WIR S1 Tomb of Horrors [SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!!]‏

[jonesy]

So what clues or hints do we have to help get past the Agitated Chamber? AFAICT, somewhere between none and almost none.

I'd say less than none. If they use the riddle for this it's only going fool them into thinking there's something else going on, like actual invisible hands moving the room.

"Turn" is a term of art in 1E that means 10 minutes, right? So does that mean the PC's have 10 minutes to explore before the place goes nuts? I don't think so, but I'm not 100% certain. And once the floor starts rocking, how long does it keep going? The module is silent.

Tournament module, remember? Could be just a mechanism for speeding up the proceedings if the DM so chooses.

Finally, determining whether or not a PC is holding onto the tapestry when the earthquake sets in is probably going to take a fair amount of DM discretion. "I inspect the tapestry." Am I touching it? Am I holding it? Let's fight about it!

I think it's more about a PC reacting to the floor movement, like what the paranoid wizard did: "I grab the tapestry and hang on." Bye, bye, wiz. Right before the rest lucked into the secret door too.

 

[FoxWander]

IMO, this room is one reason people call the Tomb a killer dungeon. There's enough random crap to keep the party's attention to guarantee they'll stick around long enough to either trigger the trap or wind up with a room full of deadly snakes. If they find the way out there's a 37.5% chance (50% trap x 75% tapestry) whoever does it (along with anyone unlucky enough to be standing near them) will be instantly dead leaving a sea of green slime blocking the exit, Finally, fire is the most common way to deal with both green slime AND masses of snakes, virtually guaranteeing the room will be fireballed triggering the brown mold transformation. Brown mold grows "2, 4, or 8 times its area from the heat fed to it." Even just a torch within 5' can cause it to grow- so if any of the random junk in the room caught on fire from the fireball then the room is likely to be literally filled with brown mold fairly fast.

This whole room is just a show-stopper waiting to happen. And the "trembling hands" bit tells you nothing even if you manage to suss out that it's talking about this room. And for the final bit of "WTF!"- the room barely makes any sense within the setting of the Tomb. Seriously- a wrecked Ikea showroom and sea-life tapestries?! What do Finding Nemo and Little Mermaid posters have to do with the funeral setting?

 

[jonesy]

What do Finding Nemo and Little Mermaid posters have to do with the funeral setting?

A really vague water motif? As in, please don't use fire here.

Sleeping with the fishies?

Acererak went on a vacation somewhere nice and oceany, and liked the scenery?

 

[Bullgrit]

Area 21. The Agitated Chamber

This room is another example of why I think the Tomb of Horrors is just too clever by half. The gimmick here is just overly complicated, and like every other area, is presented in a great, long wall of text.

"specially anti-magic treated creations of green slime and brown mold."

If the PCs tear the tapestries, the tapestries turn to green slime. If they burn the tapestries, the tapestries turn to brown mold. If the PCs don't intentionally tear or burn the tapestries, the vibrating floor gimmick will probably force a tear. It's like the designer was just trying so hard to make this a deadly room that things just got ridiculous.

I have no real idea how Gygax came up with the idea for this trap, but my imagination comes up with this:

Playtest 1: PCs walk in, tear away tapestries to search the walls.
Edit 1: DM makes tapestries turn to green slime if torn.
Playtest 2: PCs don't tear down tapestries, choosing, instead to burn them away.
Edit 2: DM makes tapestries turn to brown mold if burned.
Playtest 3: PCs don't destroy the tapestries, choosing, instead, to just move them aside.
Edit 3: DM adds the bouncing floor to force an accidental tearing of the tapestries.
Playtest 4: PCs use 10' poles to cautiously and carefully move tapestries.
The DM is satisfied that the PCs are sufficiently paranoid and scared of the room.

Considering how easy it should be for the PCs to just slide the tapestries out of the way to search the walls, it seems that this trap will only catch PCs who are intentionally destructive in their searches.

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

Info:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/76849-gary-gygax-q-part-vi-3.html#post1399880

I guess they're traps for players who lose sight of their intended goal - looting instead of trying to find and slay the great evil.

The room where the movement will rip the tapestries if being handled, cause them to revert to their actual material, green slime, is exactly as you discerned, a trap for greedy PCs who have lost sight of their mission.

Edit: I wrote a comment on this information, but I just discovered that the rest of my post didn't transfer in my copy/paste. So...

Gygax's confirmation on this idea makes no sense. I don't see how this is a trap for greedy PCs -- they have to move the tapestry to search the wall to find the secret door to move on in the Tomb. The tapestries are not noted as valuable, so I don't see how greed is an issue.

Besides, the module's introductory text says that the PCs goal is to find the treasure hidden in the Tomb, and that the demi-lich is undefeatble. It would seem that their mission *is* looting, and not to slay a great evil.

So, like jonesy says in the XP tag, Huh?

Bullgrit

 

[Stoat]

Considering how easy it should be for the PCs to just slide the tapestries out of the way to search the walls, it seems that this trap will only catch PCs who are intentionally destructive in their searches.

I think the idea is that somebody will be holding on to the tapestry just as the floor starts jumping. That seems a little unlikely to me, but I guess a lot would depend on how the players are describing their actions and how much of rat bastard the DM is being.

Jonesy presents another scenario where the PC's could get into trouble. The floor starts up, and somebody grabs the tapestry to keep their feet.

The timing still bothers me. How long do the PC's have before the agitated floor starts acting up? The DM rolls a d6 every round. If the result is odd, the floor starts agitating "on the next turn." Do the PC's have at least 10 minutes to search around? I'm inclined to think not, but I'm hung up on the word "turn." The longer the players have to search, the more likely they are to just find the secret door and move on.

And how long does the floor keep going? If it stops, the players have a little time to search safely. If it does not stop, then it's a lot harder to safely move the tapestries.

Finally, it occurs to me that the tapestries are green. The players should shun green. So, kind of a hint that the tapestries are dangerous.

 

[jonesy]

The timing still bothers me. How long do the PC's have before the agitated floor starts acting up? The DM rolls a d6 every round. If the result is odd, the floor starts agitating "on the next turn." Do the PC's have at least 10 minutes to search around? I'm inclined to think not, but I'm hung up on the word "turn." The longer the players have to search, the more likely they are to just find the secret door and move on.

Hmm. If the DM gets a result that will make the room act up 'next turn', does he still roll for a result that next turn when it is already doing it? Would it be possible (probability allowing) for the room to start shaking and then never stop?

 

[Zombie Toast]

I just ran my party through the Tomb of Horrors yesterday (I used a version for the Pathfinder rules that I updated myself from the 2e version) and it broke them like a twig. Lost one character right away to the sliding wall, another jumped through the gargoyle's mouth, a third died from poison spikes in a pit trap. Finally one character fell into two pit traps in a row, ran through the archway of mists, was teleported to the prison, escaped, ran through the archway without the mists this time, ended up in the room of spheres, ran through that arch (losing all his stuff) and then running into the gargoyle mouth.

It was a lot of fun but some people where close to insanity by that point and if we went any further they might have started burning effigies of Gary Gygax. Some groups were not cut out to handle the Tomb.

It has inspired me to try and create a sci-fi version of the tomb though, basically a fusion of the Tomb of Horrors and Portal.

 

[GQuail]

It has inspired me to try and create a sci-fi version of the tomb though, basically a fusion of the Tomb of Horrors and Portal.

Off the top of my head, it might suit Traveller best for two reasons - because it has a certain old-school lineage, like AD&D, which might make it feel a better fit, and also because the sandbox nature of Traveller (like AD&D) helps play to this mission type. If it's to be a sort of trap for greedy PCs who could quit anytime they want, it needs a campaign stucture in which that's an option for the PCs; A direct port of Portal, though a good inspiration, would see the group trapped within the "dungeon" and forced to fight their way out, in which case the deathtraps somehow feel more arbitrary.

I wonder how much of the fluff you can keep intact, how many traps could get a direct port with enough tweaks to seem new? The word "demicyborg" appeals...

 

[amerigoV]

I just ran my party through the Tomb of Horrors yesterday (I used a version for the Pathfinder rules that I updated myself from the 2e version) and it broke them like a twig.
...

It was a lot of fun but some people where close to insanity by that point and if we went any further they might have started burning effigies of Gary Gygax. Some groups were not cut out to handle the Tomb.

Ha! Tell them next week that you playing Shoots and Ladders, something they might be able to handle.