AD&D Review - Tomb of Horrors

There's a second edition of D&D?

”… otherwise you’re setting them up for failure, and that is a dick move.”
As I have read a few of the horror stories around this module I kinda think that is sorta the point. I appreciate your positivity, and I do believe that you are able to DM this thing without using it as a big TPK machine. But my impression is that the almost automatic total party kill is absolutely what this module is designed to do. Setting the players and their characters up to fail … is the point.
The devil face thing originally came with a description that made them look like crawlspace openings and also a description of what happens if someone tries to stick their head in. ”They just vanish”. Your more gory and player friendly take on the physics is certainly better. But my impression is that as originally written, it isn’t just possible to crawl into one, it is what they’re for.

Similarly, the pre-gen characters without equipment able to harm the end boss probably isn’t an oversight. It’s just a dick move. Like this entire module.

Tomb of Horrors reminds me of early Mario Maker troll levels. They were rough and unpolished.
But Mario Maker troll levels have evolved into truly enjoyable spectacles. I'd like to see the same happen with dungeons. There's so much you could do.

Mulling it over, but I think there might be some concern that running Tomb Of Horrors 100% as-is with no changes can maybe come across as Player Versus GM due to the nature of the module's particular intent and designs. Probably also explains why some folks might also feel it's too hostile or combative in what it sometimes asks the GM to do

Powersliding into a sphere of annihilation sounds like a bad ass death.

Sphere of annihilation, I'm not against the idea that the player might "fall" the rest of the way into the sober.

How can this dungeon still be run-able? Everyone has heard about the details for 40 years.

So beautiful, thank you for sharing your excellent craftsmanship!

Thanks for the review. I've never liked this module and your idea that it is a test is good. Unfortunately, there are a lot of players that love to brag about how they beat this mod and how great they are for doing it easily. Personally, I'm not a fan of that kind of play or thinking and will probably continue to give this mod a miss.

Tomb of Horrors was great...if you're a DM that got perverse pleasure in murdering off your players and then gloating about how stupid they are. None of the killer dungeons were for me.

The wording of "Find Traps" is pretty clear that it finds anything specifically intended to be harmful. I don't like it, but the disguised sphere of annihilation clearly fits that. It wasn't created as a garbage disposal.

This is funniest thing I've seen in weeks. The description of the Sphere of Annihilation was perfect lol

Alas! It has been removed from DriveThruRPG! Not sure why..... I was hoping to get a print copy

*Edit, you can still get it in the Dungeons of Dread Collection, but the individual is gone....

I really liked the flavor you added at the end, about the upkeep of the tomb. =^.^=

I've played this and think it is a D+ dungeon at best. If the puzzles had honest solutions, then fine. But most of them are puzzles where you have not a single hint as to how to solve it. PC's have to try random stuff, and you are punished, brutally, for doing things. 'This sceptre has two ends, use one end and the door opens, use the other and your character dies. Any hints to tell you which one to use?' Of course not.

You enter a room and randomly change alignment and sex. "So I'm now an evil SOB. I don't like playing evil characters. Are you saying, I'm now someone I don't want to play?" "Yep."

The most glaring example of poor design: the riddle. If that riddle was useful, then good players who wrote it down and puzzled over it, would be rewarded. We sure were not.

I think most of the people who enjoyed this, had DM's who improved things on the fly, or gave hints which are not in the design. The closer you stick to the arbitrary death trap as written, the crappier it is. DON'T go into this random kill fest with characters which you care about.

Where Seth says, "If the PC's do something clever, then change the design so that they can have some fun", is the wisest advice I've ever heard about this failure.

Warm regards, Rick.

To be fair, while it definitely does get misunderstood a lot with some people expecting it to be a proper dungeon. But it kind of confuses even those that do actually know what it is. Saying that it’s ‘a thinking person’s module’ is a straight up lie, it’s puzzles absolutely aren’t made for d&d. It’s a troll module in the end of it, but even then, it’s not a particularly well made one for that either. It’s not a troll In a particularly entertaining way for either, if anything.

Somewhere in an out of the way corner of an out of the way location table for an out of the way hex, there lurks a smiling face of stone. What lies beneath? -- my two sentence story.

This is an amazing dungeon. This is D&D.

I am no doctor but I think sticking any part of your body in the sphere of annihilation would immediately hurt a lot. Not because of the annihilated part but in the remaining flesh at the point of severance.

i am dming it right now over roll20 for a few friends. never dmed it before, and so far nobody died, four session in and they progressing through it.

but they are very cautious and meticulous ppl, they are taking all the care of the world to progress through the dungeon. its quite nice to see how they come up with these out of the box solutions to avoid even the smallest of dangers.

I ran this one six times back in the day. I let people use copies of their characters so the character didn't die but each PC could only try it once. I didn't tone it down at all. All six groups were completely wiped out. Since it says that the PC's gear ends up in the vault at the end, I kept a sheet in the module and would add all the PC's gear to it every time. By the last time I ran it, the amount of loot in there was insane. It was two columns covering both sides of the sheet with other stuff crammed in where I could fit it. I lost the sheet at some point but it was what was in there originally plus all of the gear from multiple high level parties. That was the motivation for going there. The amount of loot in there was just absurd after a party or two.

I would like to have you review an epic AD&D modal "Axe of the Dwarven Lords" and have the original (thick) book. If you can DM me I would love to send it to you. I've tried to convert it to 5th Edition but am having difficulty doing so. I've read it and don't know how to change the difficulties. But I think you would love to read it. It's a great involved campaign with some weirdness involved.

I like the idea of the silver dragon.

When I ran this for my players, I told them that they arrived with a horse-drawn covered wagon. I told them when they were writing up any non-magical weapons/Armor/equipment (as prescribed in the module), they could also add whatever they wanted to the wagon (within reason, of course).

Their wagon was protected by the sixth level fighter henchman NPC. If a player lost their character early, then this NPC could be recruited as a player character replacement.

I’ve never really gotten the appeal of this adventure, but I always kinda liked the idea of random level 0 nobodies following along with the insane logic of this adventure, finding the remains of a bunch of adventurers who couldn’t, and then Acererak shows up at the end, sees these no ones he doesn’t know and is just like: “huh, not who I was expecting, I don’t hate you so sure take the stuff!” And these guys suddenly level up a bunch from the treasure.

Okay but isn't there a bit at the end of the dungeon where the book tells you to Gaslight your friends at the table and trick them into thinking the dungeons over before it is? I feel like that crosses a line for me, and isn't something I would feel comfortable doing as a game master

I found this module (original AD&D version) at the library in the box labeled "removed from collection due to wear and tear". I was 15 and had never GM'ed anything in my life. In fact I had only played AD&D 2nd ed for about 6 months at that time.
I bought it for what probably amounts to about 1 dollar today. I think I had a hazy idea about checking it out, and maybe learning how to do all those cool things that my own GM did. I sat down and read it, finding out about 5 minutes into the reading that I would NOT learn any of those cool things from that module (since I read the warnings and forewords and took them seriously). I stopped reading, and brought it with me to the next game session - Asked my GM if it was something he wanted to run for us. He flat out refused, and told me I might as well read it for laughs.

That was 25-ish years ago. It's still on my shelf, and I've still neither played it or GM'ed it.
I think it's about time I seriously consider running it - just to see how my regular group would react to it :D

Oh my gosh, the green head in gungeon and the fog walls in Souls games both come from this dungeon.

Your notes about the Tales from the Yawning Portal adventure lacking handouts/art is true for other adventures in the book.

For example, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is missing many MANY crucial pieces of art that explain what is going on in a room visually. The Mictlan room is probably one of the most blatant butcherings I've ever seen. It's an extremely complicated room with areas that all have different effects and the original module very clearly labels which area is which. The TYP adventure just has a blank rectangular room and a text description. I would genuinely consider that particular room unfinished from a publication standpoint.

I ran the adventure for Extra Life last year and it was great, but a lot of that greatness was specifically because I gathered a LOT of the original handout and art material to provide to my players.

Best adventure ever. Never run this in campaign! Tourney style only. I give every player two magically-equipped characters each—all gear random. The last bunch had four Wishes between them. The last one? I wish the bodies were intact enough to be Raised....

🎶little tomb 🎶🎶 little tomb of horrors 🎶

In 5th Edition, the find traps spell is a non-issue because it's totally worthless. It tells you nothing ABOUT the traps in the area.

"I cast find traps!"

"There are traps in the room."

"What are they?"

"You don't know."

"WHERE are they?"

"You don't know."

"What DO I know?"

"There are traps in the room."

Detect traps is a terrible terrible spell lol it’s a meme

I've always wanted to run this as a halo deck/video game where the PC's can reset and start from the beginning if any of them die so that there is definitely a consequence but they can trial and error things and work deaper and deaper as they figure things out

I ran Tomb of Horrors when it first came out. Although my group were experienced D&Ders (though not at these very high levels, as must be true of many players trying it), I still warned them that this scenario had been created as a super-hard convention exercise, so would be unlike any conventional adventure.

When they got to the giant green devil-face with the impenetrably black mouth (the Sphere of Annihilation), they sensibly poked at it with a 10' pole, and of course found that the stick came back lacking however much had been pushed in. I even gave them the immediate clue that the balance of the (pretty heavy) pole changed abruptly when pushed in, before they could =see= that part of it was suddenly absent.

One player decided that the missing bit of the pole had obviously been transported to somewhere else... so his character JUMPED into the mouth...

One of the worst adventures of all time in D&D, there is nothing sensical or enjoyable about it except your party coming up with ways to circumvent most of the damndable thing. Or filling it with explosives to just destroy it because its the good aligned thing to do.

I’m old and have been playing dungeons and Dragons since it came out. I don't think Seth's comment on how the sphere works is accurate. It is now but it wasn't back in the day. If you read the description of the sphere of annihilation from the original dungeon masters guide, it says, “Any matter which comes in
contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void, gone, utterly destroyed.” The key words there being “sucked into the void.” The way I saw it run most of the time was that someone would stick their hand in and their entire body would get sucked in. The other players didn't know that he was dead so they would jump in after him thinking it was some sort of teleport trap.

The only reason anyone wins the tome is because the DM let them

I used Pierce Any Shield followed up by Anti-Magic Aura and made Acererak an ornament in my character's gallery.

Loved your Gygax impression in Dungeon Craft’s video on the tomb

The 'trap' vs 'potentially deadly device that's actually technically just a puzzle' distinction feels really arbitrary. It's like when Jigsaw says he's never killed anyone. In an extremely literal way, it's technically accurate, but nobody on planet Earth is buying it.

The DM we had changed a lot of things as this was a very popular module and he was sure at least one of us owned a copy. The demon face led to a new level. We face Dustmen who were kind of like goblins in black gear that kept the place, we got caught in a weird maze and became embroiled in a battle with two succubus. Acerack was a vampire in our game and killed everyone

It was the second most hated module I ran back in the 80s. The first attempt, after the party lost half their numbers, they retreated. They regrouped, got additional NPCs and returned, and got a bit further than half way before losing another half of the party. Months later after a player had obtained a mattock of the titans, the survivors got a new party together with some NPC dwarf miners and returned. Instead of trying to go back through the swath traps, they dug down from the surface. I didn’t see anything in the module that would prevent this tactic so I allowed it. They finally found the Demi-lich and lost most of the party in the ensuing fight. A wizard, paladin, and cleric were the only PCs left standing.

I'd say find traps would definitely work on a lot of what's in the tomb. The idea of a trap is one of intent. If it's purpose and design is purely harming or impeding intruders in some way then it's a trap.

The lock that punishes you for inserting the wrong key, that's a trap. This is clearly magic or mechanical device created by design specifically to harm people who do the wrong thing, and no other reason. It's like a pit trap. Walk in the wrong place and it gives way and drops you on spikes. A static object like a vat of acid isn't a trap, but once you put in place some mechanism or magic to launch that acid at people, trick them into walking into it (say an illusory floor) or forcibly dunk them in it, it becomes a trap because the intent is as a means to harm intruders.

A teleporter that just sends you somewhere else (and is used by the designers to get around) is not a trap. A teleporter specifically designed to strip people of their equipment or transport them into a pool of magma would be. Otherwise you get into all sorts of pointless semantics games about what is and isn't a trap with the GM trying to find all kinds of obscure ways to justify how this isn't a trap.

I played this in the 80's. I died fairly quickly. I was like 15. Thanks for the share!!

One sphere of Annihilation later...

I let players go through it and all die but then I said it was just a dream and your 10th level character is not dead.

Tomb of Horrors needs to have two signs installed outside:
One is 'days since last TPK'
and the other is 'days since door stolen'