dungeon and how many characters they had left in their party when they made it there.

This is why you rarely see the kind of arbitrary deathtraps characteristic of convention modules elsewhere.
Interesting stuff. It sounds like this now-classic module had pretty humble beginnings.*

Since we're engaging in the thought-experiment of deciding what the Tomb of Horrors should be in 4E, the most obvious question is how we should "open it up" to players, if we should at all. In the time since the original, Acererak has becoming something of an icon in D&D, and given that WotC plans on stretching this adventure out for twelve levels, they obviously think there's a lot of room to develop this guy, his machinations, and his dungeon.

*For some reason this reminds me of the story of the scepter that's used for official proceedings in the Alberta legislature: The official one used now is made from metal, and is what it looks like. However, the original scepter used in 1905 -- which looks nearly identical to the one used now -- had to be made in a hurry in order to be ready in time, and ended up being constructed from assorted junk including (IIRC) a brass bedpost and a toilet float-ball, all painted gold. If I remember the story correctly, that scepter ended up being used for quite a while.
 


So, Return to The Tomb of Revisited Horrors 2: The Tomb Strikes Back?

I wish I had something more constructive to lend to this discussion, but hahahahahahahaha. I move that be the title with a huge explosion flinging Acererak's screaming skull into a close up.
 

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