# Tomb of Horrors - example of many, or one of a kind?



## Bullgrit (May 31, 2011)

Crothian said this in another thread:







> Tomb of Horrors: I know it is a meat grinder and has huge problems with the new school way of gaming. But it is one of the few modules I try to run for each new group because I think it is important for people to know what gaming used to be like.



Now, I'm not calling him out specifically, but this is the latest example of something I've seen said here many times.

Is _Tomb of Horrors_ an example of standard old school gaming, or is it a single outlier, an exception from the standard? Is _Tomb of Horrors_ what gaming used to be like? Or is it something unusual, even unique from old gaming?

Bullgrit


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## Umbran (May 31, 2011)

I wouldn't call it unique, but I wouldn't call it "standard" either.  To me, Tomb of Horrors is a bit of an extreme example of a style, but it isn't so different from others that I'd call it an exception either.

Depending what he is calling "old school" I'd think White Plume Mountain would be a better archetypal example than the Tomb, but that's just me.


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## DragonLancer (May 31, 2011)

I think it's the exception. The whole killer death-grinder dungeon wasn't as prevalent as people seem to remember. There were a couple dungeons like that in the early days but the majority of "classic" 1st ed dungeons/scenarios were more reasonable.


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## Raven Crowking (May 31, 2011)

Removed


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## ExploderWizard (May 31, 2011)

I think you are likely to get as many different answers as responses. The entire premise assumes that there is some sort of _standard _old school play in the first place. 

People played vastly different games with the same sets of standard rules. For some people the tomb may have been kind of a typical adventure, for others it might be far removed from what was typically run.


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## Bullgrit (May 31, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:
			
		

> I think you are likely to get as many different answers as responses. The entire premise assumes that there is some sort of standard old school play in the first place.
> 
> People played vastly different games with the same sets of standard rules. For some people the tomb may have been kind of a typical adventure, for others it might be far removed from what was typically run.



For example:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/260389-defining-old-school-vote.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...identifying-old-school-adventure-modules.html

Bullgrit


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## IronWolf (May 31, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> The basic design parameters of ToH -- this is a dangerous area, the builders are out to kill you, some of the things are just intended to be funny, clues abound, etc. -- was hardly unique.  ToH was unique, though, to the *degree* that it made use of those parameters.
> 
> You can see similar bits in many (if not most) TSR 1e modules, but not so densely used, and usually broken up with other types of play (more potential combat, more potential role-play, etc.).




I think this sums up what I think the best.  Things *seemed* deadlier back in the old days of gaming.  My recollection could be clouded though!

In either case, I think ToH to the extreme in its nature, but does showcase some of the deadliness - just all in one very dense format.


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## Celebrim (May 31, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Is _Tomb of Horrors_ an example of standard old school gaming, or is it a single outlier, an exception from the standard? Is _Tomb of Horrors_ what gaming used to be like? Or is it something unusual, even unique from old gaming?




I believe it is one of a kind.

Much like Tolkien's imitators completely fail to capture the most important aspects of his text, the many Tomb of Horrors imitators fail to capture the most important aspects of the module.

There are LOTS of old school killer dungeons.   IMO, Tomb of Horrors isn't even the most deadly of the old school dungeons.   'Ravenloft', 'Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' and 'Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan' are IMO all harder to succeed in with characters in the suggested levels of play.   And that's to say nothing of things like 'Grimtooth's Traps' and other silliness that resulted from designers inspired by TOH but who failed to understand what made it work.   But Tomb of Horrors stands apart from other killer dungeons generally and its imitators specifically.

First, TOH is primarily a test of player ability and not of character ability.  There is almost no combat in TOH.  There are very few saving throws in TOH.  There are numerous traps that by pass hit points completely.   Until the very final encounter, which seems by intention to be one that the wiser player avoids, what is on your character sheet is almost irrelevant in determining whether you succeed in the module.  

Secondly, this amounts to a spoiler of some sort, but Tomb of Horrors is fair.  Acererak plays fair.   He's so uncannily and unusually fair given his apparant goal (killing adventurers) that it had to be lamp shaded and explained in the game universe in 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors'.  He's not using reverse psychology on the players to force them into guessing what's behind door #2.   If you must guess whether to go left or right, then success depends largely on luck.  Acererak follows a pattern and sticks to it, so that with care you really don't have to guess after you successfully enter the tomb.   If success depends on hitting the target AC or making a saving throw or doing enough damage when rolling damage, then success is at least in part luck and even a party which makes the correct choices might still be defeated in the module.   Tomb of Horrors is almost entirely singular in being a killer dungeon where this is not true.  If you make the right choices, you can 'beat  the dungeon' with practically a party of 1st levels.   Of course, with 1st level characters you'd practically have to be perfect in your play, to the extent that I think no one could do it without having first read the text, but really to 'beat the dungeon' requires you to make no big mistakes in play anyway and so even 10th level characters only gain the ability to survive minor mistakes.

This is the main reason why Tomb of Horrors has acquired such a reputation.   It really is entirely different from everything else.  S2 'White Plume Mountain' is a killer dungeon, but its often a killer dungeon in the obvious sense of having very dangerous monsters.  The puzzles are still there, but environment is reduced to being only an equal threat and challenge.   A first level party even making all  the right decisions still has no chance of defeating the module, because so many dangerous monsters stand in the way.   By something like  S4: 'Caverns of Tsojcanth' its almost entirely the dangerous monsters and the ability to make saving throws and use your characters abilities effectively that determines success.   It's not remotely the same sort of dungeon.


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## ExploderWizard (May 31, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> For example:
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/260389-defining-old-school-vote.html
> 
> ...




With regard to what I consider old school play the tomb has a more tightly packed potential for lethality than other adventures of similar size and scope but operates on the same parameters of play, which is that the adventure is there to be overcome by the _players_ rather than the _characters. _

Old school adventures depended more on player input and decision making than the stats of the PCs. A clever player could acomplish more with a less able PC, statistically speaking. The tomb represents this approach in adventure design more sharply than some others. 

This is in contrast with many modern adventures which are designed to be overcome by the right combination of build decisions (collectively known as the character).


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## the Jester (May 31, 2011)

Tomb of Horrors wasn't 'standard' in its day- but it wasn't a total outlier either.

It takes certain tropes from 1e and pushes them to the extreme.

I maintain that it is one of the best, most challenging modules ever, but that it is ultimately fair.


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## Raven Crowking (May 31, 2011)

Removed.


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## the Jester (May 31, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Sorry I can't XP you, Celebrim.  That was a beautiful analysis.




Covered.


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## Ulrick (May 31, 2011)

Well let's see....

--Gygax devised some version of the module in 1975. 
--The official version didn't get published until 1978 as an AD&D module (the first)
--It was _not_ a mega-dungeon like Castle Greyhawk or what the AD&D DMG talked about in its appendices.
--It requires player skill, not character abilities, to beat. And a lot of patience to search everything. 
--When I ran it 12 years ago in 2e, all of the characters died. And the players got mad at Gary Gygax instead of me, the DM. 


So yes, its a standard old school module.


Or rather, it set the standards.


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## TerraDave (May 31, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> IMO, Tomb of Horrors isn't even the most deadly of the old school dungeons.   'Ravenloft', 'Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' and 'Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan' ...




So you are saying my players are right to complain?

Its the ultimate puzzle/challenge the player dungeon. So as others have pointed out, its not typical, but its a good example of a certain style of play. 

I am running the RPGA 4E conversion right now. Great, great stuff. Yes, some rough edges have been sanded down, but its safe to say the players are challegned...and puzzled.


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## howandwhy99 (May 31, 2011)

ToH is iconic to old school play. It's a puzzle with many elements.

However, in common Gygaxian practice it is for high level characters, while being one of the first modules designed for the system.  No one should play it without loads of prior experience with the game.

Within are some truly awesome tricks and traps, some truly lousy ones, and a few just right out DM-kills-your-character moments. No one should run it straight out of the booklet, it needs modifying.

To generalize how people gamed in the past would do them a disservice. We played it back in my college days for a lark and managed to get pretty far one afternoon.  It's far from the only module type in D&D or old school gaming.


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## Celebrim (May 31, 2011)

TerraDave said:


> So you are saying my players are right to complain?




I'm not sure what you are saying.   

I'm saying however that most of the old school modules run with a party of 4-6 midway in the suggested character levels or with the pregenerated characters and ran by an experience DM who takes his kid gloves off will result in a TPK most of the time and EVERY time for a less than extremely experienced party.  

In the case of C1, I6, and S4, success depends not only on playing well, but also on getting lucky with the dice.   In the case of S1, luck with the dice has relatively little impact.

It's very illustrative to compare the challenges of "Tomb of Horrors" with those of "Return to the Tomb of Horrors".   The original "Tomb of Horrors" is a puzzle dungeon that rewards careful play and tangental thinking.   "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" is a hack and slash dungeon that heavily rewards character optimization and system mastery.    In _Tomb of Horrors_, there are many examples of "Die, No Save" as a result of some player proposition.  In one case even as little as, "We move cautiously down the corridor checking for traps." results in a TPK (Note, not 'may' result in a TPK, does result in a TPK; after the proposition is made the party dies).   This is fair, because by the time this trap is encountered, hopefully the players have already realized the normal cautious approach won't work very well and the blunder ahead approach is suicidal.   And if not, ToH claims another set of victims.

But in _Return to the Tomb of Horrors_ there are many examples of "Die, No Save" _that don't depend on player proposition at all_, but on such things as the random chance that an unavoidable monster successfully hits a party member before being killed.   The former is entirely a test of player skill and the 'trap' is avoided solely by being more cautious than the usual stock answer of "We move cautiously down the corridor checking for traps."   The later is entirely a test of character skill.   It can't be avoided; all you can do is try to mitigate the luck by having very high AC and overwhelming offensive capabilities.   This is not fair, as the player can now die regardless of what his choices were.  (Granted, the odds of death might be lower than the odds of death in the aforementioned corridor trap, but one is controllable risk and the other is not.)  There are no such encounters in the original, although arguably player choice can turn the final encounter into one.


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## Celebrim (May 31, 2011)

howandwhy99 said:


> ToH is iconic to old school play. It's a puzzle with many elements.




So, are you saying that B2, WG4, T1, S3, S4, GDQ, A1-4, and ToEE all basically amount puzzles with many elements and are clearly variations on the theme ToH presents?  S1 has very little in common with other iconic old school modules, and the play of S1 is very different than that of other old school modules.  Were are the hordes of humanoids in S1, the typical gaurds and sentries, and the expected set peice battles?   So, we've got a problem here - we've got more than one kind of old school and the sort that S1 is seems to be the less common.



> Within are some truly awesome tricks and traps, some truly lousy ones




You are entitled to your opinion, but to slake my curiousity, name one.



> and a few just right out DM-kills-your-character moments. No one should run it straight out of the booklet, it needs modifying.




I disagree.  It's perfect as is and modifications at best won't improve it and at worst will degrade its unique traits and flavor.   No one should run it for a party of characters that are the product of loving creation over years of campaigning, except perhaps as a deliberate going away party, but it should by all means be ran as written.

And I say that as a guy who pretty much never runs things as written or would advise people too.


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## Abraxas (May 31, 2011)

It is unique in that it takes a DM of extraordinary skill to run it in such a way as to not  severely influence the outcome. Being slightly off on a description can be the difference between successfully navigating a room or becoming a pile of ash.

It is old school in that the player's description of how their characters are doing things really matters in how they do or do not succeed.

As for particular traps/puzzles being truly lousy - I would have to agree, but would have to look through my copy again to list them.

I have always wished that I had seen one of the groups that succeeded (using the pre-generated characters - take a look at them sometime and their gear) when it was run as a tournament module when it first came out - just to see how much of that success was actually clever play vs dumb luck. In particular, I would liked to have seen the group that figured out how to use the crown and sceptre to destroy the demilich.


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## Huw (May 31, 2011)

As pointed out _S2 - White Plume Mountain_ and _S4 - Lost of Caverns of Tsojcanth_ were also sausage factories. However, the challenges were more varied, as opposed to the constant tricks'n'traps of _Tomb of Horrors_. I almost had a player walkout over _Tsojcanth_ - had to tone down some of the more biased encounters and the requirements to enter the central chamber.

You also need to remember that in the early days, everything was potentially deadly. Survival rates of 1st level characters were 50% if you were lucky. At higher levels, you had a better chance of survival due to more hit points, better saves and actual magic items. What Tomb of Horrors (and, to lesser extent, the other S-series and oddities like _Isle of the Ape_) did was subvert this by making level largely irrelevant.


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## TerraDave (May 31, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure what you are saying.
> 
> _STUFF_




Rude and repetitive. OK.


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## Celebrim (May 31, 2011)

TerraDave said:


> Rude and repetitive. OK.




Sentence fragment.  But clearer.

For the record, I literally did not and still do not understand what you were trying to say.   I wasn't saying or not saying your players had a right to complain.  I still do not know what you are doing nor what your players are complaining about, and I don't feel much like guessing or jumping to conclusions.  Nor do I understand how, "So are you saying that my players have a right to complain?", follows from the quoted text.   Pardon me for thinking more clarification on my part might cause you to understand better what I was saying, given that you didn't seem to understand it at all.  Was that snark?  Irony?  Sarcasm?  Genuine curiousity?  An attempt at agreement?  I have no idea.

I suppose by your standards I should have said: "Unclear and illogical.  Ignoring."   If that had been my thinking though, I probably would have done so and said nothing.


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## Alaxk Knight of Galt (May 31, 2011)

If you are interested in capturing the ToH style in 4th Edition, you can't go wrong with Revenge of the Iron Lich.  It's light on combat, rewards player skill over character skill, and is very lethal.  I ran it a couple of weeks ago (with a warning to all the players about the difficulty) and it was a blast.


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## Doug McCrae (May 31, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Is _Tomb of Horrors_ an example of standard old school gaming, or is it a single outlier, an exception from the standard? Is _Tomb of Horrors_ what gaming used to be like? Or is it something unusual, even unique from old gaming?



Its gamism is extreme, swamping all simulationism to a greater degree than other modules of the period. Ie it makes no sense from a game world perspective, it exists merely to challenge the players. Acererak doesn't exist. There is no such character, he has no attributes. He's just a stand-in for the module writer. In this respect, ToH hearks back to the even more old school mega-dungeon, which was the same - purely gamist, makes no game-world sense, exists only to challenge the players. The 'mad wizards and insane geniuses' who constructed the OD&D mega-dungeons were likewise mere conduits for the will of the DM.

I think Crothian is wrong to suggest that ToH is typical. Although gamism is the primary mode of play in D&D texts of the 70s, it's usually less extreme. ToH is an outlier, while remaining on the same spectrum.

Another unusual feature of ToH is that it's extremely linear.


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## Plane Sailing (May 31, 2011)

Ulrick said:


> So yes, its a standard old school module.




I completely disagree.

It was an outlier amongst all the modules produced by TSR

It wasn't like any standard dungeon adventures which I played in, or read about in various APAs of the day.

Thus it is, by definition an outlier.

In addition, I never considered it to be a particularly interesting or 'fair' dungeon, designed with too many instant death effects. Ran a quarter of it once, and it was wholly boring.


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## Plane Sailing (May 31, 2011)

(although I ought to add that I understand that some people have found it to be great fun - I'm not saying anything objective about the fun that can be had with it, just that my group found no fun in it)

Cheers


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## Stormonu (May 31, 2011)

I find it to be typical in its components, not the whole.  Many of the tricks within the dungeon rear their head in other modules in style, if not actual execution.  

It is by far the only module I can think of where combat is virtually non-existant, but I think that such is deliberate in this modules case to eliminate randomness in the adventure; success in Tomb is by skill, not luck.


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## Celebrim (May 31, 2011)

Stormonu said:


> I find it to be typical in its components, not the whole.  Many of the tricks within the dungeon rear their head in other modules in style, if not actual execution.




I agree with this much.  If you look at another execellent Gygaxian module like WG4, you can see many of the same ideas being used in specific areas of the module.   What makes S1 stand out is the degree to which these design ideas are carried out.

But really, when we compare 'old school' vs. 'new school' I think we are comparing things of degree and not of kind.  It's not like the old school modules never featured backgrounds, plots, stories, or events, or that the new school modules never feature tactical combat, attrition, and dungeon crawls.  They differ by the degree to which these features are emphasized.


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## Ulrick (Jun 1, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I completely disagree.
> 
> It was an outlier amongst all the modules produced by TSR
> 
> ...




It can be considered an outlier because it was the first AD&D module and Gygax intentionally made it incredibly challenging for players, surpassed only by _Isle of the Ape_. But it set the standard for all modules to come in both presentation and content. AD&D itself was about player skill, not character abilities. And those early modules demonstrated this. They may not have been death trap dungeons, but they were difficult unless you thought beyond your character sheet. And even with the game itself, you did not get much XP for killing monsters. You killed them when you had to and avoided them if you didn't. Otherwise you would get nickled and dimed to death. 

Even the Giant series emphasized wit over raw character ability. If the entire Steadying of the Hill Chief got mobilized because the characters just charged right it, they'd get stomped. The Glacier Pits of the Frost Giant Jarl presented an environmental challenge that would foil uncautious and impatient players. The same goes with Hall of the Fire Giant King. These were modules for high level characters. Player skill was supposed to match these level. If not, then "thump."

The same can be said for lower level modules from those days. _The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh_ required players to decipher codes and piece together clues leading to the next module. Again, this wasn't death trap, but it required player thought.  _The Village of Hommlet_ required players to be incredibly cautious of who they speak to in town, otherwise those in moathouse would be on alert and ready. Heck, even _The Keep on the Borderlands_ required that players be cautious, otherwise their neophyte characters would be massacred.


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## amerigoV (Jun 1, 2011)

Ulrick said:


> It can be considered an outlier because it was the first AD&D module and Gygax intentionally made it incredibly challenging for players, surpassed only by _Isle of the Ape_. But it set the standard for all modules to come in both presentation and content. AD&D itself was about player skill, not character abilities. And those early modules demonstrated this.




To whit


			
				Isle of the Ape said:
			
		

> Artifacts and relics, as well as special magical items with powers granted from some great being or deity, do not work at all on this island. The demi-plane is such that their functioning is totally impaired. In other words, the characters must use standard equipment, normal magic, and their own abilities in order to survive. *Any good adventure is a test of the abilities of the players to utilize their characters,and they must not be allowed to rely on items.*




Back in our day, we kick our player's butt and called them "crybabies." And we players liked it!


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## Eric Tolle (Jun 1, 2011)

As far as different old-school play styles go...

" never mind searching for an entrance, I'm going to have my Type VI demon will just dig through the side of the mound."
"I'll have my pet bronze dragon help!"

Damn munchkins.

And then there was the plane-traveling group of Arduin characters, and the time when I tried adapting it to Traveller and they decided to simply blast through it with their scoutship's lasers....

There were a lot of equally frustrating ways of playing it "old school" style.


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## Abraxas (Jun 1, 2011)

I have never met anyone who ran it in its original tournament format (other than myself with friends one afternoon) - with the supplied pregenerated characters and a time limit. I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who did play through it that way and succeeded in getting to Acererak.

The only accounts of succeeding that I have heard relied on 
1) sending waves of hirelings/summoned critters/slaves at everything and setting off every trap in the place.
2) having access to raise dead/resurrection/a supply of replacement characters.
or
3) Summoning some sort of huge creature and simply digging the tomb out - bypassing everything.

I would also be very interested if someone has written a walk through that explains the clues that tip off the characters to the various traps.
The trap that I found particularly annoying was the tapestries of green slime/brown mold - 2 die rolls and 3 characters (or maybe 4) were killed - no save. Although later on when I owned the module and read through it - it could have been argued that this was actually the DMs fault because one character didn't actually say he was holding on to the tapestry when it was moved aside for us to go through the secret door.


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## Stoat (Jun 1, 2011)

Abraxas said:


> I would also be very interested if someone has written a walk through that explains the clues that tip off the characters to the various traps.




I'm curious about the same thing.  Several years ago, I sat down with the module and a plan to map out what clues it provides the PC's and how helpful those clues might really be.  I gave up pretty quickly.

I'll freely admit that puzzles and riddles aren't my thing when I'm a player.  But I'm not convinced that the Tomb can be solved through player skill alone.  Has the topic been addressed around here before?


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## FireLance (Jun 1, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> ISecondly, this amounts to a spoiler of some sort, but Tomb of Horrors is fair.  Acererak plays fair.   He's so uncannily and unusually fair given his apparant goal (killing adventurers) that it had to be lamp shaded and explained in the game universe in 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors'.  He's not using reverse psychology on the players to force them into guessing what's behind door #2.   If you must guess whether to go left or right, then success depends largely on luck.  Acererak follows a pattern and sticks to it, so that with care you really don't have to guess after you successfully enter the tomb. ... Tomb of Horrors is almost entirely singular in being a killer dungeon where this is not true.  If you make the right choices, you can 'beat  the dungeon' with practically a party of 1st levels.



Admittedly, I haven't read the original module, but this assertion seems to run counter to everything I've heard about it.  Could you elaborate why you think this is the case, possibly in SBLOCKs for the benefit of those who don't want to be spoiled?

Thanks in advance.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

FireLance said:


> Admittedly, I haven't read the original module, but this assertion seems to run counter to everything I've heard about it.  Could you elaborate why you think this is the case, possibly in SBLOCKs for the benefit of those who don't want to be spoiled?




Sure, as soon as I figure out how spoiler tags work...

The module has a totally unfair reputation for unfairness, not because it is unfair but because it is utterly unmerciful and unforgiving.  D&D is a very forgiving game usually.  You have hit points.  If you get hit, you lose a few but it in no way degrades your performance.  And pretty soon, you have a lot of hitpoints and can survive a lot of stuff before it kills you.  If something bad happens because you weren't careful, you generally expect that there is a random chance you'll just get out of it with no or little harm.  And so forth.  There are a lot of things I could touch on, but the point is that normally in D&D it takes a lot to kill you and any one mistake by design is not normally fatal.  So normally, D&D players are a bit careless because they don't figure that they have to take much in the way of additional precautions on account of the fact that in their expeince when they get into trouble, they can get out again.

So you can imagine their shock when they take that care free attitude in and the DM just closes the book and says, "Well, you're all dead now. Thanks for playing."

Like a child whose suddenly realizing that things aren't what they expect, they typically say, "That's not fair.", and since they typically run away from the module at that point and they leave it at that.

However, being merciful is by definition not being fair.  When you are shown mercy, it's because what you deserve is something worse and you are unfairly given more (or less) than you deserve.

But the tomb is very fair because the tomb is never really arbitrary.  

Arbitrary is usually a synonym for random, and the tomb is rarely random.



Spoiler



Acererak doesn't use reverse logic.  If Acererak calls for a sacrifice, he'll reward you if you make it rather than laughing at you about your pointless loss and then punishing you on top of it.  If Acerak gives you a choice between a noble deed and an ignoble one, the noble choice will be repaid.  If something looks evil and diabolic, then it certainly is.  There is no 'evil is good' and 'good is evil' stuff going on in the tomb.  If the tomb warns you against doing something, then its a fair warning and the consequences of ignoring it will be bad.  If the tomb provides you a clue, it's a fair clue that isn't meant to mislead you.  When in doubt, it's the middle way.  Up toward heaven is good and down toward hell is bad.





Spoiler



Acererak doesn't play damned if you do, damned if you don't.  There is a way forward, and if you take that way foward you won't get punished for it.  If there is a way to disarm the trap and you need to disarm the trap, the way to disarm the trap won't also be trapped.  You won't come to any dead ends, and if you do, it's because you missed something.  You won't come to a spot where all the doors are wrong, and if you are at that point, it's because you didn't look for another door.





Spoiler



Acererak doesn't build a maze.  He doesn't make you guess which way to go.  It's not a sprawling labrinth filled with a lot of arbitrary choices between left and right with no way of knowing which leads to certain doom and which to a reward.  You aren't arbitrarily picking your way through it, and if you paid attention he'll give you very specific directions through the tomb.  False leads look like false leads once you have the real one to compare them too, so just look around before you decide to follow the first thing you find and you'll be alright.





Spoiler



Acerak doesn't rely on attrition.  He's not trying to wear you down.  He's not going to force everyone to make a saving throw just to go foward and turn the whole affair into a test of whether you can roll high on 4 or 5 unavoidable rolls in a row.  The dungeon doesn't amount to whether you can win initiative enough times, or whether you roll high on your damage dice, or whether the monster makes his saving throw, or whether you can avoid a streak of 1's.  If you play by his rules, you'll probably never have to make a saving throw, and if you screw up and get reckless you'll probably never have a chance to.  There is almost no combat; there is almost no luck, good or bad





Spoiler



Pretty much everything you need to get out of the tomb is in the tomb.  Sadly, not everything necessary to defeat Acererak himself is in the tomb, but that might be asking for too much since the final fight in my opinion is again primarily a test of whether you stupidly blunder foward into things without observing and thinking first.  Avoiding combat is probably the best option, and its lets you get out with all the treasure.  Looting the tomb and getting away is in my opinion true victory, and as I said, it's just about possible for a 1st level party to loot the tomb and escape from it.



I could cite a lot of specific examples from the tomb, but it's getting late.

The best way to see what I mean is to read the module and then compare it to its imitators like Grimtooth's Traps where the rule of the day is coming up with completely unfair gotchas and no win scenarios for the PC's and where the text encourages DM's to adopt that sort of 'Ha! Ha! Fooled you!' attitude.  Even comparing the text to something like S2: White Plume Mountain is very instructive.


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## Jan van Leyden (Jun 1, 2011)

I have to start with telling that I neither played ToH nor have read it. This is meant as an open question, because of a perceived contradiction:

Celebrim, you are telling us that ToH is fair, with Acererak being predictable and clues for the right decision being available. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority tells me that ToH *is* meat grinder and extremely deadly.

Is it, as a test of player ability, extremely hard, so that only the very best are able to notice and piece together the clues?

Or is it that the players don't have a chance to know that ole A is playing fair at first? And if so, is their a real chance to figure this fairness out after their first mishaps?


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## FireLance (Jun 1, 2011)

Thanks, Celebrim! Unfortunately, I must spead it around, etc.

What you've written does make the adventure seem rather decent, apart from this one bit: 



Spoiler



When in doubt, it's the middle way. Up toward heaven is good and down toward hell is bad.



While there are adages or connotations that would support these as superior choices, they seem to me to be rather weak bases on which to hang a (literally - at least for the PCs) life or death decision.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 1, 2011)

Pretty much all of the old tournament modules were meat grinders, not just The Tomb of Horrors (although the Tomb is the most notorious of the lot).


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 1, 2011)

Eric Tolle said:


> " never mind searching for an entrance, I'm going to have my Type VI demon will just dig through the side of the mound."
> "I'll have my pet bronze dragon help!"
> 
> Damn munchkins.
> ...






Abraxas said:


> The only accounts of succeeding that I have heard relied on
> 1) sending waves of hirelings/summoned critters/slaves at everything and setting off every trap in the place.
> 2) having access to raise dead/resurrection/a supply of replacement characters.
> or
> 3) Summoning some sort of huge creature and simply digging the tomb out - bypassing everything.



Yes, I feel that very deadly, difficult dungeons such as ToH encourage this sort of play, which is extremely undesirable because it's bypassing content. One could argue that it isn't playing D&D properly, the PCs are not engaging with the content at the anticipated level - never touching anything, never entering any rooms, going straight to the treasure chamber. This is all possible with high level spells and powerful magic items - _passwall_, _dimension door_, shapechanging into a dragon and ripping the top off the hill, using a Mattock of the Titans, etc. All this kind of play is too clever. In Tomb, Gary anticipates this problem by having a demon attack if PCs become astral or ethereal.

Players could even take it a step further and have their PCs become patrons, staying in Greyhawk and hiring parties of adventurers to go sack dungeons for them. This is really only one step up from sending waves of slaves/summoned creatures/animated undead into each room to set off all the traps. By this stage I would say the players are no longer playing D&D.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

Celebrim: OK, while everyone else gives you kudos for saying all that stuff, I guess I'll have to be the one to point at the pink elephant in the room:

You don't give one piece of evidence from the module to support your description of its design. Not a single line, or word from the module text. You're just stating something authoritatively and expecting everyone to believe you because you are firm in your presentation.

I've read and studied the module pretty closely, and I find your description of it incongruent.

Bullgrit


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

FireLance said:


> What you've written does make the adventure seem rather decent, apart from this one bit...While there are adages or connotations that would support these as superior choices, they seem to me to be rather weak bases on which to hang a (literally - at least for the PCs) life or death decision.




In context it tends to make more sense, and as I suspected people are complaining that I haven't put things in context and used concrete quotes from the text.   I was prepping my game last night though and hadn't more time to waste.



Spoiler



The context might be for example, that you are in a pit or standing on a pit.  Do you want to go down?



The important point is that Acererak tends to be consistant.  It might not be at all obvious at first 



Spoiler



that up is good and down is bad


, but once you have a bit of evidence of Acererak's consistancy and fairness you can thing start making choices on the basis of that.   And if you do, you then have the basis - along with a lot of care and caution - for getting through the tomb.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Jan van Leyden said:


> I have to start with telling that I neither played ToH nor have read it. This is meant as an open question, because of a perceived contradiction:
> 
> Celebrim, you are telling us that ToH is fair, with Acererak being predictable and clues for the right decision being available. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority tells me that ToH *is* meat grinder and extremely deadly.




ToH is fair with Acererak being predictable and clues for the right decision being available.   ToH is also a meat grinder and extremely deadly.  There is nothing contridictory about those statements.



> Is it, as a test of player ability, extremely hard, so that only the very best are able to notice and piece together the clues?




To a certain extent yes.  Equally so, only the very experienced and creative players are able to adjust their mindset to the tomb and play it accordingly.  In most cases, "We move cautiously down the hall checking for traps." is a reasonable approach within a dungeon.  As I indicated, in ToH it leads to the most automatic TPK in any dungeon I'm aware of.  Literally the whole party dies no save.   However, hopefully the much less lethal entrance corridor and surrounding zone will have by this point convinced the party that the normal approach won't cut it.   Simply put, if you leave things up to chance, if your idea of checking for traps is saying, "I check for traps" and hoping the DM rolls well for you, then you will die.

A more typical approach that does work and which does avoid the trap (and most in the dungeon) would be: 



Spoiler



We tie a rope around the Thief and cast Fly on him.   He'll scout ahead on the end of the length of rope looking for traps and secret doors, and if he gets in trouble, we will try to pull him to safety.



And of course, there are lots of variations on that theme, some of which have already been mentioned in the thread.  The important point is most of the traps are easily bypassed if you don't have the whole party blunder into them, and you either can sacrifice your scout or you put the whole parties effort into protecting the scout.



> Or is it that the players don't have a chance to know that ole A is playing fair at first? And if so, is their a real chance to figure this fairness out after their first mishaps?




That's why I said that its unlikely a 1st level party could survive without reading the text.   The entrance corridor with its 



Spoiler



lethal but survivable pit traps


 and the similar lethal but not completely lethal traps in the surrounding zone is something of a warm up for the real challenges of the tomb.  A high level party can survive making some mistakes here (we did), although there is one notorious death trap in the entrance corridor that's probably responcible for more TPK's than any other trap even though its far from the most lethal thing in the dungeon.   It's just the first example of a player proposition that leads to death without a save, and often a party will encounter this trap while still thinking of the tomb as a normal dungeon where if they get into trouble they can always find a way to get out again.   However, even this trap is very avoidable and once its gotten you, you tend to realize just how dumb you were for falling for it.   Or not.  Some people never get over the fact that they were punished for doing something obviously stupid and blame the module designer.   The proper responce to a TPK in the entrance corridor is to grin and try again.   People who do that tend to be the ones that end up really enjoying the module.


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## chaochou (Jun 1, 2011)

There is at least one section in the Tomb of Horrors (Area 9) which I think is pretty rough. I'm not gonna quote the text, but there are no clues and no way of avoiding damage (save luck). Getting through is arbitrary trial and error and, IMO, attempting to be 'clever' is specifically penalised - you're just wasting time, effort, spells and thought trying to defeat something the text says is 'absolutely' unpreventable.

Having said that, this is from the first room of the 'Sample Dungeon' in the DMG:

ROTTING SACKS: There are 10 moldy sacks of flour and grain stacked here. The cloth is easily torn to reveal the contents. If all of them are opened and searched, there is a 25% probability that the last will have YELLOW MOLD in it, and handling will automatically cause it to burst and all within 10’ must save versus poison or die in 1 turn.

Remember, this is the sample dungeon from the DMG and there's a random death trap in the corner of the first room. You could easily wipe out half a party which decided to search those sacks.

If you do the maths with a 6 character first-level party searching the sacks - you get a 25% chance of yellow mold and less than 1% chance of all 6 characters making a save vs poison - so you could have a 24% chance of at least one character death in room one. That's pretty harsh for searching some sacks of grain. Tomb of Horrors is, by and large, significantly fairer than that, I think.


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## Umbran (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> I've read and studied the module pretty closely, and I find your description of it incongruent.




I haven't looked at the module in years (maybe I'll review it when I get home), but I think I have something to note along Bullgrit's line here.

"Consistent" does not imply "predictable".  Whether or not a thing is predictable depends on how much of what information you have.  What you can see as a GM is much different than what a player can see.  The GM, with all the information at his disposal, may feel it is predictable, while a player _in situ_ won't have the information to make the same prediction with confidence at the time he needs to make a decision.  Remember the player only gets information through trial and error, and errors are generally deadly in this scenario. 

For example, if a module is consistent in that left turns always lead to deadly traps, the GM can see that because he can see all the turns at once, and know what they lead to.  The player, however, can't make the same prediction until after he's taken both the left and right branches several times, to see the pattern, losing several party members in the process (how many points of consistency do you expect them to divine before they run out of party members?).

And, powers help you if the descriptions also have it that the deadly traps they've seen so far are also in rooms with grey stone walls, or maybe it was always that the elf was in front when they entered the deadly areas, and they decide the maker hated elves.  I don't think it reasonable to expect the players will see which bits of information are the right ones to cue off off until they're already well into the module.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Ulrick (Jun 1, 2011)

chaochou said:


> There is at least one section in the Tomb of Horrors (Area 9) which I think is pretty rough. I'm not gonna quote the text, but there are no clues and no way of avoiding damage (save luck). Getting through is arbitrary trial and error and, IMO, attempting to be 'clever' is specifically penalised - you're just wasting time, effort, spells and thought trying to defeat something the text says is 'absolutely' unpreventable.
> 
> Having said that, this is from the first room of the 'Sample Dungeon' in the DMG:
> 
> ...




Yet then again: why would player-characters want to search a bunch of sacks of moldy grain and flour? Let alone searching all of them? Is there any indication of something to gain by doing so? No. 

In comparison with the ToH: 



Spoiler



why would player-characters want to reach into the Green Devil Face's mouth? Is there anything obvious to gain? NO.




Yet I've had players do both. I took those moldy and rotten sacks and put them in one of my dungeons long ago. The character searched the sacks. I rolled the %, and fortunately the yellow mold didn't go off. 



Spoiler



And at least one player got mad because his character died from jumping into the Green Devil Face's mouth. (Note for those who know what I'm talking about: I was not running the Return to the Tomb of Horrors).



---

man, now I want to run ToH again...


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## Umbran (Jun 1, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> If you choose the tormenter rather than the arch (or cannot figure out how the arch works), then it should come as no surprise that there is torment.




Yes, but while the GM may know the "designer" doesn't user reverse psychology, is there a clue telling the player that?  Do you think somehow the players would be surprised at a villain who misleadingly mislabeled things?


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Umbran (Jun 1, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Cast augury.




That's nice for one single situation.  But how many auguries have you prepared that day?  How many choices are there to be made in that dungeon?  Do you know that this is one you should use your precious resource on _before_ someone's dead?


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 1, 2011)

Eric Tolle said:


> And then there was the plane-traveling group of Arduin characters,




What were you expecting? As experienced Arduin adventurers they probably had nary a buttock among them, how were they supposed to walk?


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

Stoat said:


> ...I'm not convinced that the Tomb can be solved through player skill alone.  Has the topic been addressed around here before?




Yes, I recall one post about a newbie gamer who had never played an rpg before with a first level pc making it to the end, grabbing some loot and fleeing for his life.

I ran _Return to the Tomb of Horrors_ as part of my regular campaign, kind of ambushing the players with it. They not only made it through (and RttToh includes the original as a _minor_ part of it), they did so without any truly irretrievable losses.

So I absolutely maintain that it's fair and ultimately possible to defeat.  But it isn't easy, it requires creative thinking and most players (_especially_ nowadays, with so few really challenging puzzles and tricks in modern adventures) don't have what it takes to get a pc through it intact.


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

Umbran said:


> That's nice for one single situation.  But how many auguries have you prepared that day?  How many choices are there to be made in that dungeon?  Do you know that this is one you should use your precious resource on _before_ someone's dead?




There's no time limit on Tomb of Horrors, and pcs that keep moving forward without appropriate resources deserve what they get.

If they've seen many traps and tricks but no monsters, they're fools if they don't clue in to the fact that "appropriate resources" are _not_ hit points.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> Yet then again: why would player-characters want to search a bunch of sacks of moldy grain and flour? Let alone searching all of them? Is there any indication of something to gain by doing so? No.



This is something that makes discussing classic D&D so difficult.

There're a bunch of sacks full of something in the corner of the room. What's in them? You don't know until you check them.

If you check the sacks: It's a trap, and your PC dies! Ha! You shouldn't have bothered them. Old school Players were wise and knew not to mess with stuff unnecessarily. 

If you don't check the sacks: There was treasure hidden in them, and you didn't get it! Ha! You should have thought to check them. Old school Players were wise and knew to investigate everything.

If you carefully check them using a 10' pole, or a summoned creature: They're just sacks of moldy grain and flour. Ha! You wasted time and magic messing with just some old bags, and got a wondering monster check and now have fewer spells for the boss encounter in the next area. Old school Players were wise and knew to conserve their time and resources for truly important things.

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> If they've seen many traps and tricks but no monsters, they're fools if they don't clue in to the fact that "appropriate resources" are not hit points.



And then they come to an area where they have to fight a bunch of terrible monsters! Ha! You fell for the pattern. Old school Players were wise and knew not to assume the next part of the dungeon will be exactly like the previous part of the dungeon. Old school Players always stayed properly prepared for diverse obstacles.

Bullgrit


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## Nagol (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> And then they come to an area where they have to fight a bunch of terrible monsters! Ha! You fell for the pattern. Old school Players were wise and knew not to assume the next part of the dungeon will be exactly like the previous part of the dungeon. Old school Players always stayed properly prepared for diverse obstacles.
> 
> Bullgrit




No.  If they're keeping the appropriate resources up, their hp are full (as is their combat abilities) because _those aren't being consumed_ as they aren't the limiting factors.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

the Jester said:


> There's no time limit on Tomb of Horrors...




This is one of the first things that a party playing Tomb of Horrors should realize.  They generally have no reason to keep pressing on until they are ready to do so.   

This is one of several reasons why 'C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan' is probably more lethal and more challenging than 'Tomb of Horrors'.  In C1, you are on a strict environmentally enforced time limit.  You can't wait anything out or recover lost resources once they are spent.  In ToH, other than the fact that its not very stylish, why not wait?  Also in C1, if you play it with the suggested party of 3 characters, you have very very few resources to spare and even if you play very well, you still might have enough bad luck that you'll lose anyway.

Similarly, 'I6: Ravenloft' is probably more of a meat grinder than ToH because Strahd is a very intelligent and proactive foe with an array of abilities that let him wear down PC's over time much faster than they can recover.  Failures usually aren't immediately lethal in I6, but its very easy to get yourself in a death spiral from which its impossible to recover.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> This is something that makes discussing classic D&D so difficult.
> 
> There're a bunch of sacks full of something in the corner of the room. What's in them? You don't know until you check them.
> 
> ...




Whats so difficult?  The adventurers life is dangerous and deadly yet rewarding to those clever and lucky enough to survive. 

Sometimes there might be a deadly trap AND a great treasure. Risk vs reward is the name of the game. 

The only time wasted is the time spent not having fun. Sometimes leaving some possible treasure behind is good risk management and sometimes not. Enjoy the experience of playing and you are doing it right.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

Area 21 – the room is 30’x30’; the secret door that leads to the rest of the dungeon is behind the tapestry.



			
				Tomb of Horrors said:
			
		

> 21. THE AGITATED CHAMBER: <snip some description by Bullgrit> Only the rather plain tapestries hanging upon the east and west walls appear to have been spared a rough looting. <snip> The weight of the players upon the balanced floor will have set a mechanism into motion, and each round they remain in the place, a d6 must be rolled. Any odd number resulting from a roll means that on the next turn the floor of the room will jump and buck up and down violently. Each player must be rolled for, with a 2 in 6 chance to fall and sustain 1 hit point of damage from abrasions and contusions.
> 
> The tapestries, which appear to feature weed-grown rocks and green and golden tan scenes of undersea life, are specially anti-magic treated creations of green slime and brown mold. If they are torn, they instantly turn into green slime and cover each and every player character/character standing before them, i.e. each covers a 20' long by 10' deep area of floor when it falls. Covered characters are turned to green slime and gone, with no recourse possible due to the amount of slime. Note that the tapestries can be handled normally, just not yanked so as to tear them (and they are well affixed at the top); however, if any character is holding one when the room becomes agitated, it is 75% probable that the jerking motion will tear the thing. If these hangings are subjected to burning they instantly turn to brown mold and drain 4-32 (4d8) h.p. of heat from all characters within 5' of the mold (and it gets worse from there . . .). Note the secret door behind the tapestry on the west wall.



If the PCs don't mess with the tapestries -- Ha! They get stymied and can't move on to explore the rest of the tomb.

If the PCs mess with the tapestries -- Ha! They can all die.

It's a tapestry. Ha! It's green slime!

It's a tapestry. Ha! It's brown mold!

It's a tapestry. Ha! It's concealing a secret door!

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

Very first area of the tomb complex (there are three "entrances" to the tomb) -- a 20' wide, 30' long tunnel ending at false double doors:


			
				Tomb of Horrors said:
			
		

> 1. FALSE ENTRANCE TUNNEL: The corridor is of plain stone, roughly worked, and is dark and full of cobwebs. The roof 20' overhead is obscured by these hanging strands, so casual observation will not reveal that it is composed of badly fitting stones. Daylight will be sufficient to reveal that there is a pair of oaken doors at the end of the passageway. If the roof is prodded with any force, or if the doors are opened, the roof of the tunnel will collapse and inflict 5-50 (5d10) hit points of damage upon each character inside of it, with no saving throw. The doors open outwards by great iron ring pulls. The cobwebs must be burned away to be able to inspect the tunnel ceiling.




Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

Pit traps (10 total throughout the Tomb):


			
				Tomb of Horrors said:
			
		

> All pits (except where noted to the contrary) throughout the Tomb are 10' deep and concealed by a counter-weighted trap door which opens as soon as any person steps on it. Thrusting with force upon these traps with a pole will reveal them 4 in 6 (d6, 1-4). Those who step upon a pit lid will have a base 100% of falling, modified downwards by 1% per point of dexterity through 12, and 2% for each point above 12, i.e. dexterity of 13 = 14% chance of not falling into a pit, dexterity of 14 = 16%, 15 = 18%, 16 = 20%, 17 = 22%, and 18 dexterity = 24% chance of not going in. At the bottom of each pit are 5 iron spikes coated with poison. Roll d6 to determine how many spikes wound the victim; 1, 2, and 3 meaning that number of spikes have wounded the victim, 4-6 equal NONE HAVE WOUNDED the character. Each spike causes 1-6 hit points of damage, and the victim must make a saving throw versus poison for each spike which wounds him or her. Any failure means the victim is killed by the poison.




Bullgrit


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> And then they come to an area where they have to fight a bunch of terrible monsters! Ha! You fell for the pattern. Old school Players were wise and knew not to assume the next part of the dungeon will be exactly like the previous part of the dungeon. Old school Players always stayed properly prepared for diverse obstacles.
> 
> Bullgrit




The party is missing a couple _chant_ and _locate object_ spells (for _auguries_ and a _cure serious wounds_ for a _divination_, are at full (or nearly so) hp and have the illusionist's _true seeing_ running. 

How does this hinder them appreciably in a fight? More, how is it that swapping out three spells for spells that help you know how to prepare somehow leaves you less prepared?

In my 3e game, a pc had a diviner cohort.  When they had time, they would prepare with his aid so as to be probably five times as effective as they would have been going in to whatever situation blind. I'd say that those two _auguries_ and that _divination_ trump those other spells in terms of "prepared for diverse challenges".


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

An untrapped secret door:


			
				Tomb of Horrors said:
			
		

> 17. MAGICAL SECRET DOOR: This entrance to the remainder of the Tomb is along the stairway which leads down. It can be found by any means, but nothing will enable it to be opened until the area is either viewed through a gem of seeing, a similar spell is cast, or a detect magic spell is used to pinpoint the magic aura. When the magic of the door is found, it will require a dispel magic or remove curse spell to remove the guard which prevents the door from being opened. Once accomplished, the secret door can be opened easily from either side.




Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

And the adamantine door (the "marking" refers to the S on the map):


			
				Tomb of Horrors said:
			
		

> 24. ADAMANTINE DOOR: Although it is marked secret, it is very evident; the marking is simply to make certain that its actual nature is known. It has permanent anti-magics on it, and there is no magical or physical way of forcing entry. There are 3 slots in the door at about waist height. If 3 sword blades are shoved simultaneously into the slots, the 1' thick panel will swing open. THIS IS A ONE WAY DOOR WHICH CANNOT BE PREVENTED FROM CLOSING IN 5 ROUNDS!




Bullgrit


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

I'm not sure what the point of posting vast swaths of the module is without spoiler tags, except to possibly spoil it for others that haven't played it.

If you're trying to demonstrate that the Tomb is a no-win, unfair, meanie module, you're still failing to address the experiences of those that have seen (or been in, or run) groups make it through.

Nobody is denying that it is a hard module, and I'll go a step forward and risk sounding elitist to say- *it's TOO HARD for any but the BEST PLAYERS.*  Take that as you will; I have never successfully _played_ through it to the end myself.  

Does that make it unfair?  No more than having Kasparov for an opponent makes a chess game unfair. Perhaps the player is outclassed; perhaps he cannot win. It's a fair game nonetheless, although I can agree that it might be an unfair match-up.

Well, so is the Tomb of Horrors.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> This is something that makes discussing classic D&D so difficult.
> 
> There're a bunch of sacks full of something in the corner of the room. What's in them? You don't know until you check them.
> 
> ...




With my mad divination skills, I sense some sort of chip on your shoulder.

a) The skilled player of any edition knows that his life is worth more than gold.  Gold is in fact relatively valueless except for the XP it may offer to recover it.   The skilled player doesn't worry too much about recovering treasure until after the main mission is over and the immediate environs are cleared.   If you miss some treasure, there is more where that came from and if you really want to search an area you can always come back.   If it comes down to a choice between risking death and possibly missing some treasure, I'm going to choose missing out on treasure almost every time.   

b) Good dungeon hygiene was an essential part of dungeoneering.   This usually involves liberal use of 10' poles and torches, occasional use of soap and water or strong alchohol, and with back up plans of burning oil and cure disease when it becomes available.  If you can't see it, don't touch it.  If it looks dirty or filthy, assume its lethal to touch because it probably is.   Loot can be explored in detail back at camp or town.  If it wastes time, it's better than dying, and if you get an extra wandering encounter check out of it well chances are what comes along won't be as lethal as yellow mold, green slime, or rot grubs.   AC provides excellent protection against monsters and cure spells are relatively cheap; ergo, anything that causes hit point damage is preferable to anything that provokes saving throws.  If you want your character to survive, you have to treat being asked to make a saving throw as some sort of failure on your part.   I personally felt 'unlucky' and felt as if I 'never' passed a saving throw, so a lot of the way I gamed back then revolved around avoiding them.


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## Stoat (Jun 1, 2011)

the Jester said:


> I'm not sure what the point of posting vast swaths of the module is without spoiler tags, except to possibly spoil it for others that haven't played it.




I'd be interested in a thread that dissected the ToH on a room by room basis, parsing the clues the module gives out and analyzing how a party might work their through it.  

Hell, if nobody else does it first, I'll start one when I get home this evening.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Ulrick (Jun 1, 2011)

Just because...

*The Orc and the Pie: The Tomb of Horrors version. *

The wooden door to this 10'x10' room is neither locked nor trapped. But a message is scrawled in large and dark letters on the front. YE HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR AVOIDING YOUR DOOM. YET NOT ALL MOUTHS SHOULD CONSUME TO GET THEIR JUST DESSERTS. EVER HUNGRY, EVEN DARKNESS MAY BE FILLED.

Inside stands a single orc (hp: 4) holding a pie. Acererak has placed a powerful stasis spell on the orc that breaks once the door is open. The rhubarb pie itself is fresh and warm, and with a dash of cinnimon in the aroma. 

The orc only speaks orcish, and will freely give up the pie if asked nicely. If attacked, he drops the pie (ruining the pie) and pulls out a dagger to defend himself. He knows nothing about the tomb itself. If _charmed_or placed under some other mind-altering enchantment, he might mumble something about "being a servant to the devil." 

If the pie is tossed into 



Spoiler



the mouth of Green Devil Face, the _sphere of annihilation _ is destroyed, beyond is a chute that leads to area 25.  Alternately, the pie may be thrown at the demi-lich itself, sating it for 1d4 rounds.


. 

The pie tastes great when eaten. If a character, however, eats the whole pie, one hour later he suffers from stomach distress, taking a -2 penalty to AC, attack rolls, and saves for 12 hours.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> I'm not sure what the point of posting vast swaths of the module is without spoiler tags, except to possibly spoil it for others that haven't played it.



Yeah, and how ridiculous of me to post actual text from the subject we’re all talking about. Really? You’re upset that I’m posting actual text from the subject?

And spoilers?! It’s a 30+ year old module for a game edition that been out of print for 20+ years! 

King Kong dies.

Rosebud is a sled.

Vader is Luke’s father.




> With my mad divination skills, I sense some sort of chip on your shoulder.



Nope, no chip on my shoulder. Just some frustration with the daisy chain of logic.

With my mad divination skills, I sense some annoyance at having your description of the text questioned. And by god, how rude of me to post actual text from the module? You made an unsupported claim. I found your claim incongruent with the text. I merely posted some samples from the text so specifics can be discussed. How rude of me to not just fully accept your description, even though it was opposite what I’ve read.



> Whats so difficult?



The problem is that *everything* is a feature.

Treasure was “devilishly” hidden in classic D&D. You had to search everything to find it.

Traps were everywhere in classic D&D. You had to leave stuff alone to avoid them.

Every conversation around here about classic D&D becomes a daisy chain of “it’s your fault.” Didn’t search the random bags: you missed the treasure. Did search the random bags: you fell for the trap. Either way, it’s because you just weren’t a “skilled player.”

Nothing was wonky back in classic D&D – “you” just don’t/didn’t understand the brilliance.

This is not to say that everything was wonky with classic D&D. Classic D&D had truly wonderful stuff as well as really wonky stuff. I just find it problematic for conversations and discussions to have *everything* presented as wonderful and brilliant. I also find it insulting to the truly great stuff of classic D&D.

Bullgrit


----------



## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 1, 2011)

Cel - How does the description of the Agitated Chamber (thanks for posting the actual text, Bullgrit) gel with your earlier claim that there is no unavoidable randomness in ToH?


----------



## Umbran (Jun 1, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Fair =/= "The players WILL figure it out".
> 
> Fair = "The players have the means to figure it out, and if they do so, they will succeed."




Yeah, right*.

Please note how I didn't claim the ToH was "unfair".   

I, personally, think "fair" and "unfair" don't usually apply to adventure design, unless you view GMing a module as a testing procedure.  Now, as a tournament piece, that's what ToH was initially designed to be, and so the question is relevant for that context, but then it is really more one of how easy the module is to adjudicate similarly across several judges, and less about the content itself.  And I think there's a great question to be asked into what, exactly, they're testing for with this one.

be that as it may, I usually approach GMing from the perspective of trying to give my players a good time.  It isn't a question of fairness, but of funness (which is, of course, subjective).  




> By any *reasonable* standard, the ToH is fair.




I'll accept that to any standard you, RC, personally find reasonable, the ToH is fair.  I cannot argue with that, and wouldn't want to.  I'll even accept it, knowing that, really, you're casting a personal judgement on standards before you even hear them.  That's your choice to make.

But, unless you pass around the memo showing that you finally got the promotion to Ultimate Arbiter of Reasonableness you've been bucking for, this is an appeal to personal authority without support.  It comes out as just another variation on the, "If you don't agree with me your mental process are inferior to mine**," form of argument. 

As always, it's kind of insulting.  Thanks, but no thanks.




*Arthur Dent, technically, had the means to determine that his house was going to be demolished for a bypass.   You may decide for yourself if he was treated fairly.

**Including, but not limited to: you are stupid, naive, ignorant, crazy, fanboi, hater... and just plain unreasonable.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Umbran said:


> But, unless you pass around the memo showing that you finally got the promotion to Ultimate Arbiter of Reasonableness you've been bucking for, this is an appeal to personal authority without support. It comes out as just another variation on the, "If you don't agree with me your mental process are inferior to mine**," form of argument.




Whatever, Umbran.

Good gaming to you.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Posting without spoiler tags is very bad form.

Area 21 is in my opinion the second most lethal trap in the dungeon behind only 



Spoiler



the sleeping gas / juggernaut trap


.  

Getting through that room without losing half the party is difficult but achievable.

So, for example:



Spoiler



1) Remember how I said that flight negates most of the traps in the dungeon?  A flying party can traverse this room without incident.   More practically, the scout can be made to fly ahead, find the door and hold the curtains aside so that everyone else can cross in relative safety.   This assumes of course that the party has figured out that the curtains are dangerous for some reason, but by this point usually parties paranoidly are assuming everything is dangerous.
2) The green slime is far more dangerous than the brown mold.   Burning the tapestries is a risky but still viable plan, both because 4d8 damage is survival and the green slime is instant death in this case, but because the text specifically says that the range of the cold is only 5'.   So the slime can be burned out of the tapestries, and then the mold dealt with afterwards by whatever means available.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> An untrapped secret door:




a) Presents no hazard.
b) As much time as the players desire can be spent on figuring out how to open it.
c) Detect magic is a logical recourse when you can't figure something out.
d) There is a gem of true seeing placed in the dungeon which a clever party might fine.
e) There is nothing random about it.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> If you can't see it, don't touch it. If it looks dirty or filthy, assume its lethal to touch because it probably is.



But there are plenty of examples in D&D adventures of valuable/magical things hidden by invisibility, and dirty things that can be cleaned up to value or magic.

This is sort of my point: There are many examples both ways – things you shouldn’t mess with, and things you should mess with. And often there is no clue for which is the right action: leave it alone, or investigate it.

Elven cloaks are found in piles of rags.
Yellow mold is found in piles of rags.

A dirty-looking item is coated in contact poison.
A dirty-looking item can be cleaned up to be valuable.

Any of the items above are not bad design, per se. But the lack of *any* clue, or especially the existence of a misleading clue, does make for bad design – unless you think requiring 50/50-chance guesses are good design. What makes things bad for discussions on this subject are when people claim that making the wrong/bad decision – based on *no* clue – means the Player is not good or skilled.

If you search the pile of rags and find an elven cloak: Skilled Player!

If you search the pile of rags and set off the mold: Poor Player!

Skilled or Poor claim based on nothing but a blind action by the Player. What if the Player rolled a die to make the decision?

Bullgrit


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Pit traps (10 total throughout the Tomb):




a) The pit traps are obviously survivable, and by design some of the least dangerous traps in the whole tomb.  The purpose of the pit traps is to convey, "Ok, watch out.  This place is serious.", before you encounter the really lethal stuff.
b) An experienced party that falls into a pit trap is being very unwary.  There are any number of countermeasures: flight, summoned creatures, throwing a weight ahead of you, probing with a long pole, etc.   Experienced parties just don't fall into pit traps at any time that they are expecting a trap.
c) A party of any degree of experience that falls into more than one pit trap is being unwary.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> A flying party can traverse this room without incident.



And what party would open the door and think, "Let's cast fly on everyone"?

It's like you're looking at a maze from above instead of from inside it. The guy actually walking in the maze doesn't know the exit is "right there, just around that next turn." And he doesn't know that there is a pit trap, "right there, just around the other turn." 

You're saying to the other observers, "This is easy. All he has to do is turn right and walk 20 more feet. He'll come to the exit."

But the maze-walker has no clues to guide him, and when he walks around the left corner and falls in the trap, you say, "Well, he's just not a skilled maze walker."

Bullgrit


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## billd91 (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> The problem is that *everything* is a feature.
> 
> Treasure was “devilishly” hidden in classic D&D. You had to search everything to find it.
> 
> ...




I think you're going to have to learn to lighten up on a lot of this. Some people actually feel that this stuff was pretty brilliant, every bit as brilliant as the things you thought classic. Should they shut up in these discussions? I don't think so. You've got to let stuff you disagree with not bother you or present your counterarguments with a cool head.

That said, I think you're spot on with the spoilers. If a movie is over a year old and I haven't seen it, I am not going to hold anybody accountable for spoiling it for me.

~ spoilers removed - because some of those WILL spoil things for some people. I'd not seen Orient Express until last Christmas, and I'd have been mightly annoyed to have had that spoiled on an RPG site. 

Memo to everyone - post spoilers, but either use [ spoiler ] tag or [ sblock ] tag please. Plane Sailing ~

EDIT: I just stumbled back on this. And I'm not going to use spoiler blocks on a 35 year old movie. Are we supposed to still use spoiler blocks on Vader being Luke's father? How about soylent green being people? The planet of the apes being Earth?


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Very first area of the tomb complex (there are three "entrances" to the tomb) -- a 20' wide, 30' long tunnel ending at false double doors:





Spoilers follow:



Spoiler



a) An experienced party will probably not send everyone in to the room in the first place until someone goes to check it out.
b) An experienced party will have tested the ceiling with a 10' pole before entering the room.  This is standard operating procedure when a ceiling is concealed because generally speaking ceilings are only concealed for a reason.  Green slime, trappers, or any other number of hazards should have taught this long before you attempt ToH.
c) 5d50 damage averages 27 hit points lost.  This is likely lethal only to the M-U.  
d) A really good party will uncover all three entrances before choosing which to investigate.   With all three entrances uncovered, it's pretty clear which represents the best prospect.
e) After failing at this entrance, the party can recover from their lesson as long as they like, probably just a night or two at this level of play.
f) These sort of surivable traps help ensure the party is taking the dangers seriously before getting to the really lethal stuff.   Actually, the other false entrance is a lot worse and would have made your attempted point a lot better.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 1, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> Posting without spoiler tags is very bad form.




Eh - you'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't worry about it on such an old module in a thread about that module.

How long does a flight spell last in 1E?  In 3E, it's minutes (unless you're tossing about Overland Flight spells, which are higher in level, slower, and much less maneuverable but have durations in hours).


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> The problem is that *everything* is a feature.
> 
> Treasure was “devilishly” hidden in classic D&D. You had to search everything to find it.
> 
> ...




One mans wonky is anothers brilliant feature. This is why there is no cookie cutter standard of old school play. 

Your character can die searching for treasure is both a feature and a bug it just depends on who you ask. 

It _was _in fact all wonderful. Part of what made it so was the encouragement from the material to toss out what you didn't want and make it your own.  When all is said and done then anything that isn't fun actually _is your fault. _

I don't know how other DMs do things but I take responsibility for what goes into my games whether I'm using a module or not. I wouldn't run the tomb for a group that I thought wouldn't enjoy that style of play.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> And what party would open the door and think, "Let's cast fly on everyone"?




No, but by the time they get to this room, a party is very likely to have said: "Let's not attempt this further without having fly on the party scout."  Ours did.  That's how we made it this far without dying, and it's how we traversed this room.  The party magic-user would prepare flight each day, and we'd probe forward until we ran out, then we'd rest.  The party scout, my thief actually, also had two potions of flight.  I consumed one the first day in the entrance corridor to ensure that I never suffered an unexpected fall, and a second one after moving through the chapel successfully.  We didn't lose anyone until the boss fight (which is unfair, but the smart party will avoid it), and at that point we just fled.



> You're saying to the other observers, "This is easy.




No, this is hard.  There is no doubt at all that it is a hard module.  However, it is also fair.



> when he walks around the left corner and falls in the trap, you say, "Well, he's just not a skilled maze walker."




If he knows its a trap filled maze, darn right that's what I say.  Especially if just having a rope around his waist and 3-4 buddies belaying the other end will negate 80% of the traps he encounters.   You did bring a rope, right?

True story, we got to the ToH, and opened the entrance corridor, and I said, "Ok, I'm going to need a 10' pole here.  Who has the 10' pole?"  "Noone?"  "Ok, let's go back to town, because there is no way we are going to survive something called the Tomb of Horrors without a 10' pole."


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Eh - you'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't worry about it on such an old module in a thread about that module.
> 
> How long does a flight spell last in 1E?  In 3E, it's minutes (unless you're tossing about Overland Flight spells, which are higher in level, slower, and much less maneuverable).




If I remeber correctly, it's turns: ei 10 minutes/level.   IIRC, the potions I was drinking lasted 1d6+1 turns.  It's been more than 20 years, and I don't have the books at hand.


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## billd91 (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But there are plenty of examples in D&D adventures of valuable/magical things hidden by invisibility, and dirty things that can be cleaned up to value or magic.
> 
> This is sort of my point: There are many examples both ways – things you shouldn’t mess with, and things you should mess with. And often there is no clue for which is the right action: leave it alone, or investigate it.
> 
> ...




Indeed there are many things hidden invisibly, in trash, and so on. But there are ways to begin to search things that may avoid setting off things like yellow mold - weighted ropes and poles come to mind. Toss the hooked rope onto the pile of rags and drag. That disturbs the pile a bit to reveal things that will give off spores, will probably reveal green slime, and may pull some of those rags apart for better visual inspection without undue risk.
Running in with your bare hands to root through the rags? Generally a bad idea, not a player showing much skill as a prudent/paranoid adventurer.

Characterizing leaving the rags alone vs finding some way to search them while managing the risk associated with doing so as a 50/50 chance is a pretty lame characterization.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> An experienced party...



So you're saying that the Tomb of Horrors really isn't a hard meat-grinder? See, this is funny. All the people who say that ToH is great _because_ it is over-the-top tough are wrong? It ain't especially tough. The way you're describing all this says ToH is actually pretty easy peasy. So if someone likes it because he considers it especially tough, he's wrong?



			
				ExploderWizard said:
			
		

> One mans wonky is anothers brilliant feature.



Yep, I can totally agree with this. But as I said, it's when *everything* is brilliant that things get weird. X is brilliant because it's well designed. Y is brilliant because it's wonky. Z is both well designed and wonky! And we like it that way! Huh?



			
				ExploderWizard said:
			
		

> Your character can die searching for treasure is both a feature and a bug it just depends on who you ask.



Yep. The frustration for discussion though is when people reverse the "wisdom" depending on the outcome:

We died searching for the treasure.
-- Well, you shouldn't have searched.

We didn't find the treasure.
-- Well, you should have searched.

It's like Monday-morning quarterbacking:

The pass is intercepted.
-- The quarterback shouldn't have tried to pass the ball.

The runner fails to score.
-- The quarterback should have thrown a pass.


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 1, 2011)

Ulrick said:


> It can be considered an outlier because it was the first AD&D module




The first AD&D module? are you sure? I could have sword I bought lots of them before I got tomb of horrors - G1-3 and D1-3 for sure?


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 1, 2011)

Removed


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 1, 2011)

jdrakeh said:


> Pretty much all of the old tournament modules were meat grinders, not just The Tomb of Horrors (although the Tomb is the most notorious of the lot).




I think this is an important point - modules which were originally tournament modules had a very different purpose and hence design from standard modules designed for campaign adventures.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 1, 2011)

> There is no doubt at all that it is a hard module. However, it is also fair.



Except for: "...the boss fight (which is unfair..."?

For myself, I find ToH as an interesting adventure concept. It's the Paranoia adventure for D&D. I see it as intentionally, designed to be unfair. It's unfairness is the basis for it's reputation as a classic adventure module. It's unfairness is its whole claim to fame. To say it is perfectly fair is to completely undermine its whole purpose. 

As a tournament module, I can see how its unfairness might be fun for some. But as a campaign module, it is unfair to the point of being mean spirited.

It's one of those things, like Global Thermonuclear War and Tic Tac Toe -- the only way to win is not to play. There's no real reason for the PCs to go into it -- there are other dungeons to explore.

But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views mutually exclusive?

Bullgrit


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## billd91 (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views are mutually exclusive.




Only if the same person holds both views.

An individual's perspective and experiences have a huge effect on how he or she makes evaluations and assesses the truth, even remembers things. I recommend that everyone watch Rashomon and read up on the Rashomon Effect.


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views mutually exclusive?




Not at all, to be fair.

In fact those two views would have to be mutually supportive, surely? If something is the deadliest dungeon, than experienced _players_ might be needed to traverse it without harm?

Cheers


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Yeah, and how ridiculous of me to post actual text from the subject we’re all talking about. Really? You’re upset that I’m posting actual text from the subject?




I find posting text from an adventure without spoiler tags to be in very poor form, yes. It doesn't matter how old the module is; how many D&D players have never been through it? It's enough of a classic that a 4e update to it was released as a dm reward. 

Here's the thing: The effort required to throw a spoiler or sblock tag around that text is _completely insignificant_ next to the effort required to type it up. 



Bullgrit said:


> The problem is that *everything* is a feature.
> 
> Treasure was “devilishly” hidden in classic D&D. You had to search everything to find it.
> 
> Traps were everywhere in classic D&D. You had to leave stuff alone to avoid them.




Old-skool D&D was a game of calculated risks and devil's choices, yes. This was not a bug; it was a feature. There's a reason that you can make a new character in 15 minutes. 



Bullgrit said:


> Every conversation around here about classic D&D becomes a daisy chain of “it’s your fault.” Didn’t search the random bags: you missed the treasure. Did search the random bags: you fell for the trap. Either way, it’s because you just weren’t a “skilled player.”




I think you're conflating "fair" and "it's your fault." 

Is a combat encounter with a monster with a save or die attack fair in 1e? There are an awful lot of them, designed for pcs of level *1 and up*. So I'd argue that save or die was an integral part of the game from the word go. I would say therefore that using a save or die monster is "fair" in 1e. 

Does that mean it's your fault when your character gets killed by the giant centipede or spider or scorpion or assassin or whatever? Not at all. 



Bullgrit said:


> Nothing was wonky back in classic D&D – “you” just don’t/didn’t understand the brilliance.




Is anyone actually arguing this? I thought the discussion was whether or not ToH was fair, not whether 1e was frequently lethal _even when fair._



Bullgrit said:


> I just find it problematic for conversations and discussions to have *everything* presented as wonderful and brilliant. I also find it insulting to the truly great stuff of classic D&D.




Is anyone actually arguing this either? There were plenty of terrible old-skool things, from adventures to magic items to monsters to character classes to entire rule systems. To prove my bonafides on this I'll even call out one of each: _Castle Greyhawk_ (the joke module), _anything items,_ pseudo-undead, cavaliers, the DMG unarmed combat system.

I understand that not everyone agrees that ToH is good, much less brilliant; as with many adventures, it's a matter of taste and playstyle. But if any group run by a hard-ass dm can come through it intact (I'm looking at my campaign's experience), I can't buy that it's unfair.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Except for: "...the boss fight (which is unfair..."?




Yes, which I already conceeded way back at the beginning of this.  However, as I have said repeatedly, though I may as well be talking to a brick wall, the boss fight is avoidable.  It is not at all necessary to defeat Acererak in order to loot the dungeon and take his stuff.   Like I said before, the final fight is also a test, like most of the rest of the dungeon, of whether you blindly blunder into things.  It is lethal primarily to the group that tries to solve every problem by achieving surprise and fighting to the death.  It's unfair primarily because there are no clues to go on, and none of the means of successfully defeating the demi-lich are the sort of things that would be obvious to an experienced player or which are within the power of a character at this level.  This is not true of the rest of the module.  



> For myself, I find ToH as an interesting adventure concept. It's the Paranoia adventure for D&D.




No it isn't.  For example, the 'Through the Looking Glass' modules are Paranoia for D&D.  They are hideously lethal, terribly unfair, and get this... somewhat humorous.  They also have none of the reputation that ToH, and for good reason. Nothing in the presentation of Tomb of Horrors indicates this is to be a light hearted romp where death is arbitrary.  It is clearly intended as a test of player skill. 



> I see it as intentionally, designed to be unfair.




No, it isn't.  It's intentionally designed to be a blow to the pride of any player who on the basis of his character's power thinks himself a highly skilled player.



> It's unfairness is the basis for it's reputation as a classic adventure module.




No, it isn't.  This is the reason why almost no one has been able to replicate the success of Tomb of Horrors.  They don't understand the module at all.  If the basis of its reputation was simply its unfairness, not only would it not be the most classic module of the sort - as many older modules are far more unfair - but it would have been easily eclipsed.  It's trivially easy to make a trap filled dungeon that is more unfair than Tomb of Horrors.   Lots of people tried and lots of people succeeded, and then wondered why no one appreciated their efforts.

Making a hard dugeon is EASY.  Making a hard dungeon that is also fair is VERY HARD.  That's why Tomb of Horrors maintains its reputation with so many gamers.  It's not just nostalgia.  It's that there is to this day almost nothing else like it.   But, there are tons of grossly unfair modules by lesser authors that didn't understand the magic Gygax had wrought.



> It's unfairness is its whole claim to fame. To say it is perfectly fair is to completely undermine its whole purpose.




On the contrary, to call the module unfair is to undermine its whole purpose as a tournament module, as a serious test of player skill, and as a tool by which DM's teach players with big heads that they still have a thing or two to learn.



> As a tournament module, I can see how its unfairness might be fun for some.




Does that make the slightest bit of sense?  As a contest, you think its unfairness makes it fun?  That's gibberish; people don't generally prize contests for their unfairness.



> But as a campaign module, it is unfair to the point of being mean spirited.




As a campaign module, it might be reasonable to say that it hard to the point of being mean spirited.   As I said right from the start, don't send your players beloved characters that are the result of years of roleplaying and character development into this meat grinder.  But get this, being hard does not make something unfair.  They are not the same thing, and you've repeatedly tried to conflate the two.  



> It's one of those things, like Thermonuclear War and Tic Tac Toe -- the only way to win is not to play. There's no real reason for the PCs to go into it -- there are other dungeons to explore.




Even to the extent that that is true, it no more makes ToH unfair than Tic Tac Toe is unfair.



> But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views are mutually exclusive.




No.  Why would they be?  Are you saying that a fair module can't also be difficult?   Because that seems to be the sum of your confusion.

And incidently, it is NOT the toughtest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time.   It may have that reputation, but I'd argue that in most cases that reputation is undeserved and the product of ignorance on the part of those that say it.   If you've played through S1, S2, C1, I6, and assorted other super dangerous modules by a DM with the gloves off, and you still think S1 is harder then I can only disagree.   But if you think S1 is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, then I'm willing to bet that in most cases ultimately you are just repeating what you've heard and have no real basis of comparison.


----------



## Umbran (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> I see it as intentionally, designed to be unfair.




"Fair" is one of those words with many nuanced meanings.

"Fair" can mean "even handed, treating all the same".  The module is largely mechanistic.  If the PCs do X, then Y occurs.  There's very little space for the GM to interpret behavior of the system, so in that sense, it is fair.

But, if you aren't extremely well versed in the style of Gygaxian traps and Gygaxian play, it would not be a fair challenge, in the same sense that it is unfair to expect you to pass a driver's test the first time behind the wheel of a car.


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## WizarDru (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Except for: "...the boss fight (which is unfair..."?




In context, he was pointing out that actually fighting Acererak was unfair...but that you didn't have to fight him...in fact, you could bypass him, get some treasure and escape.  He's effectively a deadly trap, just like everything else.



			
				Bullgrit said:
			
		

> But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views mutually exclusive?




My take is this:  Gary Gygax held this module up as an equalizer.  He had heard and encountered plenty of players who bragged how they could handle any dungeon, as their characters had managed (likely by 'Monty Haul' methods) numerous magic items, spells and equipment.  They felt they were invulnerable.  Gary set out to prove them wrong and designed ToH, a module specifically intended to wipe the smirks off the faces of the arrogant.  Said arrogant players had grown incautious or overconfident, certain that no task could defeat their characters.  ToH was designed to humble such players.

But it is not unfair.  Players aren't told that they are about to enter the Tomb of Soft Cuddly Bunnies.  IIRC, Gary warned them upfront that the ToH would be a tough module full of death-traps and danger.  The real question was how quickly it would take them to realize how vulnerable they actually were and adjust their tactics accordingly.  

Celebrim's point isn't that it isn't HARD or UNCARING or LETHAL.  His point is that it PLAYS FAIR.  Unlike some modules, with traps that have no possible way of being decoded short of painful experience (iirc, Tsocjanth has several of these...there is no clue that one color is good and another bad, that one face on a pedestal is a boon and the other a curse, etc.), ToH presents players with a chance to figure things out.

ToH is fondly remembered for being both of these things.  It was the Unholy Grail of modules, if you will.  It gained a reputation in whispered circles as THE module to beat, THE module to marvel at.  I'd wager far fewer DMs actually used the module than read it, but it got played plenty, even so.  So it is justifiably remembered as this terrible thing, but it was also remembered that some folks DID beat it, fair and square.  That's the key to its reputation, IMHO.


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## the Jester (Jun 1, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> As a tournament module, I can see how its unfairness might be fun for some. But as a campaign module, it is unfair to the point of being mean spirited.




I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Another is that it is the kind of challenge that is the topper of a group's career- if they win, they have bragging rights few others ever will.

I will agree that no dm should run it in a campaign unless their party understands up front that the dm plays hard and mean and isn't afraid of a tpk, though.



Bullgrit said:


> It's one of those things, like Global Thermonuclear War and Tic Tac Toe -- the only way to win is not to play.




Aargh! This is so not true. There are quite a few groups that have made it through- again, including my own. (If anyone wants to look at the story hour that detailed it, I can hunt down a link; also to the thread with many of my 3e conversions of the stuff in the RttToH boxed set.) 

I'll compare it to playing chess with Kasparov again; you _can_ win, it's just unholy hard.



Bullgrit said:


> But discussing it in this thread is weird because some hold it up as a great module because it is the toughest, most dangerous, most deadly dungeon of all time, and some others say it is great because actually an experienced party can navigate it with little harm. Aren't these views mutually exclusive?




Once more, "fair" and "really damn hard" are not mutually exclusive. Chess is fair, no matter who you play. Kasparov.


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## Celebrim (Jun 1, 2011)

Umbran said:


> But, if you aren't extremely well versed in the style of Gygaxian traps and Gygaxian play, it would not be a fair challenge, in the same sense that it is unfair to expect you to pass a driver's test the first time behind the wheel of a car.




I never said I expected an inexperienced group of players to succeed.  I'm not even sure I expect an experienced group of players to succeed, and if a party tells me that they defeated the demi-lich on the first time through I always expect one of the following:

a) The DM forgot about some of the module text.
b) The players had previously read either the module or the Demi-Lich entry in MM2.

However, just because only experts can pass the test, doesn't make the test unfair.  Just horribly difficult.


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## Ulrick (Jun 1, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> The first AD&D module? are you sure? I could have sword I bought lots of them before I got tomb of horrors - G1-3 and D1-3 for sure?




Okay. After some digging...

I believe that you are correct, the _Tomb of Horrors_ was not the first... 

Both _The Steadying of the Hill Giant Chief_ and _The Tomb of Horrors_ was published in 1978 in monochrome, probably within months of each other. ToH was republished in 1981, after many of the other early modules had been printed. 


Tomb of Horrors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Dungeons_&_Dragons
Against the Giants - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Yes, I know, I used wikipedia  , but moving on...)

The problem I've having is that many of these early modules lack ISBN numbers. And the Acaeum places the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief as the first D&D module, not AD&D.

However, looking at the product numbers are as follows.
Steading of the Hill Giant Chief 9016
The Tomb of Horrors 9022

Therefore, _The Steadying of the Hill Giant Chief_ is clearly the first published AD&D module (unless somebody finds one with a earlier product number)

However, to make things a bit more confusing, and perhaps where some misinformation comes from, the 3.5e pdf update states: 
"The original version of the his module was first used for the official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament at Origins I in 1974. Next it was published as Dungeon Module S1 in 1981 using the 1st edition rules." 

Adventures: Tomb of Horrors (Revised) This leads to the page to the download link for the pdf, not the pdf itself. 

For some reason I thought the _Tomb of Horrors_ was the first. But I was wrong. Perhaps I got mixed up with Gygax causing players to flee from the table before it was officially published.


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## Corathon (Jun 2, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> If I remeber correctly, it's turns: ei 10 minutes/level.   IIRC, the potions I was drinking lasted 1d6+1 turns.  It's been more than 20 years, and I don't have the books at hand.





Basically correct. A _fly_ spell in 1E lasts 1 turn per level + d6 turns, with the result of the d6 known only by the DM. Most potions lasts 4+d4 turns.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 2, 2011)

Corathon said:


> Basically correct. A _fly_ spell in 1E lasts 1 turn per level + d6 turns, with the result of the d6 known only by the DM. Most potions lasts 4+d4 turns.



So, given that, how are you expected to be reliably flying throughout the entire dungeon?


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## the Jester (Jun 2, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> So, given that, how are you expected to be reliably flying throughout the entire dungeon?




Once again: _There is no time limit on the Tomb of Horrors._

Just like with any adventure, when the resources you need for success are low, you retreat and replenish. With many adventures, that resource is hit points; here it is the ability to play carefully: _fly,_ divination spells, the right supplies (note the earlier "Nobody has a 10' pole? Let's go back to town!" story in this regard), etc.


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## Abraxas (Jun 2, 2011)

Unless the Tomb is run tournament style (or with some other time constraint) there is no time limit. There aren't any living creatures to reset stuff. In the forward, it is mentioned that the party will withdraw and rest regularly - in fact it suggests that time between sessions be treated as actual time spent resting.

So, when the fly spells run out you go rest and come back the next day

If you did not run through it this way it becomes significantly more difficult.

Ninja'd by The Jester


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## pemerton (Jun 2, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> You are given a walk-through.  It takes some intelligence and imagination to understand the walk-through, but it is there, and it (along with other clues along the way) can take you through the module quite easily.





the Jester said:


> most players (_especially_ nowadays, with so few really challenging puzzles and tricks in modern adventures) don't have what it takes to get a pc through it intact.



My take might be slightly different - many contemporary players (perhaps most) don't come to a fantasy adventure RPG hoping to solve a puzzle and then easily walk through the scenario. I quite like solving cryptic crosswords, although am not especially good at them - but they're not what I come to D&D to do!



the Jester said:


> it is the kind of challenge that is the topper of a group's career- if they win, they have bragging rights few others ever will.





Celebrim said:


> I never said I expected an inexperienced group of players to succeed.  I'm not even sure I expect an experienced group of players to succeed



Experience in not what is relevant here - training in a very specific mode of classic D&D play is what is required.



the Jester said:


> Nobody is denying that it is a hard module, and I'll go a step forward and risk sounding elitist to say- *it's TOO HARD for any but the BEST PLAYERS.*



Why would the best players [sblock]stick three swords simultaneously in the slots? What if the party has only two fighters and a scimitar-wielding druid? Does this make them bad players?[/sblock] I think this gets close to dumb luck even _for_ players who are trained in the very specific form of D&D play to which the ToH caters.



Celebrim said:


> This is one of the first things that a party playing Tomb of Horrors should realize.  They generally have no reason to keep pressing on until they are ready to do so.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In ToH, other than the fact that its not very stylish, why not wait?



The good old 15-minute adventuring day! Back in the first (? - certainly an early) module published by TSR!

I guess this shows that it is not just an artefact of contemporary RPGing.



Celebrim said:


> A flying party can traverse this room without incident.



And we also have flight as the solution to the dungeon. Which combines well with the 15-minute day, assuming that the supply of fly spells is limited.



Bullgrit said:


> This is not to say that everything was wonky with classic D&D. Classic D&D had truly wonderful stuff as well as really wonky stuff. I just find it problematic for conversations and discussions to have *everything* presented as wonderful and brilliant. I also find it insulting to the truly great stuff of classic D&D.



I agree with this.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 2, 2011)

the Jester said:


> Once again: _There is no time limit on the Tomb of Horrors._
> 
> Just like with any adventure, when the resources you need for success are low, you retreat and replenish. With many adventures, that resource is hit points; here it is the ability to play carefully: _fly,_ divination spells, the right supplies (note the earlier "Nobody has a 10' pole? Let's go back to town!" story in this regard), etc.






Abraxas said:


> So, when the fly spells run out you go rest and come back the next day




So 3E didn't invent the 15-minute adventuring day, then? 

I kid, but it's interesting.  I've never really been a huge fan of megadungeons, and resting in them* always seems a bit off to me.

* Or hopping a little ways away, resting, and returning.

EDIT: Hah!  Ninja'ed by pemerton; a good place to be!


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## Abraxas (Jun 2, 2011)

The idea of running it with no time limit may be a significant factor in how people feel about the Tomb.

When I ran it, it was using the pre-generated characters in the back as a one shot, iron man fashion - the TPK occurred due to random die rolls - not because they did something stupid (unless having the scout be 25 feet ahead instead of 30 feet is considered stupid).

In retrospect I should have told the players that we would hand wave resting and any time they chose.

This is one of those things I have always wondered about the way this was run at Cons - did the successful teams say they rested and the DM hand waved it so it used only seconds of their time slot.

Another thing I have wondered is who selected the MU's spells - if the players did, how long did they have to make the choice?


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## Celebrim (Jun 2, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> So 3E didn't invent the 15-minute adventuring day, then?




No, it didn't.  Which is why I...

a) Became somewhat annoyed with the WotC designers when they erroneously blamed the '15-minute adventuring day' on particular features of 3e.
b) Knew ahead of time that you couldn't fix the '15-minute adventuring day' by changing the rules, any more than you could gaurantee exciting encounter design by changing the rules.

The 15 minute adventuring day is a product of a certain tactical situation, namely:

1) That the PC's are the most active and proactive things in the environment or even the only active and proactive things in the environment
2) There is no real time pressure
3) There is any resource whatsoever which is consumable and may require time to replenish whether it is hit points, healing surges, or simply ammo.

Generally speaking, I never have games with 15 minute adventuring days regardless of system because I tend to have proactive villains that will hunt down the PC's with whatever resources that they have or who will themselves replenish and repair using whatever time they are given.  This is the lesson of Ravenloft versus other modules.  A proactive villain makes a module much more dangerous than one that is passive, and its true whether you are talking kobolds or powerful spellcasters.  It's therefore necessary for the PC's to press on while they have the advantage and seize as much of the moment as possible.  Likewise, I tend to have a combination of hard and soft time limits.  If the PC's don't disrupt the villains enough, bad things will eventually happen.  So the PC's have to keep applying pressure to the villains.  They can't wait as long as they might like at every oppurtunity.  And even without clear time limits, the world around them keeps living.  New events keep happening.  So, I almost never have 15 minute adventuring days.   Those people who tended to have 15 minute adventuring days in 3e would with the same players tend to experience the 4e equivalent unless either they or their players changed their play style.  

The 4e equivalent logic is, why risk going into an encounter in the ToH without dailies and full healing surges?  The answer is either, 'Because it's not very stylish', or else, 'Why not?'


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## pemerton (Jun 2, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> I... <snip>  Knew ahead of time that you couldn't fix the '15-minute adventuring day' by changing the rules
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Those people who tended to have 15 minute adventuring days in 3e would with the same players tend to experience the 4e equivalent unless either they or their players changed their play style.



This seems to posit a lack of interdependence of play style and rules, at least as far as the domain of the 15 minute adventuring day is concerned.

My view is that there is in fact a high degree of interdependence here. Part of the evidence for my belief is that the group I play with, in changing rules from Rolemaster to 4e, has dropped the 15-minute adventuring day style, and that this is clearly attributable to a host of rule differences between RM and 4e, mostly relating to various aspects of action resolution but also relating to encounter design and the way that the rules deal with issues of authority over the ingame situation, and the relation of that to action resolution and GM force.


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## pemerton (Jun 2, 2011)

Abraxas said:


> In retrospect I should have told the players that we would hand wave resting and any time they chose.
> 
> This is one of those things I have always wondered about the way this was run at Cons - did the successful teams say they rested and the DM hand waved it so it used only seconds of their time slot.



How would resting go if not handwaved? Are you thinking about random encounters?


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## billd91 (Jun 2, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> So 3E didn't invent the 15-minute adventuring day, then?




3e didn't invent it, no. But I only ever heard of it as a problem with certain play styles of 3e players.

If you ended up with a short day in 1e/2e, it was because you got your hp kicked in and ran out of healing and didn't have any time pressure. Usually, this depended on either bad luck or biting off more than you could chew.

In certain highly optimizing play styles in 3e, you added in whenever the casters blew through their higher DC spells. In 1e/2e, that wasn't much of a factor since all saves were dependent on the target, not the level of the spell. When you also consider the ease with which healing could be obtained (via spontaneous casting, cure light wounds wands), the reason for why a group of PCs might take a 15 minute day shifted substantially... for those players who made it a part of their style of play.

I mention particular styles of play because there are plenty of other styles that managed to avoid the 15 minute day. I, for example, never really encountered a 15 minute adventuring day aside from occasions when the PCs found the opposition too tough and had to make a hasty retreat and then reassessed their tactics. Running out of high save DC spells has never been an issue.


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## pemerton (Jun 2, 2011)

billd91 said:


> 3e didn't invent it, no. But I only ever heard of it as a problem with certain play styles of 3e players.
> 
> If you ended up with a short day in 1e/2e, it was because you got your hp kicked in and ran out of healing and didn't have any time pressure. Usually, this depended on either bad luck or biting off more than you could chew.
> 
> In certain highly optimizing play styles in 3e, you added in whenever the casters blew through their higher DC spells.



In the context of ToH, though, it seems to be 3E-style 15 minutes being put forward - namely, stopping and resting when the MUs and clerics run out of fly and augury spells.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 2, 2011)

Strangely, the text seems to think that it *is* an attrition dungeon.



> an automatic 1-6 hit points damage sustained (a mere annoyance, but it erodes the strength of the party).



 - Section 13, page 5


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 2, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Yep. The frustration for discussion though is when people reverse the "wisdom" depending on the outcome:
> 
> We died searching for the treasure.
> -- Well, you shouldn't have searched.
> ...




Quick question: How seriously do you take the Monday morning quarterbacks? 

If your answer is ' not at all' then why are post adventure judges of player skill treated any differently?


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## Celebrim (Jun 2, 2011)

pemerton said:


> This seems to posit a lack of interdependence of play style and rules...




Only partially.   I simply posit that there is not a large dependence of play style on the rules.   I don't deny that rules can influence play style, but its just one of several matters.

Over the last few years I've had a growing realization that there are two areas of RPG practice that are very much under emphasized when we talk about RPGs.  Those areas are how the game master prepares for an RPG session, and the style that we play the game in.   I've come to realize that the preparation for a game and the style of the game are quite often completely divorsed from the rules of the game we call 'the system', but that they have a greater effect on how the game is actually played and experienced than the rules do.   If you have two games with completely different rules, but the game master prepares for the games in the same manner and the players and game master adopt the same style of play, then the resulting games will largely resemble each other regardless of the differences in the rules.

You talk about how going from Rolemaster to 4e has changed your groups play style.   But I wonder how much of that is due to rules artifacts, and how much of that is due to perceptions of how the two games are supposed to play.   I would presume that the shift from RM to 4e was dictated by a desire to have a different play style, so it would seem rather unlikely to me that your group would immediately thwart itself in that desire.  Likewise, I wonder there are now changes in the sort of material that the game master prepares the game.   When you state: "but also relating to encounter design and the way that the rules deal with issues of authority over the ingame situation, and the relation of that to action resolution and GM force.", you are attributing a change to the rules and to a certain extent I'm sure you are right, but I'm equally seeing this as a description of a change in social contract, play style, and game preparation - all of which have a fairly loose relationship to the rules.


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## Stoat (Jun 2, 2011)

I thought there were a bunch of ethereal demons hanging around the ToH to reset all the traps if they were left alone.

Have I got my deathtrap dungeons mixed up?


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## Ultimatecalibur (Jun 2, 2011)

Stoat said:


> I thought there were a bunch of ethereal demons hanging around the ToH to reset all the traps if they were left alone.
> 
> Have I got my deathtrap dungeons mixed up?




That was something added in later updates and revisions, like 



Spoiler



being unable to remove the crown from its room


 or 



Spoiler



the adamantite doors not being made of "real" adamantite


, after people started using destructive problem solving to beat the dungeon.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 2, 2011)

Removed


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## Abraxas (Jun 2, 2011)

pemerton said:


> How would resting go if not handwaved? Are you thinking about random encounters?



Partially correct.

When I ran it, yes I was thinking about random encounters - 1st edition mind set - there were always random encounters plus, at the time, I was under the impression that it was supposed to be run as a single attempt - no rests/breaks - so the resources you had were all you had - this really does make it much tougher.

As for the con players - I was merely wondering if they thought of it at all. None of the recounts I have read ever mention this - so I'm curious.


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## Stoat (Jun 2, 2011)

I took a look at my copy of the module at lunch.  I don't see anything about ethereal demons resetting traps either.  

Re: Resting in the Tomb, the module says this:



> Negotiation of the Tomb will require quiie a long time. so be
> prepared to spend several sessions with this module. When the
> game ends for the day assume the expedition is spending the
> intervening time until play again commences resting and
> ...


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## Abraxas (Jun 2, 2011)

There is another way that the ToH is unique - The text for the DM contains more snark/sarcasm than any other published  module/adventure that I have ever read - bordering on  flat out spite.


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## pemerton (Jun 3, 2011)

chaochou said:


> this is from the first room of the 'Sample Dungeon' in the DMG:
> 
> ROTTING SACKS: There are 10 moldy sacks of flour and grain stacked here. The cloth is easily torn to reveal the contents. If all of them are opened and searched, there is a 25% probability that the last will have YELLOW MOLD in it, and handling will automatically cause it to burst and all within 10’ must save versus poison or die in 1 turn.





billd91 said:


> there are ways to begin to search things that may avoid setting off things like yellow mold - weighted ropes and poles come to mind. Toss the hooked rope onto the pile of rags and drag. That disturbs the pile a bit to reveal things that will give off spores, will probably reveal green slime, and may pull some of those rags apart for better visual inspection without undue risk.
> Running in with your bare hands to root through the rags? Generally a bad idea, not a player showing much skill as a prudent/paranoid adventurer.





Celebrim said:


> Good dungeon hygiene was an essential part of dungeoneering.   This usually involves liberal use of 10' poles and torches, occasional use of soap and water or strong alchohol, and with back up plans of burning oil and cure disease when it becomes available.  If you can't see it, don't touch it.  If it looks dirty or filthy, assume its lethal to touch because it probably is.   Loot can be explored in detail back at camp or town.



In Appendix N (I think it is), Gygax says that inspiration for the game came particulary from REH, Leibner, Vance and Lovecraft. Tolkien is also mentioned as a lesser figure.

I haven't read Leibner - my impression of his stories is entirely from TSR's Lankhmar materials plus second hand accounts. I've read a bit of Vance and quite a bit of Tolkien, Lovecraft and REH.

There is _some_ resemblance beween these suggested approaches to an AD&D dungeon - weighted ropes, poles, soap, etc - and _some_ of the investigative elements of Lovecraft. Even there, though, the resemblance is not that great: investigation in Lovecraft reveals secrets that humankind was not meant to know - not just whether or not a given pile of rags is yellow mould or an elven cloak.

There is no resemblance between these suggested approaches to play and the typical Conan story - Conan doesn't use 10' poles, doesn't map, grabs jewels and runs with them, and then if they transform into living creatures and try to kill him he kills them first! The Fellowship, in Moria, didn't haul out a rope and 10' pole to help investigate the Book of Mazarbul. I haven't noticed any resembance, either, in the Vance I've read, and I'd be surprised if Leibner - which by reputation is meant to be fun pulpish stuff - involves many 10' poles either, as opposed to the protagonists blundering their way into danger and then making good by liberal use of wits, charm and authorial fiat.

For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 3, 2011)

pemerton said:


> For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?



I guess it's because D&D started as a wargame. They added dragons and wizards to Chainmail because they thought it would be cool. But Chainmail didn't become a tool for doing the same sorts of things as those tales with dragons and wizards in, it was still a wargame.

1. Add fantasy elements to Chainmail.
2. Switch focus to individual figures, not armies. At this point, I think it becomes an rpg.
3. Play switches from battlefield to dungeon.
4. Players lose interest in playing monsters, leaving them to the referee.
5. Referee spices things up by adding traps and puzzles.
6. Gary hears some players boasting about how tough their PCs are, decides to 'teach them a lesson'.
7. Tomb of Horrors.

The D&D of Tomb of Horrors has not changed that much from Chainmail with dragon and wizard figures.


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## Celebrim (Jun 3, 2011)

pemerton said:


> There is no resemblance between these suggested approaches to play and the typical Conan story - Conan doesn't use 10' poles, doesn't map, grabs jewels and runs with them, and then if they transform into living creatures and try to kill him he kills them first! The Fellowship, in Moria, didn't haul out a rope and 10' pole to help investigate the Book of Mazarbul. I haven't noticed any resembance, either, in the Vance I've read, and I'd be surprised if Leibner - which by reputation is meant to be fun pulpish stuff - involves many 10' poles either, as opposed to the protagonists blundering their way into danger and then making good by liberal use of wits, charm and authorial fiat.
> 
> For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?




Because they are games.  The very first modules probably didn't look exactly like the classic ones.  The classic ones had evolved to be good games, and as such they had features that differed from that of good stories.

One of the most important differences being that the protagonists aren't under the control of the author.  In the literature that inspires D&D, the author favors the protagonist and insures that whatever happens and no matter how unlikely this outcome is the protagonist wins.   Obviously, this doesn't make for a very good game, and Gygax disparages game authors who take that stance.  Instead, in the game the author is in a certain sense the antagonist of the protagonists.   And as such, if the protagonists are to win through the obstacles presented by the story, they are going to have to rely on something more than the extraordinary luck typically granted to literary heroes.

That isn't to say that the game doesn't also grant the protagonists extraordinary luck and capacity - that's what hit points and the like are for - but rather that if the game isn't rigged in your favor such that you can't lose, then you are going to have to rely on something more than just your hit points. 

In that sense, game heroes tend to be much much more compotent than literary heroes.   Which is why gamers watch a movie and go, "What an idiot.  Real PC's would never fall for that trap!"


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## Celebrim (Jun 3, 2011)

pemerton said:


> There is _some_ resemblance beween these suggested approaches to an AD&D dungeon - weighted ropes, poles, soap, etc - and _some_ of the investigative elements of Lovecraft. Even there, though, the resemblance is not that great: investigation in Lovecraft reveals secrets that humankind was not meant to know - not just whether or not a given pile of rags is yellow mould or an elven cloak.




I think every good game master takes inspiration from a different set of sources.  

My strongest literary sources are Tolkien, Lovecraft, and the brothers Grimm.  

Investigation in my game may on the small scale be to determine whether the given pile of rags contains some lethal hazard or a magical cloak (or both!), but that's not what the game is about.   That's only a small scene in the game, a piece of the larger investigation.   Since my inspiration comes from Tolkien and Lovecraft, the goal of the investigation is usually to save the world or at least your peice of it, and very often what you are saving it from is someone who has learned or desires secrets that mortals were not meant to know.  

In fact, my current campaign is about exactly that - the villain desires something, which though it has a great potential for good, is something that mortals are not meant to have.  The secret of what he wants and how he intends to obtain it is the ultimate goal of the investigation, even if a particular scene involves probing with a 10' pole.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 3, 2011)

Removed


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 3, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> Because they are games.



But games can have a variety of rules and victory conditions. One could create a game in which the players are rewarded for having their characters act like the protagonists in a particular genre of fiction. For example a horror game in which the players score points for splitting up and going to the cellar.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 3, 2011)

pemerton said:


> For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?




The answer is simple. It is in fact a _game._ The source material is inspirational in tone but are still _stories. _

The game exists to to played. In order to play and engage the minds of the players there are obstacles designed to stimulate the imaginations of the players who come up with solutions. Playing the role of an adventurer would be less fun for me if it meant being guided through some story and thrown headlong into situations and passively awaiting authorial fiat to provide a way out. While this might more closely resemble familliar stories I don't see much of an opportunity for a game in it. 

The pulp feel comes from adventurers seeking fame and glory. The particulars of how this is achieved will differ depending on the medium. 

Books and movies are passive. The characters are subjected to whatever trials, adversity, and gain whatever rewards the author sees fit to write. The characters do not have independent thoughts and motivations outside of those assigned by the author.

Games are played by people who generally (hopefully) want to take an active part in the entertainment. Solving problems in a pulp/fantasy setting by real people engaging the experience as if it were actual is bound to lead to the kinds of things you don't typically see in stories. 

How many times have you encountered a situation in a book or movie and thought ; "if that were me then I would have......"  That is exactly the kind of thing you get to do all the time in an rpg.  Just because Bob the protagonist never used a stick to test something in a story doesn't mean that you can't .


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## Umbran (Jun 3, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:


> The answer is simple. It is in fact a _game._ The source material is inspirational in tone but are still _stories. _




I don't think that answers the question at all.  It looks to me completely orthogonal to the question.



> The game exists to to played. In order to play and engage the minds of the players there are obstacles designed to stimulate the imaginations of the players who come up with solutions.




Yes.  But then we come to the choice of obstacles, the actual content in the adventure.  Why is the content in these supposedly classic modules so much like an engineer trying to trick fellow engineers into making a mistake, and so little like the obstacles Conan, Fafhrd, and Grey Mouser face?



> Playing the role of an adventurer would be less fun for me if it meant being guided through some story and thrown headlong into situations and passively awaiting authorial fiat to provide a way out.




A player can have as much freedom of choice in trying to figure out how to search a stack of moldy bags as dealing with a Thulsa Doom's guards.  The question isn't about how much freedom the players are given to devise their own solutions to problems, as what their problems are in the first place.

I think the answer to that question is, as you say, quite simple, but not anywhere near the direction you put it:

The authors were more like people who fiddle with rules and puzzles, and less like people who write stories.  If you figure the authors (wisely) went by the "write what you know" philosophy, then it is not odd that the classic modules are a lot about tinkering with fiddly bits.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 3, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Yes. But then we come to the choice of obstacles, the actual content in the adventure. Why is the content in these supposedly classic modules so much like an engineer trying to trick fellow engineers into making a mistake, and so little like the obstacles Conan, Fafhrd, and Grey Mouser face?




Conan, Fafhrd and other pulp heroes didn't actually have to face any obstacles. They were all pre-written predicaments with pre-written solutions. 





Umbran said:


> A player can have as much freedom of choice in trying to figure out how to search a stack of moldy bags as dealing with a Thulsa Doom's guards. The question isn't about how much freedom the players are given to devise their own solutions to problems, as what their problems are in the first place.




I'm not understanding what you mean. Are you saying that only the type of obstacles from the stories should be included in game scenarios? 

Classic modules, as goofy as some of them were, had one thing going for them; the authors were clever enough to know that any challenge worthy of being called such was meant for the _player_ sitting at the table rather than a pile of doodles and numbers scribbled on a piece of paper.


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## Umbran (Jun 3, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:


> Conan, Fafhrd and other pulp heroes didn't actually have to face any obstacles. They were all pre-written predicaments with pre-written solutions.




If you want to be that literal, you're still probably incorrect.  From what I read from genre authors about their writing processes, they aren't that deterministic - having written the situation, then asks themselves, "Okay, so how is my hero going to get out of this one".  Authors sometimes speak of "characters writing themselves", and stories frequently go places the authors didn't plan at the beginning.  There's some role-playing going on there, but the rules involved include more of the rules of popular fictional structure and pacing than simulations of detailed combat actions.

Be that as it may, I'll rephrase the question:  Why are the obstacles in the classic modules chosen so that the stories that result after play typically bear so little resemblance to the stories that were supposedly the inspiration for the game in the first place?

My proposed answer is that the game authors were more familiar with the fiddly bits of battle simulation rules, and less facile with the rules of fictional dramaic structure, content, tension and pacing.  Rules that facilitate drama-focus came later, from other designers, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors.



> Are you saying that only the type of obstacles from the stories should be included in game scenarios?




No.  Moreover, I don't see how that logically or reasonably follows.  It is as if I asked, "Why is there so much pepperoni on this pizza, and so little cheese?" and you respond with, "Are you saying no pizza should ever have any pepperoni?"  



> Classic modules, as goofy as some of them were, had one thing going for them; the authors were clever enough to know that any challenge worthy of being called such was meant for the _player_ sitting at the table rather than a pile of doodles and numbers scribbled on a piece of paper.




I think the authors of today's modules are just as clever - it is just the fashion of what kind of challenges the players like has changed over time.


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## Maggan (Jun 3, 2011)

I don't know if my players would be considered "good" (I sometimes consider them "evil"), but the ToH prompted them to bring lots of sheep, timber, hammers and nails.

Sheep for herding through the dungeon, timber and nails to build bridges and walkways, and for propping up roofs and stuff. Without a time limit, they managed to think of a lot of engineering-based solutions to the challenges.

They didn't sustain that many injuries.

But they bored me to tears. They took the same approach to White Plume Mountain. Come to think of it, they try a lot of the same strategies when we play Call of Cthulhu. But with more dynamite and far more casualties. Go figure. 

/M


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 3, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Be that as it may, I'll rephrase the question: Why are the obstacles in the classic modules chosen so that the stories that result after play typically bear so little resemblance to the stories that were supposedly the inspiration for the game in the first place?




Perhaps because actual play (at least in the scenarios being discussed) is not a story. 




Umbran said:


> My proposed answer is that the game authors were more familiar with the fiddly bits of battle simulation rules, and less facile with the rules of fictional dramaic structure, content, tension and pacing. Rules that facilitate drama-focus came later, from other designers, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors.




Since the game was not designed or structured for storytelling in the first place I don't see how the absence of fictional dramatic structure elements was in any way a shortcoming. That would be like faulting Monopoly for not including rules to roleplay your little car or shoe.


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## the Jester (Jun 3, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:


> Perhaps because actual play (at least in the scenarios being discussed) is not a story.




This, a million times this.

Stories almost all end with the good guys victorious and intact. D&D games, especially in the early years, sometimes end with one survivor fleeing for his life. Sometimes nobody makes it back alive at all.


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## Nagol (Jun 3, 2011)

pemerton said:


> For me, then, the disconnect in AD&D is this: why are the classic adventures intended to produce a play experience that so little resembles what is said to be the inspirational material for the game?




Part of it is scene-framing.  The actors of the story are generally competent and when being proactive, assumed to have "reasonable gear" such that the only time the gear needs to be mentioned in when it is lacking for the task on hand.

When Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser decide to steal a house, you can bet that there was rope, 10' poles, iron spikes, and no end of carpentry/engineering going on as well as logistical planning for the route the team of drunken blindfolded louts who were to transport the house were to take.

The author cuts it all out _because it isn't important after the fact based on how the story unfolded_.  All that investigation, preparation, and work is important to _how the story will unfold_ as the participants engage the world and the world reacts.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 3, 2011)

Roleplaying games that try to model fiction - James Bond 007, Champions and most other superhero games, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon - came later. To a great degree I think these games all fail, because they are stuck using the same underlying, Chainmail-derived model that D&D uses. They take the wargaming model and tweak it rather than looking carefully at the fiction and coming up with a new model from scratch.

Like I say, D&D never even tried to do what James Bond and others tried, it's a medieval wargame with the trappings of fantasy fiction. Gary didn't think, "How can I recreate the feel of a Conan story?" It was much simpler, he just thought, "People are getting bored of playing Chainmail, how can I spice it up?"

Though this article completely disagrees with me!



> He was a fan of the _Conan the Barbarian_ books by Robert E. Howard and wanted to try to capture that sort of swashbuckling action in a war game.


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## Celebrim (Jun 3, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Roleplaying games that try to model fiction - James Bond 007, Champions and most other superhero games, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon - came later. To a great degree I think these games all fail, because they are stuck using the same underlying, Chainmail-derived model that D&D uses. They take the wargaming model and tweak it rather than looking carefully at the fiction and coming up with a new model from scratch.
> 
> Like I say, D&D never even tried to do what James Bond and others tried, it's a medieval wargame with the trappings of fantasy fiction. Gary didn't think, "How can I recreate the feel of a Conan story?" It was much simpler, he just thought, "People are getting bored of playing Chainmail, how can I spice it up?"
> 
> Though this article completely disagrees with me!




A good answer, but I think the full answer is somewhat simplier.  Gary may have wanted to recreate the feel of a Conan story, but at this time RPGs were brand new.   No one knew how to make a game that captured story feel.  Gary however knew alot about wargames.  So he adapted the wargames approach to RPGs and the result was often very entertaining and often a very good game, but it naturally didn't feel exactly like a Conan story.

And less we get too hubristic about this, it's worth noting that almost every game that has set out to make a game that feel exactly like experiencing a story has failed either in the market or else to succeed in doing so.  It is not at all easy to create a good game that exactly mimics a story.

I think there are two reasons for this, and they both relate to a very good responce from earlier:



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> But games can have a variety of rules and victory conditions. One could create a game in which the players are rewarded for having their characters act like the protagonists in a particular genre of fiction. For example a horror game in which the players score points for splitting up and going to the cellar.




This is certainly true, but consider:

a) How many games have actually been built along those lines?  As one example, 'Stunting' mechanics that make it more likely that you will succeed the less probable success as a result of your actions would be are a fairly new mechanic in games, and are I think counter intuitive.  I wouldn't expect mechanics like that to be a part of the first or even second generation of RPGs.  You just don't see a lot of mechanics in any game specificly designed to force a game to obey genera conventions.   There are a few, and some of them - like Sanity Points in CoC - are old, but few games have embrassed that concept comprehensively.
b) How interesting would such a game be, given that it would seem that suceess amount to nothing more than adhering to a set of genera conventions?   Player challenge is inherent to a game and not to literature, and that means that the game version of any story is likely to have differences.


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## Ariosto (Jun 3, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> Is _Tomb of Horrors_ an example of standard old school gaming, or is it a single outlier, an exception from the standard? Is _Tomb of Horrors_ what gaming used to be like? Or is it something unusual, even unique from old gaming?




It depends on what you really mean.

"Dungeon modules" in general were different from the usual foci of campaign play. Acerak's tomb was for one thing a very _small_ edifice next to the sprawling dungeons of the Gygax-Kuntz Castle Greyhawk that were the model of "a good dungeon" in the original D&D sense.

"Meat grinders" were pretty common for tournament play, because they were easy to score on the basis of where the bodies fell. However, only an occasional small portion of a big dungeon would be such a packed linear gauntlet -- as an expedition such as that to the lich's repository would be but an occasional small portion of a campaign.

The aspect of testing players rather than characters was indeed very prevalent. However -- as I think Gygax suggested in the introduction to the module -- such an overwhelming emphasis on puzzles was unusual. The Tomb was a very notable change of pace in its shortage of creatures with which to interact, and not one likely to appeal to players whose joy was in "hack and slay" or "places to go, people to meet".

If memory serves, the sample dungeon in Holmes Basic was in many ways a fairly typical slice. There were monsters just to fight or avoid, characters ranging from villains to victims to potential allies, dangerous tricks and traps, mysteries to solve and maybe some enigmas.


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## Ariosto (Jun 3, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> This is something that makes discussing classic D&D so difficult.
> 
> There're a bunch of sacks full of something in the corner of the room. What's in them? You don't know until you check them.
> 
> ...




"Old school" D&D was and is a game, enjoyed by many people who are wise and know that a game is a series of risks, a series of choices involving weighing of potential gains and losses with uncertainty as to the actual outcomes.

That characteristic of unpredictability is a feature that they _desire and appreciate_ as a change from exercises that involve obeying easily followed instructions to duplicate set sequences of events.


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## Ariosto (Jun 3, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> This is sort of my point: There are many examples both ways – things you shouldn’t mess with, and things you should mess with. And often there is no clue for which is the right action: leave it alone, or investigate it.
> 
> 
> ... But the lack of *any* clue, or especially the existence of a misleading clue, does make for bad design – unless you think requiring 50/50-chance guesses are good design. What makes things bad for discussions on this subject are when people claim that making the wrong/bad decision – based on *no* clue – means the Player is not good or skilled.
> ...




Yes, it would be unskilled reasoning and poor rhetoric if one were to claim as something else what is evidently chance (or might as well be).

However, skill can enter a game involving chance when opportunities to gamble are not just isolated events but instead interact with a larger context. Is the potential treasure more important, or the potential trap?

Poker is a game of both chance and skill. Situations can arise in such games as Chess and Diplomacy in which actually random choice of which move to make would be superior strategy to risking the revelation of a subconscious pattern that the opponent might be able to use.

Depending on the dice appears to be what often gets hailed as "good" design these days! I have yet to see the chance of picking the right door of three be only 25% or worse because some joker decided to make it a certain DC, but it seems just a matter of time.

Even when there are clues to discover, it may be most unlikely that someone will think to look for them. A spear trap in _Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure_ comes to mind, and a Medusa in _Keep on the Borderlands_, as "gotcha" moments likely to get most player groups (albeit not so many characters in well deployed parties).

In such cases, not getting caught is a noteworthy accomplishment. Not unleashing a certain furious elemental in MFA is probably more a matter of experience suggesting the general inadvisability of some courses of action. 

That one can have no iron-clad guarantee of either safety or treasure, though, is part of the game's interest. The strategic scope of the old game's design gave many types of probability more opportunity to play out and a context in which players were less dismayed by such turns of fortune.

I think there are weaknesses in, e.g., _The Temple of Elemental Evil_ and _In Search of the Unknown_, things that might add spice if used sparingly but easily become tiresome when overused. I do not remember such a problem in the Tomb, and no doubt that is due partly to the different circumstances of the whole scenario.

I seem to recall a gargoyle in the Tomb that would require magic either to bypass or to defeat. That "challenges the characters" at least to the extent that low-level characters might need to be unusually well equipped -- but really only "name level" worthies should seek Acerak's resting place.


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## pemerton (Jun 4, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> One of the most important differences being that the protagonists aren't under the control of the author.  In the literature that inspires D&D, the author favors the protagonist and insures that whatever happens and no matter how unlikely this outcome is the protagonist wins.   Obviously, this doesn't make for a very good game, and Gygax disparages game authors who take that stance.



This seems to identify the GM as analogous to the author (if I've read it correctly).

I tend to prefer an approach to RPGing that views the players as authors also.



Raven Crowking said:


> In the first Conan story, when we first meet Conan, he is engaged in updating a map!



But not a map of the dungeon. And not in the field. He's sitting in his study talking to his counsellor. Also, it is obviously an authorial device to introduce the world. The equivalent in an RPG might be a brief introductory vignette for the players.



Nagol said:


> The actors of the story are generally competent and when being proactive, assumed to have "reasonable gear" such that the only time the gear needs to be mentioned in when it is lacking for the task on hand.



An RPG could incorporate this, of course. And some do.



Celebrim said:


> My strongest literary sources are Tolkien, Lovecraft, and the brothers Grimm.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Since my inspiration comes from Tolkien and Lovecraft, the goal of the investigation is usually to save the world or at least your peice of it, and very often what you are saving it from is someone who has learned or desires secrets that mortals were not meant to know.



My last campaign resembled this. It makes for a good fantasy RPG (in my view, and presumably yours!).


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## Ariosto (Jun 4, 2011)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Why are the obstacles in the classic modules chosen so that the stories that result after play typically bear so little resemblance to the stories that were supposedly the inspiration for the game in the first place?
> 
> My proposed answer is that the game authors were more familiar with the fiddly bits of battle simulation rules, and less facile with the rules of fictional dramaic structure, content, tension and pacing.




1) I simply do not agree with your assessment. "So little resemblance" is definitely not what comes to my mind. If there is a game that would better put me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe -- not in one particular fictional setting, mind you -- then I have yet to find it. (I do very much like Chaosium's games, but see no such great difference as you seem to imply.)

2) Dramatic structure is for a dramatic production. I know of no evidence that the RPG pioneers wanted to make such a thing, but I have encountered testimony from them suggesting that they did not. Many went on to work in the field of computer games, in which dramatic structure was one way of making a silk purse from the sow's ear of limited capabilities. Ken St Andre not only did that (contributing to *Wasteland*) but continued to make his living as a librarian. Gary Gygax and others wrote novels.

When people at TSR, GDW, Chaosium and Games Workshop wanted to "tell a story" in a scenario, they were quite capable of addressing the matter explicitly. Tracy Hickman's efforts are of course very well known in D&D circles.

The claim that they lacked acquaintance with story-telling devices rings false.

3) It is perhaps not just coincidence that  "talk and slash" scenarios with heavy plot lines coming to the fore seems for many to mark the end of the period of "classic modules". The old quality of game-play, the great appeal of D&D to its early market, seems to decline when the "storytellers" start to crank out product. 

In sum, I think you are really reaching when there is a straightforward answer readily to hand: The designers were making fun games for the fun of games, not trying to make emulations of books.


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## Celebrim (Jun 4, 2011)

pemerton said:


> This seems to identify the GM as analogous to the author (if I've read it correctly).
> 
> I tend to prefer an approach to RPGing that views the players as authors also.




I won't quibble with that.  It's not very important to the topic and theory is less important than preparation and play.  However, to the extent that authorship is distributed around several contributers, it's another reason to think that story games will be a different than other sorts of stories.


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## Ariosto (Jun 4, 2011)

How come Displacer Beasts are running around in a pseudo-medieval world instead of space ships? It's the same reason that all sorts of other things are thrown together.

It's a common spirit found on Heinlein's Glory Road and in Farmer's World of Tiers that inspired D&D, not slavish adherence to the particulars of any story.

The notion that a special selection of the works of, say, Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien should somehow define the limits of D&D just has nothing to do with the historical attitudes of the game's creators.

The only answer necessary is, "It's more fun for us this way!"


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## Stormonu (Jun 4, 2011)

There has certainly been a shift in modulecraft over the years.  Remembering back through old modules, the early years of D&D certainly concentrated on "here's a location - how do YOU best it".  The adventure was about the location, and any story that arose was incidental.  Characters were simply avatars for the players to interact through to deal with the location.  This was the age of "your character knows what YOU know".

By the time of Ravenloft (though it still had a strong "Location is King" element) and the Dragonlance series, that had clearly changed.  Story was becoming more and more important and it was becoming more and more popular to tell a story that involved these fictional characters.  Beating a location became less and less important as the fictional characters themselves became more important (think of the likes of Raistlin and & Co., the perennial villian Strahd, as well as the rise of Drizzt).  As 1E grew to 2E, the game was slowly drawing a line between what the character and the player knew, and the game was shifting more towards the fictional story being more important than the location where the adventure was occuring - a shift away from "Dungeon Crawls".

I think that the likes of White Wolf games stole a lot of former D&D players (as well as many who would never touch D&D) because they hit on what D&D did poorly at the time - characterization.  WW was based more on storytelling aspects and D&D was lagging behind.  It was only when we started seeing the likes of Planescape (with Dark Sun being perhaps a preview of the drift away from "Location is King") that D&D itself started diving into immersion, and even then it was hampered by the rules/mechanics it was based off.  It was still a game of "kill things and take their stuff" even as the designers tried to deny it.

3E drew a firm line between character knowledge and player knowledge, while at the same time shifting back toward "Location is King".  However, it allowed for nearly equal play either way - you could do games where Story was more important, and the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel, or you could go old sckool with the 10' pole and checking for traps every 10 feet and brave the likes of the Tomb.

My brief brush with 4E gives me the blush that while it too can handle play in either direction, it cares less about Story than the action/location at hand.  There is a heavy stress on the fictional character, but it less on exploring who the character is and more on what he/she can do.  IMO, characters are very much a tool to interact with the environment, and not so much a fictional individual to explore what it means to be in the fictional world.

In the end, RPGs have moved far, far away from the outlook way back in the days the Tomb came out.  Tomb was asking a question - "Are you, the PLAYER, smart enough to get through this alive?".  

Most modules these day ask an entirely different question - "Do you want to hear a story?"


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## Ariosto (Jun 4, 2011)

Stormonu said:
			
		

> 3E drew a firm line between character knowledge and player knowledge, while at the same time shifting back toward "Location is King". However, it allowed for nearly equal play either way - you could do games where Story was more important, and the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel, or you could go old sckool with the 10' pole and checking for traps every 10 feet and brave the likes of the Tomb.




Just how does 3e especially make it that "the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel", as opposed to 1st ed. AD&D or Vampire: the Masquerade? 

How is the subject matter of a raid on the Tomb -- for that is not only what Umbran pointed to but what you are identifying here -- opposed to "a story"? Obviously, most stories are about other things, but the same holds for almost every subject apart from romance and religion!

I certainly don't see the relation of an hour or two of "push the target a number of squares equal to 1 + your intelligence modifier" as more like literature than the sweeping action of old-D&D pacing. I can dig that many people love that aspect of 3e and 4e, but it does not look to me like a "dramatic structure" improvement of the sort that Umbran hails.

It might better resemble Tom Clancy's prose style, or some pornography, but that hardly speaks to popular fiction as a whole.


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## Ulrick (Jun 4, 2011)

Stormonu said:


> *snip*
> 
> In the end, RPGs have moved far, far away from the outlook way back in the days the Tomb came out.  Tomb was asking a question - "Are you, the PLAYER, smart enough to get through this alive?".
> 
> Most modules these day ask an entirely different question - "Do you want to hear a story?"




Followed by: 
"How can my character interact best with the story?" 
"What is my character's inner motivation, besides treasure, to enter the Tomb of Horrors?" 
"Is my character a descendant of Acererak? If so, are all those messages in the Tomb really for ME?"
"Maybe I can reach out to Acererak and redeem him from his evil ways..." 
"How does Acererak make me feel?" 




Or worse: "Obviously the DM wouldn't throw challenges several levels above our average party level, but why is half the group dead after only 3 rooms?"


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## Celebrim (Jun 4, 2011)

Stormonu said:


> 3E drew a firm line between character knowledge and player knowledge, while at the same time shifting back toward "Location is King".  However, it allowed for nearly equal play either way - you could do games where Story was more important, and the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel, or you could go old sckool with the 10' pole and checking for traps every 10 feet and brave the likes of the Tomb.




Or, in my case, you could (and can!) do _sessions_ either way, alternating back and forth between dungeoncraft and story, and between exploring an environment and exploring characters.

What gets me is that this is the way I've been playing since roughly 9th grade.  I haven't really changed my game at all in 22 years.  My stories may have gotten a little less linear and more accomodating and my rules have changed a ton (hopefully for the better), but ultimately I'm still playing the same D&D I was playing my last year in high school.

In the old days, circa 1990, back when we were disparaging that new even numbered edition for dumbing the game down, I was already going from dungeon crawling for a session to not picking up the dice for a whole session because I was involved in complex NPC interaction.  I was in groups that alternated between planning out their campaign against some stronghold of the enemy in lavish detail, to spending much of the session discussing politics in character with each other.



> Most modules these day ask an entirely different question - "Do you want to hear a story?"




Yes, I do.

And, sometimes I also want to challenge myself against a trapped filled tomb.  Is there something wrong with like cake _and_ ice cream?


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## Stormonu (Jun 4, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> Or, in my case, you could (and can!) do _sessions_ either way, alternating back and forth between dungeoncraft and story, and between exploring an environment and exploring characters.




I certainly see no problem in that, and I'm sure most people do swing like that quite often.  The designers, though, seemed to try and shape the game in certain directions - sometimes against the flow of its fans (such as in 2E).



Celebrim said:


> What gets me is that this is the way I've been playing since roughly 9th grade.  I haven't really changed my game at all in 22 years.  My stories may have gotten a little less linear and more accomodating and my rules have changed a ton (hopefully for the better), but ultimately I'm still playing the same D&D I was playing my last year in high school.




My style, on the other hand, has definitely changed.  I started out as a 10-year old hack'n'slasher in the early 80's and got bored with it over the years (somewhere in 2E).  I'm much more of a story-teller these days, though I still love a good brawl every so often.  And I feel I've gotten a lot better with the rules too.  I shudder at the memory of some of the "adventures" I put together back in my teenage days.  I have a lot of respect for the "classic" D&D modules as they helped to lead me on the path towards better and thoughtful design.



Celebrim said:


> In the old days, circa 1990, back when we were disparaging that new even numbered edition for dumbing the game down, I was already going from dungeon crawling for a session to not picking up the dice for a whole session because I was involved in complex NPC interaction.  I was in groups that alternated between planning out their campaign against some stronghold of the enemy in lavish detail, to spending much of the session discussing politics in character with each other.




(As an aside, I loved 2E for cleaning things up - I was never fond of 1E, and only moved to it from Basic/Expert just before UE came out.)  

There was a sort of epiphany I had back in 2E when we started to have regular sessions where no dice were being thrown; it was, in a way, a lot more fun.  That realization - "I don't need the dice to resolve this" - became very prominent in the VtM game I ran a little later down the line.

However, what I was reading from the rulebooks and Dragon mag back in the day (or at least, my memory of what I read back in that time) gave me the firm impression that the designers had a particular disdain for dungeon crawls in favor of grand metaplot campaigns, which I completely disagreed with.



Celebrim said:


> Yes, I do.
> 
> And, sometimes I also want to challenge myself against a trapped filled tomb.  Is there something wrong with like cake _and_ ice cream?




As do I; I love I6 - Ravenloft, but the day I feel guilty about sending a party through Tomb will be the day I put my dice bag up for good.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 4, 2011)

Stormonu said:


> 3E drew a firm line between character knowledge and player knowledge, while at the same time shifting back toward "Location is King".  However, it allowed for nearly equal play either way - you could do games where Story was more important, and the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel, or you could go old sckool with the 10' pole and checking for traps every 10 feet and brave the likes of the Tomb.



The creation of 3e was a real 'stress point' in the history of roleplaying and the game could have been very different. As I understand it, there were a number of voices within WotC that wanted 3e to be in the same vein as Dragonlance SAGA System, which was "designed to reproduce the sweeping romance and fantastic epics of the DRAGONLANCE tradition". Such a 3e would have been rules lite and explicitly pro-story.

As it was the 'Skip Williams tendency' won out and the published version of 3e was rules heavy and simulationist, the edition of D&D closest in style to GURPS, HERO and RuneQuest.

I suspect a SAGA System version of 3e would have been a commercial disaster tbh, generally rpg fans prefer rules heavy.


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## pemerton (Jun 4, 2011)

Ariosto said:


> I simply do not agree with your assessment. "So little resemblance" is definitely not what comes to my mind. If there is a game that would better put me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe -- not in one particular fictional setting, mind you -- then I have yet to find it.



I don't think a game which "puts me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe" on it own will produce a play experience evocative of REH. For example, I don't think playing through ToH, or through an adventure in which avoiding the yellow mould using ropes and poles is a significant element of play, is very evocative of REH (or Leiber or Vance or Lovecraft or Tolkien) even if it fits the description "putting me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe".



Stormonu said:


> Remembering back through old modules, the early years of D&D certainly concentrated on "here's a location - how do YOU best it".  The adventure was about the location, and any story that arose was incidental.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Most modules these day ask an entirely different question - "Do you want to hear a story?"



I'm interested in GMing scenarios that ask my players "Do you want to create a story?" This tends to require at least a bit of reworking of most published modules.


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## Gentlegamer (Jun 4, 2011)

Huw said:


> I almost had a player walkout over _Tsojcanth_ - had to tone down some of the more biased encounters and the requirements to enter the central chamber.



Was there a hot game of _Candyland _he was missing? 

Those that complain about real challenges might be better off playing Candyland with their little sister [/Gary]


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## Celebrim (Jun 4, 2011)

Gentlegamer said:


> Was there a hot game of _Candyland _he was missing?




In fairness, Tsojcanth is arguably a more difficult module than Tomb of Horrors and there is less that a player can do about it.  I mean, if Tomb of Horrors is a meat grinder, then Tsojcanth is an industrial sized abatoir with a conveyer belt leading to a stock yard of PC's the size of Kansas.  (And it's not as tough as either C1 or I6.)

Tsojcanth is basically a showcase for MM2, with a ton of monsters crammed into a smallish area with widely varying (in 3e terms) encounter level and quite a bit of save or die (particullarly turn to stone) and a couple of die no save.  

Careful play doesn't as much determine the outcome of Tsojcanth as blind luck, dice rolls, and system mastery.  If in ToH it matters little what is on your character sheet, in Tsojcanth very little else matters and how you experienced the module probably to a large extent depends on what sort of characters you took into it.  If you did 3d6 in order, 9th level characters with a smattering of +1 items and similar minor magic devices, you probably TPKed.  If you did UA method for generating NPCs, 12th level characters with a godly suite of magic items, then you probably blazed through the adventure with no problems.  There are a few oppurtunities for a skilled hack-n-slash sort to kill themselves in Tsojcanth (including one that is notoriously unfair), but largely the players that did terrible at ToH will do well with Tsojcanth.  Skilled spellcasters and a 15 minute adventuring day are probably the secret.

I don't remember finishing the module, but I don't think it was because we TPKed.  I think we just got bored.


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## Gentlegamer (Jun 4, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> In fairness, Tsojcanth is arguably a more difficult module than Tomb of Horrors and there is less that a player can do about it.  I mean, if Tomb of Horrors is a meat grinder, then Tsojcanth is an industrial sized abatoir with a conveyer belt leading to a stock yard of PC's the size of Kansas.  (And it's not as tough as either C1 or I6.)



Like Gary, I was partially being mock insulting for humor. 

On the other hand, a D&Der who walks out of a game session because 'it's too hard' isn't a D&Der worthy of the name, in my opinion. 

If 'winning' in D&D is surviving to tell your tale, then walking away from the table is surely 'losing.'

Of course, having your _character _retreat is perfectly acceptable. Gary recounted several instances where his players had their characters flee/escape in the face of daunting difficulty rather than push on, most notably _Isle of the Ape_. 

The _player _'walking' because of difficulty is bush-league. 


> Tsojcanth is basically a showcase for MM2, with a ton of monsters crammed into a smallish area with widely varying (in 3e terms) encounter level and quite a bit of save or die (particullarly turn to stone) and a couple of die no save.
> 
> Careful play doesn't as much determine the outcome of Tsojcanth as blind luck, dice rolls, and system mastery.  If in ToH it matters little what is on your character sheet, in Tsojcanth very little else matters and how you experienced the module probably to a large extent depends on what sort of characters you took into it.  If you did 3d6 in order, 9th level characters with a smattering of +1 items and similar minor magic devices, you probably TPKed.  If you did UA method for generating NPCs, 12th level characters with a godly suite of magic items, then you probably blazed through the adventure with no problems.  There are a few oppurtunities for a skilled hack-n-slash sort to kill themselves in Tsojcanth (including one that is notoriously unfair), but largely the players that did terrible at ToH will do well with Tsojcanth.  Skilled spellcasters and a 15 minute adventuring day are probably the secret.
> 
> I don't remember finishing the module, but I don't think it was because we TPKed.  I think we just got bored.



Very good points. One thing though: isn't Tsojcanth definitely an adventure that the (skilled/experienced) high level party should have several well-equipped henchmen, hirelings, and followers? Wouldn't that mitigate some of the combat difficulty? That module definitely seems to warrant a large adventuring party.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 4, 2011)

Celebrim said:


> Careful play doesn't as much determine the outcome of Tsojcanth as blind luck, dice rolls, and system mastery.  If in ToH it matters little what is on your character sheet, in Tsojcanth very little else matters and how you experienced the module probably to a large extent depends on what sort of characters you took into it.  If you did 3d6 in order, 9th level characters with a smattering of +1 items and similar minor magic devices, you probably TPKed.  If you did UA method for generating NPCs, 12th level characters with a godly suite of magic items, then you probably blazed through the adventure with no problems.  There are a few oppurtunities for a skilled hack-n-slash sort to kill themselves in Tsojcanth (including one that is notoriously unfair), but largely the players that did terrible at ToH will do well with Tsojcanth.  Skilled spellcasters and a 15 minute adventuring day are probably the secret.
> 
> I don't remember finishing the module, but I don't think it was because we TPKed.  I think we just got bored.




You know, I've run S4 about 3 times, and been a player in it once, and never once finished it.  In one instance we had a TPK before getting to the caverns --



Spoiler



blue dragon encounter


-- and in one instance a TPK within the first 3-4 caves explored.  

I think we ran out of session time with the others, in a time when our AD&D games weren't true "campaigns" where action flowed from session to session and had continuity.  Our games then, which used a lot of TSR modules, tended to be very episodic -- we'd run a module with a set of characters, then run a different module at the next game, but there would be no "story" continuity between the two, and if characters were the same it was because a player happened to bring the same character sheets that he had brought to the previous games.

I6 I've at least seen finished once, though many of my other experiences with it ran into TPKs, many before even getting to the castle (and once before even getting to Barovia!).

(All references are to AD&D games, for those wondering about how a gaming group could tolerate so many TPKs.  Expectations have changed since the '80s.)


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## Virel (Jun 4, 2011)

ToH isn't unfair. AD&D and old school is habanero peppers you'll get burnt if your careless. ToH is concentrated habanero...you'll get lite up like a Christmas tree if your careless. ToH is distilled challendges.

It shatter quite a few big ego's back in the day that had high level characters but little or no playing skill.

Back in 1981 our DM used it as an a campaign adventure. There were four player character deaths. Two were permanent. Each death was a result of poor play. We became better players as a result. We also got the treasure. 

ToH is a hard skill test. Taking your time, be cautious and using stuff like Find Traps, Slow Poison, Monster Summoning I etc are key. There is a very real resource management part to ToH.

After ToH our play tightened up. ToH was fun but not something you'd want to deal with on a regular basis.


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## howandwhy99 (Jun 6, 2011)

This is from pretty early in the thread, but thought I should answer it anyways.



Celebrim said:


> So, are you saying that B2, WG4, T1, S3, S4, GDQ, A1-4, and ToEE all basically amount puzzles with many elements and are clearly variations on the theme ToH presents?



Yes, modules are additional pieces to the campaign puzzle. No, they are not thematic variations on ToH.

B2 & T1 I call "town & dungeons", standard campaign starter modules.  
The rest are all primarily dungeons/monster towns. 
S1 may be the iconic "tomb" module, but the others are every bit as much puzzle pieces.


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## Umbran (Jun 6, 2011)

Ariosto said:


> The notion that a special selection of the works of, say, Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien should somehow define the limits of D&D just has nothing to do with the historical attitudes of the game's creators.




You seem to keep implying that some of us have far more extreme positions than we actually do.

The notion that some particular styles should be reflected came from the authors of the game.  They were the ones who claimed they were inspired by particular works.  We merely note that this supposed inspiration does not seem well-reflected in the adventure design.



Ariosto said:


> 1) I simply do not agree with your assessment. "So little resemblance" is definitely not what comes to my mind. If there is a game that would better put me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe -- not in one particular fictional setting, mind you -- then I have yet to find it.




I was talking about the adventure design.  Not the game design.  They're not the same thing.  Your extrapolation is not founded in what I've said.

Let me state, for the record - I like 1e/AD&D.  I had a lot of fun with it back in the day.  I've run it recently for Memorial Dungeon Crawls, and had a good time with it.  I don't have any major problems with the game itself.  It is, in my humble opinion, quite possible to play a game akin to REH, Tolkien, or Leiber's works using the system - and I'm talking *not* in specific emulation of any one of them, but merely following the genre.  I've run and played such games myself.  My point is that you do have to do it yourself, as the published modules don't follow that same inspiration terribly well.



> In sum, I think you are really reaching when there is a straightforward answer readily to hand: The designers were making fun games for the fun of games, not trying to make emulations of books.




I don't think there's any reach there at all.  What you are saying and what I've said are quite compatible.  I'm saying they wrote what they knew, you're saying they wrote what they liked.  Do you want to argue that these are not related?


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## Gryph (Jun 6, 2011)

pemerton said:


> In Appendix N (I think it is), Gygax says that inspiration for the game came particulary from REH, Leibner, Vance and Lovecraft. Tolkien is also mentioned as a lesser figure.
> 
> I haven't read Leibner - my impression of his stories is entirely from TSR's Lankhmar materials plus second hand accounts. I've read a bit of Vance and quite a bit of Tolkien, Lovecraft and REH.
> 
> ...




Fafhrd and the Mouser engage in a lot of precise, equipment based thieving and exploration.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 6, 2011)

Removed


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

> Self-sacrificing deeds such as holding the battle line while the other characters retreat, acting as point man (opening all doors and being the first to investigate anything), and offering oneself prisoner if the rest of the party is let free usually result in a character’s rapid death. As a result, players want NPC’s to be point man and charmed orcs to open doors. Experienced players are usually very paranoid about subjecting themselves to any danger above the norm.
> 
> Dungeons and Dragons, as is written, should play like a good fantasy story. However, any exciting fantasy writer delights in individual acts of heroism which would be theoretically impossible in D&D. The great dwarven warrior Hendel in The Sword of Shannara, for example, outwits and escapes from an entire army of gnomes and later effectively fights dozens of them. (In this book, gnomes are roughly equivalent to orcs in D&D.) One of my players, after reading The Sword of Shannara remarked that those adventurers must have had a very lenient referee, because he let them get away with so many seemingly impossible feats.



 - Doug Green, Rewarding Heroism in D&D, from Dragon #29 publishing date Sept 1979

Doug proposes a variety of rules modifications to make D&D more like a fantasy story, including increased xp rewards for self-sacrifice (rather akin to the idea of awarding victory points for splitting up in a putative horror game I mentioned upthread) and the concept of the 'Heroic Act'. A PC undertaking a Heroic Act, which means fighting against overwhelming odds for the good of the party, gets greatly increased combat abilities, rather like spending a hero point in games such as WEG Star Wars or Mutants & Masterminds.

It's a very prescient article, pointing to the promotion of altruism in Dragonlance and the many subsequent attempts to emulate heroic OTT action in games such as Star Wars, Feng Shui and Spirit of the Century.


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## the Jester (Jun 7, 2011)

[MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION], after some work, I have found a link to the part of the story hour where my campaign hit the Tomb.


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## Rune (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> [MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION], after some work, I have found a link to the part of the story hour where my campaign hit the Tomb.




Spiffy!


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> It's a very prescient article, pointing to the promotion of altruism in Dragonlance and the many subsequent attempts to emulate heroic OTT action in games such as Star Wars, Feng Shui and Spirit of the Century.



Interesting reference - thanks. (Can't XP you yet.)


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## billd91 (Sep 12, 2011)

...


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## terrya (Sep 14, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> So you're saying that the Tomb of Horrors really isn't a hard meat-grinder? See, this is funny. All the people who say that ToH is great _because_ it is over-the-top tough are wrong? It ain't especially tough. The way you're describing all this says ToH is actually pretty easy peasy. So if someone likes it because he considers it especially tough, he's wrong?
> 
> Yep, I can totally agree with this. But as I said, it's when *everything* is brilliant that things get weird. X is brilliant because it's well designed. Y is brilliant because it's wonky. Z is both well designed and wonky! And we like it that way! Huh?
> 
> ...




WARNING THIS POST HOLDS OPINIONS, THEY ARE INDEED ONLY MY OPINION, I DONT NEED YOU TO TELL ME THAT I AM MEARLY GIVING MY OPINION.

I failed to read the rest of the thread after this point, apologies for that but I had to pick up on your im sorry to say quite depressing out look on gaming. When i started playing 1E (And somthing i personally have tryed to keep no matter what E) I was amazed at how it turned the simple things like a bag of grain into a life or death situation because THATS HOW IT WOULD BE IF I WAS STUCK IN A MUDDY DUNGEON LOOKING FOR TREASURE. The how point was to make it realistic, to make you feel like your charecter was an extension of your self and then tempt you with greed into what at times was reward and others death because ill say it again THATS HOW LIFE WORKS BUDDY. If you want a game that provides no real threat comitment or realistic design go play neverwinter or world of warcraft or 4E Modules because quite frankly your get alot more out of it


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## amerigoV (Sep 14, 2011)

terrya said:


> I failed to read the rest of the thread after this point,




I would encourage you to read the rest of the thread. Regardless of the opinions that you may dissagree with, there is some very good insights to the module in this thread.

I dare say it is the ONLY thread on ENWorld worth reading past the second page (all others are either go off topic or wind up arguing over the definition of "hollaback girl" - this has stayed on topic, civil, and interesting).


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## terrya (Sep 14, 2011)

amerigoV said:


> I would encourage you to read the rest of the thread. Regardless of the opinions that you may dissagree with, there is some very good insights to the module in this thread.
> 
> I dare say it is the ONLY thread on ENWorld worth reading past the second page (all others are either go off topic or wind up arguing over the definition of "hollaback girl" - this has stayed on topic, civil, and interesting).




I already did and would agree this and the other thread about the Toh have reminded me about a lot of my own fond memories of more classic gaming and I have loved reading the brake down these guys have provided but Bullgrit seems to want a module that is designed to provide a fantasy world were no skill is required, no real threat is presented and a medicore story is followed and I just cant understand why he wouldnt look to computer game titles for this. For example the group I play with on Thursdays would totally agree with bulgritt they play 4E and think its the best thing ever, they look at me funny when i mention marching orders or when i say no you cant make an arcana check to instantly know everything about a monster youve just met for the first time. The experiance they enjoy is following the story were playing,which is a great one btw (war of the burning sky) but it is not the spirit in which any of the grewyhawk / 1E were written. Gary designed a world that was realistic and designed to test your ability as a person, not your ability to design a charecter with stupidly written feats and over the top resources and then watch them never be challenged whilst they follow what turns into a very mundane story quite quickly because as with stories THERE IS NEVER ANY REAL THREAT TO THE MAIN CHARECTERS!


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## amerigoV (Sep 14, 2011)

terrya said:


> but Bullgrit seems to want a module that is designed to provide a fantasy world were no skill is required, no real threat is presented and a medicore story is followed and I just cant understand why he wouldnt look to computer game titles for this.




In Bullgrit's defense (since he is on vacation), I think he has another angle. Many fans of ToH claim that superior player skill allows you to "win" this module with hardly any damage. His contention is not that challenging players or threatening PCs is bad, it is just that player skill is not truly going to win the day in ToH. There is a hefty serving luck needed to get through as well as skill. The post you quoted from him illustrated that there are inconsistencies in playing the module -- sometimes caution works, other times it gets you killed.

ToH has two extreme camps -- its just a killer dungeon vs. player skill. This thread shows it falls somewhere in between depending on some luck along the way.


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## terrya (Sep 14, 2011)

amerigoV said:


> In Bullgrit's defense (since he is on vacation), I think he has another angle. Many fans of ToH claim that superior player skill allows you to "win" this module with hardly any damage. His contention is not that challenging players or threatening PCs is bad, it is just that player skill is not truly going to win the day in ToH. There is a hefty serving luck needed to get through as well as skill. The post you quoted from him illustrated that there are inconsistencies in playing the module -- sometimes caution works, other times it gets you killed.
> 
> ToH has two extreme camps -- its just a killer dungeon vs. player skill. This thread shows it falls somewhere in between depending on some luck along the way.




The inconsistencies are common in all of the older modules, as they are in real life. For example I would compare searching a sack full of grain to asking a girl if she would like to have sex. She may say yes and youve just hit the jackpot (the grain had a +4 sword in it) or she may slap you and call over her 6 ft 8 Body building Bf (save vs poison or die). This is what makes for good role playing and attatchment to your charecter because its actually realistic enough for you to become engrosed in the experiance and not the number you rolled on your dice.

I personally believe from what I have seen TOH was designed to test a certian genre of player skill (one that I and many others love) but is not a test of inteligance, just experiance, persistance and at times both logical and ilogical thought. Which is brilliant considering its meant to be designed by a long dead mad lich, again realism!

I may be way off the mark in saying it but bullgrit seems to off had a bad experiance playing the module as it doesnt fit his style of play more than anything. That or he strugled with it but i doubt it as he does seem to be a pretty smart guy and if he did he was just being lazy, which is what some people game to be.

It suprises me how many people share his opinion also, people who have played since 1E and actually think that games improved. The whole argument around this module is just another way of arguing Story telling vs crafting your own story with a strong hint of paranoia! Some more time constricted games will always prefer story telling but then they cant call them self role players and as ive stated before will simply get more from a computer game and should not even try to play a module written by Gary or 99% of pre 3.X material.


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## Stoat (Sep 14, 2011)

I'll leave any discussion of the ToH to the other thread (which I haven't forgotten).  But I will say that I've never much liked the deadly sacks of grain in the 1E DMG's sample adventure.  Here are a few reasons why:

1.  The idea that rooting around in a sack of moldy grain might kill somebody instantly doesn't seem realistic to me and does nothing for my sense of verisimilitude.  I don't imagine that moldy sacks of grain are actually instant death traps in the real world.  I am somewhat surprised to find that they are in the game world.  

2.  IIRC, there are no clues or hints in the sample adventure that the moldy sacks of grain could be a deathtrap.  There is no reason for a player (particularly a newbie player) to believe that investigating the sacks might kill their PC dead.  It feels arbitrary to me.  I'd be happier if some such a clue was present.

3.  The encounter encourages a style of play that I don't care for.  It teaches the players that even mundane objects can be insta-killers.  Exploring common dungeon elements can lead to death with little to no warning.  IMO, this approach risks inculcating a habit of excessive caution and a reluctance to explore and interact with the game world.  I don't want players who are afraid to poke at some rotten sacks.  I definitely don't want players to spend 30 minutes of game time dithering over the safest way to approach a pile of rotten sacks.  I think the encounter in the sample adventure leads to both.


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## terrya (Sep 14, 2011)

Stoat said:


> I'll leave any discussion of the ToH to the other thread (which I haven't forgotten). But I will say that I've never much liked the deadly sacks of grain in the 1E DMG's sample adventure. Here are a few reasons why:
> 
> 1. The idea that rooting around in a sack of moldy grain might kill somebody instantly doesn't seem realistic to me and does nothing for my sense of verisimilitude. I don't imagine that moldy sacks of grain are actually instant death traps in the real world. I am somewhat surprised to find that they are in the game world.
> 
> ...




Sacks of grain may be a bad example, but I would suggest to you that in a medevil setting sacks of grain may well have contained deadley plauge viruses. But trapped chests and doors would be another example of the exact same princable? What would your views be on does? As bullgrit is very negative about these also!

Excessive caution is a huge part of early D & Drole playing. I know if i was actually this charecter i would take every percuation to ensure i came out of there alive. I would carry my 10ft pole and tap the floor, have everyone tied togther with rope, use a mirror to look round corners, flour to combat invisibility and pepper to throw off tracking dogs! ALL OF IT! So why should i when role playing a charecter not do all these things?


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## amerigoV (Sep 14, 2011)

terrya said:


> Excessive caution is a huge part of early D & Drole playing. I know if i was actually this charecter i would *take every percuation *to ensure i came out of there alive. I would carry my *10ft pole and tap the floor*, have everyone tied togther with rope, use a mirror to look round corners, flour to combat invisibility and pepper to throw off tracking dogs! ALL OF IT! So why should i when role playing a charecter not do all these things?




It just struck me as funny - one of the false entrances to the ToH has a trap that if you tap the ceiling it kills you in a rock fall. The other false entrance traps you if you hesitate as a wall blocks the party off. Another trap could send the whole party into a lava pit if are roped together and go too far down the hall. That's the whole contention around the module - in some places caution kills you, some places it saves you.  Its not that "stuff happens" as in real life, its the module intentially has these extremes. To use your example, its if you ask the girl out she either kills you or you instantly marry a rich heiress (vs. get lucky or BF chases you off)

The ToH is a bad example - thus this thread. I really is not old skool - its just a nasty yet intriguing module. It has its reputation precisely because it is one of a kind. 

At the end of the day, story vs. exploration is a personal preference by individuals and groups. Some people like one and sprinkle in the other.


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## terrya (Sep 14, 2011)

A very good way at looking at it. As in Toh the contradiction from room to room is indeed more extreme but Bullgrit was arguing the princable more than the example. As your already saying Toh indeed just took the genre and ampted it up to 1000 but thats the point of it and why it prooved the be so popular! I would also agree with your final statement as thats what the whole argument comes down too, im just saying does who like story shouldnt discuss the design flaws of Toh or the module at all because it wasnt designed for them


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## Stoat (Sep 14, 2011)

terrya said:


> Sacks of grain may be a bad example, but I would suggest to you that in a medevil setting sacks of grain may well have contained deadley plauge viruses. But trapped chests and doors would be another example of the exact same princable? What would your views be on does? As bullgrit is very negative about these also!




I'd be much more comfortable with the sacks of grain if they contained some plague that weakened or killed the PC's over time.  My problems with the encounter as it is written are (1) the risk posed by the rotted sacks seems unrealistically severe; (2) there is no real way for the players to recognize the risk posed by the rotted sacks; and (3) as a result players (particularly newbie players) are encouraged by the example dungeon to be unduly cautious.  

As for chests and doors, I'm not opposed to insta-kill traps, but I tend to use them sparingly.  Partly this is because I don't think it's realistic for such things to be common, and party its just because I don't want to run a table where simply opening a door is an exercise in painstaking caution that takes twenty minutes of real time to play out.  I have run that type of game, and I got bored with it.


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## Bullgrit (Sep 16, 2011)

terrya said:
			
		

> When i started playing 1E (And somthing i personally have tryed to keep no matter what E) I was amazed at how it turned the simple things like a bag of grain into a life or death situation because THATS HOW IT WOULD BE IF I WAS STUCK IN A MUDDY DUNGEON LOOKING FOR TREASURE. The how point was to make it realistic, to make you feel like your charecter was an extension of your self and then tempt you with greed into what at times was reward and others death because ill say it again THATS HOW LIFE WORKS BUDDY.



That a particular activity could be dangerous or deadly, (realistic or not), was not my point in the post you quoted. You dropped the quotes I was responding to, so you lost the context of my statements. And then you say:







			
				terrya said:
			
		

> If you want a game that provides no real threat comitment or realistic design go play neverwinter or world of warcraft or 4E Modules because quite frankly your get alot more out of it



You not only start off claiming I mean something I’ve never said, but you tell me to go play something else. This suggests that you aren’t just innocently stating your opinion on the thread topic, but it seems you are trying to troll me. I don’t know why you choose to misrepresent my position – by either taking quotes out of context, or not even bothering with quotes and just stating that I mean something I’ve never said – but it doesn’t look like an honest attempt at discussion. So I won’t bother responding point by point to refute your mischaracterizations. That just wastes my time and feeds a troll. amerigoV and Stoat make good points that I agree with.

Bullgrit


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## Scott DeWar (Nov 17, 2012)

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## Scott DeWar (Nov 17, 2012)

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spam reported


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## Scylla (Nov 19, 2012)

I think the Tomb was old-school in its semi-random, cutthroat, not-all-encounters-need-be-balanced, and "Play stupid and you'll die" approach. It was short on backstory and long on crawl, also hallmarks of the day.

But it was also a step beyond, a real meatgrinder in a decade of meatgrinder adventures. The fact that the OP is inquiring about the Tomb specifically, as opposed to, say, Castle Amber or Tsojcanth or Lost City, is probably a result of its (well-deserved) infamy.

It should be noted that some traps therein were fairly arbitrary, even for 1e. It also had a _lot_ more save or die type stuff.* Oh other adventures had that —the _cloak of poisonousness_ in the Temple of Elemental Evil was merciless (no save, try it on & you were _dead_, period)—but the Tomb had so many more of them. Every room conquered was a victory, and characters that didn't become cautious soon did so to their sorrow.

*The funny thing about this is that I've run the Tomb with few modifications for very low-level characters without problems, because most of the traps depended more on player choices than high to-hit rolls. In fact, I used the Tomb to introduce no less than 3 groups of new players to D&D.

Curious how a more recent Tomb run went? Click HERE.


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