Tomb of Horrors - your experiences?

[JohnBiles]

I've run it several times; once was a TPK, another, they gave up after half of it and the last time, they got through the whole thing with no casualties, then when they saw Acerak, the Paladin rushed up with a bag of holding, scooped him into it, then put the bag inside another bag of holding (or maybe it was a portable hole), blowing the contents into the Astral Plane.

Bye, bye, Acerak.

However, later they went to the Astral Plane and ran into Mr. Acerak

 

[Hellzon]

So, it's an unfair, frustrating death trap with lots of spectacular ways to get killed and little else. Uhm, is there a 3e conversion somewhere?

Why yes sir. Made by WotC, no less.

I've played it. We got halfway through on an unofficial con, and then decided to fast-forward to the lich's chamber because... well yeah, it's grindy. Acererak owned our behinds.

The rogue/expert multiclass guy who brought a donkey and a bar of soap into the dungeon was the most useful one.

 

[Prisoner6]

It's just a deathtrap. There's no way to get through to the end. It's only about seeing how long the party lasts.

I played it once or twice and died very quickly.

Now I just use it as a reference as some of the nastiest traps ever.

 

[Betote]

It's just a deathtrap. There's no way to get through to the end. It's only about seeing how long the party lasts.

And that's what makes it so fun

It's like playing Tetris: You know you're going to lose, so it's all about how long you last and how much fun you have in your way to the grave

 

[Ulrick]

I just ran this module for a local convention.

The seven players used the pregenerated characters in the back (Option I).

At times the players went from being extremely cautious to downright reckless. The first 1/2hour was spent investigating the three entrances, but without going into any of them. And at the end of the 1st hour all the characters ended up nude. One PC lost his arm--despite losing a large part of a 10ft pole in a certain trick. I really don't know what he was thinking.

I graciously let them re-outfit themselves with mundane equipment from their camp. Since they were high-level, I assumed that they brought a number of hirelings and sufficient equipment for the expedition--that and I didn't want the game to end an hour into the session.

Four hours later, only one character had died. The rest had been beaten and bloodied by the various tricks, traps, and creatures of the dungeon. One character almost died of poison, but I allowed an optional rule in the DMG that it takes about a minute for a character to die of poison. So the cleric in the group saved him. I was sort of disappointed at the low mortality rate. Characters kept making their saving throws.

The session ended, however, with most of the group dying in an explosion. We felt that was a good stopping point and plan on possibly continuing at a later date.

It was wonderful. The players enjoyed the old-school feel of AD&D and even liked out it was a simpler game. I had fun running the module, and watching the players cringe every time I smiled.

If any PCs manage to make beat the module with their original characters, I plan on printing off a certificate declaring that they have "Official Bragging Rights," signed and dated by me.

 

[Festivus]

Death. Death. Death.

I DMed this twice way back in middle school. The first party all died in the hallway. That was a short session. The second party all jumped through the wrong portal one after another. Dead. That was a short one as well. I never did get to run through the rest of it.

This... I have run it three times, no survivors.

 

[Crothian]

The module would make a good movie in the Saw series.

 

[Nebulous]

We started Return to the Tomb of Horrors about a year or so after 3.x came out. I loved it, and was actually reading over it this morning before i even saw this thread! It is still one of my favorite adventures ever written, from the story to the art to the presentation, everything is perfect. We never finished it back in the day, we got near the end of the City of Moil and the group broke up for reasons i forget.

I would run the whole thing again and convert it to 4e. That's actually why i was looking over it, to see how hard it would be, and it would not be hard at all, just monster stats.

Reading those old adventures really reminds me of what is missing in new-fangled stories like Keep on the Shadowfell (although Bruce Cordell did both!); it is a long, long story that is just plain FUN to read, rather than filling up 75% of the book with stat blocks. 4e could do this as well, but i haven't quite seen it happen yet. The focus of most of the adventures is solely on combat encounters with less emphasis on anything else.

Did i mention the book of art that came with RttToH? Awesomeness.

EDIT: I should mention that i toned down the lethalness of the first Tomb (the original) just a tad to avoid a TPK, as that is only really the halfway point of the campaign. The necromancer city ended in a couple of PCs deaths (multiple flying, invisible, finger of death necromancers) and the end of the campaign looked brutal.

Aside from the actual Tomb, there are a number of unfair traps that will chew up and spit out any party, so be warned. Playing by the book is very, very deadly, particularly traps that drop PCs suddenly into a negative energy plane with no escape...

 

[Kichwas]

Been too many years to remember the details. I've run it and played it. I remember something about a Kendar tied to a rope used at the black portal near the beginning... but I don't generally remember to many characters dying in it.

S1 is one of those 'random roll gets you' modules. You can get through with bad tactics and bad strategy if you just roll right, and you can TPK despite the best plan if you roll wrong. I guess the times I've been there people rolled right...

IMO, while I remember it fondly, the above means it was poorly designed. TPK or success should be based around your tactics and strategy, not your d20.

 

[jdeleski]

I'm running the V3.5 version of the ToH for my group right now, and they're actually not doing too badly. The entire party is naked, however, and some are now of the opposite sex, and their thief managed to spot a trapped tilting hallway that would've dropped them into lava.

Fun stuff, though, as long as you have a well-blended team of patient players. I suspect that my team's nakedness will ultimately spell disaster, though...

Hurm.