# Is TOMB OF HORRORS the Worst Adventure Of All Time?



## edutrevi (Jan 25, 2016)

I call this a classic.


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## doctheweasel (Jan 25, 2016)

It's a good module for a specific playstyle. For other playstyles, not so much. 

It obviously doesn't fit John's style and I think he makes it clear why.


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## CubeB (Jan 25, 2016)

I guess its fun if you're fond of the meatgrinder playstyle, but I hate that kind of playstyle.

And I also hate the stupid demon face. That's dumb.


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## delericho (Jan 25, 2016)

Well, apparently 51% of ENWorld members in 2006 thought it was badly designed. I doubt that percentage has changed all that much since then.

Personally, I've never played or run S1. However, I very much doubt it's the _worst_ adventure of all time - certainly, it's got a long way to go before it matches "Scourge of the Howling Horde" with it's grey-text-on-grey-background failure, or the adventure that finally persuaded me 4e wasn't for me... "Tomb of Horrors".


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## Deuce Traveler (Jan 25, 2016)

This is a horrible adventure to spring on a bunch of 10-14th level characters who had been developed slowly over the course of many, many hours of adventure.

But this is not meant to be an adventure to spring upon your long standing adventuring group.  It is a tournament module meant to be used against numerous groups all competing with one another for which group got furthest, normally with quickly generated characters in which the gamers have little emotional connection.  It is meant to be cruel, with a lot of dark and malicious deaths and other twisted fates like the loss of limbs, equipment loss, and gender swapping.  Even solo characters can get deep in using summoned creatures, retainers, and laborers, as was common in 1st edition.  Because of this, it is one of the best tournament modules ever published and is a classic I am quite proud to own.


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## Ralif Redhammer (Jan 25, 2016)

Tomb of Horrors is a product of a different era in gaming. Would I want to play one of my favorite characters in it? Heck, no. Would I want to grab a bunch of pregens and see how far we can get in it? Absolutely!


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## Dahak (Jan 25, 2016)

John Wick was probably the player in his group (and there was always one) who stomped out of a session when he didn't get his way. Gary Gygax hurt his precious little feels and now he's burying a dead guy's work.


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## darjr (Jan 25, 2016)

It's a high level DCC funnel in my mind. Very fun. But yea, if your players have a deep connection to their characters and they only have the one and your group is dead set against making new high level characters, then maybe steer clear.

More and more I think John Wicks RPG sensibilities are alien to my own.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 25, 2016)

Yeah, old dungeons weren't always great. Random monsters of random power levels and deadly traps for no reason. 

Kid today have it easy with their level appropriate dungeons, "CR" and bounded accuracy.


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## Cristian Andreu (Jan 25, 2016)

I love Tomb of Horrors, even if my regular DMing style is very different (I avoid putting situations in which the fate of PCs is out of their control entirely). 

I think it is one of those things you need to be fully aware what to expect before venturing forth. I've always understood the module is entirely self-aware, and if memory serves it was explicitly created to force PCs to think every step and surprise them with curveballs on every corner.

I think Wick misses the point when claiming it represents the worst and most backwards ideas about roleplaying; most of the tricks  ToH uses can indeed be representative of a rather contentious DMing style, but only when used unfairly. I cannot speak for what Gygax's original intent was, but I'm pretty sure he expected players to understand this was going to be the epitome of the deadly dungeon, and that those tricks were going to be aplenty.

In other words, it's like stepping into Splash Mountain and then complaining that the ride sucks because the designers were completely careless about people getting wet. Sure it would suck getting wet in Space Mountain where you are not expecting it, but in Splash Mountain it's kind of in the name.


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## ccs (Jan 25, 2016)

That was an amusing read.
I wonder if the author ever figured out why he was punched in the face?


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## jaycrockett (Jan 25, 2016)

He has quite a story to tell about Tomb of Horrors.  I think that alone makes it not the worse adventure.  The worst adventures are forgettable.

Also the artwork is wonderful.  Any module that has Erol Otus art in it is ok by me.


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## Jiggawatts (Jan 25, 2016)

This guy just embodies class and elegance.


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## Celebrim (Jan 25, 2016)

Yeah, this is the guy that claims D&D isn't an RPG, so why does his opinion of a D&D module count?

S1 is not only not the worst D&D module of all time, but it is one of the best. 

His little 12 year old self was incapable of running the module for its little 12 year old friends.  Boo hoo.  

I'd feel some sympathy and compassion here, but Wick hasn't over the years - including in this article - shown much sign of having learned much since that time. 

Or not to point too fine a point on it, I'm not terribly surprised when Wick self-discloses all the jerk moves he's pulled over the years.  Nor am I ever any more flabbergasted by the degree of cluelessness on display when he discusses something.


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## Moorcrys (Jan 25, 2016)

Boo hoo John Wick. It's old school and awesome.


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## EternalDungeonMaster (Jan 25, 2016)

In my opinion, Tomb of Horrors is not meant for at-home campaign play. The adventure was written as a tournament adventure, which was run with pre-generated characters. The early D&D tournaments were competitive in nature; groups earned points based on how far into the tournament they could get and how many tournament objectives they could meet. The entire party could get wiped out and the group might still win the event if they scored enough points. In fact, it was highly unlikely that a group would make it to the end of one of the early tournament adventures without either running out of time first or the entire party getting killed.

In its golden age, TSR needed to print a lot of material: publish or perish. So these tournament adventures made it into print. They weren't written for campaign play. Some, just by chance, were better for campaign play than others. Tomb of Horrors? Not so much.

For my taste and experience, I would not run this as an adventure for an ongoing, long-term campaign. It wasn't written for that purpose, and it doesn't lend itself at all to that purpose.


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## Celebrim (Jan 25, 2016)

CNYGamer99 said:


> In my opinion, Tomb of Horrors is not meant for at-home campaign play.




It also makes a great one shot, using one of the parties included in the adventure which in practice is how most people play it.  

If you want to include it in a standard campaign, you have several options.  One, you could play with a highly experienced team of players with proven tournament skills.  Or you could run the module at a couple levels higher than its suggested level with even moderately experienced players.  Spell casters of 15th level or higher will largely breeze through the module (consider the impact of 'Find the Path' alone), and if they don't and they earned those levels legitimately then its their own fault.   Or you could play the whole thing is a nightmare where death is not permanent, forcing the players to TPK after TPK ground hog day style until they escaped the nightmare.

Of course, the big problem with running ToH these days is almost everyone that is experienced has experienced it.

And well they should.


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## LostandDamned (Jan 25, 2016)

For a one shot fun game, it's a classic.

For a regular campaign it's an awful piece of badly written garbage.


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## EternalDungeonMaster (Jan 25, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Or you could play the whole thing is a nightmare where death is not permanent, forcing the players to TPK after TPK ground hog day style until they escaped the nightmare.




I like that, it sounds like a fun idea. I might steal that for my game.


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## jamesjhaeck (Jan 25, 2016)

Dahak said:


> John Wick was probably the player in his group (and there was always one) who stomped out of a session when he didn't get his way. Gary Gygax hurt his precious little feels and now he's burying a dead guy's work.




Sounds like you didn't read the article. Wick was the DM!


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## MwaO (Jan 25, 2016)

I'd point out that most people who played Tomb of Horrors in convention or near the time that it came out were also highly aware of the illusionary wall story from I think the previous year.

Namely, 8 out of 9 parties found an illusionary wall and stepped through. Then died. The winner of the RPGA tournament was the only group who thought to tap around with a 10' pole.

If you were playing an RPGA mod from that time period, the general assumption was that there were a bunch of absolutely lethal traps that needed to be carefully thought out. Such as using a 10' pole or sending cheap, mostly trained, kind of party-sized creatures(aka mules) into things to see if they came back out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2x63mm/the_good_old_days/


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## thexar (Jan 25, 2016)

The best part is playing Joust against the Lich. The trick is to be Player Two.


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## eleran (Jan 25, 2016)

*My ToH experience.*



Celebrim said:


> Or you could play the whole thing is a nightmare where death is not permanent, forcing the players to TPK after TPK ground hog day style until they escaped the nightmare.




I had a similar yet different experience.  Our DM set the whole thing up as a quest to travel to Acereraks tomb and vanquish the evil and rescue something or other from the tomb.  We went through all the trouble of following clues to the well hidden dungeon.  Went inside and went through the grinder, which was obviously pissing of some players.  it ended with an almost total TPK.  We got to the tomb, and everyone got killed but me, the thief of the party who had always been played as a coward when it came to BBEGs and the like, but was a total beast on traps and locks and other thiefy things.  I split as soon as the skull rose up and struck down our mage.  The entire rest of the party met similar fates.  But since I had been mapping and taking care of traps I knew the best way out.  

It turned out to be a dream/nightmare sequence.  We were assured through a Commune spell that would be our fate if we ventured into the Tomb.  So we made the decision that rather than enter the tomb we would do our best to magically seal and ward it so no one else would go in, and hopefully nothing would come out.  

He gave us full experience because of the trauma the players went through.  I have never been sure if he did the dream sequence on the fly because of the result or if he had that planned from the beginning.  I think it was planned out that way.

At least that is whats left of my memory of this dungeon.  It was over 30 years ago.


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## Cristian Andreu (Jan 25, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Or you could play the whole thing is a nightmare where death is not permanent, forcing the players to TPK after TPK ground hog day style until they escaped the nightmare.




I once ran it in a similar manner. The dungeon's entrance(s) was in a haunted graveyard with ten open graves and a bell; every-time someone died, they woke up in one of the open graves and the bell rang once, slowly breaking apart each time and crumbling to dust at the 30th, basically giving the party 30 lives to spend together.

It worked surprisingly well.


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## Ralif Redhammer (Jan 25, 2016)

So...Dark Souls the RPG?



Celebrim said:


> Or you could play the whole thing is a nightmare where death is not permanent, forcing the players to TPK after TPK ground hog day style until they escaped the nightmare.


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## neobolts (Jan 25, 2016)

Glad to see so many people who "get" it. This is a one shot deathtrap for bragging rights and tale telling. It would be a terrible addition to a long running epic fantasy tale. Worst to me means poorly written or unplayable.


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## Dahak (Jan 25, 2016)

Jumblejacks said:


> Sounds like you didn't read the article. Wick was the DM!





Sounds like you didn't read my post. He wrote in his usual bratty tone, about how he had to save his players. Then he whinged about how EGG was mean to him. That he ran the game has nothing to do with me comparing him to the player who rage quits when things don't go his way. He's a control freak, or at least writes like he is. Caveat: I don't know the guy, he may be the sweetest man alive outside of gaming.


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## mach1.9pants (Jan 25, 2016)

A great way to get your name back in the news for your upcoming rpg release, well played Mr Wick. As to his review, he totally misses the point of the module, as had been pointed out numerous times up thread.


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## Celebrim (Jan 25, 2016)

neobolts said:


> Worst to me means poorly written or unplayable.




It's neither poorly written nor unplayable.

And may I refer you to the 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors' story? http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...the-Tomb-of-Horrors-finally-gets-a-Story-Hour!

I suspect many groups have in fact actually incorporated the Tomb into long running epic fantasy tales successfully.


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## martinlochsen (Jan 25, 2016)

Interesting that the guy kills his players and laugh in their faces and then blames the module for the loss of his friends.


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## Morrus (Jan 25, 2016)

martinlochsen said:


> Interesting that the guy kills his players




Yikes. Harsh game.


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## Zelofcad (Jan 25, 2016)

Funny: it's the second time in a few day that I read a negative opinion on the Tomb of Horrors, and I quite don't understand.
I incorporated the 3.5 version of the Tomb in my campaign and my players liked it. A little more than a year has passed since the battle with Acererak, and they sometimes still quote the initial poem or recall some funny episodes: even if they lost some characters in there, they gladly remember the Tomb.
I have to say my players entered the Tomb with extreme caution and they used a lot of... let's say creativity to manage it, but that's what I expect from a group of adventurers entering an old ruin filled with traps protecting what was inside (they were aware of that: it was part of the story).


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## martinlochsen (Jan 25, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Yikes. Harsh game.




What? You never played like that before? That's TRUE old school playin'. ;-)


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 25, 2016)

Not familiar with John Wick's work or why his opinion means a lot but I think many have stated it already, its a tournament module to challenge the players more with traps and tricks and often "unfair" encounters that lead to instant TPK. Its without a doubt not the more modern challenge the character sheet type game, or even a game for those looking for hack and slashing as its mostly traps. You could play it in an ongoing campaign but you better be the type of player who doesn't mind losing a long term PC.   ON a note, we had an off night in my gaming group so I was going to run it in 1e with the pre-gens.  It was last minute and I didn't have time to put all the PC stuff together which was a problem but I quickly realized that we had been playing 3e/5e for so long that we really forgot how to run 1e.  We are long term players from the late 70's to mid-80's and were struggling with things like "why is there no search skill under the thief....".  Its a different gaming mindset with old 70's D&D products.  Bad module no, but not everyone's style especially if they are looking for deep storytelling.

And I don't understand the statement "two of them are designed to give the GM the authority for a TPK". 

Read his blog post.  Just made me go "awwwwww the poor baby".  Gary's comment echo my feelings honestly. Then again I'm more into D&D as a game rather than a shared storytelling experience.


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## Nagol (Jan 25, 2016)

martinlochsen said:


> What? You never played like that before? That's TRUE old school playin'. ;-)




Killing your players goes well old-school and veers off into "D&D is the tool of the devil"/"All D&D players are sociopaths" ways of thinking.  Old-school stops short of real world violence; we only kill characters.


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## Jiggawatts (Jan 25, 2016)

I wonder what he has to say about Rappan Athuk.


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## MwaO (Jan 25, 2016)

Zelofcad said:


> Funny: it's the second time in a few day that I read a negative opinion on the Tomb of Horrors, and I quite don't understand.




I think a lot of it is about expectations. Do your players expect their PCs to die on a regular basis? Is staying dead a problem? Is the how the DM reacts to a TPK a problem? If the players come up with an interesting/funny/smart/clever idea that isn't anticipated by the mod, will the DM let them bypass it? If the players do something apparently stupid(such as step into a pure black area that light doesn't bounce off of nor does it reflect...), does the DM assume that the PCs might do something to stop it?

Depending on what your group decides how the world works, it can be a very different adventure...

An example of the problem is what Wick describes when he's playing the Rogue - he establishes that he knows where the traps are, so the players logically assume that when he doesn't tell them to do something, it must be safe. That's a really bad thing that the DM let happen and if I were DM, I'd say immediately, hey, we need to re-define what the rules of a trap are before something like that happens(if I were going to allow Wick's know-everything Rogue in the first place)

These vary a lot in terms of campaign by campaign.


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## Zelofcad (Jan 25, 2016)

MwaO said:


> I think a lot of it is about expectations. Do your players expect their PCs to die on a regular basis? Is staying dead a problem? Is the how the DM reacts to a TPK a problem? If the players come up with an interesting/funny/smart/clever idea that isn't anticipated by the mod, will the DM let them bypass it? If the players do something apparently stupid(such as step into a pure black area that light doesn't bounce off of nor does it reflect...), does the DM assume that the PCs might do something to stop it?
> 
> Depending on what your group decides how the world works, it can be a very different adventure...




I think you are right.
My players know that the world their PCs live in is dangerous, that death is an option and that if they decide to enter a clearly dangerous place they should reasonably expect they could die.
That said, I like when my players come up with a clever or a funny idea: that's the way they avoided some of the dangers, or reduced the damages. The sphere of annihilation is a good example: they analyzed it (detect magic and so on), and didn't simply jump in. That way, they survived.



> An example of the problem is what Wick describes when he's playing the Rogue - he establishes that he knows where the traps are, so the players logically assume that when he doesn't tell them to do something, it must be safe. That's a really bad thing that the DM let happen and if I were DM, I'd say immediately, hey, we need to re-define what the rules of a trap are before something like that happens(if I were going to allow Wick's know-everything Rogue in the first place)
> 
> These vary a lot in terms of campaign by campaign.




I completely agree.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 25, 2016)

Its kind of sad to see a grown man still angry at a module he played when he was 12.


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## devincutler (Jan 25, 2016)

I find John's complaints to be ill-considered. Almost every trap in the dungeon can be defeated with a 10 ft pole. Especially the ever-cited dragon mouth. A simple 1 copper piece pole for goshsakes! If you are going into a death trap dungeon (and Wick told his players they were) and don't prod EVERYTHING with a pole...you deserve a TPK.

In the 70's, players were expected to be paranoid...of everything. They listened at every door, tapped every wall and floor and ceiling with a pole, spiked open every door. That's just the way it was.

And that doesn't count spells like Contact Other Plane and Commune.

Tomb of Horrors is fairly survivable if you are a LITTLE lucky and a lot cautious. It was designed to take arrogant players down a peg.


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## Eltab (Jan 25, 2016)

_Tomb of Horrors_ says all over the covers and the intro "This module is designed to kill PCs".  I own a copy but I've never played it: I don't have any obnoxious players or characters I want to drive out of my life for keeps.


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## drjones (Jan 25, 2016)

After reading Ready Player 1 and getting interested in the module I used it in my long-running 4e Dark Sun campaign.  As many have noted it has some issues in a real campaign with real role playing, but I got around all that by making it the equivalent of a 'lost in the holodeck' Star Trek episode.  Players are roped into a virtual experience (complete with short, red robed Dungeon Master) run by a coven of mind flayers to test applicants who thought they were trying to join an underground mages guild but were actually being sorted into food/thralls/agents based on their performance.  There were hints here and there that it was fake and I blunted some of the more obvious instant death stuff so as to not tip my hand when they had to roll up 'new' characters.  Had some fun when the rogue lost his arm in the demon's mouth and experienced 'phantom pains' occasionally afterwards due to damaging his real world, still existing hand.  They were not too pissed when they eventually broke out of the dream.

Anyway, it all turned out well.  As much as we want to make it easy to be a DM, in the end even a perfectly written adventure takes some interpretation and massaging to fit into a campaign.  This one takes much more than usual, but in return it offers some very memorable and unique experiences.


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## darjr (Jan 25, 2016)

True story. I ran it for one of the 5e betas and a player rolled a vorpal sword as his starting weapon, his favorite weapon. First combat he rolled a twenty, then a second to decapitate a demon.

He said he could have his character die happy. Which was convenient cause he did soon after.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 25, 2016)

I think this is a topic to dig into for one of my favorite whipping boy topics of game design: the _goals of play._ Seems like John Wick has a very different set of goals today than Gygax did at the time. There's a lot of meat in exploring how those goals are different and why they result in different play experience for different players.

I think calling the Tomb of Horrors the worst adventure ever is shortsighted and a bit narrow-midned. It is bad _for certain goals_. It's great at others.


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## wwanno (Jan 25, 2016)

I will run it with my players in the next few weeks.

They are playing "Roots of Evil" and they have to enter Azalin's lair.

They have read the blog post of this guy, and started screaming about bad dungeon design and save or die mechanics.

So, just to test them, I will use the tomb of horror and substitute Azalin for Acerak.
They don't know that I will play this trick.

I don't want to end the campaign abruptly, so a B plan is necessary. Even if they fail, Azalin will revive them to know where they hid his phylactery.

I want to se their faces when they will discover the truth in the end...

You are not a D&D player if you don't try it. That tomb is a legend, it deserves a try.


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## Benji (Jan 25, 2016)

Our Dm in a 3.5 game had the 3rd edition version: it added saving throws which helped. We ended up stuck at the tomb due to some mystical fields and had to 'Solve it' to escape. It messed us up good an proper and killed two of the party.

This is the bit where I don't get annoyed because we had raise dead prepped. It meant that those who died got to roleplay doubt and uncomfortableness of being brought back. (One charater hated us for it). So all in all in was a great dungeon.


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## Xethreau (Jan 25, 2016)

I'm A Banana said:


> I think calling the Tomb of Horrors the worst adventure ever is shortsighted and a bit narrow-midned. It is bad _for certain goals_. It's great at others.




Exactly. There are times when I want a very challenging and engaging hardcore dungeon crawl. And then there are other times when I want to participate in crafting an epic story with characters who stand a reasonable chance of surviving long enough to become three-dimensional. 

If I were playing Tomb of Horrors, I would certainly grab a pre-gen. And I wouldn't get attached.


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## Nytmare (Jan 25, 2016)

I've played through the Tomb of Horrors twice.  The first time we tried playing through "seriously."  Two of the players had played through before and had at least a little bit of shaky knowledge of some of the traps and pitfalls.  We meta-gamed, used player knowledge, and played characters only meant to survive the tomb intact and I think we lasted at most two sessions.

Several years later, with a slightly different group, we tried a second time but we approached things very differently.  Magic the Gathering's Legends expansion had just come out and each of us drew a random legendary character from the set.  We'd create the characters based solely off of our interpretations of the cards and their flavor text, gave optimization a passing glance at best, and focused on nothing but hammily role playing our way through the module.  I don't remember how far we got (or how many characters ended up shuffling off their mortal coils in the process) , but the game lasted the span of a sleep deprived 4 day weekend and our group still has a handful of in jokes and references that we make to that game 22 years later.


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## werecorpse (Jan 25, 2016)

Much as I love the game I largely agree with John Wick.

Plenty of early d&d was roleplaying lite and problem solving heavy. ToH is a prime example - all the story stuff is meant to come from the DM not the players then they cast find the path, find traps, augury, commune, detect magic etc play send in the sheep, poke with 10' pole. If you do all this you should come out ok. If you don't and the DM plays the way the dungeon is written you die. My memory is that the tournament characters at the back of the dungeon can't defeat the final antagonist - so it's not about winning its about surviving longer than another party. It's all about the dungeon nothing for the characters to interact with.

Designing a dungeon to kill the players is child's play, not clever.

I dislike trap dungeons as I don't find continuous trap finding interesting, or particularly challenging (btw surely as soon as you touch to start to climb into a sphere of annihilation you are sucked in and annihilated - so that trap is typically bogus)

Gygax had some fantastic design skills, but from what I have read of his stuff and stories of his game play he made all the usual Gm mistakes - Gm v player, designing stuff which has as its purpose to "get arrogant players", playing favourites, being dismissive of others play styles etc.

ToH deserves its place in history as both a piece of fantastic design (mostly the artwork) and a cautionary tale (for DM's about design as much as for players).


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Gygax had some fantastic design skills, but from what I have read of his stuff and stories of his game play he made all the usual Gm mistakes - Gm v player, designing stuff which has as its purpose to "get arrogant players", playing favourites, being dismissive of others play styles etc.




Irony.


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## pming (Jan 26, 2016)

Hiya!

I pretty much disagree with all of what Mr.Wick wrote. I think there are some key points he isn't considering...

First...yeah, what everyone else in this thread said; it's a module designed _to kill PC's_, and, more importantly, it is designed as a _tournament module_.

Second, "old skool" (or "a regular AD&D game in 1980's") had the assumption that the _*players*_ were the ones making the life-or-death decisions. It was the _*players*_ who came up with how to detect a trap and defeat it. It was the _*players*_ who were the prime determining factor of how successful a character was. Back in those days, I didn't say "Make a Spot Trap check, DC 22", I said "You see a wooden door, with iron bands...but the iron bands don't look nearly as rusty as the others you've seen. Almost like someone is trying to keep them clean". That's when the _*players*_ start to use their own brains to detect and overcome any traps. *The Key Thing* Wick seems to be missing is this. His players _obviously_ were either not up to the task, or were used to some other form of play style. As a player, when you see something in a deadly dungeon, you don't just jump in and hope you can roll good if you need to. The Tomb of Horrors was _specifically designed_ to prey on that kind of "Freelick Maneuver" (re: "Freelick, the Fernetic of Glossamere jumps into the pit to gather up all the treasure! How much does Freelick get?"...kudos to any who know what movie I'm quoting that from). Throw things at it (iron spikes, water, oil, a rat/lizard/snake/small-animal, etc). Cast knowledge-type spells like Divination, Commune with Other Plane, or even Speak with Dead if one of your companions goes through and doesn't come back or scream or give any other indication. A party of 7 or 8 (that was the 'average' party size in those days), the clerics, druids, magic-users and illusionists should have a sack full of spell scrolls between them...they are all 10th to 14th level, after all! No small feat in 1e AD&D! That's one to two years of 8-hour weekly sessions...surely the players have learned how deadly stuff can be at those levels.

Third, and I think this is the *MOST TELLING* reason why he lost friends... he stood up and laughed at them. The module didn't do that..._he did_. He gloated. He was a world-class 12 year old a-hole in that moment. His fiends just lost all their hard-earned (I'm assuming here...) characters because they didn't think it was a trap, or at least a trap that would kill them if they were stupid enough to let it. And he, in his 12 year old wisdom, felt it was appropriate to jump up from the table, point his finger and laugh heartily at his 'friends', straight in the face. _THAT_ is why he lost friends...not the module.

Anyway, thats my 2¢. I've also killed PC's...TPK's...with that module. Usually at the mouth, but I've also killed a "25th level paladin with 25 in all stats, with a two-handed holy avenger vorpal sword and a huge ancient gold dragon as his mount"...I think he made it in 20 or 30'. Followed the red path, fell in pit, failed save...died. That was rather funny to me...but I _didn't_ jump up, point my finger at him, and laugh.

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Nytmare (Jan 26, 2016)

Did you just make a Mazes and Monsters reference on a D&D message board and wonder if anyone was going to get it?


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## Xaelvaen (Jan 26, 2016)

This adventure was designed to challenge high level characters that had become arrogant in their supremacy (in Mr. Gygax's home campaign, prior to being formally written for tournament play in 75) - this fact alone gives me quite a large profile of those who do, and do not, like the content therein.  Those with whom I game, and myself, absolutely love this adventure and consider it beyond criticism.


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## Henry (Jan 26, 2016)

For another take on this venerable module:

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/retrospective-tomb-of-horrors.html

A hammer is a terrible tool for baking a cake, but when you have some nails to drive it works just fine.


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## IgnatiusJ.Reilly (Jan 26, 2016)

The adventure is not for new DMs who do everything by the book. Unless, of course, it's just played on a lark using expendable characters.


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## Zarithar (Jan 26, 2016)

I think its a great article and I see his point. When run as written, Tomb of Horrors is basically a giant middle finger from the DM to the players. When modified to give the party a chance, it works. Thematically, I personally really enjoy it... but would never run it strictly as written. 

I enjoyed the article and his anecdote about his thief character was pretty great.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 26, 2016)

ToH was written with the specific intent to kill off PCs of players who thought they were God's gift to gaming.  The fact that John hasn't figured that out context after 35ish years to what?  Sound edgy?  Speaks volumes.  IMO anyway.  And I've no desire to ever play it myself, FWIW.


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## neobolts (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> It's neither poorly written nor unplayable.
> 
> And may I refer you to the 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors' story? http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...the-Tomb-of-Horrors-finally-gets-a-Story-Hour!
> 
> I suspect many groups have in fact actually incorporated the Tomb into long running epic fantasy tales successfully.




I made my point poorly. I was saying it is not poorly written or unplayable, thus not meeting my definition of "worst." I do still think it is better suited for disposable PCs vs a long term campaign, due to its use of quick TPK events.


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## Ilbranteloth (Jan 26, 2016)

One of my favorite adventures of all time. I've run it many times.

The reason I like it has nothing to do with the style of play. It has to do with the setting. In my opinion, if a powerful magical creature is going to build a crypt to secure their stuff, it will be deadly. That's all. No pulling punches. I don't necessarily agree with every single encounter, or all of the specific design elements. 

But the idea that the only thing keeping tomb-robbers from succeeding is the design of your tomb and the traps that protect it (plus some potential undead, contracts, or bound guardians), just makes sense to me.

The overall concept is the standard for most crypts that I make.

Ilbranteloth


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 26, 2016)

pming said:


> Hiya!
> 
> I pretty much disagree with all of what Mr.Wick wrote. I think there are some key points he isn't considering...
> 
> ...




The more I think of this the more I want to run this again. 

I was looking through it and its pretty clear what type of module it is. Gary even says this module will not be for every group. 

"As clever players will gather from a reading of the Legend of the
Tomb, this dungeon has more tricks and traps than it has monsters
to fight. THIS IS A THINKING PERSON’S MODULE. AND IF YOUR
GROUP IS A HACK AND SLAY GATHERING, THEY WILL BE
UNHAPPY! In the latter case, it is better to skip the whole thing than
come out and tell them that there are few monsters. It is this writer’s
belief that brainwork is good for all players, and they will certainly
benefit from playing this module, for individual levels of skill will be
improved by reasoning and experience - if you regularly pose prob-
lems to be solved by brains and not brawl, your players will find this
module immediately to their liking." ToH pg 2

Its about challenging a player, as in the guy in the seat not his search bonus or other skill on the character sheet.  Of course 1e had no skills so to speak. 

And as you say, it wasn't EGG's fault the blog writer was acting like a jackass.


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## Psikerlord# (Jan 26, 2016)

I agree ToH is a terrible adventure. For a real campaign, with precious PCs, it is downright mean to run it as is. It's a simple, awful, deathtrap, nothing more. For a one-shot, with players who know they're going into ToH, it's a bit fun, but not much? Why - coz the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you dont need to. Which gets boring very quick unless you throw in some monsters (ToH has almost no monsters, it's all traps, if you dont already know).


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## Zak S (Jan 26, 2016)

I love uber-cautious death trap games.

ESPECIALLY mid-campaign when I super-love my character and have invested so much in them over the years and so every decision and every die roll is heavy with consequence and super tense.

It's delicious, it's like tiramisu. Every second, every thought, every preparation counts.

If you don't: ok. But unless you think other people don't count, you can't call it a bad adventure (at least not just on account of being super deadly and caution inspiring), just not to your taste.

It's a bit like saying "THIS IS THE WORST BOOK! WHY? IT'S IN FRENCH!!!! AND I DON'T READ FRENCH!!!"


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## pming (Jan 26, 2016)

Hiya!



Psikerlord# said:


> I agree ToH is a terrible adventure. For a real campaign, with precious PCs, it is downright mean to run it as is. It's a simple, awful, deathtrap, nothing more. For a one-shot, with players who know they're going into ToH, it's a bit fun, but not much? Why - coz the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you dont need to. Which gets boring very quick unless you throw in some monsters (ToH has almost no monsters, it's all traps, if you dont already know).




But it's not a terrible module at all...I would say that it is, however, "a terrible module for you". For me and all but one of my players...it would be very memorable, in a good way. When you say "_Why - [because] the best way through the dungeon is to be uber cautious and not interact with anything you don't need to_"...you say it like it's a bad thing. For me and almost all of my group, this would be a _good_ thing. Something that would bring home the point that this is a lich who designed his tomb to KILL INTERLOPERS. He didn't design it to "be a bit of a bother" and he most certainly didn't design it to be "a reasonable challenge, but not too hard, for adventurers to steal his treasure and desecrate his tomb". HE'S TRYING TO KILL YOU AND EVERYONE WITH YOU! So, IMHO, if you, as a player, are informed enough to realize that this is a true _deathtrap_ dungeon, designed to trick and screw you over so that you die quickly and horribly...then you should be informed enough to say "Uh, no. We'll just use that map we got from the wizard as fire-starter for tonight's camp", and go take on some 'lesser', or 'more reasonable' challenges. Fair enough. Part of being a successful adventurer is knowing when to hold 'em, and knowing when to fold 'em. 

Oh, lastly, "throwing in some monsters" doesn't equate to "more exciting". If the players enjoy X, throwing in  Y isn't going to mean much. In fact, it can seriously detract from the "fun and excitement" of a given adventure. Again, this is wholey an assumption on your part for your particular play style. One that the Tomb of Horrors doesn't support.

IMHO, Mr.Wick basically said "Broccoli is the worst vegetable of all time!", and then tried to back it up with anecdotes about how it was two shades of green when you buy it, two different shades when you steam it, and it reminds him of trees and that time he climbed a tall one, fell out, broke his arm and hip, and had to do painful physio for a year...so, "obviously" broccoli is the worst. *sigh*

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Zak S (Jan 26, 2016)

pming said:


> Mr.Wick basically said "Broccoli is the worst vegetable of all time!", and then tried to back it up with anecdotes about how it was two shades of green when you buy it, two different shades when you steam it, and it reminds him of trees and that time he climbed a tall one, fell out, broke his arm and hip, and had to do painful physio for a year...so, "obviously" broccoli is the worst. *sigh*




Yep.

And it's amazing that, even in 2016:

1. People still read folks who do that opinion-as-fact thing
and
2. People decided it was worth talking about with other humans.


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## Jhaelen (Jan 26, 2016)

Well, of course ToH isn't the worst adventure module of all times. I know it, you know it, and Mr. Wick knows it, too. It's just a ploy to get you to read his article(s) because it's a really well-known and (in)famous module. I'm not falling for it after reading his previous nonsense about D&D not being an RPG. The guy's suffering from a severe case of tunnel-vision.

Personally, I'm not a fan of ToH, despite (or because of?) my using it as a campaign-ending device in the past. As many have already pointed out, it wasn't really meant to played in an ongoing campaign. It was created as a tournament module, a very specific way to play an RPG that surely isn't for everyone.


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## Zak S (Jan 26, 2016)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, of course ToH isn't the worst adventure module of all times. I know it, you know it, and Mr. Wick knows it, too. It's just a ploy to get you to read his article(s) because it's a really well-known and (in)famous module.




But, again:

It's really sad that someone who would do that is getting listened to.

The RPG community is riven with arguments from people with GENUINE fundamental disagreements about real stuff. Like there are not only people who genuinely believe that x edition will make society worse, but less crazy things like arguments about how to make the RPG community more diverse, etc. Just the arguments we _should_ be having, and is already like 200,000 arguments. Why add extra unnecessary un-substantive argument on_ top _of that?

And all that argument makes it _really_ hard for people to access straight-up information on how to run their game or how best to design one for the audience they're after or to get tools to play their game with other people have made. 

So to just sort of write a clickbaity title and add entropy to the already desperately uninviting stew of argument that is the online RPG community seems unimaginably selfish. And to actually read and then take seriously an article by someone who'd do that seems unimaginably gullible.


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## Li Shenron (Jan 26, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Designing a dungeon to kill the players is child's play, not clever.




Tomb of Horror was written in an era where the standard of videogames was to be designed to kill the players. There's an abyssal distance between coin-op games of the 80s and today's normality of games where you never ever really die. They are different kinds of fun, and yet those old ones designed to kill you quickly and repeatedly were a huge success back then (and still have a reasonable fanbase today, although they don't generate much revenue), which means they were indeed very clever.

As others also pointed out, ToH was meant to be a tournament adventure, where there is no point for the characters to exist after the end of it. It might make it even easier to determine the winner(s) of the tournament: if _nobody_ can really get to the end of the adventure, there is less chance for ex-aequo, and less ambiguity, which could be the case for example for one group to survive the tomb but get few XP VS another group to TPK but earn more XP. Everyone is expected to die sooner or later, just like in 99% of any arcade videogame, and the winner is simply who scores more points.

In addition, Tomb of Horror has pretty much obviously a _horror_ tone. Similarly to watching a horror movie, where you know everyone is going to die, and the fun of it is watching the _how_. You are supposed to like the genre, or watch/play something else.

Naturally, is someone is expecting a looong TV series with serious character development, and is not keen on seeing interesting characters die off at random times (GoT), you shouldn't try horror. And you shouldn't blame those who actually told you so...


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## The Human Target (Jan 26, 2016)

Even as a tournament style module I think it sucks.

It's full of trial and error death.

The dungeon design is wonky.

There isn't anything intresting in it that isn't a "gotcha you died!"


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## trancejeremy (Jan 26, 2016)

I think there are two misconceptions.

Firstly, I don't think it really was a tournament module. Oh sure, it got used at conventions. But it lacks the scoring system found in other tournament modules and I don't think it was run as a tournament, where the best players would win prizes.  

Secondly, it's actually not that tough. EGG ran it for Rob Kuntz, who didn't beat it, but looted the place, and then his son Ernie, who did beat it. Random people he ran it for at conventions beat it. 

That it is perceived to be tough is mostly because a lot of modern players don't really play for well, keeps. They know they won't die unless there is a very special combat. And traps are just a nuisance, not something that could kill you. So why bother to poke something first to see if it disintegrates anything it touches, just leap in.


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## Zak S (Jan 26, 2016)

The Human Target said:


> Even as a tournament style module I think it sucks.
> 
> It's full of trial and error death.
> 
> ...




Trial and error death is interesting if you like thinking of ways to safely perform trials.


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## Lwaxy (Jan 26, 2016)

I loved playing through this. And we did play it with a long standing group. We did have a deux ex machina to rise our chars several times though. For some reason, our wizard never once died though. We were a bit higher in levels than suggested if I remember right, and 6 people.


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## Paraxis (Jan 26, 2016)

I am not a fan of tomb of horrors myself, but we should take a moment that John Wick says crap like this to get attention, he is not a good game designer and not someone's opinion that should matter on what type of adventure you and your group enjoys.  So don't give him the attention he so desperately wants and just have fun. 

For those unaware he makes statements like this " Why? Because the designers had given up the ghost. D&D was not a roleplaying game. It was a very sophisticated, intricate and complicated combat simulation board game."  and "Can you successfully play D&D 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition without roleplaying? Yes, you can."  and "The first four editions of D&D are not roleplaying games. You can successfully play them without roleplaying. "

I doubt he has every played through tomb of horrors as he seems to not even think D&D is a roleplaying game.

He makes statements like the above to get people to visit his blog and think his opinion matters, it doesn't.


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## dwayne (Jan 26, 2016)

I played through this up until the end and a few of us did get killed one permanently but only because he was careless. We took a long time and made a few missteps along the way but in the end we made it more or less in tact. It did take a while to get one of our characters beck from another plane and to raze another back from the dead but you got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.


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## pemerton (Jan 26, 2016)

Criticism of ToH is not a new thing. Sometime in the past few years I found online a copy of an Alarums and Excursions play report from the original tournmanent (Mark Sawnson in Alarums & Excursions #4 September 1975) - maybe someone posted it on a thread here.

Anyway, some relevant extracts:

The dungeon that Gary had brought along was being run in a tournament - all parties with identical characters (ranging from a MU 12 to a Fighter 4 - with strength of 18). . . .

As I started to say- there were no wandering monsters (damn few monsters at all, in fact), plenty of traps (too many) and very few experienced players. It was run by Gary's son, who devoted no effort to keeping the characters in character. However, we did just as well as the other Friday night group . . .

Another, later party, possibly aided by rumors or led by someone who understood pits, elf proof plaster [the GM did not let elves notice secret doors concealed behind plaster, which this player had not anticipated] and the unpopulated nature of Gygax's dungeon - got the whole treasure. Sigh.

From this experience I deduce a couple of lessons. 

1) Don't run D&D as a tournament. 2) Always shatter plaster unless you are in the dungeon of nasty minded people such as I who might put poison gas behind it. 3) Play a Gygax game if you like pits, secret doors and Dungeon Roulette. Play a game such as in A&E if you prefer monsters, talking/arguing/fighting with chance met characters and a more exciting game. Of course, the game may not have been typical, but Gary can defend himself. I felt no real desire for a second, similar game.​
I've never run or played ToH in D&D. I did restat it for Rolemaster once, and used it in a game, but once the players worked out that their PCs were in the Tomb of Horrors they pulled out.

I don't think it's the worst module that I own. It's certainly not the best. Just confining myself to Gygax modules I have got far, far more fun play out of the G-modules (especially G2) and D1-D2. (I don't think I've ever used D3, but at least on reading I would rate it well above S1 also.)


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## neobolts (Jan 26, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Yikes. Harsh game.




Jack Chick tried to warn you. LOL


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

pemerton said:


> I don't think it's the worst module that I own. It's certainly not the best. Just confining myself to Gygax modules I have got far, far more fun play out of the G-modules (especially G2) and D1-D2. (I don't think I've ever used D3, but at least on reading I would rate it well above S1 also.)




So, I understand that a person's emotional response to a dungeon is subjective and differs from person to person and from experience to experience.

But speaking as a DM, one of the things that strikes me about S1 is just how difficult it is to successfully replicate the dungeon.  There have been tons of attempts at replicating S1 - it's probably the most copied dungeon design in the history of the game - but most of them have been terrible, usually because they think that killing the PC's is all that is going on in S1 and they think they are being clever by killing PC's.  A good example is Grimtooth's Traps, which tends to have traps that punish players for looking for tangential solutions or proactively being creative or the city of Moil in 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors' which is far more lethal than ToH (and really, has to be) but proactively kills the players in ways that make ToH seem perfectly fair and reasonable.  Considering how many people have attempted to make S1 (including me in my younger days before I understood the module), and just how hard it is to do it well, I vote S1 to the highest levels of dungeon craftsmanship.  

But G2 (indeed the whole G series) on the other hand always stuck me as something that your average senior in high school or freshmen in college could and did create.  The are straight forward designs that are practically nothing more than implementations of an entry in a monster manual, 'Hill Giant tribe, found in lair, maximum numbers and numbers of servitors'.  They play largely as straight forward tactical slogs of the sort Gygax was fond of  - large numbers of demihumans, variously armed and equipped, with boss monsters that are slightly tougher than their comrades.  The trope shows up again in B2 and in the first part of WG4, and in T1-4.  I think it appeals to Gygax's love of D&D as a tactical skirmish level wargame.  Some parts of those modules are inspired, but I never thought much of their basic design.  If you want combat oriented dungeon crawl as opposed to D&D as wargame, Paul Jaquays was doing it better with works like Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia.  

Lastly, Tomb of Horrors stands up well in terms of the stories its created.  Everyone has a story.  Sometimes, like with Wick, the story isn't very pleasant, but it is powerful in a way that 'we killed 80 hobgoblins', 'we killed 40 bugbears', 'we killed 20 ogres', etc. just isn't.


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## DocSun (Jan 26, 2016)

I read the article and ya know what. It is funny as hell. That last convention antidote is now one of my favorite moments along with the dread gazebo. That stupid orb man. Still a fun, if somewhat unfair run for a one shot game.


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## ExTSR (Jan 26, 2016)

Gotta hand it to John Wick; nice PR move for your blog. Everybody's reacting, even me. ;>



trancejeremy said:


> I think there are two misconceptions.
> it's actually not that tough...  traps are just a nuisance, not something that could kill you. So why bother to poke something first to see if it disintegrates anything it touches, just leap in.




Hear here. 
I especially liked his start, the 3 entrances.
So you just walk in like it's a tavern in town? Absolutely no information-gathering?

This is a high-level game. Try starting with _Find The Path_ (specify "the location of the being, or remains thereof, for whom this Tomb was created"). It'll be up for a couple of hours (10 min. / Lvl) unless it gets _Dispelled_.

So I agree with Mr. Wick; 12-year-olds (apparently with Int & Wis of 3-5, in this case) shouldn't go play here. Probably should keep an eye out for dangerous playground swings, too.

Frank Mentzer

(ps: I have a lot of young fans. I accordingly choose not to wallow in vulgarity and obscenity. But that's a style thing, and Mr. Wick is welcome to follow his own path. As for myself, I don't have to do that to get attention.)


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## TerraDave (Jan 26, 2016)

Uh, we had a lot of fun with it. We played it in a slightly different way then it was written, but in D&D you are allowed to do that. Thats why there is a DM. 

It has a certain goal in mind and does it extremely well.

In a campaign, if played "straight", then it should be optional for the PCs, and while they shouldn't know the twists and turn, they should know it is truly dangerous. (And would have access to the resources to know that.) 

And one of EGGs PCs did in fact play it in their campaign, and did beat it.


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## collin (Jan 26, 2016)

I enjoy the comments in this thread so far, and I agree that, although perhaps not meant to be a tournament module, it is probably best used as such.  Gygax has stated in interviews that he created it because his players thought there was no dungeon he could come up with that would be challenging enough for them, so he met that challenge.  And, TSR needed product in its early days, so this was as good an adventure scenario as any to publish.  Also, comments he made over the years in interviews pretty much confirms that at least in those early days of D&D, the relationship between the DM and the players was more of an adversarial one.  That is, it was more of a DM vs the players to see who would "win".  Gygax had no problem with this concept, unlike more modern role-playing where the DM creates a story and helps guide the players while offering them various challenges.  Along these lines, the novel that WotC published early in the 3rd edition years, written by Keith Strohm, does a nice job of telling a story that incorporates characters and plants the Tomb of Horrors in the story as a cumulative plot device for the characters to overcome for the sake of retrieving treasure to help a local government.  So although the adventure itself seems like more of a one-shot tournament challenge, you can use the Tomb of Horrors in such a way as to expand the continuing story of an adventure party. 

As for John Wick's comments, the disdain for ToH is understandable at first glance.  But one has to take other factors into account before simply labeling it as the worst adventure ever and walking away.  It's the context that's important.


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## Morrus (Jan 26, 2016)

collin said:


> Gygax has stated in interviews that he created it because his players thought there was no dungeon he could come up with that would be challenging enough for them, so he met that challenge.




Sounds odd. Beating your players is a trivial matter for a GM. Put 99 Tarrasques and a herd of Orcuses in the first room, and you're done. If that doesn't work, blow the planet up.

Challenging players is not the hard thing. The hard thing is designing challenges which challenge them *just enough* while still being fun.


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## ehren37 (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Irony.




Except those are things which we should rightly be dismissive of. This isnt a case of a bigot complaining about how no one tolerates his views. In D&D, I cant agree that "GM vs Player" is a valid playstyle, given that one side holds all the power in the game. Look, most of us were crappy and petty 12 year old DM's at one point (regardless of our chronological age at the time). Most of us grew out of it. 

Unless you're actually advocating playing favorites, petty gotchas, and abusing the trust of the DM position are equal to one based on respect and fair rulings. Some things really kind of are badwrongfun.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

ehren37 said:


> Except those are things which we should rightly be dismissive of. This isnt a case of a bigot complaining about how no one tolerates his views. In D&D, I cant agree that "GM vs Player" is a valid playstyle, given that one side holds all the power in the game.




More irony.  And now I'm going to start being dismissive.



> Look, most of us were crappy and petty 12 year old DM's at one point (regardless of our chronological age at the time). Most of us grew out of it.




Because you aren't relenting on being insulting.



> Unless you're actually advocating playing favorites, petty gotchas, and abusing the trust of the DM position are equal to one based on respect and fair rulings. Some things really kind of are badwrongfun.




No, but I will call out associating those things with inherent aspects of adversarial play as being the sort of dismissive, snearing, better than thou attitudes that are gaming bigotry.


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## delericho (Jan 26, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Sounds odd. Beating your players is a trivial matter for a GM. Put 99 Tarrasques and a herd of Orcuses in the first room, and you're done. If that doesn't work, blow the planet up.
> 
> Challenging players is not the hard thing. The hard thing is designing challenges which challenge them *just enough* while still being fun.




Surely it's fair to assume that Gygax was aware of that, and that therefore what he was going for is a dungeon that was _almost_, but not actually, impossible?

(My evidence for that being the existence of "S1: Tomb of Horrors", of course.  )


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## GrahamWills (Jan 26, 2016)

delericho said:


> Surely it's fair to assume that Gygax was aware of that, and that therefore what he was going for is a dungeon that was _almost_, but not actually, impossible?
> 
> (My evidence for that being the existence of "S1: Tomb of Horrors", of course.  )




First up; It pretty much cannot be the worst, because it has some good illustrations. Therefore it is of some use and therefore it is a better module than many others I have read which have absolutely no use (outside of starting fires)

Second; yeah, you have to be strongly into that old-school adversarial style of play to like actually playing it. Now, it might be a fun power-trip to run it, and it might be fun to be able to sit around years later and discuss how awesome it was for everyone to die horribly, but fun to play? Don't think so.

As evidence -- I can't see any indication in this thread that anyone enjoyed playing it. The pro-ToH comments are pretty much all based on theory or thought or ideals. I think it'll be super-rare to have people say "I played this with my character with no idea what it was like and died instantly and it was way cool".

Of course, having said this, it now biases the responses and I expect I actually will get people saying how much they enjoyed arbitrary death....


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## ehren37 (Jan 26, 2016)

Li Shenron said:


> In addition, Tomb of Horror has pretty much obviously a _horror_ tone. Similarly to watching a horror movie, where you know everyone is going to die, and the fun of it is watching the _how_. You are supposed to like the genre, or watch/play something else.




I think that's really my issue with it, it really doesnt. If you watch any group play it "to win", its boring as hell. Just a long series of pixel bitching around, poking things with sticks, resting the moment you are out of augury/commune spells, etc. There's like 2 things to fight tops. Would anyone want to watch a movie where the protagonists did the stuff suggested in this thread? Send a train of mules in to trigger traps?

I mean, we all know Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been so much better if instead of racing the boulder and dodging darts, Indy meticulously puttied up each dart hole, placed a portable structurally sound bridge over the chasm with reinforced guard rails, left the dungeon to go consult some books, and heroically lead a bunch of pack animals to their death before pulling out a scale and calculator to properly calculate the idol's weight and use the necessary amount of sand. 

To me, traps are mainly interesting when they are in action, which means the good ones should be triggered. Now some of the ones in Tomb ARE interesting - the bleeding wall for example allows people to interact once its set off, and is clever in how players defeat it. Others are random - the scepter to crown disintegration, if memory serves, has no hints, so its augury, or 50/50 chance of killing your comrade.


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## ehren37 (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> More irony.  And now I'm going to start being dismissive.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




So you're actually advocating adversarial play as valid? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was essentially agreed upon as poor form in this day and age, given the disparity of power in D&D.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

ehren37 said:


> So you're actually advocating adversarial play as valid? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was essentially agreed upon as poor form in this day and age, given the disparity of power in D&D.




I'm saying that thousands of groups over the years have enjoyed D&D as a competitive activity where they faced off against a proud RBDM and sought to try to defeat the challenges he threw their way.

And yes, there is a decided power imbalance, and any DM worth his pizza can kill the PC's any time he wanted to just by being actually unfair rather than what is coddled noob would call unfair, but there is an art in bringing challenges that are just hard enough that it seems amazing when you get by them.  There is a beauty in good play from a skilled group of veterans where everything comes together and they overcome odds that anyone would think they really shouldn't.

You can complain about ToH all you like, but the truth is that over the years lots of teams beat that module playing against DMs that weren't pulling any punches.   I can't say that, but then I was just 13 at the time.  But some groups have, and they ought to be rightly proud of such an accomplishment.  

And it's trivially obvious that most had fun doing it.

So yeah, you are basically going 'badwrongfun' here while ironically berating others for it.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

ehren37 said:


> Would anyone want to watch a movie where the protagonists did the stuff suggested in this thread?




This comes up every time we do a John Wick thread.

RPG's are not movies.  They are just not.  Direct comparisons between the two are almost always invalid.   The point of playing an RPG is not to create the script of a movie.  Any transcript of an RPG would need to be adapted to be a good script for a non-interactive medium.   Movies and RPGs are fundamentally different story telling mediums.  Cinematic action in an RPG is fine, but it's not what an RPG is about and there are lots of things that you can do in an RPG that you can't do in a movie and vica versa there are things that make sense in movie logic that have no place in an RPG.



> I mean, we all know Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been so much better if instead of racing the boulder and dodging darts, Indy meticulously puttied up each dart hole, placed a portable structurally sound bridge over the chasm with reinforced guard rails, left the dungeon to go consult some books, and heroically lead a bunch of pack animals to their death before pulling out a scale and calculator to properly calculate the idol's weight and use the necessary amount of sand.




It might not have been a better movie, but Indy would have been much smarter had he instead of racing boulders and dodging darts, puttied up the dart holes and used a grappling hook to exit the tombs through the hole in the roof rather than facing a bunch of death traps and getting captured by Bellock.  Actually, once he triggered the first dart, he could have instead of tip toeing across those traps, easily have disarmed every trap by the same method.   He didn't, because since this is a movie there is actually zero chance that the darts will hit him.  It might not have been as exciting to a hypothetical audience to disarm each trap, but while you make movies for a passive audience, you don't play an RPG primarily for the audience.   You play an RPG for the participants.  

You see there is a fundamental problem with movie logic in an RPG.  In a movie, there is literally no chance of the protagonist failing.  There is nothing actually on the line.  The protagonist can do anything, and the protagonist is ultimately going to win anyway - often through the selective stupidity of the antagonists.   In an RPG, the protagonist really can lose.  He's really risking defeat.  So its natural that the protagonist is actually cunning rather than movie stupid.


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## ehren37 (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> This comes up every time we do a John Wick thread.
> 
> RPG's are not movies.  They are just not.  Direct comparisons between the two are almost always invalid.   The point of playing an RPG is not to create the script of a movie.  Any transcript of an RPG would need to be adapted to be a good script for a non-interactive medium.   Movies and RPGs are fundamentally different story telling mediums.  Cinematic action in an RPG is fine, but it's not what an RPG is about and there are lots of things that you can do in an RPG that you can't do in a movie and vica versa there are things that make sense in movie logic that have no place in an RPG.




Fine, substitute the word story or novel. I realize you missed the point of what I was responding to while tripping over yourself to cry foul, but the person I was responding to said that it had a horror tone and likened it to a movie. It's a pretty boring and crappy horror TALE, when played out in grognard vision. Pixel bitching is still boring, and frankly I'm too old and get to game too little to run through the same stupid checklist when opening every single door. Particularly since its only through the DM's grace that listening at the door doesnt trigger the worlds quietest wail of the banshee or some other arbitrary and randomized kill condition.  Maybe I've just seen behind the curtain, and realized that there is no "beating" a RBDM challenge. They simply let you win. So I'd rather my adventures simulate interesting stories, than making sure all the proper chest inspection protocols were followed. No one talks about the session where their thief rolled some dice and disarmed a trap and no one got hurt 20 years later.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

ehren37 said:


> Fine, substitute the word story or novel.




Fine.  Point still stands.  An RPG session isn't a novel either.  A novel is a passive experience by the reader.  An RPG is interactive.  



> I realize you missed the point...




No, I didn't.  You spent the whole post complaining that the play didn't resemble Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I got your point just fine.  I just think it's an utterly clueless statement to make.



> It's a pretty boring and crappy horror TALE, when played out in grognard vision. Pixel bitching is still boring, and frankly I'm too old and get to game too little to run through the same stupid checklist when opening every single door. Particularly since its only through the DM's grace that listening at the door doesnt trigger the worlds quietest wail of the banshee or some other arbitrary and randomized kill condition.  Maybe I've just seen behind the curtain, and realized that there is no "beating" a RBDM challenge. They simply let you win. So I'd rather my adventures simulate interesting stories, than making sure all the proper chest inspection protocols were followed. No one talks about the session where their thief rolled some dice and disarmed a trap and no one got hurt 20 years later.




Even if I fully agreed with you, and I don't, this amounts to a preference regarding what is fun in play.   It is not objectively true that that style of play is boring.   Indeed, it's likely that my preferences in play are more like yours than you think, but it still is true that I have from time to time enjoyed the old school style dungeon crawling as a change of pace and a thing with a certain artistic merit of its own. 

What this still amounts to is you claiming its 'badwrongfun' for the people who do enjoy that sort of play because it isn't your personal preference.   Hence the reason I pointed out the irony.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Gygax had some fantastic design skills, but from what I have read of his stuff and stories of his game play he made all the usual Gm mistakes - Gm v player, designing stuff which has as its purpose to "get arrogant players", playing favourites, being dismissive of others play styles etc.




Dear werecorpse:

Since you've become the catalyst for a discussion of this, I thought it fair to address your point a bit more fully.

I myself had for the longest read the 1e AD&D DMG and dismissed much of its advice as being poor or incoherent.  His approach to handling players seemed a bit harsh, some rules seemed to positively get in the way of good gaming, and the standards of play he discussed often seemed somewhat odd.  I had devised my own approaches over the years and disregarded much of his advice, taking only what seemed sound and ignoring the comments that seemed ill-thought out.

I had a revelation though when one summer I sat at a table in a gaming store and hosted open gaming sessions, where anyone could show up with a character and play the game.  And the longer I did that, the more respect for the 1e DMG and Gygax's insights I started to have.  I began to realize that what I had found less than useful advice, wasn't aimed at the DM who is hosting a game for 3 friends who show up every week.  Much of the advice in the DMG is aimed at DMs in Gygax's situation, which was hosting games six nights a week for a revolving cast of players and characters who show up 12 or 20 at a time.

Once you realize that there is a vastly different approach you can and often have to take to roleplaying when there is a single player, or 2-3 players, or 4-6 players, or 7-12 players, or more than 12 players you start to realize that Gygax's advice in the DMG is no less and probably much less dysfunctional than what you find in Burning Wheel or FATE or half a dozen other Indy RPGs where the author doesn't realize almost everything they are saying is predicated on at minimum not having more than 2-3 players in a high trust environment.  Once your group size grows, once that high trust social contract has to go out the window, things get much clearer.

Indeed, one of the things that is most deficient in most modern RPGs compared to Gygax's writing, is that while modern RPGs are far more organized and coherent in their rules presentation, they often fail to really describe and demonstrate play as effectively, leading to perfectly coherent rules that are perfectly unable to obtain the results they are intended to produce.  Or at minimum, unable to tell a would be GM what they need to do to turn these rules into the game the rules intend, because they fail to realize how much more there is to an RPG session than the rules.

Be very very careful of accusing as experienced and celebrated GM as Gygax of 'making mistakes'.  It may just be that the aren't playing in the same environment you are playing in with the same constraints or lack thereof you have.   Until you've trudged a few miles on that GM's side of the screen, you may not have the perspective to critique them.  And you already know one should be careful of dismissing others play styles.  So practice your own advice.

Or to put this more bluntly, you sir are not Gary Gygax.  Show some respect.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 26, 2016)

ehren37 said:


> I think that's really my issue with it, it really doesnt. If you watch any group play it "to win", its boring as hell. Just a long series of pixel bitching around, poking things with sticks, resting the moment you are out of augury/commune spells, etc. There's like 2 things to fight tops. Would anyone want to watch a movie where the protagonists did the stuff suggested in this thread? Send a train of mules in to trigger traps?



In a movie analogy, _Tomb of Horrors_ is perhaps best compared to a mystery. There are things that the antagonist knows that the protagonists do not, and the story is largely about uncovering those unknown things, until all the plans are laid bare (the treasure). In the movie version, you see the party standing in front of the green gargoyle head debating. The reckless, adventuresome character has already gone in the head, and she's been gone like an hour and hasn't come back. Something probably happened to her, but you don't know what, and you don't want it to happen to you. So all the characters are debating - do we send someone in? Do we use one of our limited "Ask A Friend" spells? Do we just move on? What if it vomits acid at us or something? 

The tension is in not knowing. The catharisis comes from finding out - when the thief puts the 10-foot pole in and it comes out dissolved halfway. We know that adventuresome halfling isn't coming back. 



> I mean, we all know Raiders of the Lost Ark would have been so much better if instead of racing the boulder and dodging darts, Indy meticulously puttied up each dart hole, placed a portable structurally sound bridge over the chasm with reinforced guard rails, left the dungeon to go consult some books, and heroically lead a bunch of pack animals to their death before pulling out a scale and calculator to properly calculate the idol's weight and use the necessary amount of sand.
> 
> To me, traps are mainly interesting when they are in action, which means the good ones should be triggered. Now some of the ones in Tomb ARE interesting - the bleeding wall for example allows people to interact once its set off, and is clever in how players defeat it. Others are random - the scepter to crown disintegration, if memory serves, has no hints, so its augury, or 50/50 chance of killing your comrade.



Again, think in terms of the mystery genre. Think of the Monty Python Investigator Tiger sketches or the movie Clue or Sherlock Holmes on a case. Folks are dying left and right whenever the lights go out. The idea isn't to find out whodunnit as much as it is to avoid the murderers to get a bunch of filthy lucre. The challenge isn't in overcoming the trap, it's in being clever enough to avoid it in the first place.

It's not an action movie. It's a mystery.

It's not perfect like that, but it's better aligned with the play goals if you think of it that way.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 26, 2016)

Gygax definitely wasn't a "we are trying to tell a story here" DM, the story is something that is put together by players thinking about or discussing what happened in the game session.  Its why old school modules often have a lot of monsters packed in tight which might not be the most logical but it provides plenty of game challenges for the players to overcome, via might or brains.  RBDM style is a perfectly valid style to run a game. My players and I are a fair bit competitive they just ask me to keep it fair and let the dice fall where they may.  We have a pretty high death count and people just make new characters since they like playing D&D and overcoming the challenges in the game more than trying to explore the human condition via elves and orcs. But in the end evryone play the game the way that makes them have the most fun.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

I'm A Banana said:


> It's not an action movie. It's a mystery.




Yes.  You could also look at it as a Heist movie, "Oceans 11 - Greyhawk edition; Plan the perfect crime."

But while the experience of the game can be likened to the payoff in a heist movie where the plan comes together, the actual experience of the game is planning and pulling off the heist and not the experience of watching others do it.  That means that you yourself accept responsibility for the pulling off the heist in all its elaborate steps, and are not just reporting the exciting parts.  

If that's not your cup of tea, I perfectly understand.  If you want to say people are childish for liking that, well... that's a different matter.


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## pemerton (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> If that's not your cup of tea, I perfectly understand.  If you want to say people are childish for liking that, well... that's a different matter.





Celebrim said:


> So, I understand that a person's emotional response to a dungeon is subjective and differs from person to person and from experience to experience.
> 
> But speaking as a DM, one of the things that strikes me about S1 is just how difficult it is to successfully replicate the dungeon.
> 
> ...



So you're taking the high ground by deriding others' preferences as "average seniors in high school or freshmen in college" rather than childish? With a tactical wargaming jibe for good measure?

I'm glad you mentioned B2, though - another Gygax module that I think is better than S1. (I've never done much with the Caves, but have had more than one good experience GMing hijinks in the Keep, mostly involving the evil priest disguised as good.)

On G2, it uses the three dimensions of the geography in a way that I've never seen replicated in a D&D module (not that I own the full set, but I've read a few). And consistently with the comments made by the Alarums and Excursions critic that I quoted - and quite at odds with your tactical wargame comment - it has a lot of scope for dealing with NPCs, striking or fracturing alliances, etc. It's a very dynamic environment where the dynamics of the geographic environment and the dynamics of the social environment are in synergy.



Celebrim said:


> Gygax's advice in the DMG is no less and probably much less dysfunctional than what you find in Burning Wheel or FATE or half a dozen other Indy RPGs where the author doesn't realize almost everything they are saying is predicated on at minimum not having more than 2-3 players in a high trust environment.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Indeed, one of the things that is most deficient in most modern RPGs compared to Gygax's writing, is that while modern RPGs are far more organized and coherent in their rules presentation, they often fail to really describe and demonstrate play as effectively, leading to perfectly coherent rules that are perfectly unable to obtain the results they are intended to produce.  Or at minimum, unable to tell a would be GM what they need to do to turn these rules into the game the rules intend, because they fail to realize how much more there is to an RPG session than the rules.



These comments make me wonder whether you've read the GMing advice for the games you're criticising (FATE, BW, maybe HeroWars/Quest and/or the various -World games?), let alone played them. These games describe and demonstrate play in far more detail than Gygax does (the closest he comes is not in his DMG at all, but in the closing pages of his PHB), and their authors manifestly realise that there is far more to GMing procedures and techniques than just the rules. Their advice and explanations reflect this.



I'm A Banana said:


> In a movie analogy, _Tomb of Horrors_ is perhaps best compared to a mystery. There are things that the antagonist knows that the protagonists do not, and the story is largely about uncovering those unknown things, until all the plans are laid bare (the treasure). In the movie version, you see the party standing in front of the green gargoyle head debating. The reckless, adventuresome character has already gone in the head, and she's been gone like an hour and hasn't come back. Something probably happened to her, but you don't know what, and you don't want it to happen to you. So all the characters are debating - do we send someone in? Do we use one of our limited "Ask A Friend" spells? Do we just move on? What if it vomits acid at us or something?



I think one of the relevant factors is that, in fact, the "Ask a Friend" spells aren't limited. There is no clock in ToH.

This seems to me to drive home [MENTION=31506]ehren37[/MENTION]'s point: optimal play of ToH (with a flying thief on a rope, or sheep being herded through the dungeon, or summoned monsters - the "cannon fodder" someone mentioned upthread) can tend to be boring. This come through in the Alarums and Excursions comment that I quoted upthread: no NPCs to engage with, no dynamism. It's one of the most static adventuring environments ever published, I think.


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## Zak S (Jan 26, 2016)

it's super-dynamic because you spend the whole game discussing what to do next with the other players.

That's the experience at the table, no matter what the movie in your head imagines.


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## Vigilance (Jan 26, 2016)

No. Tomb of Horrors is far from the worst adventure of all time.


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## Celebrim (Jan 26, 2016)

pemerton said:


> So you're taking the high ground by deriding others' preferences as "average seniors in high school or freshmen in college" rather than childish?




I didn't say that.  You have quoted me out of context using heavy snipping.  

I am in no way deriding the preference of high school or college age DMs, or even those that enjoy G2.  I'm just saying its not that hard of a dungeon to create.  Nor am I faulting a young DM for making something along the lines of G2.  I know I've turned out worse, and I could point out some features of G2 that are rather well done (lack of map symmetry for example is an important detail young map makers often get wrong).  But on the whole, I'd guess the average DM could write something along the lines of G2.  S1 has largely proved beyond even most of the better professional DM's ability to replicate.



> With a tactical wargaming jibe for good measure?




Jibe?  I rather like tactical wargaming, and make it a regular part of my D&D diet.  I'm merely asserting that sometimes the big masses of low level humanoids that show up repeatedly in Gygaxian design were uninspiring and led in the context of AD&D to rather uninteresting combats.  In T1 the bandits were well done.  In WG4 however, the most inspired part of the design is not the big set piece against the norkers and giants in the upper levels.  

The giants.... well, I find them more of the same trend on a bigger scale.

I seriously doubt you could get anything like B2 published today.  The keep, other than it's missing lots of essential information it expects a novice DM to supply, is a nice base of operations for what it is.  It's the kitchen sink caves that are, despite a few interesting encounters, the problem.

But the particularly poor design I'm referencing though can't be blamed on Gygax, but rather is riffing on the less inspired encounters in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb pits which have Gygax's fondness for big set piece encounters... without the tactical set piece.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 26, 2016)

pemerton said:


> I think one of the relevant factors is that, in fact, the "Ask a Friend" spells aren't limited. There is no clock in ToH.
> 
> This seems to me to drive home [MENTION=31506]ehren37[/MENTION]'s point: optimal play of ToH (with a flying thief on a rope, or sheep being herded through the dungeon, or summoned monsters - the "cannon fodder" someone mentioned upthread) can tend to be boring. This come through in the Alarums and Excursions comment that I quoted upthread: no NPCs to engage with, no dynamism. It's one of the most static adventuring environments ever published, I think.



I think ToH could stand to be much more dynamic, but I also think that this is a stylistic thing. Bringing sheep to the dungeon is like earning 10 gp from some orcs and then giving up to go home and become a baker because adventuring is too dangerous. Or in the mystery analogy, deciding after the second murder to just call the cops rather than find out how to survive. If the goal of play is to confront and overcome a challenge, it's not going to be fun if a bunch of summoned monsters beat the challenge. (Though this was in 1e, where divination spells and summoned monsters could just as easily screw over the party that used them much of the time). 

Now, ToH does kind of encourage this kind of extreme lateral thinking. I wouldn't say the module is perfect by any stretch.

But for the right goals of play, it's good at what it does. 

The "right goals of play" here really doesn't include "tell a compelling narrative." That's not what ToH is interested in at all.

It is interested in "reduce information asymmetry," ie, "solve the mystery." It's not necessarily the BEST THING EVER at that, but it's really what the module is offering, and that's where the fun of the module lies. Use your spells and abilities and puzzle-solving skills to determine how to get through this thing without grisly death. 

That can be a fun game, and ToH is totally a reasonable stab at that kind of fun with a lot of solid elements (like the gargoyle face). Given that play goal, ToH is clever and devious. A flying rogue on a rope is just a FOO strategy that might dominate the play experience, but given that ToH was one of the earliest examples of this design, I don't fault it much. The first group that beat it with a flying rogue on a rope would've felt VERY clever indeed before the Internet just ruined all the secrets! 

Given the goal of "Explore the unknown," though, ToH is just unfair and punishing you for doing what you think is fun.


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## werecorpse (Jan 26, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Dear werecorpse:
> 
> Since you've become the catalyst for a discussion of this, I thought it fair to address your point a bit more fully.
> 
> ...




Just dealing with that one paragraph. My point is that IMO Gygax had some wonderful skills but that he made mistakes. I don't consider it disrespectful to someone to say that I think they made mistakes. I greatly respect Gygax as a game designer and as a dungeon designer. I have never seen him run a game but from what I have read I respect him as a DM as well.

edit: just read your comments about G2. Irony.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 27, 2016)

I'm A Banana said:


> I think ToH could stand to be much more dynamic, but I also think that this is a stylistic thing. Bringing sheep to the dungeon is like earning 10 gp from some orcs and then giving up to go home and become a baker because adventuring is too dangerous. Or in the mystery analogy, deciding after the second murder to just call the cops rather than find out how to survive. *If the goal of play is to confront and overcome a challenge, it's not going to be fun if a bunch of summoned monsters beat the challenge. (Though this was in 1e, where divination spells and summoned monsters could just as easily screw over the party that used them much of the time). *




Though I'd say the magic user who summoned those monsters overcame the challange, not the monsters themselves.  Its a intelligent use of resources to overcome an obstacle.


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## vonmolkew (Jan 27, 2016)

haven't read all the comments, so sorry if I start beating a dead horse.....this was one of the most fun modules I've ever run...as far as the "Face" is concerned - doesn't anyone carry a 10' pole any more?  That was the first thing my party tried.  Started at 10'; came out as 5'.  Question:  who sends the entire party down a corridor (one of three mind you) without first scouting them out?  The "useless" poem at the beginning helped save their butts more than once.  Yes, a couple of them died.  Yes, they knew going in that this might be the first time it happened.  They still had fun.....also, one thing to remember:  this was written for the Original AD&D rules.  Back in a time where the DM was encouraged to be cold, heartless and vicious.  And from the article, it sounds like the 12 year old DM was exactly that....maybe he shouldn't have rubbed it in their faces.  Sometimes being a dick gets you punched in the face.......


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## darjr (Jan 27, 2016)

I ran it for my kids. My oldest had his character poke the sphere. He was playing a vampire centaur and was clued in when his finger grew back. His brother, playing a werewolf,  said "cool!" They were ten and twelve.


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## Parmandur (Jan 27, 2016)

Never played it, never really had that play style experience (Kickstarted Dungeon Crawl Classics latest printing to remedy that!), but "not liking the intended style" is kind of a leap to "WORST ADVENTURE EVAHR!"



Honestly, that 12 year old DM experience sounds aweful; but it also sounds like he and his friends grew as people from it.  Nobody, likely, has ever been able to say that of the Forest Oracle.


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## thom_likes_gaming (Jan 27, 2016)

Hilarious article, thank you John Wick.
Sure, he kinda missed the point, and his 12-year-old self simply didn't play it "right", but: The bit with the replay years later and the Bag of Holding alone is priceless. Laughed a lot.


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## pemerton (Jan 27, 2016)

I'm A Banana said:


> Bringing sheep to the dungeon is like earning 10 gp from some orcs and then giving up to go home and become a baker because adventuring is too dangerous. Or in the mystery analogy, deciding after the second murder to just call the cops rather than find out how to survive. If the goal of play is to confront and overcome a challenge, it's not going to be fun if a bunch of summoned monsters beat the challenge. (Though this was in 1e, where divination spells and summoned monsters could just as easily screw over the party that used them much of the time).
> 
> Now, ToH does kind of encourage this kind of extreme lateral thinking. I wouldn't say the module is perfect by any stretch.
> 
> ...



In the Alarums and Excursions review/critique that I posted upthread, the author also explains the procedure he used for exploring the pit with the levers: hammer iron spikes into the wall so the PCs have something to stand on/rope themselves to, _then_ pull the levers.

That's in the same general vicinity of a flying thief on a rope, and was implemented one of the first times that the module was run! And the player didn't seem to feel all that clever, though there are some snide criticisms of inexperienced players who didn't think of similar useful techniques.

I'm not really here to beat up on ToH. As I said in my first post, it's not the worst module that I own, but its certainly not the best, and not the best Gygax module that I own and have used. And at least some of the things that frustrate me about ToH were evident to players way back in 1975, as shown by the A&E review. Wick's rhetoric might be a bit overblown, but most of his particular criticisms are pretty old-hat and familiar.

They're hardly worthy of some of the outrage found in this thread.


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## pemerton (Jan 27, 2016)

Zak S said:


> it's super-dynamic because you spend the whole game discussing what to do next with the other players.



In that sense, solving any puzzle with a group of friends can be dynamic, especially in a context of no takebacks.

But that doesn't necessarily make for a good RPG session - as at least one relatively experienced player thought even way back in 1975 (per A&E quoted above).

EDIT: That is to say, a person for whom that sort of dynamism doesn't lead to a good RPG session is hardly some sort of freak or outlier, even if there are others for whom that _would_ be a good session.

I think Wick's criticisms of ToH are pretty commonplace and unremarkable. It's no surprise that not everyone agrees, given that "bad module" is a matter of taste and judgement, and obviously his rhetoric is intended to generate needless outrage, but there's nothing in his blog that's very shocking, is there? If he'd posted the A&E commentary under his own name, would that have caused outrage too? Is ToH now so iconic that criticising it is per se heretical?


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## pemerton (Jan 27, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> But the particularly poor design I'm referencing though can't be blamed on Gygax, but rather is riffing on the less inspired encounters in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb pits which have Gygax's fondness for big set piece encounters... without the tactical set piece.



I'm not sure where Q1 comes in - I certainly didn't mention it. It's a pretty awful module in my view, based on both reading and attempting to use various bits and pieces of it in various systems (RM, 4e). Some of the basic ideas of the demonweb are interesting, but that's about it.


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## Psikerlord# (Jan 27, 2016)

The Human Target said:


> Even as a tournament style module I think it sucks.
> 
> It's full of trial and error death.
> 
> ...




Best case scenario: it's a suicide mission for disposable PCs (as a tournament adventure, as it appears it was originally conceived), to see how far you can get before TPK.


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## shager (Jan 27, 2016)

In the article he reveals quite plainly why he hates this thing so much - running it as written caused him to lose his small number of friends for a whole year, and suffer all the effects of that which followed. That's pretty heavy stuff.


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## DEFCON 1 (Jan 27, 2016)

To figure out whether something is objectively "bad" (or even more to the point "the worst of all time")... you first need to establish what exactly it is trying to do (or what the author contends they were trying to accomplish with it.)  You then can look at the resulting item and begin to figure how how well or how poorly this item actually is what the author/creator was going for.

The Tomb of Horrors has a very specific purpose as a module.  It has a very specific style it is going for.  It has a very specific thing it is trying to accomplish.  Thus it behooves all of us to then look at the module and ask ourselves whether it does what it sets out to do.  If it comes even _slightly_ close to it, then it cannot be considered "bad" and most certainly cannot be considered "the worst of all time".

Notice here that I've put absolutely no moral or personal judgement on whether someone should _enjoy_ the item.  Whether or not the item floats the boat of the person looking at it has no consequence when trying to make an objective determination whether it is bad or good.  If you don't like or appreciate the aesthetic of horror movies, you quite possibly might look at the original 'Halloween' and say "that's a terrible film!" (especially if you're putting it up against things like 'The Godfather' or other film of that ilk that you love.)  But it's not.  We all know it's not.  In fact, it regularly voted as one of the greatest horror films of all time.  Thus, it cannot ever be called an objectively "bad" film... and ABSOLUTELY cannot be called "the worst film of all time".  And if someone does that, they obviously have little to no qualifications to making objective analysis.

The same holds true for The Tomb of Horrors.  You might not like, appreciated, or enjoy the aesthetic of the module and what was the author's intent... but if you want to have your criticism taken seriously, you have to put your distaste to the side and figure out "Does this module accomplish what it set out to do?"  And if you look at all the artwork, the maps, the creativity, the writing, the deviousness of the traps, the going against the grain of the tropes of the time, and also the possibility and style required to actually succeed... I don't know if there's any of us who could honestly say "Nope, it doesn't accomplish what it's trying to do."

And therefore it isn't objectively "the worst module of all time."


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## delericho (Jan 27, 2016)

DEFCON 1 said:


> To figure out whether something is objectively "bad" (or even more to the point "the worst of all time")... you first need to establish what exactly it is trying to do (or what the author contends they were trying to accomplish with it.)  You then can look at the resulting item and begin to figure how how well or how poorly this item actually is what the author/creator was going for.




I agree, with one caveat.

If "what the author was going for" is actually contrary to what makes for a good adventure module (in this case) then you could end up with something that achieves its goal but can't be considered a good example.

To give an absurd example, if I declare my goal to be "make a bunch of pancakes" but then sell those pancakes as "a new adventure module", I would have achieved my goal but obviously not created a good adventure module!

Or, to give a slightly less absurd example, something like The World's Worst Dungeon Crawl is clearly an adventure module, and it equally clearly achieves its goal, but it's deliberately not a _good_ adventure module - it tried for "so bad it's good", which isn't _quite_ the same thing.

...

None of which applies to "Tomb of Horrors".


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## Morrus (Jan 27, 2016)

delericho said:


> To give an absurd example, if I declare my goal to be "make a bunch of pancakes" but then sell those pancakes as "a new adventure module", I would have achieved my goal but obviously not created a good adventure module!




Well, in that situation your actual goal is in conflict with your advertised goal.


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## delericho (Jan 27, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Well, in that situation your actual goal is in conflict with your advertised goal.




I did say it was an absurd example.


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## Pauper (Jan 27, 2016)

For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.

In that context, Tomb of Horrors as 'worst' makes perfect sense, because it's pretty much the exact opposite of Ravenloft -- Tomb says 'you will go through this module in exactly the way I specify or you will all die! repeatedly!', while Ravenloft says, 'hey, go through this mod however you like, I can adapt, oh and by the way I can do a lot worse than kill you'.

--
Pauper


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## Celebrim (Jan 27, 2016)

Pauper said:


> For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.




Which is just absurd, because while I am a great admirer of Ravenloft and would vote for it for "Best Adventure of All Times" the one big issue I do have with the module is that it is an absolute meat grinder that is in many ways far more lethal than Tomb of Horrors.

Ravenloft gives suggested level guidelines that are probably too low for the difficulties presented, and is in the hands of a DM given to ego gaming probably even worse than Tomb of Horrors because Strahd can be treated as if he validates toying with the PC's unfairly.  If anything, I6 gets my vote for most difficult adventure of all time if played as written by a capable DM.  Sixth level characters just don't have a chance against a monster like Strahd who can drain energy levels (and there is nothing they can do to stop him), and easily retreat to regenerate before attacking say 10 minutes later.  They can't even hide, because he can scry them unfailingly, and he has enormous resources to bring to bear in terms of minions along with 10th level spellcasting abilities.  

And the module absolutely wrecks a party for trying to retreat, so you can't even run away.  And traps?  While the traps aren't normally immediately lethal, they do split the party up so that Strahd can prey on them all the more easily.  Inevitably, players get split up, get lost, get isolated, and either die to vampire or find themselves being punished by one of the absolute lethal "you dared to run away?" devices.

It's a slaughter, and played as written, it's not even a fun slaughter.  Getting I6 to play well requires enormous DM effort and surviving it requires extremely experienced players.   I've never run it except as a one shot because it is literally more dangerous than Tomb of Horrors.

And there are some minor issues as well.  For example, the catacombs level has a lot in common with Tomb of Horrors save that unlike Tomb of Horrors it tends to create a lot of boring, pointless, and undirected play because it commits the cardinal sin of module design in being repetitious and symmetrical.  If 'pixel bitching' is bad in Tomb of Horrors, it's far worse in the catacombs of Ravenloft.

UPDATE: The cynic in me just realized that this is perhaps not nearly as incoherent as it may seem once you realize that it is Wick doing to the voting.  Tomb of Horrors puts the DM in a very passive role of responding to PC actions.  If you are a DM given to ego gaming, the only satisfaction that Tomb of Horrors can provide is killing your PC off rather suddenly.  But Ravenloft all but openly validates an ego driven GM toying with and tormenting the players endlessly.  You've got a highly active god-like NPC that can do just about anything he likes, is basically unkillable if run well, has mind control powers, can strip the PC's of their ability to defend themselves, and lives in a giant maze like dungeon which is designed to control, steer, confuse, and ultimately drive PC's to despair without immediately killing them.  If you get your kicks off of controlling your players and are the sort of person that gets disgusted with a game once the players are able to gain some system mastery and begin steering play, then Ravenloft is practically an ego gaming DMs nirvana.  Taken in this light, it gives you this ultimate DM pet NPC that can literally force the PCs to do his bidding.  Why wouldn't a DM with a huge ego love this module?  By comparison, ToH gives the DM nothing to steer play with.


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## delericho (Jan 27, 2016)

Pauper said:


> For full effect, contrast this article with the recently published "Best Adventure of All Times" essay where Wick discusses what made Ravenloft such an amazing module.




Having read both, I'm now more convinced that [MENTION=98938]DeF[/MENTION]CON1 made the right assessment - John Wick seems to have a very specific set of requirements for what _he_ wants in an adventure and has made the mistake of considering _his_ tastes to be a marker of universal truth.

(Consider food: you can have a good pizza and a good curry, and both are good meals but they're _different_ good meals. And a person who loves pizza and hates curry will of course prefer the one over the other. But that doesn't make the curry a bad meal - it just means it's not to his taste.)

And, unlike "Tomb of Horrors", I actually have run "I6 Ravenloft", and do indeed count it as probably the best single adventure I've ever run. But I wouldn't hold it up as the one true way to design a good adventure - and indeed in some ways it's got a _lot_ to answer for, ushering in as it did an era of story-heavy adventures, many of which were pretty damn poor.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 27, 2016)

shager said:


> In the article he reveals quite plainly why he hates this thing so much - running it as written caused him to lose his small number of friends for a whole year, and suffer all the effects of that which followed. That's pretty heavy stuff.




Its not the modules fault he was a jerk.


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## thom_likes_gaming (Jan 27, 2016)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Its not the modules fault he was a jerk.




Good gravy... he was 12 years old. How much maturity do you expect?


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## Celebrim (Jan 27, 2016)

delericho said:


> (Consider food: you can have a good pizza and a good curry, and both are good meals but they're _different_ good meals. And a person who loves pizza and hates curry will of course prefer the one over the other. But that doesn't make the curry a bad meal - it just means it's not to his taste.)




I think the food analogy is very appropriate.

I like a garden salad.  You can make a delicious garden salad.  While I consider it a bit strange if a person really only wants to eat salad, I can sympathize with that because I understand the deliciousness of crisp fresh vegetables where the ingredients are artfully considered to form a great whole.  

I might say, "That's a great salad." 

Now, on the other hand, I also like cheesecake.  Cheesecake is a very delicate and difficult dish to make well.  Many professional chefs can't even do a great job of it.   Many baked goods are similar in this.  They require deep understanding of the chemistry that goes into baking, great precision in technique, and lots and lots of practice to pull off well.   

I can't really say that salads are better than cheesecakes from an objective standpoint.  I eat salads more often than cheesecake on purpose, because a diet too rich in cheesecake would be bad on several levels.   I likewise can't say that cheesecake is objectively better than dishes I don't particularly like, like roasted red beets.  If a person likes salad, or cheesecake, or roasted red beets, or dislikes these things, then good for them.  I'm particularly admiring of persons who appreciate the goodness in all sorts of foods, in the way I just can't of red beets (or potato chips), but if a person likes relatively few foods that is there preference.  And, as I'm likely to like many of the same foods that they do, I will sympathize with their preferences.

But I can objectively state that cheesecake requires more skill to pull off adequately than a garden salad does.  A garden salad is an appropriate dish to give to a novice cook to begin learning how to prepare good food.  And there is an art underneath a good garden salad and we could actually discuss at great length the elements that will make a garden salad good and worthy of praise.  And we can do that without diminishing the fact that you might have enjoyed that garden salad from Wendy's rather well.  But a cheesecake now, and many other similar baked goods, is likely to turn out disastrously in the hands of a novice.  Much greater skill and effort is required to prepare a good one.  And we can say that without insisting that anyone is wrong for not liking cheesecake much.  Just because something is fancy and complicated and difficult doesn't mean it is necessarily more enjoyable, much less more enjoyable for everyone.

That is to say, admiring the craftsmanship of something is different than enjoying it.   You can appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into things you don't particularly care for, and you can enjoy things that don't have much craftsmanship in them.

This is the same way I feel about modules.  Taken for what it is, S1 is like a rather well crafted cheesecake (though not perfect of course) - or if you prefer like a near perfectly executed dish of caramelized Brussels sprouts with whole roasted garlic, duck bacon, and a balsamic drizzle.  G2 is like a rather average garden salad.   Now, you may well enjoy G2 more than S1, and that's fine and perhaps natural.  And there is certainly nothing wrong with not liking cheesecake or Brussel sprouts at all.  But to claim that a module is 'the worst adventure ever', when in fact it is well crafted and enjoyed by a very large number of people, is like claiming any dish with red roasted beets in it is the worst ever just because you don't like beets.

UPDATE: A bit more thought on the food analogy.

Often when we are discussing the quality of a module, the very appropriate question comes up which is, "What could we do to make the module better?"  This is an appropriate question because it gets to the heart of the question of the module's craftsmanship.  The module will, as almost any dish will, have flaws and refinements that could be made to improve it.  The very best dishes - and adventures - are going to be the sort that we can not easily find ways to improve, and which we must confess honestly we couldn't do better ourselves.

But what typically happens in the case of a module when we do this is something that is absurd.  If asked, "What could we do to make Tomb of Horrors better?", people will begin to say things like, "We could make it less deadly.",  We could make it less challenging.", "We could give it more monsters.", and when people say that they indicate that not only do they not understand how to make the module better, but they don't even understand what the module is.  

They are like someone asked to criticize a cheesecake who says, "Well, we should take some of the eggs out, indeed I think it would be better with no eggs.   And no sour cream as well.  And we should use a bit of olive oil.  And we should start with cottage cheese rather than cream cheese, but not as much.  And we should replace the flour with lettuce.  And then add some palm hearts, some tomatoes, and a bit of fresh basil."  And if you respond, "But that wouldn't be a cheesecake, it would be a salad!", they say, "Well of course, salads are better than cheesecakes!"  Or in the same way, you might say, "How could this salad be made better?", and they might say, "Well, we need bigger less crispy croutons.  And less lettuce.  Indeed, a lot less lettuce.  Maybe some basil.  And we should mash up the tomatoes and cook them.  And we should use much more cheese and pepperoni.  A few of the onions and peppers can stay, but the cucumber has to go."  You might respond, "But that's not a salad; that's a pizza!", and they respond, "Yes, that's how you make a salad better, you turn it into a pizza."

Now that's funny on some level, especially when meant as a joke.  But it's ridiculous if you don't see how ridiculous that actually is.


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## Celebrim (Jan 27, 2016)

thom_enworld said:


> Good gravy... he was 12 years old. How much maturity do you expect?




None, or rather, barely more than was displayed in the story.  (I'd hope my 12 year olds would do better in such a test.)

But he's not 12 any more, and rather than blaming the problems on his 12 year old self, he's persisting in blaming the module.  This suggests he's not progressed very far from the story, particularly in light of what he recounts about what he has done since then.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 27, 2016)

thom_enworld said:


> Good gravy... he was 12 years old. How much maturity do you expect?




Not much but to be a grown man and still hold a grudge against a game module is pathetic. Especially when the blowback against his 12 year old self was due to him being a 12 year old jerk to his only friends. Yet he's acting like the module was what lost him his only friends for a year.  I'm sure tons of 12 year old kids back in the day ran it and didn't lose all their friends with a TPK.  The whole blog post comes across like he's still suffering from PTSD over it. I hope he gets the help he needs to put this behind him.  Are there RPG orientated therapists?  Analysts? Maybe an analrapist?


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## Emerikol (Jan 27, 2016)

One of the greatest of all time.   It is a tournament module and it is roleplaying as "war" at it's finest but that is a known fact.

I think many "modernists" who view roleplaying differently see the module in a negative light.  Perhaps by their values and their playstyles it is not good but that just means it doesn't fit a purpose for which it was never defined.   For those like me who prefer the Gygaxian style of play it is awesome.


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## Uchawi (Jan 27, 2016)

It was one of the most unforgiving adventures that subscribed to a specific style of play and most likely received bad reviews when the table did not appreciate its focus.


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## Celebrim (Jan 27, 2016)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure where Q1 comes in....




The whole thing about encounters in bare rooms with "60 gnolls", "40 bugbears",  "20 ogres", "10 trolls", and so forth is not made up, but an actual series of encounters in Q1.  

But realizing that is true of Q1, I'm having a hard time understanding your appreciation of G2.  You claim to like the three dimensionality of the module, but its only superficially 3D.  Much like the very similar B2 structure, the central valley disguises that its all taking place on a flat surface.  None of the encounters make much use of the 3D structure, certainly not as much as they could or other modules do, and few (one?) make direct use of as much as a staircase.  Encounter areas don't usually interact with each other across space, much less across 3D space.  Rooms are generally not described as sloping, and the caves are all on two flat non-intersecting levels connected at 2 points only - one of which is a 200' vertical 10' wide shaft.

The problems are so numerous, I could fill more pages discussing them than the module actually has.  Just briefly:

a) About half of the encounters 50 odd encounters are with "3 frost giants" or "4 frost giants" all equipped about the same.  Most of the remainder are with different numbers of frost giants, or similar numbers of giants of a different species (ogres, ogre magi, hill giants, stone giants, fire giants)- most of which are given by the text every reason to be mutually hostile to the players.   Two encounters of the same sort is 1 too many.  Three is right out and should be sent back for revision.  Four is the editor should send back a letter to the writer stating no further work is needed or desired.  Gygax of course didn't have an editor at this point other than himself to speak of, and was breaking ground in undiscovered country, so we ought to allow that.  But that doesn't mean that the level of craftsmanship on display is often very high.

b) Even among the non-giant encounters, there are reoccurring themes - 2 encounters with frost toads and 3 encounters with winter wolves, for example.  Rarely (bordering on never) does the terrain or circumstances of the encounter play any role, and the text certainly doesn't high light such things.  Tactically, the fights divide into to two types - straight up slogs or else undetectable ambushes that then turn into straight up slog fests.  The practically the only mentions of terrain are to ensure fireball, which Gygax sure recognizes in 1e is a leveler of all playing fields against mosters and especially cold loving ones, is partially nerfed and its use punished.

c) Far from the assumption of dynamism, for the most part the module not only assumes monsters will occupy static positions but depends on it.  The sheer numbers of giants would absolutely overwhelm a party of the suggested level should the giants actually react dynamically.  The entire upper level of the 'Glacier Rift' is barely larger than a football field, and certainly no larger than a stadium.  From the giant's perspective and sense of scale, the whole place is scarcely larger than an modest scale upper class home.  In many cases, 3-4 giants are living in rooms from their perspective not much larger than a walk in closet with just enough room to stretch out on the furs and sacks said to be there also.   Yet the assumption for the most part of the text is that the vast majority of the tribe will be unaware of a battle mere yards away and must be alerted by action stealing activity to sounds that would be obvious at twice the distance.  Indeed, the arrangements of the giants to defend their stronghold are ridiculous to the point of seeming to be an attempt to actually sabotage their ability to defend themselves.  It seems that way because it actually is.

d) The module is no less a potential meat grinder and TPK than ToH, only it depends far much more on luck.  If any 2-3 giants roll high on their 'to hit' rolls and/or damage in the same round, you have PC paste.  The Dragon encounter involves two dragons, each of which insta-kills any PC of the suggested levels that lacks protection from cold if either saving throw is failed, and which together will generally TPK a party without protection from cold regardless of saving throws.  Yes, of course a PC party should prepare for cold danger in such an obvious scenario, but then again of course a PC party should cast 'augury' or other precaution before stepping into the Devil's Mouth.  The difference is, in G2 even if you do everything right, you can still die to bad luck.

e) The module has some of the worst verisimilitude of any of the old school modules that got a reputation for bad verisimilitude.  The only real access to the dragon's lair is through a shaft so narrow and so vertical that they arguably can't use it.  The dragons themselves are so venerable that it's difficult to imagine why they tolerate acting like pets, even to such as giants.  The daily caloric intake of the complex is a good bit greater than a city of 1000 people, but there is basically no economic activity going on.  The inhabitants need to eat 2-3 bison, or a dozen elk, or a few score deer or antelope daily to avoid starvation, but other than the one kitchen little activity seems to be happening.  None of the giants seem to have anything to do with themselves except wait around to die.  This is particularly odd because scattered throughout the module are a very large number of enormously valuable and sometimes incredibly complex items of giantish manufacture.  This includes a huge number of objects of art specifically created to honor different tribes of giants apparently made by completely absent giantish craftsman, as well as an enormous number of giant weapons and the like.  Distant tribes are engaged in economic trade that is lacking any apparent source, and while you could try to make this some sort of clue it's more retroactively trying to plug holes than actually thought out.  The overall appearance is not of an actual functioning society, but of a particular sort of dungeon designed for balanced play and not the actual utility and use of the inhabitants.

Additionally, there are items covered with contact poison in the open in living quarters, which much represent some considerable risk to the inhabitants beside being conceptually less fair than most of ToH which at least calls out that everything is deserving caution.  And then there is the enormously unnecessarily complex (and lethal) puzzle box, which has to rival anything in ToH for arbitrary death.

f) It's actually fairly impressive how much game is incorporated into such a short text, but about half the text is simply a listing of innumerable treasures that degenerate to redundancy and tedium fairly quickly.  If trying not to die in ToH is supposed to be tedium, trying to ransack all the sacks, chests, and so forth to find all the meaningless XP boosting foozles you need is much worse.   For the most part, this is to Gygax what most early novels are to writers.  Compared to even B2, a module I dislike, from a writing perspective this is a weak effort with little creativity or style.

g) The opportunities for role play are scarcely more than in ToH, which does have the nymph.  Sure, a DM could make more and invent all sorts of personalities and individual motives, but as written there actually isn't a lot in the way of disparate factions here to play on.  The slaves are few and explicitly called out in the text as worthless.  The ogres and yeti have no real reason to revolt, nor does the text call out either as possibilities.  The cloud giant is described as a new henchmen.  The fire giants have every reason to be hostile.  The stone giants aren't hostile, but they've no reason at all to be helpful and break their neutrality either.  The dragons and other pets always attack and often with surprise.  Only the storm giant offers much in the way of meaningful RP.  Maybe a DM could roll with a suggestion to, for instance, encourage the cloud giant to overthrow the Jarl and rule as king in his place, but it doesn't appear that the module is intended to play that way or anticipates anything of the sort.  Nor does there appear to be much opportunity for the players to win anything's trust save magically.   The price of anything's loyalty but the storm giant is not specified.

h) The text descends far too often into Gygaxian obscurantism.  I don't mind all the obsolete words, and you can usually figure them out from the context, but the garbled sentences are often too much even more me.   Just try reading the paragraph near the start about the suggested party composition for clarity.

Now, is it fun?  I'm sure it could in the hands of the right DM and with players with a particular sort of attitude be a lot of fun.  But as a design it just doesn't hold up all that well.  It's seldom inspired, rarely as grand as it can or maybe should be, is way too repetitive, and spends far too much time describing various treasures that really only exist to fast power level the party up to the point they can take on the Fire Giants.  The whole thing feels primitive - like some random mobs you are supposed to grind in World of Warcraft just to hit the next level.  By contrast, I feel ToH's design has stood up very well to the test of time, and it makes a great module even today.


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## Treantmonklvl20 (Jan 27, 2016)

The module is basically unplayable.  That said, it was a fun read, and that we're talking about it all this time later means that it was thought-provoking at least.


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## MwaO (Jan 27, 2016)

thom_enworld said:


> Good gravy... he was 12 years old. How much maturity do you expect?




I'd note how he behaved at a convention as a grown up. The story sounds kind of funny until you look closely at it. i.e. just imagine being one of the other players at that table. You've traveled to a convention, spent money to play a slot(and therefore heavily limited your other choices), and some guy tricks you into a TPK 5 minutes into the mod. 

Sounds if he might have gotten lucky to not get punched again...


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## Zak S (Jan 27, 2016)

Treantmonklvl20 said:


> The module is basically unplayable.  That said, it was a fun read, and that we're talking about it all this time later means that it was thought-provoking at least.




How can you use the word "unplayable" to describe a module that has been played? And beaten?

Like when people say "Ok, I played this in 1992 and..." are you saying they are lying?

Do you think the fan press stories from the original tournament runs are a clever fabrication?

How deep does this conspiracy you're imagining run?

These are not rhetorical questions--I really want to know.


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## Shadowdweller00 (Jan 28, 2016)

Treantmonklvl20 said:


> The module is basically unplayable.  That said, it was a fun read, and that we're talking about it all this time later means that it was thought-provoking at least.



The module is not remotely unplayable.  It DOES require a healthy sense of paranoia and the expectation that what you don't know will probably kill you.

Speaking for myself, I LOVE games like that - played fair, in proper doses, and without misconceptions of the sort of game one is getting into.


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## Treantmonklvl20 (Jan 28, 2016)

Zak S said:


> How can you use the word "unplayable" to describe a module that has been played? And beaten?
> 
> Like when people say "Ok, I played this in 1992 and..." are you saying they are lying?
> 
> ...




Google "Tomb of Horrors unplayable" and you will get lots of hits.  None will speak about a conspiracy (I take that back, I didn't click them, I'm assuming none will speak of a conspiracy).  You may find that the English language occasionally has nuance.  For example, I have been known to refer to a particular colleagues writing as "undecipherable" yet I have an employee who can indeed read her writing.  No, I do not suspect my employee and this colleague are running a conspiracy either.

In regards to Tomb of Horrors, I can say that when I originally read the module many years ago, I decided I would never run it, because I did not think it would be fun to run or play.  I still have it on my bookshelf, and have never run it in all these years, never will.  That's what I meant by unplayable.  Sorry that you misunderstood.


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## Celebrim (Jan 28, 2016)

Treantmonklvl20 said:


> Google "Tomb of Horrors unplayable" and you will get lots of hits.




Plenty of people have false ideas about plenty of topics.   



> You may find that the English language occasionally has nuance.




The English language has plenty of nuance, but nuance is not the same as nonsense.  That Tomb of Horrors is unplayable is nonsense.  That you try to defend it, citing 'nuance', is to misuse nuance as much as you have misused unplayable.



> For example, I have been known to refer to a particular colleagues writing as "undecipherable" yet I have an employee who can indeed read her writing.




What I generally note is that people use familiar words like 'indecipherable' when they lack the vocabulary to come up with a more appropriate term.  But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope you meant to use the term merely as comic exaggeration.  

So, were you utilizing comic exaggeration when you said that the module was unplayable?



> In regards to Tomb of Horrors, I can say that when I originally read the module many years ago, I decided I would never run it, because I did not think it would be fun to run or play.  I still have it on my bookshelf, and have never run it in all these years, never will.  That's what I meant by unplayable.  Sorry that you misunderstood.




Choosing not to play something is not the same as something being unable to be played.  If you meant that you decided to never run it, then you should have said that.

Also, in general, apologizing for someone else's behavior is the same as saying that they and not you made the mistake.  So it's not an apology at all, but in fact a covert insult.  

Zak S didn't misunderstand you at all.  He assumed you were intelligent enough to mean what you said and responded to you as if you were intelligent enough to deserve a response.

Incidentally, out of curiosity I did Google: "Tomb of horrors unplayable".   And while its hard to tell what Google censors these days, the majority of my top answers, including essays like, "Tomb of Horrors: A D&D classic, or an unplayable deathtrap?", come down decidedly on the side of the adventure as a classic, and often, as the greatest D&D module of all time.  Perhaps you were too quick to judge all those years ago.


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## werecorpse (Jan 28, 2016)

It has been thought provoking and I have gone back and had a look at the module which I admit I haven't looked at since I played it in the early 80's.

---Spoilers below---

It still feels like there are too many arbitrary "no save you die gotcha" events or if you do X you get a prize (but you could just have easily died no save so the reward is too capricious to feel earned). Having said that it's not as deadly as I remember and I do credit a fair bit of the deadliness to the DM approach. In Wick's case, and in many others from what I understand, the DM seemed to embrace the DM v player style of game play (which is a style I'm not fond of but you may like) rather than DM as independent arbiter or co-storyteller. The advice for the DM in the module encourages independent arbiter but the competitive style seemed all to common when this was run in my day. I think that the tone of this adventure did imply that style of play.

The green devil mouth is a classic example. It doesn't suggest that the DM encourages players climb in and indeed on reading it again and the description of a sphere of annihilation in the DMG once any matter touches it it is destroyed. So unless you jump into it you would know it's destroying matter once you put your hand in, before going further (indeed sensibly the surrounding air would be rushing into it but maybe magic doesn't work that way). 

I still think it's a beautiful piece of work and a seminal work that inspires and intrigues people 40 years on so kudos. It's not my preferred style of play it feels more like a bunch of puzzle tests, some requiring thought some needing luck, than the RPGs I am used to playing.

As a side thought I read about how when it was run at a tournament a group placed the gold crown found in the pillared throne room on the Demi lich's skull and touched the silver end of the sceptre to it. Gary Gygax was there and was called over to adjudicate and he ruled it destroyed the Demi lich. 
Now in the module it says "touching the silver nob to the crown while wearing it the wearer is instantly snuffed out turning to a fetid powder which cannot be brought back to life no matter what" and it also says abou the final encounter "the skull can be harmed only as follows" and then lists 8 ways you can harm the skull (it doesn't include the crown/sceptre). I know that no one I played with would have allowed the crown thing to work - or anything else other than the 8 ways described. 

Here's a list of fun ways to traverse tomb of horrors
- spend a few months casting divination spells with a list of questions before even approaching it
- sit outside for a week or two and send in sheep, summoned beasts, scry, etc
- cast find the path, find traps, knock, retreat and rest a day after every encounter. While inside remain flying and invisible. Use summoned monsters, dig past doors, etc
- summon earth elemental so to explore, tunnel and map it.
- or my personal favourite just strip mine the hill (50 charmed kobolds should do it) and enter every room from above.

And don't forget to sell off all the adamantine and mithril doors, vaults, valves etc - woo hoo cashola!

Whatever you do don't form up with a hardy band of adventurers and enter the tomb to explore it. This is an excavation not a combat mission.


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## Caliburn101 (Jan 28, 2016)

The OP failed to understand what type of adventure he was running, and then blamed the adventure and not his lack of comprehension.

Tomb of Horrors is a classic adventure for a good reason. I've run it seven times since it first came out and only had one TPK. I've run it in D&D (of various edition), GURPS and RuneQuest (the last two systems far more lethal than D&D) and I have never had a group of players complain...

... quite the opposite in fact. They were usually the kind of people who enjoy horror movies, and they were mature and intelligent gamers (almost to the last of them).

The module is all about how you approach it, and about what you get out of a game.

Are you more concerned with challenge, invoking a rise in heart rate and trepidation for your enjoyment, or are you a self-entitled monty-haul munchkin (or some variant of that)? Where you are in that range will determine your appreciation of the module.

Tomb of Horrors never suited the processed cheese always-encounter-fair-CR approach to gaming because it pre-existed it, and if you aren't clever and lucky you have to run away at some point. If the GM is fair about pre-warning players, and has the right players (those more concerned with role-play over roll-play), they will get the most out of the dungeon and won't mind it's unforgiving nature.

I wish more published material didn't have a background write-up like "The dangerous dungeon of whatever, from whom countless adventurers have never returned", only to be an average working day stroll for adventurers of the right level.

Anyone running this dungeon who didn't realise what is was before they ran it either didn't bother reading it, or are dumb as a post.


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## Hussar (Jan 28, 2016)

Tomb of Horrors, to me, is kinda like a Tarantino movie.  Either you really like them, or you really hate them.  It's kinda rare to find someone who is on the fence.  TOH hits all the buttons for people.  If you want this style of play, then, it's a fantastic module.  If it's not your bag, then it's REALLY not your bag.  It's a bit of a one trick pony - it's not like you can change into different approaches in the adventure - either you're playing super paranoid SAS commandoes, or you're dead.  You can't talk to anything, there's nothing, other than the traps, to interact with, and there's virtually nothing to fight.

To use 5e parlance, it's 100% exploration pillar.  (Or close enough to 100%)  

For exactly the same reasons [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] can look at the G modules and think they're somewhat simple to design (they're mostly combat adventures after all, one trick ponies as well), others look at ToH and think it's pretty much one long "gotcha". 

Personally, I find a number of the trap encounters far too arbitrary to be interesting.  You've got a 2 in three chance of dying at the entrance, and, outside of something like Contact other Plane or other "Please Mr. DM, can you give us a hint" type spells, there's no reason to try one over another.  It's far too aribitrary for my tastes.  I mean, good grief, you need to find what, some 11 secret doors, including one hidden inside a pit trap, in order to complete this module.  Fail any one of those find secret doors checks, and you're SOL, you cannot actually find Acerak.

Certainly not to my tastes anymore.


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## chibi graz'zt (Jan 28, 2016)

Interesting, the links to Wicks blog are denying access, seems he's taken his page down?


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## Pauper (Jan 28, 2016)

It's a 403 error for the entire site -- seems like someone's messing with Wick's website, or something else has happened to mess with the permissions. It might just be maintenance on his webhost.


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## DEFCON 1 (Jan 28, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Here's a list of fun ways to traverse tomb of horrors
> - spend a few months casting divination spells with a list of questions before even approaching it
> - sit outside for a week or two and send in sheep, summoned beasts, scry, etc
> - cast find the path, find traps, knock, retreat and rest a day after every encounter. While inside remain flying and invisible. Use summoned monsters, dig past doors, etc
> ...




Now see here... this is precisely the sort of logic and intellectual rigor that has absolutely no place in the game of Dungeons & Dragons!    These are the sorts of actions that an organization or city planning commission would undertake, not the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventuring group would follow!

D&D "dungeon crawling" adventuring groups are the equivalent of the people who jump off cliffs in wingsuits or deep dive without scuba gear into those deep holes in the ocean floor or freeclimb vertical mountain faces without any safety gear on.  99.999% of society look at them and asks "What possible reason is there for risking your life like that for conceivably no return?"  And invariably the answer is "Why not?"  Dungeon crawlers in the world of D&D are the same way-- delving into magically sealed and defended areas with no knowledge of what is going on inside, risking their lives for no reason other than the excitement and the hope of untold riches within (despite having no real knowledge such riches even exist.)  No average person would risk their lives for that-- going in through the front door and just "seeing what happens" based upon their skill alone.  They'd do exactly what you suggested in your list... not play fair (according to the tropes of the D&D "dungeon crawling" game.)


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## Celebrim (Jan 28, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Personally, I find a number of the trap encounters far too arbitrary to be interesting.  You've got a 2 in three chance of dying at the entrance, and, outside of something like Contact other Plane or other "Please Mr. DM, can you give us a hint" type spells, there's no reason to try one over another.  It's far too aribitrary for my tastes.  I mean, good grief, you need to find what, some 11 secret doors, including one hidden inside a pit trap, in order to complete this module.  Fail any one of those find secret doors checks, and you're SOL, you cannot actually find Acerak.
> 
> Certainly not to my tastes anymore.




So, while I am a big fan of the module and would list it in the top 5 best of all time, I have numerous complaints large and small against the module.  Although I know where you are coming from, I would phrase them slightly differently than you do.

The modules biggest problem isn't the arbitrary nature of the traps, but the fact that the module as written tends to specify a list of arbitrary solutions to each problem the module presents and explicitly excludes all others.  

So for example, you complain about the initial three entrances to the tomb, claiming that there is a 2 in 3 chance of dying.  But I think this analysis is flawed.  For one thing, the collapsing stone trap entrance 'only' does 5-50 damage.  That's not enough to ensure a TPK given the levels of the PC's.  Even the thief is likely to be 11th level or so, and therefore have enough hit points to survive an average roll.  And a 9th or 10th level fighter is almost certain to survive even a harsh roll.   And let's keep in mind, at this level you can have 9th level clerics, who can raise dead if they have a body on hand to raise.  So if you did get hit by the collapsing stone trap, at most you'd expect it to be a set back that the party could deal with.  

The really problematic entrance is the one with the sliding block trap, and that's only because the text lists a few arbitrary magical solutions and excludes all others.  That might be reasonable for tournament play when you are trying to ensure all the refs rule the same on the main situations that come up, but it's not reasonable in general and even from a tournament play perspective many of the listed solutions are somewhat arbitrary as to why they work and others don't.   Why not 'stone shape'?  Would planeshift or teleport work?   What about oil of etherealness?  PC's have potentially lots of solutions at this level, many just as reasonable as the official ones the text lists.  It's not the arbitrary nature of the problems that bother me, but the arbitrary nature of the solutions.  

Nowhere is that more of a problem than in what I consider to be the modules one entirely unfair encounter, and that is with Acererak himself.  Exactly what harms the demi-lich is one of the most arbitrary lists in history, and the module provides not only zero clues to the solution but the things you need to have a reasonable chance of beating the demi-lich are not to be found in the module.  Indeed, a quick look at the pregenerated characters shows that basically none of them have what they need to take down the demilich before being destroyed.  The spell resources they need are mostly above their level.  The weapons they need they don't have.  And the spells and weapons aren't to be found in the dungeon.  By contrast, every single other problem in the dungeon has a solution which some area of the dungeon contains an answer to.  Need a magic ring?  There is a room containing one.  Need 10 large gems?   There is a room that contains them.   Need true seeing to overcome a puzzle?  There is an item in the tomb that provides that effect.  

Now, on a metalevel this makes a bit of sense.  Acererak wants heroes to overcome his traps, but doesn't want to be defeated.  But as module design, giving players no real way to win is just bad.   You could easily tweak the meta to have Acererak so confident he can't be defeated, that he's left the gear players need to defeat him hidden in different parts of the dungeon - a power word: kill scroll painted on plaster that can be carefully removed from the wall if recognized, 3 forget wizard scrolls in a trapped chest, a room containing a lethal trap which if somehow evaded allows the party to claim at the least +4 sword, and so forth.  That would vastly improve the design of the module conceptually.  

One of the best things about the module is Acererak's taunting of the players manages to make a static passive foe into a memorable reoccurring NPC - and one you come to hate.  But I think that aspect though could be made even stronger.

Finally, the tomb is far to amendable to solutions that evade it.  By far the best approach in my opinion is to go Bellock rather than Indiana Jones, thereby rendering looting the whole tomb into more of a business endeavor than a fabulous adventure.  All that fantastic color in the tomb just becomes more loot, and indeed the tomb itself is in many cases worth more than the treasure that is in it.  For example, the mithral vault and the adamantium doors are probably worth more than most kingdoms.

But these complaints don't detract completely from the many things the module does get right, or from how it usually plays for experienced players who don't start thinking out of the box until they get in the tomb and realize they need to.


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## Shades of Eternity (Jan 28, 2016)

man seriously on the fence.

tomb of horror represent a style of gameplay that isn't everybody's cup of tea.  dubbed "fantasy vietnam" by some, it is a harsh assumption that everybody is out to kill you.

however, legend of the five rings (which john wick is partly responsible for) also has a lot of instant kill mechanics, but in a different way.

can't really call either right or wrong, but tomb of horror isn't the worst module by any stretch.


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## Balesir (Jan 28, 2016)

What really puzzles me about ToH is that it's vulnerable to a party thinking as one of the groups of my acquaintance did (I wasn't playing with them that night, more's the pity).

There are doors in the place worth more than the "treasure". Seriously, calculate the volume and mass of the mithril "valves" (14' by 28' by 3' and specifically noted as "solid mithril"!*) and the adamantium "trick" door. The party simply went away and negotiated with a kingdom of dwarves to dig the hill in which the Tomb sat away completely. Simply erase it from the map. Remove every trap and wall from the outside in. The dwarves got the mithril, the party got the 'treasure'. Oh, and some shiny dwarven armour.



*: At a rough estimate, allowing for the doors to be non-rectangular and such, this amounts to over 1.25 million pounds of mithril. 12.5 million mithril coins in OD&D terms. That's a lot, even if you have to fight for it.


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## pemerton (Jan 28, 2016)

Caliburn101 said:


> The OP failed to understand what type of adventure he was running
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



So just to be clear - RPGers who don't like ToH are self-entitled monty-haul munchkins? Including the author of the 1975 A&E review, who played it at Origins in 1975?


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## Zak S (Jan 28, 2016)

Balesir said:


> What really puzzles me about ToH is that it's vulnerable to a party thinking as one of the groups of my acquaintance did (I wasn't playing with them that night, more's the pity).
> 
> There are doors in the place worth more than the "treasure". Seriously, calculate the volume and mass of the mithril "valves" (14' by 28' by 3' and specifically noted as "solid mithril"!*) and the adamantium "trick" door. The party simply went away and negotiated with a kingdom of dwarves to dig the hill in which the Tomb sat away completely. Simply erase it from the map. Remove every trap and wall from the outside in. The dwarves got the mithril, the party got the 'treasure'. Oh, and some shiny dwarven armour.
> 
> ...




How is that puzzling? Modules should be vulnerable to smart players


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## Balesir (Jan 28, 2016)

Zak S said:


> How is that puzzling? Modules should be vulnerable to smart players



Sure, but it renders the place both irrelevant and impossible at once. How did the mithril - a substance that only dwarves are supposed to know how to craft - get there without the dwarves knowing of it? Why was there any trivial "treasure" at all given the economic might needed to make the doors to the final chamber? It just renders the whole place nonsensical, _after_ you have gone through all the traps to get to the "final boss". The only real purpose of the doors seems to be that they are not openable without the key - and yet they both invite their own end and are economically barmy.


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## Zak S (Jan 28, 2016)

Balesir said:


> Sure, but it renders the place both irrelevant and impossible at once. How did the mithril - a substance that only dwarves are supposed to know how to craft - get there without the dwarves knowing of it?




I can't believe that in 2016 there are still people who do this.


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## Hussar (Jan 28, 2016)

Balesir said:


> Sure, but it renders the place both irrelevant and impossible at once. How did the mithril - a substance that only dwarves are supposed to know how to craft - get there without the dwarves knowing of it? Why was there any trivial "treasure" at all given the economic might needed to make the doors to the final chamber? It just renders the whole place nonsensical, _after_ you have gone through all the traps to get to the "final boss". The only real purpose of the doors seems to be that they are not openable without the key - and yet they both invite their own end and are economically barmy.




Let's be honest here - that's a thought that wasn't even a consideration in adventure design of the time.  D&D as economics simulation has been an exercise in futility since day 1.  Trying to apply logic to these things fails miserably.


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## Balesir (Jan 28, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Let's be honest here - that's a thought that wasn't even a consideration in adventure design of the time.  D&D as economics simulation has been an exercise in futility since day 1.  Trying to apply logic to these things fails miserably.



As a working system, absolutely - nor is there particular reason why it has to. But this doesn't even meet the basic requirement of making sense as a location for treasure grubbing by murder-hobos. Its "solution" is clear but has nothing to do with the foci of play in AD&D. It all boils down to the GM making a ruling (since AD&D has no actual rules for negotiation) either to arbitrarily and unreasonably refuse to negotiate as the dwarven king or to render the site null in the end.

I think it's just that it seems to have been formulated with blinkers on - with no consideration of the wider meaning of what has been put there. The game world thereby becomes inconsistent in one way or another due to the existence of the place.


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## werecorpse (Jan 28, 2016)

Zak S said:


> I can't believe that in 2016 there are still people who do this.




Do what?


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## Balesir (Jan 28, 2016)

Zak S said:


> I can't believe that in 2016 there are still people who do this.



It wasn't written in 2016, it was written in 1978. It was inconsistent by the measure of its own times. And it renders the game world inconsistent by its existence. It's just odd, considering the admonitions coming at GMs about world creation, around then.


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## howandwhy99 (Jan 29, 2016)

S1 is one of the greatest game modules of all time. It does however contain many flaws. A good DM can fix these and balance the module to fit capably within a well designed system. But I think most present day DMs don't even understand the basics of the actual original D&D game to begin to do so.

The flaws with the module are excused, I think, because this is the first adventure module of its kind ever. And it is exceptionally good in many respects that it didn't have to be. The wargaming sensibility of a 6-armed gargoyle more powerful than the PCs, but trapped in its room due to size. Hidden pit traps and multiple directions used over and over again and not boringly or with repetition (one secret passage is even hidden in a pit). Look at the pearl string of rooms themselves. There are more interesting pieces here than in S2 and every bit as challenging. 

One of Gygax's flaws was he had a tendency to release the very highest level modules at beginning of a game's publication. Which makes it very hard to use such designs early on as all players are still new to the system and not adept to even judge the quality of such a high level, difficult, and complex design. Expectations of what the players can do because of intimate familiarity of a game's design is essential to crafting any high level game module. And even when completed it still must be developed / playtested by high end players proficient with that particular game. "Break this please"

I think the module would have been better served publishing it later after a few years of players getting PCs up to those levels and knowledgeable about the game. But I wasn't around at that time, so I don't know. Perhaps the potency of the wargaming community's hard won design philosophies could have been enough to justify early publication? I know there's plenty of solidly balanced game design in ToH that most people I know just flat out miss.


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Let's be honest here - that's a thought that wasn't even a consideration in adventure design of the time.  D&D as economics simulation has been an exercise in futility since day 1.  Trying to apply logic to these things fails miserably.




Not here it hasn't. Economics makes it possible to run _Fiefs, Settlements, Kingdoms_, and _Empires. T_his has been an integral part of many of the campaigns that I have hosted as a GM, that goes all the way back to 1978. Judges Guild worked out some basic Barony rules for settlers arriving at your stronghold, seeking charters, business grants, and land grants. There was a base figure for annual taxation collection based on civilization level times the total population. These funds were then used to hire soldiers and police, and other government officials, and also reinvested with the settlers to generate additional incomes.

The players have to feed and house their workers and fighters directly, but can use the taxes as they see fit in emergencies as they are the Barons, after all. Too much taxation and the peasants rebel sabotaging tax collection efforts and killing guards, police, and government officials. Too little taxation and the community stagnates, with settlers relocating for better opportunities. Some players used magic to help their development, some don't. 

Made the game more interesting too... What about that next great quest or adventure? Have to put it off, because just about now, your finance minister just came to you and told you that a neighboring Warlord had just raided the Western Castle, burned the settlement there, and killed about a third of your troops. The rest of your troops are currently holed up there under siege and are just hanging on, and by-the-way, there's a pack of Werewolves on the North Frontier that have attacked the farms there... 

But enough of this... Back to the main thread...

_Tomb of Horrors_ totally sucked. I played in it twice literally the day it was released, but never ran it as a GM. As a group we never played it again after that one evening too, so as far as an adventure module goes because of it's limited use, It was one of the most expensive we ever bought. Contrast this to _B1 Into the Unknown_, or _B4 Lost City,_ _Frontier Forts of Kelnore_, or _Hommlet_, and even _Forge of Fury_ which we used over, and over, and over again with slight variations of course... I still use these sandbox modules today, with brand new players, and they really enjoy it! You will never see me run _Tomb of Horrors_ though, and here is why;

_Tomb of Horrors_ is exactly what we never wanted in an adventure, It's just a death railroad, a meat grinder designed to tear up high level characters, It's the _Kobayashi Maru_ of D&D where you literally have to cheat to win. It was the first of what is now known as misery tourism games, one where there is no positive outcome._ It changed D&D made it much more about winning and losing, and much less about just playing the game._ I could see it being useful at a convention game where players could get bragging rights about having survived the longest, in a _Survivor_ type scenario, but for campaign play... pretty much useless, unless of course, you are a GM looking to kill off high level characters. This has no other purpose or use beyond that.

This pretty much ensured that TSR never got money for adventure modules or dungeons from me, as I judged them partly based on what they had created with _Tomb of Horrors_. This was just one other thing that held me back from adopting 1e AD&D as the standard, and what kept me out of the mainstream, where I continued to play and run 0D&D or B/X games. _This is part of the reason I still prefer creating homebrew game material... because I can write so much better Adventures, and create much better Dungeons_ than this pile-o-steaming you know what...


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## Zak S (Jan 30, 2016)

GameDaddy said:


> you literally have to cheat to win.





Again: are you assuming the people who report winning without cheating are lying?

And all the people who are reporting from tournaments, games, etc are helping them lie in order to deceive you?

How deep do you believe this conspiracy goes?


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

Wasn't talking about cheating exclusively at tournaments, was talking about cheating in general... Also, I'm not accusing anyone here, just made some observations about what actually occurred at our gaming table, Cheating increased dramatically at our gaming table as I watched players trying to figure out completely new out-of-game or metagaming ways to get through the _Tomb of Horrors_ alive...

You should write a whole new total deathtrap adventure like _Tomb of Horrors_, there's a couple of completely new generation of GMs who would pony up some serious cash just to run a game like this for their gaming peeps, just so they could kill every character in the party, and feel smugly superior without actually having the chops to create such an adventure on their own.

Better though, to create a much higher quality of adventure where the players at least have a chance out of the gate of winning, if they play well, are creative, or if they are exceptionally good at teamwork.


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## Zak S (Jan 30, 2016)

GameDaddy said:


> Wasn't talking about cheating exclusively at tournaments, was talking about cheating in general... Also, I'm not accusing anyone here, just made some observations about what actually occurred at our gaming table, Cheating increased dramatically at our gaming table as I watched players trying to figure out completely new out-of-game or metagaming ways to get through the _Tomb of Horrors_ alive...




So when you wrote:

"you literally have to cheat to win."

you actually didn't meant that at all and meant to say

"revealed the willingness of players in my group to cheat because it was hard"?


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## werecorpse (Jan 30, 2016)

Hey Zak S. What were you referring to a half dozen or so posts up when you said that you couldn't believe in 2016 there are people who still do "this"?


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## Zak S (Jan 30, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Hey Zak S. What were you referring to a half dozen or so posts up when you said that you couldn't believe in 2016 there are people who still do "this"?




Pick apart the practicalities and economics of things built by crazy wizards for inexplicable crazy reasons (in-world) and transparently to create a challenge for players (out of world) as if the quality of the product depended on that.


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

Zak S said:


> So when you wrote:
> 
> "you literally have to cheat to win."
> 
> ...




_No, with the original as written, you literally had to cheat to win._ 

This was my total experience with it... 

We had about fourteen peeps show up for this game, one GM. High School. Friday Night Party. We would drink, and party on, and play. He started with a party of 8, I didn't play in the first round, just rolled up a 10th level character instead. I wasn't even finished before the entire first party was dead.

I played in the second round and died before reaching the Chapel. The GM claimed no one could survive, so I sat out the third round and just watched another group of fellow players try again. While this was going on, The other players tried real hard to get the GM completely drunk. They also tried many different tricks to get him away from the table so they could get a look at the module to foresee what was coming, because no one could even guess. We just knew it would be lethal.

_Back then there was no websites to go through that contained detailed walk-throughs, nor were there I-phones and androids to look up cheat codes or player tip sites._

The second time, I brought my favorite 18th level Wizard. I had spent about three years of weekends playing this Wizard, and had actually worked him up from 1st level...

Lasted longer in the second round. Made it to the Portal, and then got hosed by the _Sphere of Annihilation_. No save allowed. That was simply a Dead Wizard Walking. 18th level. Three years of gaming done. ...in 30 minutes.

I quit playing for the night after that, just went back to the party-in-progress instead. later on, the GM loaned me the module so I could get a look at the whole adventure. No one else ever ran it.

The players that did finally make it through that night played almost until dawn. They just kept dying, and rolling up new characters, and going to the next deathtrap, until they died. Wash, rinse, and repeat until they met the Lich. And they all died a couple times there too...


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## Zak S (Jan 30, 2016)

GameDaddy said:


> _No, with the original as written, you literally had to cheat to win._
> 
> This was my total experience with it...




So are you or are you not saying that when other people say they beat it without cheating they were lying?

Because "You have to cheato win" ("have to") and "My experience" ("we had to") are conflicting statements.


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

Zak S said:


> So are you or are you not saying that when other people say they beat it without cheating they were lying?
> 
> Because "You have to cheato win" ("have to") and "My experience" ("we had to") are conflicting statements.




A player could win if they knew what was going to happen ahead of time. How would they know, unless they had looked at the module? 

Play it often enough and you could "Win", by leaving a trail of corpses behind. If you actually had to work your characters up to tenth level, instead of just rolling them up I'd say no way. 

Most of us back then actually worked our characters up, and wouldn't use a character in a game or adventure unless they had legitimately survived.

Iron man. For tabletop adventures. Imagine that.


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## Zak S (Jan 30, 2016)

GameDaddy said:


> If you actually had to work your characters up to tenth level, instead of just rolling them up I'd say no way.




So you are saying the records (including from tournaments) of people having done this and won are fabricated?

Again: how deep does the conspiracy you're imagining go?


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

Hrrrm? You still want me to guess about the tournaments? ok... based on my experience...

I'd say they won at tournament, I'd also say that they had some previous exposure to this particular adventure. _Like an insider knowledge level of exposure._

In our local group, in Colorado, we just didn't play that way. Also in our group RPGs weren't really considered as a proper venue for competition. Wargames, Board Wargames, and Simulations with referees and judges were where we sought to get ranked, and where we kept score.


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## werecorpse (Jan 30, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Pick apart the practicalities and economics of things built by crazy wizards for inexplicable crazy reasons (in-world) and transparently to create a challenge for players (out of world) as if the quality of the product depended on that.




Thanks for the reply.

I guess my issue is that on the one hand the potential critics of the adventure are chastised for not being sufficiently logical or for being too gamey in the way they approach the adventure and not thinking outside the box. On the other if you examine the adventure itself in a "logical" way consistent with the world you're "picking apart the practicalities"

edit: and you praise a group as playing intelligently for using the value of the doors to hire a dwarven kingdom - that's using the economics and practicalities of the dungeon design.


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## werecorpse (Jan 30, 2016)

Zak S said:


> So you are saying the records (including from tournaments) of people having done this and won are fabricated?
> 
> Again: how deep does the conspiracy you're imagining go?




What do you mean by winning? 

Do you mean destroying the demilich or just getting further in a tournament than someone else? (The only one I have read has the demilich being destroyed by using a method that is not one of the eight methods listed as the only way to harm it)

are there records of people working there way up to tenth level and then going through the adventure and winning?

I would be interested in reading their accounts.


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## GameDaddy (Jan 30, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Are there records of people working there way up to tenth level and then going through the adventure and winning?
> 
> I would be interested in reading their accounts.




Ditto on that. I'd find that very interesting.


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## GMforPowergamers (Jan 30, 2016)

I do belive that the only way to win at this horrable adventure is to cheat... and I do belive it is a bad adaventure, that is not to say "No one ever had fun with it" I have no doubt people had fun with a lot of bad games...

Mario Maker is a new type of video game that reminds me a lot of D&D (no it's not an RPG, but you build a level and then others go through it.) There are 'good levels' there are 'bad levels' and there are 'fun levels'... not all good levels are fun for everyone, some are just too easy (just like any game) some people go out of there way to make bad levels fun... go search out the super beard bros or Game grumps and watch them play. They can explain much better then I can why some levels are just bad design...

I doubt the ToH is the worst ever written (to be honest I clicked hoping to hear about brigands and bandits not running) 


The moduel requires an amount of meta game thinking, and power gaming that some will find fun, but in the end is almost unplaybul as written. As was pointed out up thread read streaight with the pregen characters the Demi lich can not be beat, the 8 ways are not avalibul to those characters... that alone makes it unplayable as written.

and before I get accused of beliving is some strange conspiracy, I belive that with work it CAN be made to be playbul, and those are the stories you are hearing...


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## Eric V (Jan 30, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> I guess my issue is that on the one hand the potential critics of the adventure are chastised for not being sufficiently logical or for being too gamey in the way they approach the adventure and not thinking outside the box. On the other if you examine the adventure itself in a "logical" way consistent with the world you're "picking apart the practicalities"




Well put.

While I think the module itself is kind of garbage, it DID inspire Return to the Tomb of Horrors (by Bruce Cordell), and that one is one of my favs, so silver linings and all that.


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## Celebrim (Jan 30, 2016)

GMforPowergamers said:


> The moduel requires an amount of meta game thinking, and power gaming that some will find fun, but in the end is almost unplaybul as written. As was pointed out up thread read streaight with the pregen characters the Demi lich can not be beat, the 8 ways are not avalibul to those characters... that alone makes it unplayable as written.




Your referencing my words and you aren't understanding them.

In the context of 1e AD&D, winning is not beating the monster.  Winning is getting the treasure out of the dungeon.   And by some measures, Tomb of Horrors is such an easy module that 1st level characters could get the treasure out of the dungeon successfully.   In that sense, it's one of the most fair and playable modules ever written, because almost every other module mostly comes down to 'did we roll well at the right times'.


----------



## GMforPowergamers (Jan 30, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Your referencing my words and you aren't understanding them.



no I understand them completely, and you disagree with the opionon and conclusion I draw from them, but instead of disagreeing you pretend I didn't understand...






> In the context of 1e AD&D, winning is not beating the monster.



 in the context of the entire edtion, nope I can agree. D&D (Any edition) is a role playing game that is "Won" when your character survives to go on his next adventure...



> Winning is getting the treasure out of the dungeon.



 I disagree, it could be A goal, but it is not winning, it is just advanceing to the next stage. As long as you are playing you are winning...




> And by some measures, Tomb of Horrors is such an easy module that 1st level characters could get the treasure out of the dungeon successfully.



 by some measures... OK, now we get into the menusa. The Mario Maker example I pulled says it best... there is good and bad design, but sitting around with a bu
nch of your friends jokeing can be fun even in bad design, they set up lots of lets plays going through "bad levels" or "Troll levels" not because those levels are well designed, but because of the fun of the let player talking...





> In that sense, it's one of the most fair and playable modules ever written,



I thank you for showing me you can't be objective at all...




> because almost every other module mostly comes down to 'did we roll well at the right times'.



wait... my home brew system is better then FATAL there for my system is good... setting a low bar then saying you cleared it isn't very good, especially since I started off with "It isn't the worst, but it's bad"


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## Celebrim (Jan 30, 2016)

GMforPowergamers said:


> no I understand them completely, and you disagree with the opionon and conclusion I draw from them, but instead of disagreeing you pretend I didn't understand...




Just as long as you aren't pretending that I said the module is unplayable, you can draw whatever inane conclusions from my points you like.



> I disagree, it could be A goal, but it is not winning, it is just advanceing to the next stage. As long as you are playing you are winning...




For example, if this is true, then it can't also be true that the fact that there is no fair way to kill Acererak if the text is strictly adhered to cannot be said to make the module unplayable.  You just have to recognize that winning is just advancing to the next stage, preferably with a ton of XP.



> I thank you for showing me you can't be objective at all...




Back at you.


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## werecorpse (Jan 31, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Your referencing my words and you aren't understanding them.
> 
> In the context of 1e AD&D, winning is not beating the monster.  Winning is getting the treasure out of the dungeon.   And by some measures, Tomb of Horrors is such an easy module that 1st level characters could get the treasure out of the dungeon successfully.   In that sense, it's one of the most fair and playable modules ever written, because almost every other module mostly comes down to 'did we roll well at the right times'.




Surely you are not suggesting that because it's possible to get some treasure out of a dungeon without combat that fact in and of itself makes the dungeon one of the most fair and playable of all time?

that makes any ridiculous collection of rooms, traps and monsters a fair and playable dungeon as long as the first room has a sack of gold in it.

IMO winning in RPGs can be different for each challenge (in this case dungeon) and I would have said winning in the context of tomb of horrors is destroying the Demi lich or a slightly lesser win (but still a win) would be looting the Demi lich's hoard.


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## Hussar (Jan 31, 2016)

On the idea of reports and cheating:

Look, I'm not saying the people who reported succeeding at the module were automatically cheating, but, lets face facts.  What are the odds that a group of 6-8 people with zero preparation and pre-gen characters could successfully navigate the ToH in 3-4 hours?  It's pretty hard to believe.

What is perhaps easier to believe is those 6-8 players listened in on earlier tables running the module, talked to other players who played the module previously, and generally canvassed as much information as they could about the module beforehand and thus managed to complete the module due to a pretty healthy running head start.

Granted, it might be that they were just that good.  They managed to defeat the entire module completely on their own.  That is certainly a possibility.  But, IMO, it's likely not what happened.  They defeated the ToH the same way that most home games did it - they had a pretty large amount of forewarning from other players and perhaps even had access to the Monster Manual II.

Heh, my own group did ToH after playing the G series.  Which meant we had an intelligent sword that detected secret doors and a +5 Hammer of Thunderbolts.  Made the module fairly easy to defeat.  But, a group doing this with the pre-gens?  With zero forewarning?  And only first-person accounts of the event?  I remain healthily skeptical.


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## Celebrim (Jan 31, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Surely you are not suggesting that because it's possible to get some treasure out of a dungeon without combat that fact in and of itself makes the dungeon one of the most fair and playable of all time?




If you don't think I'm suggesting it, perhaps you should go with that feeling.

I'm saying that the fact that the module depends largely on player actions and not on combat mechanics means that it is one of the most fair and playable of all time.  Compared to a module containing say a dragon or other active threat, winning is much less dependent on luck.  And I'm saying that it's one of the only modules for 10th level characters I know of that could reasonably be completed by a low level party.  And I'm saying that it is possible, to make good decisions that lead to surviving the tomb and making off with the demi-liches loot.  Since Acererak, at least as presented in the original module, is an entirely passive villain killing him isn't really necessary.  The smart party kicks down the door, recognizes that the fight is pointless, and takes his stuff.  

This is entirely consistent with what Gygax calls out as smart play in the 1e DMG, where he suggests that the smart party tries to avoid pointless combat while obtaining their goals.   Bypassing combat where the option is available is usually smart play.


----------



## ccs (Jan 31, 2016)

Hussar said:


> On the idea of reports and cheating:
> 
> Look, I'm not saying the people who reported succeeding at the module were automatically cheating, but, lets face facts.  What are the odds that a group of 6-8 people with zero preparation and pre-gen characters could successfully navigate the ToH in 3-4 hours?  It's pretty hard to believe.
> 
> ...




Yes, the players in that tourney won because they were time travelers!
Congrats on figuring it out.

The tourney you're debating happened in the 70s.
Tomb of Horrors wasn't published as a module until '81.
Monster Manual II?  Published in 1983,


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## werecorpse (Jan 31, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> If you don't think I'm suggesting it, perhaps you should go with that feeling.
> 
> I'm saying that the fact that the module depends largely on player actions and not on combat mechanics means that it is one of the most fair and playable of all time.  Compared to a module containing say a dragon or other active threat, winning is much less dependent on luck.  And I'm saying that it's one of the only modules for 10th level characters I know of that could reasonably be completed by a low level party.  And I'm saying that it is possible, to make good decisions that lead to surviving the tomb and making off with the demi-liches loot.  Since Acererak, at least as presented in the original module, is an entirely passive villain killing him isn't really necessary.  The smart party kicks down the door, recognizes that the fight is pointless, and takes his stuff.
> 
> This is entirely consistent with what Gygax calls out as smart play in the 1e DMG, where he suggests that the smart party tries to avoid pointless combat while obtaining their goals.   Bypassing combat where the option is available is usually smart play.




Well you did say that by some measures tomb of horrors is such an easy module that 1st level characters could get the treasure out of the tomb successfully. I don't think they could get to Acererak's Vault so I wondered if you had some other measure of successful.


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## JonnyP71 (Jan 31, 2016)

GMforPowergamers said:


> and before I get accused of beliving is some strange conspiracy, I belive that with work it CAN be made to be playbul, and those are the stories you are hearing...




How do you judge if a module is 'playable'?

I recently introduced 1E to 2 groups consisting of players younger than me, 1 group of near newbies, and one of more experienced gamers who are a bit too young to have played 1E - most cut their teeth on 2E/3E and other RPGs.

My introduction for both groups was Tomb of Horrors with a group of characters I created specifically for the adventure.  I gave the casters some suitable spells, I gave them a Paladin with a +4 defender sword, they had plenty of trap detection abilities in the party.  They were well set to have a go at the Tomb.  We played it as written, sticking closely to the original rules of 1E.

2 groups, 4 in one, 5 in the other.  Both groups made it as far as Acererak.

One character survived, naked, penniless.  Acererak was untouched. No treasure was taken from the Tomb.

So they 'failed' in one sense.

But both groups still talk about the adventure, of the laughs they had, of the traps they overcame.  It taught my group of newbies a more circumspect way of playing, it taught them how to be resourceful and how to think outside the box when it came to spell use.

The adventure succeeded. It proved very 'playable' as is.  It worked, it was fantastic fun for everyone.


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## Caliburn101 (Jan 31, 2016)

pemerton said:


> So just to be clear - RPGers who don't like ToH are self-entitled monty-haul munchkins? Including the author of the 1975 A&E review, who played it at Origins in 1975?




Out of those who have read the module and still chose to play it, yes.

You can't look at the risk, decide to take it on and then get upset and claim it is a bad module and unfair _when you don't win_, not unless you're self-entitled. Nor indeed can you do the same as a DM and then publically complain about it because you slaughtered your players characters.


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## werecorpse (Jan 31, 2016)

Caliburn101 said:


> Out of those who have read the module and still chose to play it, yes.
> 
> You can't look at the risk, decide to take it on and then get upset and claim it is a bad module and unfair _when you don't win_, not unless you're self-entitled. Nor indeed can you do the same as a DM and then publically complain about it because you slaughtered your players characters.




Sure you can. You can play and lose or win in a good or bad module, and you can DM and slaughter player characters in a good or bad module. Those results do not establish the quality of the module.

The question asked was does not liking the module make you a self entitled monty haul munchkin. IMO no. 

My earliest comment in this thread was saying ToH had some poor design issues. Despite (or perhaps because of) those issues that I considered poor clearly there are many who have enjoyed it just the way it is. So subjectively the answer is it's a fine dungeon for some play style and not for others. If you start saying some of those play styles are wrongbadfun you need to rethink - I slipped into that way of thinking a bit. 

It seems that the success or not in ToH rests a lot on the interpretation of the text and player statements by the DM. In 3.0+ where you have a more mechanical chance of finding the trap it's up to the dice. In pre 3 it's up to DM to decide if the players succeed and up to the words of the DM to guide them. The green devil face trap is a classic example - many DM's would describe it in such a way as there is no way anyone would climb into it, and if they started too they would either be sucked in telling everyone else that it's a hideous trap or they would lose a limb - same result. Yet apparently it causes a great many deaths. I suspect that is due to the dm's interpretation of the module - as happened with 12 year old John Wick.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Gygax's statement at the start of the return to tomb of horrors. He describes how one team destroyed the demilich using a method that was not one of the methods stated in the module as being one of the methods able to harm it. They won first place in a tournament for coming up with an innovative and novel solution. So essentially more than in many modules success depends on your DM. According to the module you can only harm the skull in one of 8 ways, the DM (including the designer) allowed a way not stated in the 8 to not only effect the creature but destroy it and you defeat the enemy. Could I have dumped a tapestry on the skull and torn it? Would that work? Could I grab it, dimension door and lob it into the green devil mouth? On the text- no but maybe it's innovative enough to be worth a win by GM fiat?

Same with the taking a bunch of newbies through it when the DM has chosen their magic items, trap detecting abilities and given them suitable spells. A good way to run it IMO but is it too much DM help? I don't know.

The suggestion by Gygax that this style of play requires brains is fine, brains certainly help, but the suggestion by the supporters of ToH that other styles do not or if you dislike this style you are playing a dumbed down version of the game is not.

In the end I can't decide what I think. As gamers my groups have always played campaigns and over the 15 or so years we played 1e after ToH came out we knew of its reputation but never seriously tried to take it on in campaign - our characters just weren't interested in poking around in a famously deadly tomb that posed no threat to anyone.  Maybe by ignoring it we won.

I think I'd like to run it as it appears as much a test of the DM as the players. I might stick it in my latest 5e campaign and if the players ever go there convert it.


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## JonnyP71 (Jan 31, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Same with the taking a bunch of newbies through it when the DM has chosen their magic items, trap detecting abilities and given them suitable spells. A good way to run it IMO but is it too much DM help? I don't know.




Imho that was the only way to run it - the PCs were in one group Cleric 12/Paladin 11/Bard 5-7-8/Monk 11/Mage 13, the smaller group used Cleric 13/Paladin 12/Monk 11/Mage 14 - I ensured such spells as Transmute Rock to Mud, Dimension Door, Wizard Eye, Shatter, Forget and Legend Lore were in the Mages' spellbooks, and the Cleric began with Find Traps, Commune and True Seeing, magic items were the aforementioned +4 defender, along with a few protection devices, a Horn of Valhalla, a Staff of Power (with very limited charges), and Slippers of Spider Climb - items commensurate to a party of that level.  They still failed - but they did well to get as far as they did - the group of newbies didn't realise they were safe to rest and the last character alive (the Monk) reached Acererak without ever resting.  The other group did realise resting was safe, but crucially lost their Paladin to the exploding Altar.  It was their Mage who managed to escape alive.

I would never throw it into a campaign.  Not ever.  But as an interesting diversion to an existing campaign, with characters to whom the party had no emotional attachment, it was superb.

Plus, it has really changed the newbies' play style - they have approached 5E ever since with a more intelligent mindset, thinking much more cooperatively about their actions.  And that has been the module's biggest win.  From a DMing point of view, I really enjoyed seeing how the module engaged players who had previously sat back and let the game go on around them.  Rather than charging around, hacking at almost anything in sight, they were stopping to think, and to study their surroundings, examining the puzzles, thoroughly deconstructing the clues.

In short, it was brilliant for all of us, and is now one of my favourite modules ever produced.


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## Hussar (Jan 31, 2016)

ccs said:


> Yes, the players in that tourney won because they were time travelers!
> Congrats on figuring it out.
> 
> The tourney you're debating happened in the 70s.
> ...




Sigh.  I guess I was unclear.  The tourney players played in multiple rounds no?  It's not like the module was run at the convention in one time slot and never run again.  It is entirely possible for someone to observe earlier runnings of the module and use that information later on when they run the module.  

Someone playing the module in a home game could have had access to the module beforehand.  Or perhaps read various descriptions of it in different publications like The Dragon or various other sources.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one such source earlier.  While there was no Internet, true, information did get disseminated through the hobby.

Someone playing the module after 1983 could have access to the MMII.  

Sorry, I guess I thought what I was saying was clear in context.  I forgot that Internet Pedantry is a much better way of discussing something.

Look, are you saying it's absolutely impossible for someone who claims to have successfully navigated the module to have any foreknowledge of the module?  If not, then which is more likely:  a group of 6-8 quite probably strangers, successfully navigated the module in 4 hours without any forknowledge, or; a group of 6-8 quite probably strangers observed other groups playing the module a few times, picked up hints and tips and then successfully navigated the module in 4 hours?

Granted, it's entirely possible that the former did, in fact, happen.  However, Occam's Razor tells us that it's far more likely the latter.


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## HardcoreDandDGirl (Feb 1, 2016)

does anyone have a list of anyone who actually completed the mod at a home game or con? Did they play pregens or homebrew characters? Did they go in with no information, or knowing what they were in for?

Let me say I've played through it twice. Once it was a short run... it was in 2e and it was the first time I ran into a creepy DM. It was a bad game for way more reasons then I can list, but I will say I can't blame the adventure.  The second time was in 3.5, and it went well for almost five sessions before we TPKed...

I don't know if it's unfair, but it was not even in the top half of adventures I liked. I would love to hear some 'good stories' about this adventure.


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## Caliburn101 (Feb 1, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Sure you can. You can play and lose or win in a good or bad module, and you can DM and slaughter player characters in a good or bad module. Those results do not establish the quality of the module.




Nothing here contradicts what I am saying to the OP.

HE is the one decided to blame the module for having a bad day with it, and not only that, but with some overblown hyperbole. The worst module of all time?

It can just as invalidly be argued that balanced modules where you have to have a very, very bad run of bad luck on the dice or make tactical mistake after mistake before the module can kill your characters is a poor kind of module.

I prefer to play the game with some risk, as do all my players, and as have nearly all the players of the many campaigns I have run. As I said, I've run it seven times, and in less forgiving systems than D&D, and never heard such a negative rant about the module.

Perhaps you have?


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## werecorpse (Feb 1, 2016)

Caliburn101 said:


> Nothing here contradicts what I am saying to the OP.
> 
> HE is the one decided to blame the module for having a bad day with it, and not only that, but with some overblown hyperbole. The worst module of all time?
> 
> ...




Nope, gotta admit it was a pretty negative rant.

Wow you've run the module seven times. Which systems and how did they go?
(I wouldn't have thought it would make much difference playing a less forgiving system -no chance to find a trap unless you look in the right spot and  death no save seems the most common way of dying in the adventure and that's isn't affected by the system)

I am very interested in hearing how different groups went through the adventure.


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## billd91 (Feb 1, 2016)

shager said:


> In the article he reveals quite plainly why he hates this thing so much - running it as written caused him to lose his small number of friends for a whole year, and suffer all the effects of that which followed. That's pretty heavy stuff.




I wonder if that really happened, personally, or, if it did, whether he was really that contrite about it. After all, he is the guy who wrote this:
Hit ‘em Where it Hurts

That article also may have been full of exaggeration - in fact, I assume it is - but if not, that's not exactly the kind of GM who sounds like he laments losing friends by going above and beyond the call of the rat bastard DM.

So what do I take from all of this? Either John Wick is a dick or he writes hyperbole to entertain the readers. Maybe a bit of both. Either way, I'm not going to cross the street to game with him. And if his GMing style causes him to actually lose friends (again)? I'll experience me some schadenfreude.


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> I guess my issue is that on the one hand the potential critics of the adventure are chastised for not being sufficiently logical or for being too gamey in the way they approach the adventure and not thinking outside the box. On the other if you examine the adventure itself in a "logical" way consistent with the world you're "picking apart the practicalities"
> 
> edit: and you praise a group as playing intelligently for using the value of the doors to hire a dwarven kingdom - that's using the economics and practicalities of the dungeon design.




and Eric V, too

Your logical fallacy here is an equivocation over the words "logical" and "rational" and "intelligent"--they are used to mean different things in different parts of your argument.

In trying to WIN the game, what's logical and rational and intelligent concerns "What actions can you perform to get the max xp, survive, etc?".

In trying to CRITIQUE the quality of the game, what's intelligent (in the game design) concerns "How do possible players' idea of fun line up with what the module enables?"

You throw another different definition (kind of blurring "logical" "rational" and "intelligent") into the mix (also used in critque) "Is the fantastic gameworld itself logically consistent with our world?"--which is not relevant. Like asking why each time you jump on a turtle in Super Mario it slides rather than just gets crushed. Does an "intelligent"
player throw up their hands in disgust because the physics are "irrational" or does the intelligent player realize
how turtle shells work and use it to their advantage. Depends on which of the equivocal definitions you used.

So you're pretending "logical and rational" mean the same thing in all 3 cases when you've secretly kind of redefined it each time.


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> What do you mean by winning?




I mean whatever it is critics are saying when they say the module is "unwinnable".

ToH was famously beaten, in one of the first tournaments in which it appeared, by someone who had a RAW leveled-up PC who defeated the Lich using the rules (see Tv Tropes).

If you read forums threads there's lots of people describing it being beaten in many other ways.

So whatever way you can define "beaten" it has been "beaten".

Therefore people saying it's "unbeatable" are essentially describing a conspiracy in which dozens of people (at least) have been pretending to have beaten the module or have seen it done using excruciatingly detailed descriptions (including walk-thru threads) for like over 30 years.


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

billd91 said:


> Either John Wick is a dick or he writes hyperbole to entertain the readers.




Considering how many GENUINE and kind of important things there are to argue about in RPGs, I can't see how you can do the second without being the first.

It's like seeing a fire people are trying to put out and chucking in a few cherry bombs just so people will pay attention to you.


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

Hussar said:


> On the idea of reports and cheating:
> 
> Look, I'm not saying the people who reported succeeding at the module were automatically cheating, but, lets face facts.  What are the odds that a group of 6-8 people with zero preparation and pre-gen characters could successfully navigate the ToH in 3-4 hours?  It's pretty hard to believe.l.




Many of these people are still alive.

Since you're accusing them of lying in a public place, the least you could do is track them down and ask them before doing that. Also: [MENTION=55178]Nytmare[/MENTION], Eric V.


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> According to the module you can only harm the skull in one of 8 ways, the DM (including the designer) allowed a way not stated in the 8 to not only effect the creature but destroy it and you defeat the enemy.




You are leaving out an important detail. The module itself was conflicted and REQUIRED a judgment call, it wasn't just that the judge went easy on the players.

There were 8 ways described of killing the demilich. It said these were the onyl way to kill it.

There was ALSO an item that would destroy whatever it touched.

So these 2 rules were in conflict an a call was required--it wasn't like the rules had to be altered to be nice to the players, it was absolutely necessary to make a DM call one way or another in that situation.

Your argument also requires that never in all human possibility could a player ever had used any of those 8 ways. Which doesn't match the actual-play reports ont he internet


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## Zak S (Feb 1, 2016)

Hussar said:


> If not, then which is more likely:  a group of 6-8 quite probably strangers, successfully navigated the module in 4 hours without any forknowledge, or; a group of 6-8 quite probably strangers observed other groups playing the module a few times, picked up hints and tips and then successfully navigated the module in 4 hours?
> 
> Granted, it's entirely possible that the former did, in fact, happen.  However, Occam's Razor tells us that it's far more likely the latter.




Allegedly the world record for running the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a mile in 3:43.13.

But really, what are the chances that someone could run a mile that fast? I mean, most people can't. I mean: almost nobody.

So, really, what's more likely: someone ran a mile in 3:43.13 or they didn't?

Occam's Razor, man, he obviously didn't, I mean, come on...


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## Nytmare (Feb 1, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Many of these people are still alive.
> 
> Since you're accusing them of lying in a public place, the least you could do is track them down and ask them before doing that. Also: [MENTION=55178]Nytmare[/MENTION], Eric V.




You have absolutely 0 reasons to put words into other people's mouths or attempt to twist my skepticism of what I hear recounted year after year as gamer urban legends into something that it's not.  Please check your overly aggressive BS at the door.


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## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

Nytmare said:


> You have absolutely 0 reasons to put words into other people's mouths or attempt to twist my skepticism of what I hear recounted year after year as gamer urban legends into something that it's not.  Please check your overly aggressive BS at the door.




I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood.

Are you saying:
- "The people who post on the internet about having defeated Tomb of Horrors without cheating or having seen it done are lying"

...or are you you saying "The people who post on the internet about having defeated Tomb of Horrors without cheating or having seen it done are telling the truth"

...or are you saying something else?

Because "skepticism about reports" entails necessarily that these reports from Gen Con and the walk-through threads and other comments are lies.


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## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> and Eric V, too
> 
> Your logical fallacy here is an equivocation over the words "logical" and "rational" and "intelligent"--they are used to mean different things in different parts of your argument.
> 
> ...




1. I don't use the word rational
2. I am commenting on what I see as inconsistencies in the argument that says it's intelligent play to hire dwarves to strip mine the dungeon to get the mithril but levels criticism at someone who picks apart the economics and practicalities of the world (which IMO is relied upon to hire the dwarves) - partly because this argument ties into one that is levelled at those who say they dislike the module (the assertion that if you don't like it it's because you aren't clever enough to deal with its tricks)
3. I acknowledge some people have had fun (a great deal) with the module as written and to the extent my comments are criticising someone else's style of fun I retract them and apologise. Different strokes and all that.
4. I am not intending to suggest that the game world is consistent with our own - I am suggesting that there's nothing wrong with asking that it be consistent with the game world as presented.
5. I don't think I have secretly redefined anything.

However, your Mario turtle argument suggests to me that you consider it fine to use the oddities in the dungeon to your advantage (hire the dwarves because the doors are made of very valuable material) but that it is a different thing (and an inappropriate thing) to say the dungeon doesn't make sense because it was built with absurdly rare and valuable material. If this is/was your point I have no issue (edit: though I don't entirely agree I now at least see your point)


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## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> 1. I don't use the word rational



Not relevant to the argument, sorry I included a near-synonym and confused the issue


> 2. I am commenting on what I see as inconsistencies in the argument that says it's intelligent play to hire dwarves to strip mine the dungeon to get the mithril but levels criticism at someone who picks apart the economics and practicalities of the world (which IMO is relied upon to hire the dwarves) - partly because this argument ties into one that is levelled at those who say they dislike the module




Again: not logical.

The dwarves being hirable is a concern for the player trying to win in a world where that can happen. Whether that is "rational" is not relevant to the quality of the module.

Just like turtles being stompable is relevant to someone trying to beat Super Mario, the physics of that is not relevant and if the physics doesn't match real life that is not relevant and doesn't make the game worse.

I mean: the economics of Mushroom World probably don't make sense, that doesn't mean you can't think of clever things to do in Super Mario or that it's a poorly-designed game.

Demiliches are crazy near-gods and make crazy things in their crazy houses. Ok.



> (the assertion that if you don't like it it's because you aren't clever enough to deal with its tricks)




I never said "if you don't like it it's because you aren't clever enough to deal with its tricks" or anything like it. I don't say insane things.

I said a much more rational thing. I said "one possible reason some people may not like it it is they aren't clever enough to deal with its tricks" and "It is not rational to claim the game is 'unbeatable' simply because you can't think of a way to beat it".



> 3. I acknowledge some people have had fun (a great deal) with the module as written and to the extent my comments are criticising someone else's style of fun I retract them and apologise. Different strokes and all that.




It is good that you did that. This makes you a better person than someone who isn't able to do that.



> However, your Mario turtle argument suggests to me that you consider it fine to use the oddities in the dungeon to your advantage (hire the dwarves because the doors are made of very valuable material) but that it is a different thing (and an inappropriate thing) to say the dungeon doesn't make sense because it was built with absurdly rare and valuable material.




That is what I am saying. Though I think the important thing is:

THE BASELINE ASSUMPTION of any fantasy game is that it "doesn't make sense" on some level of physics. This must be true for the game to be a fantasy game with magic in it. This is by definition going to mean there are knock-on effects for some of the economics, etc. A great deal is left in a black box, unexplored by the deisgner. It has to be. To criticize what is known to be a fantasy on the grounds that it contains some of these assumptions  is absurd.

The only way to take advantage of strategies that exploit things left in the fantasy world's workings' "black box" (Can I hire dwarves to do x for me? Are there dwarves nearby?) is to run it pas the GM and have them make a call. (And the GM, of course, is an elected office and must represent the collective sensibility of the group) The only other option is to limit the game in some new way that would go against the philosophy of forcing outside-the-box creativity required to make many playstyles fun.



> (edit: though I don't entirely agree I now at least see your point)




Then you could say why you don't agree and we could have a conversation about that.


----------



## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> I mean whatever it is critics are saying when they say the module is "unwinnable".
> 
> ToH was famously beaten, in one of the first tournaments in which it appeared, by someone who had a RAW leveled-up PC who defeated the Lich using the rules (see Tv Tropes).
> 
> ...




I have accepted winning this module in the terms of the discussion means destroying the demilich or the lesser win of looting his vault. It could have meant had a really good time (death included), Heard about the adventure and left it alone. Went in came out without finding the demilich but survived. Just for the purposes of this discussion about the module I think it's worth getting an idea of what people mean when they say it's unwinnable, or it's easy to win.

i googled tv tropes and didn't find the reference you referred to, or any of the walk through threads you refer to. I would be very interested in reading them but I'm not great with Internet searches could you please link them?

I think it's going too far to say that if you doubt that the adventure is winnable you are essentially asserting that there is a conspiracy. You may think that the choices made by the GM in running the game were not those that you would have allowed and that it was those choices that got people though. There are numerous examples of eye witnesses honestly testifying about something and getting it completely wrong. Apart from my comment that winning a tournament might mean getting further in. The DM could have misread something letting a group past a trap that should have killed them, one DM might say you can't dig through the walls to get past doors another might say it takes 3 rounds, a DM might give extra description of a clue any number of things may explain how a group did something, a player may be good at reading the GM and pick up traps not though Playing the module but by GM tells. 

I have watched various games online (some run by game designers) and it's pretty common to see people (players and DM's) make rules mistakes or Allow stuff that's not strictly by the book.


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## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Allegedly the world record for running the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a mile in 3:43.13.
> 
> But really, what are the chances that someone could run a mile that fast? I mean, most people can't. I mean: almost nobody.
> 
> ...




Occam called. 

He wants his razor back until you both learn to use it properly : )


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## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> I have accepted winning this module in the terms of the discussion means destroying the demilich or the lesser win of looting his vault. It could have meant had a really good time (death included), Heard about the adventure and left it alone. Went in came out without finding the demilich but survived. Just for the purposes of this discussion about the module I think it's worth getting an idea of what people mean when they say it's unwinnable, or it's easy to win.
> 
> i googled tv tropes and didn't find the reference you referred to, or any of the walk through threads you refer to. I would be very interested in reading them but I'm not great with Internet searches could you please link them?
> 
> ...




Gary Gygax, inventor of D&D and Tomb of Horrors, was the guy who judged the tactic beating the demilich was legit.

If he's not an authority on the tournament version of ToH and D&D, who is?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors

I found that by googling "Tomb of Horrors" and "tv tropes", so I'm guessing if you want more testimonials, google a wee bit harder.


SPOILERS:
"
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Gary Gygax, in the introduction to Return of the Tomb of Horrors, tells the story of how at one GenCon, one team actually succeeded in the adventure by using one of the no-saving-throw instant death traps against Acererak. "I put the crown on the demilich's head while my buddy taps it with the wrong end of the scepter." Made doubly awesome by the fact that the tournament's DM called in Gary Gygax himself for backup, and Gary admitted that it would work, and ruled that Acererak instantly died. First prize!
"

Robin Laws also wrote a history of Gen Con, so you could ask him--he answers his mail.

Dragonsfoot is a great resource if you want to hear testimonials about people dealing with old modules for the first time.


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## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

I had found that tv trope reference - it was the same as the one I had referred to earlier so I was looking for something else.

I will consult the resources you suggest for more stories.

I am aware that Gygax judged the event with the crown and sceptre. The effect of touching the wrong end of the sceptre to the wearer the result is "the wearer is instantly snuffed out, turning to a fetid powder which cannot be brought back to life no matter what (wishes notwithstanding)". I would have thought it was like a powerful curse that effected the living (the use of snuffed out which usually refers to flame, light or life, the phrase can't be brought back to life - a bit like the demilich attack).However its use is novel, innovative and deserves reward in a tournament, and has been judged so by Gygax. I also would have interpreted the words "can be harmed only as follows" to exclude the methods of harm contained in that same adventure. But it worked in that tournament and that's fine and dandy. 

I guess my point in referring to this success is to wonder about stories of successes, did they occur by using ways to harm the demilich that depend on DM interpretation rather than according to the methods stated in the adventure?


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Many of these people are still alive.
> 
> Since you're accusing them of lying in a public place, the least you could do is track them down and ask them before doing that. Also: [MENTION=55178]Nytmare[/MENTION], Eric V.




I'm not accusing them of lying one whit.  I'm saying that there may be other details being left out of the story which would explain things better.  Which often happens in anecdote.  See below.



Zak S said:


> Allegedly the world record for running the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a mile in 3:43.13.
> 
> But really, what are the chances that someone could run a mile that fast? I mean, most people can't. I mean: almost nobody.
> 
> ...




Since there is video tape evidence of this, it would be pretty hard to fake.  Never minding thousands of spectators who witnessed the event.  Now, if _I_ claimed to have run that fast, would you not expect me to provide pretty clear proof?  Or would you take me at solely my word?  If so, I have this amazing deal in Nigeria for you.



Zak S said:


> Gary Gygax, inventor of D&D and Tomb of Horrors, was the guy who judged the tactic beating the demilich was legit.
> 
> If he's not an authority on the tournament version of ToH and D&D, who is?
> 
> ...




Now, think about this for a second.  How did they know about the two ends of the sceptre?  The story on TV tropes does not specify.  Now, again, it's possible that in the 4 hours they had to resolve the module that they experimented with the sceptre somehow and learned how it worked.  That would require at least one PC dying first, but, possible.  Or, it's entirely possible that they knew about the crown beforehand, from other accounts, and used that knowledge in the game.  

In both cases, the group "won" the adventure, but, which one is more likely?  The group, knowing that everything in the dungeon is very bad, would have had to try on the obviously magical crown, kill that PC - for no reason since the curse of the crown only activates after you leave the dungeon - and then think to put that crown on the head of the demi-lich.

Again, it's possible.  I totally agree.  Just exceedingly unlikely.

-----

Look, the problem with anecdote, as I said before, is that anecdotes by their very nature are rarely the whole story.  Once upon a time, I used to follow bridge in the newspaper.  The card game.  I haven't lived in an English speaking country for a long time, but, I assume that papers still cover bridge clubs.  Thing is, bridge clubs report perfect hands far, far more often than is statistically expected.  A perfect hand in bridge is so mind bogglingly unlikely that a person could play their entire life and not see one.  Yet, here we have witnessed accounts of it occurring on a fairly regular basis.

Are people lying?  Is there a conspiracy?  Nope, not in the slightest.  However, there is more going on than simply playing the game.

Since we certainly don't use a new deck and a Vegas style card shuffler for each hand, the cards themselves are being biased in play.  People shuffle, of course, after each hand, but, because the cards themselves are re-entered into the deck in a semi-non random fashion (you collect the "tricks" after each round of play, meaning that suits will be stuck together) and the shuffling itself is rarely thorough enough when done by a human to guarantee a random distribution, the longer a group plays with a given deck, the higher the chance becomes that a perfect hand will be dealt.

Are they cheating?  Are they lying?  Not in the slightest.  It's very unlikely that anyone even considers this during play.  It's just normal play.  Anyone who has played a lot of cards will see similar events occurring in any card game.  Play enough hands of gin with the same deck and the deck becomes significantly biased.  

This, IMO, is exactly what's going on here.  Tournament games are not private.  Anyone can watch, and it's not like there's an NDA governing play after the fact.  Gamers talk.  Gamers tell gaming stories.  "Hey, I put on this crown and Bob disintegrated me with the silver end of the scepter" is a pretty cool gaming story.  And thus, forearmed, the next group goes into the scenario with a fair degree of outside help.

If the FIRST group to play the module had done this, I'd be spectacularly impressed.  But, again, I sincerely doubt that's the case.  

Look, you can beat the module.  I did.  I stated earlier that I did.  We had played through the G series first and had the sword that detected secret doors and the Hammer of Thunderbolts - makes the module a heck of a lot easier.   

But, no, I'm not going to take anecdotes at face value. Not when perfectly reasonable explanations are sitting right there.  What's the saying?  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof?  Gaming stories from a tournament forty years ago isn't exactly brimming with fact checking is it?


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## ExTSR (Feb 2, 2016)

Hussar said:


> If the FIRST group to play the module had done this, I'd be spectacularly impressed.  But, again, I sincerely doubt that's the case.



Since your mind is already closed, I'm sure that truth would only push you into "Pix or it didn't happen" denial mode.

But nevertheless...

1975 Origins.
D&D was a year old. Nobody knew if it'd be a dud or a hit. No clue.
There weren't any RPG tournaments yet.
TSR wasn't publishing adventures yet. No TSR character sheets yet, either. (Hat tip to 'Wee Warriors', a married couple from Michigan who had just moved to California, for launching both concepts.)

A small cadre from TSR, led by Gary, ran several tables. All were notoriously "no spectators!"; this was new stuff, new concepts.
At each table, one "best player" was selected. (Seven years later I returned to the same method when I founded the RPGA.)
And more than one table beat the Tomb.

Truth. Deal with it. Or not, your call; plenty of revisionism out there (and in this thread).

cya at the gaming tables...

F

::cue Hussar's denial rant::


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## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

ExTSR said:


> Since your mind is already closed, I'm sure that truth would only push you into "Pix or it didn't happen" denial mode.
> 
> But nevertheless...
> 
> ...




First, thanks for joining the discussion. I have a few questions if you are able to answer that would be great.

1.Did you play or DM?
2.What happened in your group?
3.How many players were at each table and how long was allocated to the session in the tournament (was it only 4 hours)?
4.Was this the tournament that was won by the "crown & sceptre" method of destroying the skull?
5.Did you use the characters as presented from the back of the published module?
6.how different was the tournament module from the one later published?


"More than one table beat the tomb" - how many played & failed? - what other method were used to defeat the demilich?

I know it's 40 years ago so it's a big ask but I would love to know as much as you can recall.


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## darjr (Feb 2, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> First, thanks for joining the discussion. I have a few questions if you are able to answer that would be great.
> 
> 1.Did you play or DM?
> 2.What happened in your group?
> ...




So when an eye witness account isn't good enough you move the goal posts?


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## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

Hussar said:


> I'm not going to take anecdotes at face value. Not when perfectly reasonable explanations are sitting right there.  What's the saying?  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof?  Gaming stories from a tournament forty years ago isn't exactly brimming with fact checking is it?




Jon Peterson fact-checks gaming stuff all the time.

And "I beat a module" isn't exactly an 'extraordinary claim'" nobody said "I beat the module with the help of ancient aliens".

As many many many many people have pointed out, all you need is tons of hirelings, chickens and other canaries to beat this dungeon. That was a much more common style of play back then.


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## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

darjr said:


> So when an eye witness account isn't good enough you move the goal posts?




What are you talking about? What goal posts?

I'm just after information and this information source looks golden (as did the information about the crown & sceptre).


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

darjr said:


> So when an eye witness account isn't good enough you move the goal posts?




To be fair  [MENTION=52905]darjr[/MENTION], I'm the one expressing doubt.  

And, no, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm not saying no one ever completed the module.  Not at all.  I KNOW you can complete the module because I've DONE IT.  I'm expressing some degree of skepticism that multiple groups, with zero forewarning, no outside knowledge, using ONLY pre-gen characters and no other resources, could complete the module (as written in 1978 - I don't know how closely the original tournament module follows the printed version) in 4 hours.

I'm NOT saying it's impossible.  I'm saying that I remain skeptical.

Those must have been one helluva gathering of brilliant minds for several tables, first time through with no forewarning, using OD&D and Chainmail rules to boot, to beat that module.  Hats off.  That's impressive as all get out.


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Jon Peterson fact-checks gaming stuff all the time.
> 
> And "I beat a module" isn't exactly an 'extraordinary claim'" nobody said "I beat the module with the help of ancient aliens".
> 
> As many many many many people have pointed out, all you need is tons of hirelings, chickens and other canaries to beat this dungeon. That was a much more common style of play back then.




But, that's the thing - this is a tournament module.  None of those things are available.  All you have is the character sheets in front of you and nothing else.  Hiring dwarves to dig down an alternative entrance isn't an option.

I'll repeat it a third time.  My group also beat this module.  But, we did so, same as the idea you're expressing here, with far more resources than what's available in the tournament adventure.


----------



## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

Did a little fact checking, and this is why I remain skeptical of anecdote. 

 [MENTION=6810442]ExTSR[/MENTION] talks about how they played the module at Origins 1976 (July 23-35 Baltimore, according to Wikipedia).  Ok, fair enough.  Thing is, the 1st printing of the 1e PHB (according to the Acaeum) is June 1978.

IOW, the module that people played that people bought in the store is a different one than was played at the original tournament.  It has to be.  The pregenerated characters in the store bought version are created using the Player's Handbook, but, those rules wouldn't be available for more than a year after Origins.  So, right there, we have a possible explanation for discrepencies in experiences.  The module I played (that I bought in the store) differs from the module that was played in 1976.  How does it differ?  I don't know.  I honestly have no idea.  But, is it possible for those differences to explain the differences in experiences?  Again, I don't know, but, it does seem possible.

I'm really unsure why [MENTION=6810442]ExTSR[/MENTION] accuses me of ranting.  I've been pretty forthright and forthcoming in my points.  I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, although, to be honest, I suspect there is far too little actual evidence other than anecdote to actually make any informed judgement.  But, I hardly think I'm being unreasonable.  Why am I being told I'm "ranting"? 

Like I said, I remain healthily skeptical.  There are just far too many unanswered questions for me to simply say, "Oh, sure, no worries.  Everyone else that reports having difficulty completing the module is just a poor player and too stupid to answer the challenge."  It's going to take a bit more than vague, "Well, several tables completed it, so there" for me to actually believe that.


----------



## increment (Feb 2, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Did a little fact checking, and this is why I remain skeptical of anecdote.
> 
> @_*ExTSR*_ talks about how they played the module at Origins 1976 (July 23-35 Baltimore, according to Wikipedia).  Ok, fair enough.  Thing is, the 1st printing of the 1e PHB (according to the Acaeum) is June 1978.



Frank (and the Wikipedia page for the Tomb of Horrors that shows up for me anyway) are correct that the Tomb was run at Origins in 1975, not 1976. You are correct that the PHB did not come out until 1978.



Hussar said:


> IOW, the module that people played that people bought in the store is a different one than was played at the original tournament.  It has to be.  The pregenerated characters in the store bought version are created using the Player's Handbook, but, those rules wouldn't be available for more than a year after Origins.  So, right there, we have a possible explanation for discrepencies in experiences.  The module I played (that I bought in the store) differs from the module that was played in 1976.  How does it differ?  I don't know.  I honestly have no idea.  But, is it possible for those differences to explain the differences in experiences?  Again, I don't know, but, it does seem possible.



It is true that they are not the same adventure. The Origins Tomb was run for exactly 120 people in the 1975 tournament, eight parties of 15 players each. Yes, each party was 15 players, so they used the infamous "caller" rules. At four scheduled times in the convention, Gary Gygax and his son Ernie each simultaneously ran the adventure for one group.

It is thus not an entirely apples-to-apples comparison to look at the 15-player parties of OD&D pregens designed for the 1975 Tomb versus the 2-10 player parties designed for AD&D in the 1978 module version of the Tomb. The 1978 module does say that if more than 5 players are participating, each should control only one character, so, let's say it is designed for a 6 or so character descent as opposed to the 15 character descent of the Origins tournament. More disposable bodies are handy when dealing with so many traps and arbitrary ways to die.

It is similarly difficult to say whether the module version is more deadly without cherry-picking details that perhaps aren't representative given the differences in the system between OD&D and AD&D. The first false tunnel, which collapses for 5-50 damage in the 1978 Tomb, deals only 4-40 damage in the 1975 Tomb; and the gargoyle in room #8 that has 64 HP in the 1978 Tomb has only 42 HP in the 1975 Tomb. 

At least one prominent gamer who played in the tournament - Mark Swanson, who came down to Origins from Boston - complained that the Tomb of Horrors was a really stupid adventure full of pits and traps that had no real depth to it. He also lamented that of the people in his party, only four of the fifteen had ever played D&D before, which made the adventure difficult to navigate. Characters were distributed in alphabetical order, so you didn't get to assign the most powerful characters to the most experienced players (and there are pretty vast differences in the power-levels of the pregen characters, they range from 12th to 4th level). His group didn't get very far.

Swanson sourly noted that parties that ran later in the convention weekend got inside information from previous tournament participants, which gave them an unfair advantage.

One group did manage to get the whole treasure at the end. The overall winner of the tournament was Barry Eynon, who was an experienced player from the Ryth campaign visiting from Michigan.


----------



## Caliburn101 (Feb 2, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> Nope, gotta admit it was a pretty negative rant.
> 
> Wow you've run the module seven times. Which systems and how did they go?
> (I wouldn't have thought it would make much difference playing a less forgiving system -no chance to find a trap unless you look in the right spot and  death no save seems the most common way of dying in the adventure and that's isn't affected by the system)
> ...




I have run it for D&D 1st, 2nd (once each), twice with 3.5, twice with GURPS and once with RuneQuest III.

I have seen the crown and sceptre used once to destroy Acererak, an antimagic field to supress him whilst the group looted his room, a portable hole/bag of holding was used to deal with him once, two groups have escaped the dungeon after losses prior to the BBEG fight and one group used a Decanter of Endless Water and Potions of Water Breathing to deal with the pit traps and the flame trap corridor after doing extensive research on the place after interviewing Archmage Tenser himself about the dungeon (he and Robilar survived it in Greyhawk canon - fleeing the battle with Acererak) - half of them died in the BBEG fight though.

Interestingly, one Paladin became a Blackguard mid-dungeon, which definitely helped him survive, and a Wizard in another game sold his soul to a demon to get through it alive. But then I am lucky enough to generally have 'think outside of the box' role-players in my groups, so things can go anywhere sometimes.

In my experience, if someone complains of something being too difficult and therefore 'unfair' after going at it head on, expecting a straight rush in and hit it to work most of the time, then they are often enough the kind of player who is self-entitled, whether they realise it or not. Unfortunately this type of player is more prevalent these days, as the number of encounters per day and the CR of the challenges has become a codified thing which cements an expectation that this is the only way it can be done. The players having limited resources (like older version wizards and their very few spells at low level) is one thing - a half decent player will adjust and try to solve encounters without blowing their limited 'ammunition'. But now, you can actually be accused of being a 'bad DM' by some players for having the temerity to exceed the number of recommended encounters per day, exceeding CR or pressing characters (without them having made mistakes) after their x/rest resources are expended.

This limited and '_only _inside the box' approach to the game was almost a strict requirement with the way 4th Edition rules worked. So much so my players and I abandoned it early on.

Personally I think the idea that all encounters must be entirely 'defeatable' using 'point and shoot' abilities or dice rolling alone is an unfortunate expectation baked-into to a certain extent with newer editions. This passively discourages creative 'outside the box' thinking ("I'm out of surges/spells/turns etc... so can't do anything.." kind of thinking.), and this is a great shame. Older editions of the game, and in fact some of the systems that rose at that time (like RuneQuest I) required more than the tabletop equivalent of MMO ability button mashing to deal with challenges and were I feel all the better for it.

It's no wonder this person or that cries foul and 'it's unfair' instead of thinking 'how else can we deal with this?'.

If you think this is an unfair appraisal, please consider that I have been DM'ing since the late 70's and have seen the trend develop slowly over time. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone who came to game latter on, but it is much more common than it used to be. Questions like "how do I deal with the 15 minute working day syndrome" just never got asked in yesteryear - the answer was self-evident back then insofar as the players were part of the solution and DMs just dealt with it. They didn't seem to need (and in fact didn't have) any advice or guidance, rules based or otherwise to resolve it, so they just did it.

Yet somehow we all managed to enjoy long-running campaigns without regular TPKs or problems with encounter balancing, despite the other types of shortcomings the earlier versions of RPG rules worked.

Things these days are far more 'spoon fed' if you strictly follow the guidance available, and naturally, any module predating this development are going to be seen by some as 'unfair' or 'the worst module ever' because that is the only benchmark they have for what it 'right'.

A solution for such hide-bound D&D DMs raised on this paradigm is to GM other game systems that don't have it. Run a GURPS game, or a RuneQuest game or similar - games that just say "here's how you make characters, here's how your play, here's a bunch of challenges of various types - GO!".

It will help them develop their own judgement on threat level and challenge without sitting there adding up numbers, and it will help their players be more adaptable in their approach to resolving encounters and situations in-game.

THEN perhaps, older modules like Tomb of Horrors or Lost Shrine of the Tamoachan can be revisited by them and enjoyed instead of being complained about...


----------



## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

Hussar said:


> But, that's the thing - this is a tournament module.  None of those things are available.




Wait wait wait wait...

Is the claim "this is unbeatable without cheating" or "this is unbeatable without cheating in a tournament that allows no buying chickens" or "this is unbeatable with a legit leveled-up PC"?

Or have the goalposts been moved again?

Just state, in clear english, exactly the single sentence statement you are making, and everyone else should do the same.

And this question is not just for you but for EVERY person who has claimed it's "unbeatable" or "unbeatable without cheating"


----------



## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

increment said:


> Frank (and the Wikipedia page for the Tomb of Horrors that shows up for me anyway) are correct that the Tomb was run at Origins in 1975, not 1976. You are correct that the PHB did not come out until 1978.
> 
> 
> It is true that they are not the same adventure. The Origins Tomb was run for exactly 120 people in the 1975 tournament, eight parties of 15 players each. Yes, each party was 15 players, so they used the infamous "caller" rules. At four scheduled times in the convention, Gary Gygax and his son Ernie each simultaneously ran the adventure for one group.
> ...




Thanks for that. 
Do you know 
1. how long each group had to deal with the adventure?
2. Was the demilich destroyed ?(was this the crown & sceptre event?)
3. How did the other groups go (the ones that didn't get the whole treasure or have Swanson and not get very far?)

Just learning that there were 15 players per group is pretty mind blowing.


----------



## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Wait wait wait wait...
> 
> Is the claim "this is unbeatable without cheating" or "this is unbeatable without cheating in a tournament that allows no buying chickens" or "this is unbeatable with a legit leveled-up PC"?
> 
> ...




Hussar has always been talking about winning in a tournament. He refers to the tournament as being 3-4 hours with 6-8 players and zero preparation. He did this early on. He also has said multiple times that he believes it can be beaten and has in fact beaten it. In fact you quoted one of his posts where he was says it was pretty hard to believe it could be done by 6-8 people in 4 hours. You said that His statement that such a thing was hard to believe was akin to accusing people of lying. 

Part of the reason I was asking how long they had in the tournaments was because I suspected the early tournaments were not set up the same way as Hussar expected. We now know the original one had 15 players per group. This is an important factor. i would be interested to know how long the groups played.

it was treatmonk20 who said it was unplayable and defined that as in his view not fun to play or run.

and gamedaddy also said some stuff about maybe cheating, he was the one talking about a legit levelled up character or something (can't quite remember - apologies).

you seem to be conflating a bunch of people's posts.

Btw i was the one accused of moving the goalposts the first time (incorrectly I suspect as I suspect dajr had my posts confused with Hussar) so accusing Hussar of moving them again seems unecessarily snarky.


----------



## Zak S (Feb 2, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> you seem to be conflating a bunch of people's posts.




Of course I'm not. That's why I said:



> And this question is not just for you but for EVERY person who has claimed it's "unbeatable" or "unbeatable without cheating"




I just want to make sure every variation to the claim to be accounted for so they can all be clarified.


----------



## werecorpse (Feb 2, 2016)

Caliburn101 said:


> I have run it for D&D 1st, 2nd (once each), twice with 3.5, twice with GURPS and once with RuneQuest III.
> 
> I have seen the crown and sceptre used once to destroy Acererak, an antimagic field to supress him whilst the group looted his room, a portable hole/bag of holding was used to deal with him once, two groups have escaped the dungeon after losses prior to the BBEG fight and one group used a Decanter of Endless Water and Potions of Water Breathing to deal with the pit traps and the flame trap corridor after doing extensive research on the place after interviewing Archmage Tenser himself about the dungeon (he and Robilar survived it in Greyhawk canon - fleeing the battle with Acererak) - half of them died in the BBEG fight though.
> 
> ...




Thanks for your recollection of events. I think the style of play and what is expected of the game and players has changed a lot over the years (I started playing in the late 70's and DMing probably in 1980 if memory serves. I have run a couple of approx 15 year 1e campaigns and a RQ campaign that lasted about 5 years). I've never been a big trap fan and I'm not so against the change but that's a conversation for another place.


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

Zak S said:


> Wait wait wait wait...
> 
> Is the claim "this is unbeatable without cheating" or "this is unbeatable without cheating in a tournament that allows no buying chickens" or "this is unbeatable with a legit leveled-up PC"?
> 
> ...




Umm, fourth time now. I never said it was unbeatable. Perhaps I should try a larger font?


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

increment said:


> Frank (and the Wikipedia page for the Tomb of Horrors that shows up for me anyway) are correct that the Tomb was run at Origins in 1975, not 1976. You are correct that the PHB did not come out until 1978.
> 
> 
> It is true that they are not the same adventure. The Origins Tomb was run for exactly 120 people in the 1975 tournament, eight parties of 15 players each. Yes, each party was 15 players, so they used the infamous "caller" rules. At four scheduled times in the convention, Gary Gygax and his son Ernie each simultaneously ran the adventure for one group.
> ...




Thank you very much for this. On my phone and can't posrep. But it's nice to know that my skepticism wasn't entirely off base.


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## ExTSR (Feb 2, 2016)

*Enough *



Hussar said:


> Did a little fact checking, and this is why I remain skeptical of anecdote.
> @_*ExTSR*_ talks about how they played the module at Origins 1976 (July 23-35 Baltimore, according to Wikipedia).



First, a big shout-out and thanks to Increment's posts (Jon Peterson, author of _Playing At the Worl_d -- THE definitive and exhaustive tome that documents our roots in the 1970s).

The above quote shows my core problem here, as Jon has pointed out. Hussar misquotes me and then follows his own Google-trail, heedless of facts. You see a lot of that these days, but to echo a common meme... "your google-fu doesn't trump my law degree." (No, I don't have a law degree, literalists. If your head went there, refocus, and try to keep up.)

.

For those who are interested in historical facts, I refer you to this Authority (proven so), and I respectfully bow out. I once walked out on a certain gamer website, my former internet 'home', because of this sort of 'debate'.

No, I wasn't there. I'm a new guy, "3rd wave" we call it; didn't get to TSR until 1980. My knowledge in this area comes from my friends, from oral histories recounted by those who were actually there. I am proud to know these people, by accident of fate.

But I'm not the Angry Young Man whose shoes I once wore, and I have little time or patience for those who desperately seek googly verification for their theories while turning their backs on the resources and truths that have been uncovered through sheer hard work, spurred by a genuine love of our Hobby. This includes Jon and Shannon and many others (edit: like Bill M... see current OD&D video).

Feel free to follow your pet theories, one and all. And do indeed be distrustful of anecdotes, for our memories blur over decades. Proper research notes the anomalies but synergizes multiple sources to find a path to Truth. An open and intelligent mind is always suspicious of Pet Theories that seem to be convenient answers to All the Questions. Reality is rife with complexity and nuance, and simplistic solutions are usually wrong.

So I'm outta here, enough with this thread. As I leave, I apologize for not using any vulgarity or obscenity; my refusal to sheeple-up and descend to the common conventional tactics (ala the Wickster) does not boost my signal, but I am content with who I am, and my small place in this world.

cya around EnWorld.


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## Hussar (Feb 2, 2016)

And thus we see why I remain highly skeptical of anecdote.


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## billd91 (Feb 2, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Thank you very much for this. On my phone and can't posrep. But it's nice to know that my skepticism wasn't entirely off base.




You do realize that, with respect to the Mark Swanson bit, he's relating an anecdote? And you're using that to bolster the validity of your skepticism.


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## Zak S (Feb 3, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Umm, fourth time now. I never said it was unbeatable. Perhaps I should try a larger font?




I asked a specific question:

"Just state, in clear english, exactly the single sentence statement you are making..."


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## werecorpse (Feb 3, 2016)

Hussar said:


> And thus we see why I remain highly skeptical of anecdote.




To be fair the anecdote was that people had attended a tournament (or several tournaments) and one or more groups had "beaten the tomb".

You then registered your scepticism by stating you found it hard to believe that such a feat could be done but added parameters that were not part of the anecdote "by 6-8 players in 4 hours with 0 prep". That's like not believing that the running feat referred to above in the Occam's razor discussion could be done "by a child under 14 carrying a 50 kilo rucksack".

Your skeptiscism may be accurate but it was about something that wasn't part of the original claim. 

(And yes I note that you had always accepted that the module was beatable)


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## increment (Feb 3, 2016)

billd91 said:


> You do realize that, with respect to the Mark Swanson bit, he's relating an anecdote? And you're using that to bolster the validity of your skepticism.



Well, in fairness, I was citing a write-up that Mark Swanson produced for Alarums & Excursions #4 within a week of playing in the tournament personally, which I corroborate with a direct comparison to the actual 1975 Tomb draft used by Gygax to run the game, as well as the Origins program and a few other pieces of contemporary evidence. So there are good reasons to think his representation is fresh and accurate, though obviously nobody's perfect. It is a very detailed read, you can really trace the party's progress through the Tomb and see how each trap and encounter looked to him as the caller.

But I'd like to add that Frank's anecdotes sometimes capture information that falls outside the scope of my archival method, and should not be dismissed lightly.



werecorpse said:


> Do you know
> 1. how long each group had to deal with the adventure?



Not off the top of my head. It was a timed event, and you got a five-minute warning near the end (which in an environment like the Tomb naturally caused some last-minute desperate deaths).



werecorpse said:


> 2. Was the demilich destroyed ?(was this the crown & sceptre event?)



That's my understanding, though I'm not sure how he was destroyed.



werecorpse said:


> 3. How did the other groups go (the ones that didn't get the whole treasure or have Swanson and not get very far?)



Swanson reports that the other Friday night group only got roughly as far as he did, despite having 13 experienced players. Note though that the format really favored later groups in the weekend: you could sign up on the program for 1, 2 or 3 trips, so if this was your third try, you could surely help steer the party in a productive direction. It's no surprise that the first evening runs of the weekend didn't yield a winner.


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## Hussar (Feb 3, 2016)

werecorpse said:


> To be fair the anecdote was that people had attended a tournament (or several tournaments) and one or more groups had "beaten the tomb".
> 
> You then registered your scepticism by stating you found it hard to believe that such a feat could be done but added parameters that were not part of the anecdote "by 6-8 players in 4 hours with 0 prep". That's like not believing that the running feat referred to above in the Occam's razor discussion could be done "by a child under 14 carrying a 50 kilo rucksack".
> 
> ...




I believe you'll find if you go back, you've got the order of events backwards.  I registered my skepticism that a group going into the module cold, with a 4 hour time limit, would be able to complete the module only to be told afterward that not only was it possible, but that more than one group did so in the original tournament.  It wasn't until a bit after that that  [MENTION=52672]increment[/MENTION] stepped in with a more detailed account based on first person reports.

But, as my Internet is currently really hating En World, I cannot go back at this time and check, so, it's entirely possible that my mouth got going before my brain engaged.  

/edit - my Internet is kinda loving En World, so, I could wander back through the thread.

My very first post on the whole point about anecdote was this one:



Hussar said:


> On the idea of reports and cheating:
> 
> Look, I'm not saying the people who reported succeeding at the module were automatically cheating, but, lets face facts.  What are the odds that a group of 6-8 people with zero preparation and pre-gen characters could successfully navigate the ToH in 3-4 hours?  It's pretty hard to believe.
> 
> ...




Note, at this point, I don't think anyway, no one had actually posted ANY actual anecdotes.  Just some vague pointing at various Wikipedia and TV Tropes articles.  And, note, right from the first, I NEVER accused anyone of lying or being deceptive.  I was skeptical that anyone did it without a bit of extra help, that going in 100% cold was, and is, IMO, very unlikely to result in a successful run in 4 hours, but, even right from the start, I was entirely willing to admit that the module is playable.  

 [MENTION=6810442]ExTSR[/MENTION] stepped in later on and provided some insights and then [MENTION=52672]increment[/MENTION] provided more.  I'd say that my skepticism was both healthy and dovetails pretty well with the additional information we've been given.

I'm frankly baffled by the pushback I'm getting here.  I wonder if I'm not being lumped in with other people's arguments and if there isn't some misreading going on.

---- 

As to the "one sentence explanation requested, I guess I'll repeat for the 5th and final time:

I am skeptical that a group, without any prep, going into the module completely cold, could complete the module in 4 hours.

Is that clear enough?


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## ExTSR (Feb 3, 2016)

Hussar said:


> at this point, I don't think anyway, no one had actually posted ANY actual anecdotes. ExTSR stepped in later on and provided some insights and then increment provided more... I'm frankly baffled by the pushback I'm getting here.



Slight terminology suggestion... I provided some second-hand unverified anecdotes by friends. (I wasn't there.) Then Jon dropped by with some Truth. That's HIS stock in trade. ;>

As to pushback... I suggest that perhaps it was your firm position clearly and loudly announced well before you had all the facts, and "I didn't know!" is your reason.
So it may be your Method rather than the Results that are affecting readers the most.

Just my 2c, I'll go back to my game now. 

F


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## Nytmare (Feb 3, 2016)

ExTSR said:


> As to pushback... I suggest that perhaps it was your firm position clearly and loudly announced well before you had all the facts, and "I didn't know!" is your reason.
> So it may be your Method rather than the Results that are affecting readers the most.




That's kinda what skepticism is.


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## Shades of Eternity (Feb 11, 2016)

ha, he said it  for marketing purposes for seventh sea.

judging it by how much it made, it worked 


edit: well done.


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## GameDaddy (Feb 14, 2016)

Zak S said:


> And "I beat a module" isn't exactly an 'extraordinary claim'"...
> 
> As many many many many people have pointed out, all you need is tons of hirelings, chickens and other canaries to beat this dungeon. That was a much more common style of play back then.




_Was not._ 

None of the players in our group brought hirelings, chickens, or canaries...  or anything else even remotely like that. Just to try it, some folks used pregens, I rolled up brand new 10th level fighter. After that character died, on a direct challenge of the GM, I brought one of my best characters, a 17th Level Wizard, that had never died in any other adventure that I had playing for over two years years previously. We did bring 6 ' and 10' poles, rope, spikes, hammers, picks, shovels, and other common dungeon sundries.

This was 1980. We played the mono 78' red cover version, because it had just arrived at our Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS). 90% of everything we ever learned about RPGs came from the FLGS. We mail ordered our wargames, and the wargame companies like _Avalon Hill_ and _SPI_ published their catalog, and direct mailed us new catalogs with the latest releases at least once a year, AH and SPI were famous for mailing quarterly updates as well. That's once every three months, and they were the big boys in the game Industry. RPG were still very new, and the other gaming companies we would get catalogs from would maybe mail out a catalog maybe once a year. TSR would add an advertising page, so you could learn about new modules by reading the last page of a game or module. One of the inside cover, or maybe it was the back of the Tomb of Horrors listed the other modules that were released at the time, and often we would go down to the game shop after we had played a new module or game, and special order new games or modules we learned about in this manner.

I might have attended one or two _Ghenghis Con_ game conventions in Denver by that time. There were no groups that would teach RPG or wargame walk-thru's at the convention at that time, because organized play groups did not even exist then. We would just go to shows to try new games, and half the new games at a show were run by local GMs and Refs from coffee stained crib notes, rules mashups, or some new cobbled experimental rules set laboriously typed up on some old typewriter. If you were really newfangled and had a nice chunk of change to burn, you could buy an electric IBM Selectric typewriter which included a whiteout typeover ribbon so you could quickly correct your writing mistakes on the fly.

State of the Art computers of the time included TRS-80's, The Amiga, and a few folks had Apple IIe's. Any gaming material that came from these computers were printed on cheap mechanical tractor dot matrix printers, which featured perforated continuous sheets of paper tens or hundreds of feet long that included holes so it could be fed through the printer. We bought this paper in boxes. One sheet of this printer paper was like a hundred or five hundred continuous pages long, and we would print just what we would need, maybe ten sheets, then tear off this whole lot, then separate the papers laboriously by hand. The Ink quality varied widely, and often, after just a year, anything tractor printed would be so faded it was illegible.

Full color printing was extremely rare, and most games or RPGs were black and white, or featured one tone monochrome color printing. To be considered truly professional, you had to at least spring for a full color cover, but the vast majority of games were released as Black & White, or featured a monocolor print job with black and one other color. TSR printed their modules in monotone blue color because photocopiers at the time could not see light blue, it shows up as white for black and white copiers, and red shows up as solid black. It was a copy protection scheme to up their sales of modules. You had to either buy the module, or copy the maps and game notes by hand to duplicate them, because most copiers didn't "see" blue and would not reproduce the blue maps or notes on copies.

Us real GM's had a name for that style of play, where players got chickens, or cattle, or hirelings and ran them though the dungeon ahead of the players. We called it _Monty Haul GMing_, after that television game show _"Let's Make A Deal"_. Basically with Monty Haul GMing, the GMs would award the players with a bounty or plentitude of monies, or treasure, and/or magic. And then let the players run through a dungeon or challenge. Our gaming group looked down on this style of play with considerable disdain. We actually didn't see this style of play often, but we heard about it.

The other term used at this time was _Iron Man_, and with the _Iron Man_ style of play, the player would carefully actually work up a character from first level. and almost everyone at this time had a few long-term characters that had survived multiple campaigns of often unexpected complexity. Naturally we took great pride in the few high level characters we had, that had survived fiendishly devised dungeons, and adventures. If the high level character dies, player would roll up a new character at the 1st level, and start again. _Iron Man. _You had what equipment was listed on the character sheet when you started, and nothing else could be added, unless the game started in like some big city or something similar.


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## pemerton (Feb 14, 2016)

Caliburn101 said:


> I am lucky enough to generally have 'think outside of the box' role-players in my groups, so things can go anywhere sometimes.
> 
> In my experience, if someone complains of something being too difficult and therefore 'unfair' after going at it head on, expecting a straight rush in and hit it to work most of the time, then they are often enough the kind of player who is self-entitled, whether they realise it or not.
> 
> ...



It's good to know that everyone who doesn't like ToH has some sort of character flaw!

Or maybe they just don't like the same things you do. It doesn't mean that you're better than them.

And just for clarification: I've been GMing since the first half of the 1980s; have never enjoyed trap-and-puzzle-style dungeons (either as GM or player); have GMed a lot of 4e (among other systems); and see a lot of "outside the box" thinking from my players.


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## Hussar (Feb 15, 2016)

Been thinking about this thread for a while, and this is how I would critique the ToH:

*The Good*

1.  ToH is fantastically inspirational.  There are just some excellent ideas in there.  And, I would say that few if any other modules have been burned into the collective zeitgeist of gamers as much has this one has.  Show someone a picture of the Green Demon Face and everyone knows exactly what you're talking about.  I'd say there are extremely few modules with that level of instant recognition.  So, obviously this module touches on something in our collective experience.  And, IMO, many of the traps and puzzles are pretty interesting without being reduced to pixel bitching.  The tension in the module is very high.  You have your player's undivided attention when you run this module and that's a very, very good thing.  Of all the criticisms you hear about ToH, no one ever says it's boring.  

2.  I can't think of another module that has inspired DM's to the level of this module.  For example, how many other forty year old modules get modelled in 3d??  One of my earliest gaming experiences was watching my older brother run this module for his friends (I was a bit too young at the time to play).  I remember quite vividly when the players came to the series of secret doors that have to be opened in a specific way or a spear trap shoots out and tags you.

My brother had the players actually get out of their chairs and demonstrate how they were opening the doors.  I was observing LARPing in 1979!    To this day, I've rarely, if ever, seen this level of immersion from any other module.  And that's a very good thing.

*The Bad*

1.  Like anything, nothing is perfect.  The module does suffer from some extremely arbitrary choice points where the players really have no way of knowing which is the right choice.  It becomes less a "thinking man's dungeon" and more "Can you brute force calculate the answer before you run out of HP?" module.  The above mentioned secret door/spear traps section is a perfect example of this.  There's no clues whatsoever.  So, you basically just have to run through every possible solution until such time as you open the door.  And each time you're wrong, you take damage.  There's rather a lot of this sort of thing and the module, again IMO, suffers for it.

2.  Metagaming.  As was mentioned, the module is more or less unsolvable if you use it as written.  A group using pre-gens without any outside knowledge will almost certainly fail to complete the adventure.  It's frustrating to say the least.  Which, in practice, means that virtually no one actually goes through the module as written.  [MENTION=80711]GameDaddy[/MENTION] above mentions bringing a 17th level wizard into the module to resolve it.  This is far, far outside the scenario parameters (and likely would make the module pretty easy to solve to boot).  In my own experience, we had a group that had played the G series and had an intelligent sword that detected secret doors.  Makes the module pretty darn easy.  Or, you get the bag of rats solutions that people talk about.  IIRC, Gygax's own group saw Robilar do pretty much this exact tactic.  And, likely, he was not going into the module without any foreknowledge.

--------

Conclusion:

Is the module the worst of all time?  No.  Not in the slightest.  There are far, far worse modules out there.  The worst that can really be said about ToH is that it's a pretty linear module with no role play interaction (there isn't anything to talk to) and fosters a very strong sense that players should game the game, rather than role play their own characters through the scenario.  OTOH, it is very inspirational, filled with all sorts of very, very memorable events that players still talk about and remember forty years on.  That, right there, makes it a very good module.


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## JonnyP71 (Feb 15, 2016)

Hussar said:


> Is the module the worst of all time?  No.  Not in the slightest.  There are far, far worse modules out there.  The worst that can really be said about ToH is that it's a pretty linear module with no role play interaction (there isn't anything to talk to) and fosters a very strong sense that players should game the game, rather than role play their own characters through the scenario.  OTOH, it is very inspirational, filled with all sorts of very, very memorable events that players still talk about and remember forty years on.  That, right there, makes it a very good module.




That's a pretty fair conclusion on the whole.  However on your roleplaying point, while it's true to say there is little to for the players to interact with in the module, it forces more player-player interaction than any other printed module D&D I have played or DMed.  And as DM I loved the level of thought it provoked among my playing groups - even though they all used one-shot PCs to which they had no personal attachment, they were really invested in the challenge the Tomb presented. 

Yes it is a 'players vs the game' adventure, that's precisely what it was meant to be, and on that score it succeeds admirably.

The worst modules are those which are utterly forgettable and which feel pointless. Tomb of Horrors is perhaps THE most memorable for a whole generation of gamers.  And it is far from pointless.


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## GameDaddy (Feb 15, 2016)

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. I'm just saying it's very unlikely that a convention group with just four hours could complete this without some additional foreknowledge or help, and this estimate is based on the experiences of our actual group play.

To note, our group did successfully beat the dungeon, but not on the first attempt, ...nor even the second. We started about seven or eight pm. I quit by ten, after losing the wizard in our second run through, and the bulk of the rest of the group played through until they completed the _Tomb of Horrors_ and quit around three or four a.m. Many of our weekends in high school went that way. It took like five or six attempts before they finally succeeded and it was a real bloodbath.

I remember where the Canary came from now. In ToH the _Canary in a Cage_ came with one of the Pre-gen characters or as an additional equipment option the players could add in the pre-dungeon outfitting phase of the adventure. I do remember one player taking this option now and carrying a canary in a cage into the Tomb of Horrors. He died. The Canary died. We did have a discussion about the canary though during the game, after the first couple run throughs that went something like this;

Me: _"Why are you bringing a canary in a cage into this dungeon?"_

Tom:_ "Well, you know, it's like in a mine, if there's no air, or poisonous gas, the canary will die first, and we'll get some warning that we need to act."_

Me:_ "Really??? just what exactly do you plan on doing if the canary dies? You have just a few rounds before you too will suffocate, or die a horrible death because of the poison."_

Tom: _"We can leave, and go back out the way we came in."_

Me: _(Thinking about one way doors and slide traps) "uuuhh-huh..."_

Tom: _"And the cleric can heal us..."_

Me: _"OK, what spells can help? Ahh remove poision! But how is the cleric going to know if you need to have poison removed, or if you are instead out of air and suffocating? ...And how many spells or scrolls like this is the cleric going to need to keep the whole party alive? You think the cleric is going to have time to save everybody, or is he going to use his spells to save himself?"_

Tom: _" I dunno..."_


I'm sure Gary and Frank and company laughed their a$$es off when they walked into the convention center gaming hall and saw all these players with big tough fighters, Fear inducing thieves, and awesome wizards, who were daintily traipsing through the dungeon hauling canaries in cages. This goes right back to the _Monty Haul "Let's make a Deal"_ theme, where people would show up in the most ridiculous of costumes in order to wow Monty and persuade him to favor them. The same with the players and GM ...in game with ToH. Yay!

If it helps any, our gaming group didn't like to think of ourselves in those terms. Instead of _Canaries in a Coal Mine_, we envisioned ourselves to be a lot more like _Conan_, _Subotai,_ and _Valeria,_ when they stole into the underground stronghold of _Thulsa Doom_ to kidnap the Princess in _Conan the Barbarian_. We go in fast using stealth and camouflage, dodge or disarm the traps, kill anything that needs to be killed, and get out fast with the treasure/loot, and with the least amount of alarm, or fuss.  



Now Hussar is right, It's a very good dungeon, but not in the way one would immediately expect, or guess. Here's what actual effect this play through had on me;

1) Other than B1 (Which was an exceptionally well designed dungeon) I had not played in any TSR Dungeon. We had taken the Holmes blue book to heart, and had happily crafted our own dungeons and story lines for years before and were already well versed in fiendish Dungeon design by the time ToH even came out. Other than B1, I never bought a TSR dungeon module, and didn't buy another dungeon module until after 2000 when WOTC released _Forge of Fury_. And that was only after I had a chance to examine an already opened copy of _Forge of Fury_.

TSR used to shrink wrap all of their dungeon and dragon modules so I couldn't inspect them for quality, This also put me off from buying any more modules, specifically becuase of our experiences with ToH. I did play in one other campaign where my friend Tom ran the _B4 The Lost City_ adventure, right after it was released in 1982. It was also very good, and I enjoyed it even though I lost two of the five characters that I played during that adventure.

2) When we went back to making our own dungeons, I always made sure to include at least two available methods or techniques any player could use to disarm any trap, because I wanted to avoid having my dungeon labeled a _"Railroad"_ which was a term we first heard not too long after the release of _Tomb of Horrors_.

3) Whenever somebody did use the term _"Railroad"_ to describe an adventure or game. I always though first of _Tomb of Horrors_ and that inexperienced GM, and that evening where I lost my best wizard in a sadistic deathtrap where I felt, ...despite my best efforts, there would have been _no chance to win_. Most games, and adventures that earned the label railroad were ones that I personally avoided, and to this day avoid, because it reveals a fatal flaw in the inherent design that is not properly being addressed by the game designer. 

It's not a matter of game balance, as an adventure can be unbalanced and tilted in the favor of players, or tilted against them. A really good game should be neither, and it should be up to the players to eke out a victory against a series of challenges, some more difficult, and some less difficult, but no challenge should be so difficult that it cannot be overcome. Any challenge like that and it is no longer a game.


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## Ranes (Feb 29, 2016)

GameDaddy said:


> ...it should be up to the players to eke out a victory...




Or, if you're in the Tomb of Horrors, _eek_ out a victory.

I know. I shall immolate myself forthwith.


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## sphere830 (Jan 1, 2017)

I enjoyed this piece and the discussion it has generated.  I love this module for everything that the piece brought out.  For the reason of evolving the GM alone--ToH is very important "module."  Regardless of your experience, I hope you have a memory of the Tomb of Horrors.  I never beat it myself and lost a 7th level Ranger to the dungeon.  That doesn't stop me from owning a first edition and rereading the dungeon for sheer ruthless design.  Tomb of Horror forms a kind of base-line for the limits of a death-trap.  But pillaged, this module is like a great early Atari game...it still works.  This 32-page gem has enough game design and traps for many campaigns employed as a toolbox.  And, as importantly, we are still having conversations about the shared and culture experience that ToH generated.  This essay expressed something that everyone that experienced this module has felt!  Fun Sunday read.


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## Zak S (Jan 1, 2017)

sphere830 said:


> This essay expressed something that everyone that experienced this module has felt!




I'm sorry, what was the thing that I (and apparently everyone who's played this module has felt) that it expressed?


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## sphere830 (Jan 2, 2017)

Zak S said:


> I'm sorry, what was the thing that I (and apparently everyone who's played this module has felt) that it expressed?




Fair question.  It seems for me that ToH places absolute kind of traps (e.g. sphere of annihilation) where bumbling around them instigates creativity or avoidance.  As a party and relationship to the game itself, Tomb of horrors offers a dungeon (or series of traps) that will likely take a number of attempts/characters to beat.  Or it offers a place in the game world that is almost unapproachable, but an example of the world being more important than individual characters.

My apologies for the initial ambiguity.

I should also put out here what I thought about the article.  First, I disagree that Tomb of Horror is a bad module.  In fact, I think of ToH as one of the best adventure modules, essentially for the reasons listed both above and in my initial comment.

Secondly, even though I said that I had never "beat" the adventure, ToH is not like most adventures (As most here have already commented on).  I do think of this as a true dungeon of horrors.  The game design itself evolved the game passed an adventure/puzzle to be beaten/solved in one pass.  But, again, in my mind represents a truly place of horror.  A place to be either taken seriously or avoided all together.  Also a place or site that will alter the game world if the players choose to engage or venture into.  Which brings up another point for clarity.

If a person is running a game of one-shots and/or linearly (aka tournament talk above and beyond the scope of my comments), then this module is the Donkey Kong of early adventure design.  This dungeon will take your quarters.  At the end,  I prefer to add the Tomb of horrors to all of my game worlds, but in a sandbox-kind of way.  That said, rumors leading a party are esoteric and must be pursued but forewarned.

I also like the critical essay of Wick's, but not because I dislike the Tomb of Horrors.  Many people don't share initial experiences with the module, without the current meta-thinking about the what the Tomb of Horrors has become.  And this is where my initial comment was rooted (albeit incompletely).  Tomb of horrors is still generating conversation in general.  From a game design perspective and a collection of traps and killer situations, I still love the Tomb of Horrors.  The module does what it was intended for, to humble the hubris and the lack of concerns of high-level characters.  So I disagree with Wick, but the article (like the module itself) does generate good conversation.


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## wwanno (Jan 2, 2017)

sphere830 said:


> Fair question.  It seems for me that ToH places absolute kind of traps (e.g. sphere of annihilation) where bumbling around them instigates creativity or avoidance.  As a party and relationship to the game itself, Tomb of horrors offers a dungeon (or series of traps) that will likely take a number of attempts/characters to beat.  Or it offers a place in the game world that is almost unapproachable, but an example of the world being more important than individual characters.
> 
> My apologies for the initial ambiguity.



That is exactly what I am doing in all my campaigns, whatever the edition (2nd or 5th, I am the DM of 2 campaigns).

There is the tomb and it is known all around the game world.

Anytime the players desire, I let them generate PCs (lv 10+1d4, random magic equipment) to play the module.

If they die, I write down where they died and what they were carrying with them. If they pick up some loot, I remove it from the list.

If any group of players will win the dungeons, the new will spread all over the game worlds, and the players from the other campaigns will know that somebody else took the treasures of the tomb.

If the players adventure in the tomb with newly created PCs, they will put down those PCs at the end of the module (for good or for bad), but if they decide to play it with their main characters they could end up really really RICH in bot magic and mundane, and they will keep playing those characters.

The fact is that the players (partially) know what is inside the tomb because they left those items when they tried with their previous PCs.

I hope that in the end they will dare to enter the tomb with their main PCs, lured by the treasures inside  

Inviato dal mio ASUS_Z00AD utilizzando Tapatalk


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