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Tell me your tale about the Tomb of Horrors
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<blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 4101305" data-attributes="member: 8158"><p>Well, there's the "once you're out, you're out" option as well. </p><p></p><p>IMO, the perceived deadliness of ToH is highly exaggerated. This is an adventure where you're supposed to delve like you were in a giant deathtrap. Think Indiana Jones creeping through the opening scene of Raiders, or the "Cube" movies. The reason this threw people for a loop is because most modules back then were completely linear, and the party could just allow themselves to be herded from one place to the next. ToH, OTOH, is a cattle chute designed to herd the players into a killing floor. It's the dungeon that ingrained in a lot of people that secret doors are worth looking for even when you haven't reached an apparent dead end.</p><p></p><p>The players who died and died and died just didn't get that they weren't running recklessly through a lair full of gnolls and orcs to chop and blast. Nothing lives in the Tomb of Horrors; it is a tomb, not a lair. Nothing needs to live or go about a daily routine here. Its sole landlord is dead and he designed this place to make sure visitors join him. That was a mental adjustment that players needed to make, and many just didn't. Or, another way to look at it, the DM didn't grasp the notion that not every dungeon is suitable for every group of players. </p><p></p><p>A good example is early in ToH where there's a "room" that's actually just [spoiler]a big sphere of annihlation"[/spoiler]. Now, who would just go probing something as ominous as that with something as valuable as one of their limbs or their head? Well, some people's notions of what a hero is entails having more nerve than sense, so they plunge right in. OK, they're dead.</p><p></p><p>There's only one rule you gotta remember to have a reasonable chance of surviving ToH (as reasonable as the chances of surviving any dungeon, at any rate), and it should be self-evident to any dungeon delver:</p><p></p><p>[sblock]<strong>If the result of an action isn't fairly manifest, then don't do it until you've fully accounted for your options. This means you don't run down blind corridors that lead off in one direction with no terminus in sight. You don't play with altars or magical runes if you don't have to. Treat these things as red herrings that will lure you away from the safe route, because that's what they are.</strong>[/sblock]</p><p></p><p>Me and another character both made it to the end with a couple of 10th-level thieves, a hireling or two, and a lower-level NPC wizard. When we got to the vault and immediately decided that we weren't gonna touch no [spoiler]demilich skull[/spoiler], the DM decided that was anticlimactic and arbitrarily had Acererak show up in person and wipe us out summarily. He would later recant the decision and let us have the loot.</p><p></p><p>Reminiscing about ToH makes me wonder if D&D's heyday is way in the past, at least for me. It's gravitated so far away from puzzle-solving and other forms of strategic thinking, and its current design and development staff feel that the majority of players want an RPG to deliver short-term and fast-paced gameplay that rewards reckless, triggerhappy behavior instead of making it costly. Looking at how people employed at WotC call it a badly-designed or overrated dungeon makes me kind of sad. </p><p></p><p>No, ToH isn't for everyone. Heck, I sure wouldn't want to run that style of dungeon more than occasionally. But I do regard it as a facet of D&D gameplay that shouldn't be discarded.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Felon, post: 4101305, member: 8158"] Well, there's the "once you're out, you're out" option as well. IMO, the perceived deadliness of ToH is highly exaggerated. This is an adventure where you're supposed to delve like you were in a giant deathtrap. Think Indiana Jones creeping through the opening scene of Raiders, or the "Cube" movies. The reason this threw people for a loop is because most modules back then were completely linear, and the party could just allow themselves to be herded from one place to the next. ToH, OTOH, is a cattle chute designed to herd the players into a killing floor. It's the dungeon that ingrained in a lot of people that secret doors are worth looking for even when you haven't reached an apparent dead end. The players who died and died and died just didn't get that they weren't running recklessly through a lair full of gnolls and orcs to chop and blast. Nothing lives in the Tomb of Horrors; it is a tomb, not a lair. Nothing needs to live or go about a daily routine here. Its sole landlord is dead and he designed this place to make sure visitors join him. That was a mental adjustment that players needed to make, and many just didn't. Or, another way to look at it, the DM didn't grasp the notion that not every dungeon is suitable for every group of players. A good example is early in ToH where there's a "room" that's actually just [spoiler]a big sphere of annihlation"[/spoiler]. Now, who would just go probing something as ominous as that with something as valuable as one of their limbs or their head? Well, some people's notions of what a hero is entails having more nerve than sense, so they plunge right in. OK, they're dead. There's only one rule you gotta remember to have a reasonable chance of surviving ToH (as reasonable as the chances of surviving any dungeon, at any rate), and it should be self-evident to any dungeon delver: [sblock][B]If the result of an action isn't fairly manifest, then don't do it until you've fully accounted for your options. This means you don't run down blind corridors that lead off in one direction with no terminus in sight. You don't play with altars or magical runes if you don't have to. Treat these things as red herrings that will lure you away from the safe route, because that's what they are.[/B][/sblock] Me and another character both made it to the end with a couple of 10th-level thieves, a hireling or two, and a lower-level NPC wizard. When we got to the vault and immediately decided that we weren't gonna touch no [spoiler]demilich skull[/spoiler], the DM decided that was anticlimactic and arbitrarily had Acererak show up in person and wipe us out summarily. He would later recant the decision and let us have the loot. Reminiscing about ToH makes me wonder if D&D's heyday is way in the past, at least for me. It's gravitated so far away from puzzle-solving and other forms of strategic thinking, and its current design and development staff feel that the majority of players want an RPG to deliver short-term and fast-paced gameplay that rewards reckless, triggerhappy behavior instead of making it costly. Looking at how people employed at WotC call it a badly-designed or overrated dungeon makes me kind of sad. No, ToH isn't for everyone. Heck, I sure wouldn't want to run that style of dungeon more than occasionally. But I do regard it as a facet of D&D gameplay that shouldn't be discarded. [/QUOTE]
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