Bullgrit
Adventurer
All true enough to be repeated.Stoat said:As for the module's popularity, I think there are several reasons for it. For one thing, the Tomb of Horrors is old. It was written in 1975 and first published in 1978. In other words, it's older than AD&D. It was there at the beginning, and that fact alone is going to give some cachet.
Moreover, and more important, the Tomb is different from the vast majority of published adventures. It is extremely light on combat. So far, the only unavoidable fight we've seen is the grey ocher jelly in Area 19. As far as I know, it is the only classic module based around tricks and puzzles instead of monster encounters.
Further, the encounters we've looked at so far are memorable. We can argue about whether the Great Green Devil or the gender-bending Chapel or the Agitated Chamber are fair, but I think we can all agree that they stick in the mind. The encounters are original and weird. They present unusual challenges, and failing to meet those challenges results not just in death, but in strange and gruesome outcomes. PC's might be disintegrated, they might wind up naked back where they started, they might have their gender reversed, they might get turned into slime. You don't forget something like that. You talk about it for years after it happens.
Bullgrit