Tell me your tale about the Tomb of Horrors

[DM-Rocco]

I was reading this thread here and it reminded me about all the times I ran that adventure. I have ran that adventure about 21 times and I love it, It is my all time favorite.

So, it begs the question, what are your experiences with the adventure? How did your players handle it and what fun stories did you take away? Or, how many PCs did you make into enemies and why?

I'll share some of my stories as others write.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I'll let you know about 3 weeks from now. I haven't run or played it before but I plan to run it for my group (with pre-gen characters) as a tribute to Gary. I expect quite a few deaths. Anything less would be a disappointment!

Olaf the Stout

 

[Treebore]

Death, Death, and more death. Typically an 80 to 100% death rate. Only Ravenloft has been deadlier. 11 out of 13 runs were TPK's.

Strangely only one person has ever stuck their hand into the mouth.

The getting teleported and appearing naked has been the second deadliest. The end battle has caused the most deaths.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

We went in, we died. Over and over again.

Honestly, I don't like it. I find it all very arbitrary. I would only run it as a "beer and chips" one-off.

 

[BabbageCliologic]

I was reading this thread here and it reminded me about all the times I ran that adventure. I have ran that adventure about 21 times and I love it, It is my all time favorite.

So, it begs the question, what are your experiences with the adventure? How did your players handle it and what fun stories did you take away? Or, how many PCs did you make into enemies and why?

I'll share some of my stories as others write.

Ah, what memories. I ran through this in junior high school. We ended our campaign with Tomb of Horrors. Before we started that, we went from Level 1 to probably about 35 over the course of a year. Most of us had artifacts, but they worked for us without any bad effects. We stormed the heavens, specifically the Egyptian, Greek and Norse god homes, killed and took treasure and captives, many, many captives. My PC got Aphrodite as his consort, the others took Demeter, Isis, and Sif, IIRC. We also made Thor, Ra, Osiris and Zeus as our shield bearers, so when we went into the Tomb of Horrors, we sent them in first. Thor got taken out by the Sphere, Zeus ran off in fear after being killed 35 times and then we strode into the Lich's chamber, where Ra and Anubis took several a spells to the head, each. Can you say exploding mellon? That distracted the Lich enough for my PC as well as the rest of the group to finally take the Mo-Fo down. I scored 1,574 hit points of damage with my backstab (and I was the party Cleric!). I think we leveled to 49 or 50 at that point.

Ah, good times. Good times!

/BC

 

[hong]

BabbageCliologic wins the thread, EVEN THOUGH HE'S STEALING MY KITTY.

 

[demiurge1138]

One Christmas break, I sent out missives to all of my old players, gathered from the four corners of the globe from their colleges to spend a holiday at home. "I'm running a game of D&D," said I. "9th level characters. Make them as broken as you like. Bring a few spares."

The lot gathered around the gaming table expectantly, chatting about how their dinosaur-riding charge-monkeys could Power Attack to their ACs and deal an average of 300 damage a round. I cleared my throat, and waited for everyone to settle down.

"Welcome," said I, "to the Tomb of Horrors."

And oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that was had. And a sickly grin like a waning crescent moon spread over my face.

The charge-monkey was killed in one round by the Four-Armed Gargoyle. Half of the party fell for the corridor trap, and slid down the one-way express to Lava-Land. The full-plate wearing psychic warrior served as trapfinder, taking who-knows-how-many spears to the chest with stoicism, and when he was turned into a woman, he never told anybody and slept with her full-plate on. The party gathered monkeys from the surrounding swamps (I was inspired in my description of the Tomb from Hindu temples swarming with langurs and macaques) and used them to test portal-combinations. When they realized that the portals were stealing their treasure, they made booties for the monkeys and found out which ones lost them.

It was glorious.

Demiurge out.

 

[Mark Hope]

My most recent run through the ToH, from another thread about this topic a year or two back:

Session #1
Session #2

One of my players (Reinbowarrior, who pops into that thread as well) ran the 3e ToH for two other groups he knows. One was TPKed and the other made it through with some very ingenious play: they whipped a bag over Acererak's head, ran with him into the anti-magic room and proceeded to pummel him to death. Very smart.

I also ran it some years ago for a group under 2e rules. I was leaving the country and wanted to have a cool final session for the group I was DM for at the time. So I picked Tomb of Horrors. The group was pretty potent - all around 12th and 13th level, and kitted out with good gear for that level. Like it mattered.

After losing one PC in the entryway to the big squishing block, they redoubled their resolve and entered the Tomb. Within the next half an hour we had two characters stumbling about naked (wailing and wailing about their lost magical goodies), another lost an arm to the black mouth (sending the player into "my character is now suicidal with rage" mode) and a fourth was burned to a crisp by something (I can't remember what now, but at least it stopped all the wailing). Pretty soon we were down to two very scared PCs running about inside, completely lost (their map having been burned up too).

In the end the players begged me to declare the adventure a dream or a hallucination or anything. For a while I was all "Sorry, your prized PCs are dead, the campaign is over and I'm leaving the country tomorrow. Have a nice life" but something weak and pitifully human in me relented and I eventually agreed and let them have their precious characters back the way they were. In hindsight, actually, it was better that way. TPKs are all well and good, but nothing beats condescending generosity after watching grown men plead and whine for an hour.

 

[shilsen]

My experience with the adventure?

I read it and realized that not only would I never run it but I'd never play in it, since it was almost diametrically opposed to my gaming style and tastes.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Before it was popular on the web, before the web, I did have someone cast magic missile at the darkness

This is a link to the story hour I wrote about he last party I ran through the Tomb. It was a lot of fun, for me, and a lot of death. The problem is that many had done the tomb in the past, but many had forgat about it, at least they said.

Still, it was mostly fun. The whole party ended up naked and weaponless with the exception of the dwarven defender, who was not so stupid to go through the arch. He ended up attacking the party because, when the rest of the party was naked, they felt he should be too and tried to grapple him through the portal. They all pretty much went insane by the end.