Tomb of Horrors

[the Jester]

All right, I ran a conversion of Return to the Tomb of Horrors (which included the original ToH as a 'piece of the whole' and therefore waaaay out-deadlied it) a while back with a nigh-epic party.

Suffice it to say that they did fine, and I'm notorious for liking a high lethality rate in my campaign.

Really, folks- careful play = survival. Not sure whether to touch that door? Try augury. My party eventually made it through with no permanent losses (though I did tone down a few of the perma-deaths into deaths that could be wished or true resurrected out of).

 

[Agamon]

ToH is meant to be played as Mark Hope is playing it, a one-shot with pre-gens. It's a beer and pretzels game that takes place away from the more serious campaign. Too get all worked up over how it's so brutal is just silly. It's not the type of game for everyone, and it's not really meant to be used with PCs you've built from the ground up (although, for those that have done so successfully, kudos).

 

[VirgilCaine]

I've run it once, about half a year ago. Three characters died in the first room.

Three out of how many?

Personally, I like requiring tactical, intelligent tactics from my PCs/players.

ToH is meant to be played as Mark Hope is playing it, a one-shot with pre-gens. It's a beer and pretzels game that takes place away from the more serious campaign. Too get all worked up over how it's so brutal is just silly. It's not the type of game for everyone, and it's not really meant to be used with PCs you've built from the ground up (although, for those that have done so successfully, kudos).

Ditto this.

 

[Pants]

The lack of boxed text and poor organization frequently makes it difficult for the DM to properly present the module -- presenting all the information the PCs should have without revealing anything they shouldn't.

Wow, this was the absolute worst part of running the module for me.

Holy crap, ToH is a horribly presented module. It has the picture book... which is nice, but the info is presented in such a slap-dash way that I often couldn't tell how some traps were supposed to work.

 

[MPA]

Three out of how many?

Out of three, but the last one was actually a suicide because he was the only one left.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Out of three, but the last one was actually a suicide because he was the only one left.

What kind of hero is that?

 

[Crothian]

What kind of hero is that?

he said he ran it for three characters not heroes

I'm going to run this new version as is (a few house rules will make a little difference but otherwise the mod will be the same) for my group soon. I'm not sure if they will make it through even though I feel they are smart guys and lucky at times (well, not jason he can't roll to save his life...so he's going to be dead multiple times here). Its going into my campaign, I've never really like one shots and the updated makes a lot of sense as the module has been run in the campaign time line just not by these players.

 

[Tuzenbach]

I think it's easy to point to key design flaws in the original Tomb: There are too many situations in which death is simply capricious, since Gygax delights in the undetectable and unavoidable.

I'll have to disagree with you on that one. What Gary did in designing the Tomb was simply to put himself in the shoes of Acererak. Pretend you're a centuries old, chaotic evil lich. How is the most death possible for Tomb intruders NOT a good thing, given the whims of the tomb's owner/creator? Gary merely played the part to a tee.

 

[Justin Bacon]

I'll have to disagree with you on that one. What Gary did in designing the Tomb was simply to put himself in the shoes of Acererak. Pretend you're a centuries old, chaotic evil lich. How is the most death possible for Tomb intruders NOT a good thing, given the whims of the tomb's owner/creator? Gary merely played the part to a tee.

There's a difference between Acererak (a character in the world) designing a capricious death trap in the context of the world and Gygax (an RPG designer) designing a capricious death trap by (re)writing the rules by which the universe works.

Let's be clear: This is a module which explicitly breaks the rules without any rhyme or reason. For example, take a look at Area 7: "At the place it turns east there is a plug in the ceiling which can be detected only with magical vision means or if a character has sense enough to test for secret doors by rapping. Secret door detection will not be of avail here except as noted."

How, exactly, did Acererak design a secret door that evades, for example, the natural ability of elves to detect secret doors? Is this a magical effect? Would a dispel magic suppress it and allow elves to detect secret doors in a normal fashion? I dunno. You dunno. Gygax is simply being capricious and arbitrary in a way that has NOTHING to do with the actual game world. Don't believe me? Then why do the players need to specify rapping? Why can't the normal mechanics for searching cover this?

Or how about the auto-striking bolts in Area 9 which appear to be magical (since you need to make a saving throw vs. magic to avoid being hit)... but which continue to operate even if an antimagic effect is used. Or the spike trap in Area 20 which can't be overcome by a thief for some reason. Or the sleep gas which can't be resisted in Area 23 for some reason.

And so forth.

There's a difference between saying "Acererak designed a cunning and deadly tomb for himself" and saying "here is a poison which instantly slays anyone touching it, even if they're magically immune to all poisons; NO APPEALS!".

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Crothian]

There's a difference between saying "Acererak designed a cunning and deadly tomb for himself" and saying "here is a poison which instantly slays anyone touching it, even if they're magically immune to all poisons; NO APPEALS!".

So an extremely smart and clever character cannot invent new ways for which magic and things work? Sometimes people are more advanced then those around them and it seems like they are breaking the rules but they are really just discovering the limits we thought existed don't really. This is harder to do in an RPG since the rules have to be defined and obviously not something everyone likes.