We destroyed the Demi Litch with that crown and septer. Our thief placed the crown fast and lightly on the skull and the Cleric touched the silver end to the crown. It was fitting end to the s.o.b. after a party member died that way. Of course we now knew we had a powerful weapon so once we found his room we knew what to do -
Love your explanation of this module and your reasons for liking or not liking things. I kind of agree it is sort of a death trap and it's really was meant for his specific group of well seasoned players. For just an open-ended new group I would do like you do in rearrange things to make it more like a standard dungeon with a goal treasure at the end. As for me my dwarven thief acrobat at the time lost an arm to that green demonic face. So fortunately our party having a ring of regeneration, remember those?, I was eventually able to get an arm back although I did have to play for several weeks or several months of game time as a one armed bandit. Often the challenge as I was the party's chief scout and trap finder. So always finding myself far ahead of the group alone. Good times! Daniel from Banditskeep left a link to your channel. This is how I found you. He's a good guy.
the illustrations /art in this book are fantastic. I never got close to level 10 to play this adventure but I do remember flipping through this module back in the late 80's.
glad to see the channel growing so fast! I just subbed at 1k a couple days ago. Now over 1200. That's awesome! I am 36, been playing D&D for 26 years starting with AD&D (2nd edition) and I love all the old school content. I actually like 5E, but there was more magic in the older editions. I think overall, there were fewer rules, so it was a more imaginative game.
I did the same thing when I ran this one back in the day... modified it to get rid of the "Gotcha! Yer dead instantly!" stuff to give the players a chance. It was fun with that tweaking. :-) We all had a blast and everyone had great memories from it.
Fun video! It made me subscribe to your channel! I got lucky with this module and only have fond memories of it. By lucky I mean I was first introduced to this module as a player by a DM who said we could use our regular campaign characters, but he was sure that at least half of us would die and instead we should use the characters in the roster and just play the module for fun, what we would now call as a one-shot. Him presenting the module thus way made all the difference in how we experienced it. We, wisely, did not use our campaign characters and ended up having a ball. I have never run this as anything but a one-shot adventure myself, almost more like an extended convention game. That said, I do think you raise some important points. I don’t always fall in line with your thoughts about the points but I do think you have presented many of the important aspects of this adventure in fully appreciating it, except for leaving out the poem. The poem is vital to success in this adventure IMHO, but more on that later. This is a tournament module. Character death is a great thing for a tournament module because it makes for a very explicit way to distribute points and decide on a winning party for the tournament. This doesn’t make for a good campaign module though, I agree with you there. But in fairness to Gary, he wrote it as a tournament module, and it’s functionally a pretty good one. Second, I think Gary’s label of “player skill” is really important for appreciating this module. I think he is contrasting “player skill” with “character ability” which would be more about what the character can do. Your great example with the invisible stone is a good one for this. Character ability is being able to cast a Detect Invisibility spell to see the stone. This is what the character can do in the parameters of the rules. I think this is exactly what Gary did not want to emphasize in terms of having it produce success in this module. He wanted to emphasize the ability or skill of the player to find a way to overcome the traps and such in this module that had little if anything to do with what the characters can do. This is also why I think the poem is so important. The character can’t read and decipher the poem. Only the players can do that, and getting the clues from the poem is far more valuable in this module than what spells the character can cast, how many hps they have, or what magical items they have. I honestly think that this is what Gary was responding to, that people were saying they have these “invincible” characters because they have X magic items or can cast Y spells or whatever. By creating encounters where there was no saving throw and death, or where X spell does not work, or anything else like that Gary acted to remove character abilities almost completely from the equation. I think this is part of the genius of this module. Would I want a whole campaign of that? Not likely. But for a one-shot? Sure, why not. And in fairness, I am hard pressed to think of any module that Gary wrote that didn’t have at least few instances of that magical situation where spells don’t work or there is no saving throw. Granted, the proportion of these types of “anti-rules” situations is higher in ToH than most of his other modules, but they were still often in the other modules. Great video, looking forward to watching them all!
Great video. TOH is also one of my favorites but I always felt just a little guilty running it and always ran it as a one off without permanently killing anyone's characters. According to EGG (from some Q&A on a web forum) Rob Kunz was able to "beat" the dungeon with his character Robilar the first time Gary ran the Tomb of Horrors. Rob was playing solo but had a small group of henchmen including some orcs as cannon fodder. As I recall several of the orcs died but the character types all survived. This was all much to Gary's dismay as Rob was one of the players he was trying to take down a notch. It is an interesting story and if true show that smart (and ruthless) players could survive and beat the dungeon. I feel sorry for the poor orcs though! Regarding a Patreon adventure i'd like to see Traveller, AD&D and Champions adventures but would be happy with just about anything. I see someone else posted about making a video of a play session with your group. If you did then maybe you could have them playing thorough the Patreon adventure?
One module, that to my mind is similar, is "Tower of the Stargazer" from "Laminations of The Flame Princess." It is not as deadly, but nearly as tough. I like to describe it as for 1st level characters, played by 15th level players.
First adventure I played - i think i died in one the false entrances! Still have my original pink monochrome S1, held together with very yellowed Sellotape.
I've never played it myself, though I've owned the thing since the early 80's. I think it would be a lot of fun to run as a one shot with player buy-in. "Ha Ha, you're dead!" insta-kills aren't any fun in a campaign but they could be with pre-rolled characters, especially if you give each player 3 or 4 characters to play. Zero level funnels can be a lot of fun even knowing that most of the characters are going to die. You could almost run this like a high level funnel.
Hey 121... you know a kind of content I'd be really interested in hearing about, that this video really made me kinda wish for ... How about some old stories? You know, not actual DnD materials, but your own personal stories of games you've played from back in the day. People you met. Campaigns you had. The kinds of stories you tell when you're hanging out with your table after the session has ended, laughing about memories. If you've got some good ones from the older DnD versions, that'd be pretty cool. I would watch that. It was such a more rugged game, you know? The whole culture. It'd be cool, unique stuff to hear about.
I ran it a few years back using 1st Edition rules and only two of four survived, though they were naked as they left the tomb and they and their henchmen returned to civilization. Player stuck his head in the devil head? LOL. Awesome. I placed mine in the Vast Swamp as well. #21 was where they lost their thief to green slime. They went back to civilization and used a wish to bring her back at the cost of all the treasure they'd found up to that point. I like how unintuitive the place is. Acererak built it to kill. I always loved the picture of the demi-lich skull. The secret of the demi-lich is that you have to actually do some research via legend lore or divination spells to have any chance of beating the demi-lich at the end. I liked Return to the Tomb of Horrors as well, though never actually ran that boxed set.
Thanks for running through this, I like your process of using the illustrations. I noticed you didn’t go over the poem - did you not incorporate that? When we ran through it we found the poem useful in solving many of the rooms.
@@page121tabletoproleplaying4 I can see that - different table culture - my group loved pouring over the words and felt awesome when our translations where right - things like the green face (avoid) the hidden (behind plaster) secret door, the ring all make sense in the poem - not the throne though 😂
Never played in it or ran it, but really want to, just for kicks. Won't run my family through it though, as I don't do much killing off my kids PC's...unless they choose some really dumb courses of action. 🤓 I'll scare the daylights out of them and draw that out a lot though....often. Lol 😆Thnx, Tony!! 👍
I found this song about the tomb and I think it's pretty good , check it out ua-cam.com/video/M6qAOkK75DA/v-deo.html . Also these old reviews of classic D&D material is great stuff love it ...
No one would play it in our group, Gary forgot a REAL reason for characters to risk their lives in a hell hole. Also high level Magic Users could eventually destroy the entire complex with passwall and disintegrate scrolls, And a cleric with earthquake would flatten the place. Rivers could be moved if necessary to flood the place, etc
With the exception that the tomb is alive. It is basically the body of the lich. Anyway it just repairs itself in a sense. Unless you somehow destroy the phylactery that contains the soul of the lich the tomb will always be there. It's how he gets his life essences to continue existence.
Was my favorite module as a kid
I still have nightmares! One Vicious Adventure!
I played this one back in the 90s, we got lucky with the crown and rod.
We destroyed the Demi Litch with that crown and septer.
Our thief placed the crown fast and lightly on the skull and the Cleric
touched the silver end to the crown. It was fitting end to the s.o.b.
after a party member died that way. Of course we now knew we had a powerful
weapon so once we found his room we knew what to do -
Love your explanation of this module and your reasons for liking or not liking things. I kind of agree it is sort of a death trap and it's really was meant for his specific group of well seasoned players. For just an open-ended new group I would do like you do in rearrange things to make it more like a standard dungeon with a goal treasure at the end.
As for me my dwarven thief acrobat at the time lost an arm to that green demonic face. So fortunately our party having a ring of regeneration, remember those?, I was eventually able to get an arm back although I did have to play for several weeks or several months of game time as a one armed bandit.
Often the challenge as I was the party's chief scout and trap finder. So always finding myself far ahead of the group alone. Good times!
Daniel from Banditskeep left a link to your channel. This is how I found you. He's a good guy.
Welcome. Thanks for watching.
the illustrations /art in this book are fantastic. I never got close to level 10 to play this adventure but I do remember flipping through this module back in the late 80's.
Extremely Awesome, Amazing & Wonderful Review of the Tomb of Horrors Module by you Sir. Super Detailed & Excellent Work. Bravo! 👽👻😉😉
Thanks. Glad you liked it.
glad to see the channel growing so fast! I just subbed at 1k a couple days ago. Now over 1200. That's awesome! I am 36, been playing D&D for 26 years starting with AD&D (2nd edition) and I love all the old school content. I actually like 5E, but there was more magic in the older editions. I think overall, there were fewer rules, so it was a more imaginative game.
Thanks for watching.
I did the same thing when I ran this one back in the day... modified it to get rid of the "Gotcha! Yer dead instantly!" stuff to give the players a chance. It was fun with that tweaking. :-) We all had a blast and everyone had great memories from it.
I dislike no save instant kills.
Fun video! It made me subscribe to your channel!
I got lucky with this module and only have fond memories of it. By lucky I mean I was first introduced to this module as a player by a DM who said we could use our regular campaign characters, but he was sure that at least half of us would die and instead we should use the characters in the roster and just play the module for fun, what we would now call as a one-shot. Him presenting the module thus way made all the difference in how we experienced it. We, wisely, did not use our campaign characters and ended up having a ball. I have never run this as anything but a one-shot adventure myself, almost more like an extended convention game.
That said, I do think you raise some important points. I don’t always fall in line with your thoughts about the points but I do think you have presented many of the important aspects of this adventure in fully appreciating it, except for leaving out the poem. The poem is vital to success in this adventure IMHO, but more on that later.
This is a tournament module. Character death is a great thing for a tournament module because it makes for a very explicit way to distribute points and decide on a winning party for the tournament. This doesn’t make for a good campaign module though, I agree with you there. But in fairness to Gary, he wrote it as a tournament module, and it’s functionally a pretty good one.
Second, I think Gary’s label of “player skill” is really important for appreciating this module. I think he is contrasting “player skill” with “character ability” which would be more about what the character can do. Your great example with the invisible stone is a good one for this. Character ability is being able to cast a Detect Invisibility spell to see the stone. This is what the character can do in the parameters of the rules. I think this is exactly what Gary did not want to emphasize in terms of having it produce success in this module. He wanted to emphasize the ability or skill of the player to find a way to overcome the traps and such in this module that had little if anything to do with what the characters can do. This is also why I think the poem is so important. The character can’t read and decipher the poem. Only the players can do that, and getting the clues from the poem is far more valuable in this module than what spells the character can cast, how many hps they have, or what magical items they have. I honestly think that this is what Gary was responding to, that people were saying they have these “invincible” characters because they have X magic items or can cast Y spells or whatever. By creating encounters where there was no saving throw and death, or where X spell does not work, or anything else like that Gary acted to remove character abilities almost completely from the equation. I think this is part of the genius of this module. Would I want a whole campaign of that? Not likely. But for a one-shot? Sure, why not.
And in fairness, I am hard pressed to think of any module that Gary wrote that didn’t have at least few instances of that magical situation where spells don’t work or there is no saving throw. Granted, the proportion of these types of “anti-rules” situations is higher in ToH than most of his other modules, but they were still often in the other modules.
Great video, looking forward to watching them all!
Great video. TOH is also one of my favorites but I always felt just a little guilty running it and always ran it as a one off without permanently killing anyone's characters. According to EGG (from some Q&A on a web forum) Rob Kunz was able to "beat" the dungeon with his character Robilar the first time Gary ran the Tomb of Horrors. Rob was playing solo but had a small group of henchmen including some orcs as cannon fodder. As I recall several of the orcs died but the character types all survived. This was all much to Gary's dismay as Rob was one of the players he was trying to take down a notch. It is an interesting story and if true show that smart (and ruthless) players could survive and beat the dungeon. I feel sorry for the poor orcs though! Regarding a Patreon adventure i'd like to see Traveller, AD&D and Champions adventures but would be happy with just about anything. I see someone else posted about making a video of a play session with your group. If you did then maybe you could have them playing thorough the Patreon adventure?
My group is hesitant about our games being filmed. They feel it might disrupt the play. We'll see what the future holds.
One module, that to my mind is similar, is "Tower of the Stargazer" from "Laminations of The Flame Princess." It is not as deadly, but nearly as tough. I like to describe it as for 1st level characters, played by 15th level players.
First adventure I played - i think i died in one the false entrances! Still have my original pink monochrome S1, held together with very yellowed Sellotape.
Over 30 years of gaming and I've never played this but want to. Put this on mute, left a like and let it play for the algorithm.
Thanks
Great rundown! Thanks for the video. 🙂
Thanks for watching.
I've never played it myself, though I've owned the thing since the early 80's. I think it would be a lot of fun to run as a one shot with player buy-in. "Ha Ha, you're dead!" insta-kills aren't any fun in a campaign but they could be with pre-rolled characters, especially if you give each player 3 or 4 characters to play. Zero level funnels can be a lot of fun even knowing that most of the characters are going to die. You could almost run this like a high level funnel.
Hey 121... you know a kind of content I'd be really interested in hearing about, that this video really made me kinda wish for ...
How about some old stories? You know, not actual DnD materials, but your own personal stories of games you've played from back in the day. People you met. Campaigns you had. The kinds of stories you tell when you're hanging out with your table after the session has ended, laughing about memories.
If you've got some good ones from the older DnD versions, that'd be pretty cool. I would watch that. It was such a more rugged game, you know? The whole culture.
It'd be cool, unique stuff to hear about.
Great video.
I ran it a few years back using 1st Edition rules and only two of four survived, though they were naked as they left the tomb and they and their henchmen returned to civilization. Player stuck his head in the devil head? LOL. Awesome. I placed mine in the Vast Swamp as well. #21 was where they lost their thief to green slime. They went back to civilization and used a wish to bring her back at the cost of all the treasure they'd found up to that point.
I like how unintuitive the place is. Acererak built it to kill.
I always loved the picture of the demi-lich skull.
The secret of the demi-lich is that you have to actually do some research via legend lore or divination spells to have any chance of beating the demi-lich at the end.
I liked Return to the Tomb of Horrors as well, though never actually ran that boxed set.
Thanks for running through this, I like your process of using the illustrations. I noticed you didn’t go over the poem - did you not incorporate that? When we ran through it we found the poem useful in solving many of the rooms.
I've used the poem. I find it generally slows the game down.
@@page121tabletoproleplaying4 I can see that - different table culture - my group loved pouring over the words and felt awesome when our translations where right - things like the green face (avoid) the hidden (behind plaster) secret door, the ring all make sense in the poem - not the throne though 😂
@@page121tabletoproleplaying4 you’ve really inspired me with this video, I’m making one now on “player skill” thanks so much, great channel!
@@BanditsKeep I did one a few months ago on non-weapon proficiencies I use in my game. Here is the link ua-cam.com/video/PZTVTJ7vRQk/v-deo.html
Never played in it or ran it, but really want to, just for kicks. Won't run my family through it though, as I don't do much killing off my kids PC's...unless they choose some really dumb courses of action. 🤓 I'll scare the daylights out of them and draw that out a lot though....often. Lol 😆Thnx, Tony!! 👍
Thanks for watching and good luck running it.
I found this song about the tomb and I think it's pretty good , check it out ua-cam.com/video/M6qAOkK75DA/v-deo.html . Also these old reviews of classic D&D material is great stuff love it ...
It was a killer.
will you ever stream or video your group during a play session?
They're not keen on the idea yet. We'll see what the future holds.
No one would play it in our group, Gary forgot a REAL reason for characters to risk their lives in a hell hole. Also high level Magic Users could eventually destroy the entire complex with passwall and disintegrate scrolls, And a cleric with earthquake would flatten the place. Rivers could be moved if necessary to flood the place, etc
With the exception that the tomb is alive. It is basically the body of the lich. Anyway it just repairs itself in a sense. Unless you somehow destroy the phylactery that contains the soul of the lich the tomb will always be there. It's how he gets his life essences to continue existence.
What is the reason to enter? There is none.That is a giant flaw.@@WayneBraack