Tomb of Horrors 4e - Mouseferatu style

[Windjammer]

The product description pretty much rules out that we'll get an actual module as opposed to a loose collection of challenges. The product's level range (10 to 22??) already precludes a tighter design, unless this product overhauls the dogma of only throwing level appropriate encounters at the PCs. I mean, I'd hope so, but let's not get carried away. I think comparisons to 4E's own Dungeon Delve or 3E's Book of Challenges hit the mark pretty well of what we can reasonably expect. And yes, one can realistically "weave a campaign around" the challenges in these books.

Me, I'm not interested in yet another collection of encounters. There's already no way to meaningfully tell apart a "module" like Revenge of the Giants from a collection of encounters. And I've no need to see Acererak recycled now for the third time in a 4E product. Wake me up when WotC does something new.

 

[Jhaelen]

But one of the things that was so cool about the original was that for the most part, a party of cautious 2nd and 3rd level characters could overcome the challenges.

And that's precisely part of the reason why I never liked it. Measuring player skill is not something I am interested in an rpg. Why have character advancement rules at all, if all that power you have accumulated in your adventuring career doesn't matter?

The only thing the original module is good for is as a campaign ending device. If you no longer feel like DMing for a group, throw the 'Tomb of Horrors' at them and they'll no longer want to continue playing. Worked like a charm for me.

Now, this doesn't mean that the 4e version will be bad. Actually, the episode approach sounds quite interesting to me.

RE: Kzach: Noticing that a room is trapped doesn't necessarily make it any easier to actually disarm or avoid the trap. If the trap must be dealt with in order to get to the McGuffin it can be as obvious for everyone: A room criss-crossed with swinging blades and intermittent blasts of fire, acid, and whatnot?

Combine it with a bunch of enemies that have to be dealt with at the same time for an additional challenge.

 

[avin]

Will there be Modrons in it?

Dude, if this is not going to be a TPK module you are already screwed...

 

[Prism]

RE: Kzach: Noticing that a room is trapped doesn't necessarily make it any easier to actually disarm or avoid the trap. If the trap must be dealt with in order to get to the McGuffin it can be as obvious for everyone: A room criss-crossed with swinging blades and intermittent blasts of fire, acid, and whatnot?

Combine it with a bunch of enemies that have to be dealt with at the same time for an additional challenge.

I agree that traps in 4e work far better if other stuff is going on at the same time. The old style surprise hit 'em once kind of traps (minion traps in dmg2) really don't work as well anymore as the detection chance in a normal party is all but automatic with passive perception.

A similar problem is secret door detection. In the original I can think of at least 3 secret doors which are very hard to find and in fact are key to that part of the adventure in sending the party down a false route. Unless you fix the DC's way over the parties level secret doors like this are pointless. When I'm creating my own adventures I have no problem in setting level 20 DCs in a level 10 adventure but can a module get away with this?

 

[Celebrim]

And that's precisely part of the reason why I never liked it. Measuring player skill is not something I am interested in an rpg.

Curiously, measuring character skill is not something I am interested in an rpg.

Why have character advancement rules at all, if all that power you have accumulated in your adventuring career doesn't matter?

First of all, I didn't say it didn't matter. Not long after the suggested levels for the original ToH, the character power will go up sufficiently that solving most of the tomb becomes a trivial excercise in spell-casting and monster bashing. Even Acererak himself goes down hard to high level party that includes a Paladin and a couple of spell-casters. In fact, ToH is actually easiest using the suggested characters if you play with fewer people because the high level characters are so much more compotent than a large mass of low level characters. Additionally, playing a high level character will give you the best chance to recover from each mistake (in our group's play, our barbarian survived a mistake just by having too many hit points to kill). If you have a party of 30th level characters, you'll just overwhelm Acererak's tomb with even minimal player skill. You're just too powerful; you have too many options; too many 'I win' buttons; and too many means of acquiring information from the DM. It's like, "Tomb of Horrors? Good thing we've got that Easy button!"

Secondly, there are lots of reasons for character advancement other than...whatever reason you think character advancement is for.

1) As a reward for skillful play by the player.
2) To advance the story of the hero in the classical story arc of myth, such as we find in Theseus or Beowulf.
3) To change the way that the game is played over time so that you don't find yourself doing the same thing and having the exact same style of campaign at 15th or 30th level that you had at 1st or 5th.

That last one in particular makes me wonder why 4e has character advancement at all, since 'the math' is actually designed to keep it from happening.

The only thing the original module is good for is as a campaign ending device. If you no longer feel like DMing for a group, throw the 'Tomb of Horrors' at them and they'll no longer want to continue playing. Worked like a charm for me.

We did it as a one shot so that the inevitable player deaths would not distract from the fun. And it was an amazing time.

Combine it with a bunch of enemies that have to be dealt with at the same time for an additional challenge.

If you are supposed to win, if winning is the expected result, is it really a challenge or is it really just the illusion of success?

 

[Joshua Randall]

If you are supposed to win, if winning is the expected result, is it really a challenge

Sure. Just ask anyone who does the NYT crossword. It's hard as heck, but you are expected to "win" eventually.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure. Just ask anyone who does the NYT crossword. It's hard as heck, but you are expected to "win" eventually.

Not that I've done alot of crossword puzzles, but I'm not sure I've ever finished the Saturday NYT crossword puzzle. I'm sure I could eventually, but I'm also fairly sure that the expected outcome is not that the beginneer will be able to leisurely solve them in a couple of hours. The only NYT puzzles I've ever solved are the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday ones (and certainly when I work on the Sunday, I don't expect to solve it all). I lack the skill and experience to solve the more difficult puzzles in a reasonable amount of time.

Of course, a more experienced and talented puzzler could probably solve them in under 5 minutes. That, I probably could never do even with practice.

Likewise, very few players have ever beaten Centipede, Mrs. Pac-Man, Xevious and its not even clear that most people could do so with enough practice.

By comparison, I seriously doubt that anyone above the age of 10 has played Diablo II and not beaten it.

 

[catsclaw227]

Hey Ari -- Can you answer this....

Is it more a collection of mini-adventures that are to be used as an over-arching plotline you can add to your existing game?

Goodman had one called Dungeon Interludes with had 4 or 5 different adventures you are supposed to do at different parts of your campaign between 1 and 14th level. Each mini-adventured didn't get you all the XP you needed to advance, so it can be used as a series of side-treks that has recuring villians, themes, and it's own plot.

 

[Nebulous]

Let's just say that, after working on this, I have a much greater respect for what Bruce Cordell went through writing Return to the ToH back in 2E.

Well Mouse, Cordell's RthToH 2e is one of my fav adventures ever. I hope yours can top it!!!

i'm actually very curious to see how 4e approaches the save or die mechanics the tomb was fond of.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Curiously, measuring character skill is not something I am interested in an rpg.

I'm not sure why. The point of the game is to simulate a fictional world where fictional people live and see what happens to them when put into certain situations. It isn't to see how said fictional person would fare given the entire knowledge pool of some guy from modern day Earth. Plus, if all you are doing is testing player skill then you are entirely negating the physical abilities of the fictional characters.

A player can come up with a plan to roll underneath the blades as they swing(which may be easy or hard depending on the player and the situation). It might not be so easy for the fictional character to actually make that roll if he's extremely overweight and laden with armor.

The game is a combination of player skill and character skill. We test both of them.

3) To change the way that the game is played over time so that you don't find yourself doing the same thing and having the exact same style of campaign at 15th or 30th level that you had at 1st or 5th.

That last one in particular makes me wonder why 4e has character advancement at all, since 'the math' is actually designed to keep it from happening.

The point is that the story changes, the mechanics of what you do change, but the difficulty of facing similar foes does not. You get new options, which change the details of what you can do, you get more powerful in comparison to foes that you've already fought but you now face new enemies who are more powerful.

This allows you to make the progression from Heroic(local threats that only cause problems for a single village or city) to Paragon(regional threats that cause problems for multiple cities, an entire country, or a group of countries) to Epic(world wide threats to universe wide threats).

Your chance to hit against enemies who are equal to your level doesn't go up or down, but you fight gods instead of orcs and you teleport enemies to hell and back instead of shooting fire from your hands.

If you are supposed to win, if winning is the expected result, is it really a challenge or is it really just the illusion of success?

Winning is the expected result, but it isn't the only one. It's the same thing that happens when I sit down to watch a movie. 99% of all movies are going to have the happy ending where the heroes defeat the bad guys and everything is solved. That doesn't mean I should stop watching movies simply because I already know how it is going to turn out. Instead, I continue to watch them because I want to know HOW they win, laugh at the amusing lines of dialogue, see the cool scene where the hero blows up the building, find out the hidden secret behind the evil guys plot and so on.