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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bullgrit" data-source="post: 5708268" data-attributes="member: 31216">I always figured that was referring to the fact that this wasn't just a normal door -- that the door itself was the numbered area, not the hallway. At the time this was written/published, D&D dungeon maps legends only had two door symbols -- the little rectangle and the S. (Later, they added a dot in the little rectangle to represent a locked door, which would have been good for this situation.)But even so, using the S to show this is an unusual door is kind of silly considering there are other unusual doors in the Tomb that don't use the S -- they just use a number.You know how when you are writing up an adventure for your own personal use, how you write information and descriptions and notes in sort of incomplete ways? You know the details in your head, and really all you need on paper in front of you at the game session is little reminders. You might have a locked door in one room, with the key hidden in another room. You might not write in your notes for either room that the door and key are related, because you just know it. You don't need that level of detail for your own use -- you *know* your adventure.I think Tomb of Horrors suffers a bit from this kind of "writing for oneself" mindset. For example, I bet Gygax could exactly explain how he intended things like this juggernaut trap to work. But he was used to writing up dungeons for his own personal use, and so was used to writing up just napkin-sketch-like descriptions. ToH was one of the very first he wrote up for use by others, so he probably didn't really appreciate the need for full detail, yet. It's obvious that he tried to write for an audience other than him, but he didn't go far enough. D&D/RPG tournaments were still pretty new at the time of ToH. So what we're seeing here, with the vagueness of much of the write up for the Tomb is simply a result of the lack of experience (for *everyone*) with writing D&D adventures for use by a wide audience.And again, this vagueness is probably all cool for a home game where most DMs just wanted a base frame to put their own details on. But for a tournament game, especially one billed as an ultimate test of Player skill compared to each other, the bare and vague information is actually a problem.Bullgrit</blockquote>

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