Anyone have Tomb of Horrors?

[paigeoliver]

I did for about 6 months. Then I went insane and killed it's spell system and combat system (I liked the character creation system) and merged them with Spell law and arms law. That lasted about 6 months too, before I can to my senses and went back to HERO.

Hmm, six months, assuming multiple players, did your characters actually make it through an entire scenario?

[Lord Mhoram]

Hmm, six months, assuming multiple players, did your characters actually make it through an entire scenario?

Actually I only had one player, my wife (part of the reason we were trying it out, if we had a group we would have been doing HERO). She ran 2 PCs and I ran an NPC. We got through the two intruductory adventures (basic and advanced) one from one of the magazines and about 2/3 through necropolis.

I later ran the D20 version and we ended up stalling before it was done, so it is sort of a thing that we plan on going back to it and finishing it, at least once.

[Vondy]

Tomb of Horros was easily defanged with few simple low level spells old-school DnD players never memorized due to their obsession with turning wizards into walking artillery pieces. The only issue left after that was the demi-lich, and he wasn't so bad considering the sheer number of magic items and high-end combat spells your average 14th level DnD character tends to have. I think Tomb of Horrors has potential not as an adventure, but as a scene in an adventure - the players (through another adventure) learn that an ancient artifact they need is buried in the tomb of long-dead sorcerer so-and-so and have to retrieve it to complete their quest. Tomb of Horrors becomes an extended version of the opening scene from Indiana Jones - with a monster in the treasure room.

[Eosin]

I didn't think the original DL could be harmed by magic weapons?

IIRC it was Shatter, Eyebite, and maybe 2 other spells that worked on him UNLESS your paladin had a holy weapon - and none were in the module. Even then the Avenger only did 5 points of damage when it hit - and that is the only weapon that could damage a 1st edition DL unless I am misremebering. I will also repeat that Fiend Folio did not come out for another several years by my recollection and that meant that nobody knew didly about the DL. So, you had this freaky creature that was impervious to spells and weapons - killed one person a round without a saving throw and somehow the PCs need to figure out that it is impervious to everything but these 4-5 spells in seven rounds or less (assuming that there are 7 PCs)? Paladin with the avenger is the first to go the way of the dodo.

[paigeoliver]

I just read the appropriate parts of the module and here is the real kicker.

The Demi Lichs room is itself a curious sort of trap. It has two dangers.

The trap that is in it.

The dust, which if continually attacked will turn into a ghost.

The Demi Lich himself, who does not actually attack unless you touch his skull.

If the characters are wise enough to simply go for the loot, and not bother the skull or the swirly dust, then they can just scoop up the treasure and leave!

[paigeoliver]

Btw, is anyone going to be interested in my hero conversion of this, if so I will make it more than just scribbled notes.

[Vondy]

I didn't think the original DL could be harmed by magic weapons?

IIRC it was Shatter, Eyebite, and maybe 2 other spells that worked on him UNLESS your paladin had a holy weapon - and none were in the module. Even then the Avenger only did 5 points of damage when it hit - and that is the only weapon that could damage a 1st edition DL unless I am misremebering. I will also repeat that Fiend Folio did not come out for another several years by my recollection and that meant that nobody knew didly about the DL. So, you had this freaky creature that was impervious to spells and weapons - killed one person a round without a saving throw and somehow the PCs need to figure out that it is impervious to everything but these 4-5 spells in seven rounds or less (assuming that there are 7 PCs)? Paladin with the avenger is the first to go the way of the dodo.

I don't recall. Its been that long. I do recall that a simple detect traps and pits spell, and a simple locate object spell allowed you to avoid and/or prepare for most of the traps. And since he didn't attack you unless you messed with the skull (we didn't)....

[Klytus]

For those who are interested, the demi-lich is an Epic-level monster in D&D 3rd Edition. Good luck having any party facing one of those under the new rules.

[joen00b]

There are quite a few old school adventures from D&D that I loved playing and GMing: White Plume Mountain, the Giant Series going all the way to Queen of The Demonweb Pits, The Temple Of Elemental Evil, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth... such great times in those!

Here is the definitive list of Old School D&D Modules. This has synopses of all the modules too!

Here are the ones I've played or GMed:
A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity
A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade
A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords
A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords
B2 Keep on the Borderlands
B5 Horror on the Hill
C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
D1 Descent Into the Depths
D3 Vault of the Drow
DL1 Dragons of Despair
DL2 Dragons of Flame
DL3 Dragons of Hope
DL4 Dragons of Desolation
DL5 Dragons of Mystery
G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King (mono)
GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders
I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City
I2 Tomb of the Lizard King
I3 Pharaoh
I4 Oasis of the White Palm
I5 Lost Tomb of Martek
I6 Ravenloft
I7 Baltron's Beacon
L1 Secret of Bone Hill
L2 Assassin's Knot
L3 Deep Dwarven Delve
Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits
S1 Tomb of Horrors
S2 White Plume Mountain
S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
T1 Village of Hommlet
T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil
X1 Isle of Dread
X4 Master of the Desert Nomads

Surprisingly, tehre are many I've never heard of, and even more that brought a smile to my face as I remembered the modules.

In the infamous words of Comic Book Guy: Oh, I've wasted my life.

It was still fun! Now I gotta go dig all these out, I know I still have quite a few of the ones I listed above in my closet, the GF tried to make me dump a bunch of stuff, but none of it was my old school gaming stuff

[Old Man]

The way to deal with these killer dungeons IME is to use Summons ruthlessly. Let the orcs and goblins that you summon explore all the rooms, trigger the traps, and take the losses. Rest and recharge your spells often, you want to be near full spells for the big fights.

There are some areas where using multiple bodies does not work.

I even highly doubt 90% of the wizards in the game had the right spells in their spell books, let alone memorized them.

Re: magic weapons, it was pretty lame. The only weapons that could hurt the Demi-Lich were swords (Avenger, +5 Sword of Sharpness) and maybe Mace of Disruption.

[PoorWandering 1]

If the characters are wise enough to simply go for the loot, and not bother the skull or the swirly dust, then they can just scoop up the treasure and leave!

That's how our party of 4 6th lvl characters survived. Walked into final room saw "skull with gems for teeth" swiped the sword and some other choice bits o' loot and buggered off. The sword alone established the resurection fund on a sound finincial basis. I suppose the real reason we survived was that we were all Thieves or something-thieves, had the teamwork thing down pat, and were just coming off a long running Paranoia campaign so we had the perfect mind set for this adventure. If you want to survive TOH all you have to do is think like a loot hungry munchkin and do the opposite. To give you an idea of our mindset once we saw the trap heavy entry chamber the Dwarf Fighter-Thief suggested heading back to town getting plenty of food and mining equipment and counter mining the whole place. She figured we would be under the main rooms after no more that a month or two of digging. Then we would collapse the dungeon and pick the loot out of the rubble. Pity we didn't go with that plan.

Btw: there are 2 possable fights in the tomb the litch at the end and a 4 armed demon thing in tomb itself. You can avoid the thing if you're sneaky.

[keithcurtis]

Gygax and the whole of early AD&D always seemed to be based on an adversarial approach. All the rules and modules seem to support a GM desparately trying to control rampant munchkins.

When I was the first in our group to approach it from a dramatic, genre-influenced philosophy, I rapidly became the most popular GM of our group.
Wow, that sounded really egotisitcal.

Anyway,I almost never used a module or gamed in someone else's world. Can someone who went through them tell me what was the big attraction? What made them cool for you?

Keith "???" Curtis

[PoorWandering 1]

Gygax and the whole of early AD&D always seemed to be based on an adversarial approach. All the rules and modules seem to support a GM desperately trying to control rampant munchkins.

When I was the first in our group to approach it from a dramatic, genre-influenced philosophy, I rapidly became the most popular GM of our group.
Wow, that sounded really egotistical.

Anyway,I almost never used a module or gamed in someone else's world. Can someone who went through them tell me what was the big attraction? What made them cool for you?

Keith "???" Curtis

The challenge. Think of it like a fantasy themed video game or a small unit war-game. Could you out-think the designer and the GM sort of thing. Of course not all the early modules were as adversarial as Tomb or White Plume Mountain. Some were much better balanced and entertainment oriented. The Slaver series and Bone hill for example. Keep in mind that this was back in the days when it took 2 class changes to become a bard. Good storytelling and depth were not the main focus at good ol' TSR. Frankly I see modules like the Giant series, if they are ran as written, as basically an excuse for a bunch of friends to spend a weekend sitting around, drinking soda, eating pizza shooting the breeze and occasionally rolling some dice.
The players and GM were generally aware of the limitations of the material. They tended to either 'out grow' the strict interpretation of the published stuff and move on to home grown or other companies stuff with better storytelling opportunities or they drifted away from gaming. This exodus reached it's peak when computer/console games became complex enough to duplicate this simple style of play. On the other hand there are some published adventures that are quite excellent and runnable basically as written. One of the best that I have seen was 'Dead man's stomp' in the 3rd or 4th ed Call of Cthulhu rule book. Of course this was published at least a decade after the Tomb and the industry had learned a great deal.

[Killer Shrike]

Gygax and the whole of early AD&D always seemed to be based on an adversarial approach. All the rules and modules seem to support a GM desparately trying to control rampant munchkins.

When I was the first in our group to approach it from a dramatic, genre-influenced philosophy, I rapidly became the most popular GM of our group.
Wow, that sounded really egotisitcal.

Anyway,I almost never used a module or gamed in someone else's world. Can someone who went through them tell me what was the big attraction? What made them cool for you?

Keith "???" Curtis

Im with you on this one. I bought many of the modules, mostly because Im a compulsive shopper, but I never actually ran any of them as is other than when first starting red box D&D.

All the early AD&D modules can basically be summed up as "adventure hook, go to site, fight to end, kill monster on the cover". Thats a broad generalization of course, but not too off base IMO.

The attraction is some people like that sort of gaming. The casual style of play that has more in common with 1st person shooters and video games like Gauntlet (and its successor Diablo) than what you would consider a "Role-playing" game. They harken back to the wargame roots of RPGs, where you basically just added continuity to your tactical battles, and certain miniatures that were favored by the dice were assigned some vestiges of personality.

It can be a diverting way to spend time, and while Im not fond of it personally, I do know the underlying feeling of it. It's straightforward and has clearly defined means of tracking success -- xp and loot. Personally when I want to blow off steam I load up a FPS on the old PC and blow some stuff up, but some people like to do it with dice instead.

For me if Im going to go to all the effort to take part in an imaginary world in real time, I need more than just the pitter patter of dice hitting the table. Thats why Im a ROLE PLAYER; but I still like to win and progress and have measurable success and I also want my characters abilities to exactly match their flavor, and thats why I'm a MECHANIC -- I want a character to be as closely realized as possible in the rules of the game, and I want them to be effective, so that when I portray them I can back it up if resolution is necessary.

The AD&D paradigm, particularly the early works, was not conducive to this mindset which is why I eventually found my way to the HERO System.

So really, from my point of view, the beauty of the early adventures is that they were just interesting enough to entice me, and bad enough to encourage me to find something better or make it up myself.

[Cpt.Storm]

Btw, is anyone going to be interested in my hero conversion of this, if so I will make it more than just scribbled notes.

I would most definitely be interested. I own both the old and the new Tomb and your conversion would be most helpful!

Thanks,