Tomb of Horrors Walk Through/Overview AD&D 1E
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- Опубліковано 22 лис 2024
- Walk through of the first edition Advanced Dungeon and Dragons module, We will discuss the deadly tomb of the Demi Lich Acererak. We will go over some iconic rooms and traps like the Green Demon Head room.
Love this walk in the park adventure!
C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan also had an illustration booklet.
I have a reputation for running this adventure over a dozen times. In one of them, a human 29th level Barbarian, who supposedly killed over 6 gods and took their weapons, died in the first third of the adventure, rotting away in a sealed room. The player was foolish. In another, a halfling 8th level Cartographer got through the entire dungeon and mapped almost ALL of the tomb! The player played wisely. (The map disappeared later, replaced with a scroll letter from Acererak himself stating he was impressed and wanted to hire the halfling for further explorations the lich had in mind, and gave a demon companion who ethereally followed the Cartographer around everywhere. Some blessings are worse than a curse.) In my opinion, the real joy in this adventure is that more than any other classic D&D module it challenged the PLAYERS as much as the characters!
Great comment. Thanks for your insight 👍
Such high production quality deserves more views. Im glad youtube added you to my feed.
Thank you so much. That mean a lot. I posted my first video a month ago. I am just trying to make interesting videos. Let me know if there is anything that you would like to see next.
As kids (13 or so) in the 80's my friends and I played this module with the same mentality as kids in the arcade playing video games. If the party had a TPK, let's roll up some new characters and go at it again. After two TPK's we made it to the final grand finally.
It was fun then, but after reading it again (as an adult), it was not as good as I remembered because it was not geared for a storyline. Just a meatgrinder made by Gygax who got tired of listening to people who were running their mouths about being so good at D&D and could not lose a character... so Gygax came up with this gem.
I have seen a high level party actually demolish the dungeon. Even back in the day there were some good players.
Nightmare Keep and Labyrinth of Madness were more difficult (especially the latter), but none were so iconic.
This adventure brings back memories!
thhinking persons module> No way. The traps were not "well thought out" they were designed to f**k with the players. Oh, you go through this door? Fine you are teleported to the front, naked. Why? To guote Gygax, it was very amusing for the Dungeon Master.
S1 is amazing, original, and classic.
I still have my Tomb of horrors module when I bought it when it came out, oh the memories
Don't sell it! That is a treasure. Mine came from eBay since I used/read my older bothers copy.
@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler I still recall when we first played it, at the time it was well known as a party killer, and it did just that.. When it came out, although I bought it before i knew, it caused quite a stir in the D&D world and even said it was daft and stupid for wrecking peoples long time characters, now I know I'll definately keep hold of it.
Oh and at the time I took photocopies of the in game images so as to protect the ones that came with it, this was mostly for further use at the time.
@@Sarah-JaneR32 I've got the original 1978 version with the pink cover and that has a roster of 20 characters (incl. their magic items) plus a matrix of number of players vs. the recommended character mix. It's a "Death Test" tournament meatgrinder dungeon, with the players vs. Gary Gygax, so you're not really meant to use your regular characters with it.
@@FrostSpike I have the green cover version, that has playable characters, weapons and armour lists as well at the back
I played this adventure as a monk in 3.5.
We did not have a proper trap finder so our party of 4 all died to traps.
I think the more modern way of playing (4-6 players) is just not enough for this type of adventure. Of the 15+ People that went inside back in the day, only like 4 or 5 usually came back out. Sometimes even less. This dungeons has so many dead PCs buried beneath it.. it really earned the notorious reputation it has lol
This dungeon taught me how to explore every dungeon. The tournament version had time pressure, but as a stand-alone, you should take your time. Recon with spells like clairvoyance, locate object, etc. You can literally walk all over the top of the hill and map the whole dungeon. Legend Lore Acererak and that should give you an idea of what you are up against. A familiar or animated skeleton or zombie should be point man and trigger any traps without damaging the player characters. Passwall or disintegrate your way through the dungeon. A few simulacra can make initial contact with the demi-lich, so that you can see what works. Good luck!
In my running of the adventure, any plowing through walls would most likely summon demons from the ethereal or astral to where the walls disappeared. If you looked at the map staircases you can see that the pillared throne room was over 120 feet below the top of the mound, so what horrible things were buried in that vast section of the mound, the party would soon find out. Oh, and any teleport spells simply would not work in the tomb. No cheating 😁
@@justifan So the God King DM can change the rules to TPK, because the party may not use spells to do literally what they exist for. I believe your aim is off on who is cheating.
@@justifanI think this is consistent with the spirit of the adventure, and the forethought and casual sadism of of the villain.
@@archlittle6067I think it would be a fun experience to map it out and explore creatively as you have descibed.
I learned a lot from this video.❤
Hey Richard, it's criminal how many subs you have got. Please keep producing this stuff I reference your videos a lot and like how you explore these old modules.
Thanks so much watching. Let me know if there is something you would like to see!
'I got sucked into a hole that formed the mouth of a devil face mosaic, and now I'm standing in front of another one like it. If I climb into the new hole, oresumably I'll be teleported back where I came from.'
A fake lich that is actually a zombie?? You mean to tell me after all the character deaths we had playing this module back in 1982 we actually did not complete module? OMG! LOL
Besides our host, did anyone else ever play this module in a serious way and do well?
Just finding your way round is hard. There are tons of opportunities to make unforced errors with deadly consequences which is fair enough - but there are at least a couple of traps which can easily mash everyone whatever you do. Not everyone's idea of a fulfilling time.
I played it, i still have the module, but never did well, actually many wanted it changed and were upset as it was a 'party killer' at the time, as many traps are death with no chance of saving
@@SwampCritter-df4od If I played the module I'd do as much mud-moving as I could get away with. If the dungeon insists on playing dirty and hard to navigate, I see nothing wrong in the players exploiting their strengths to the full and reshaping the place like beasts. It'll still be a tough experience even with extensive rock blasting and the spraying around of information-gathering spells.
In my running of the adventure, any plowing through walls would most likely summon demons from the ethereal or astral to where the walls disappeared. If you looked at the map staircases you can see that the pillared throne room was over 120 feet below the top of the mound, so what horrible things were buried in that vast section of the mound, the party would soon find out. Oh, and any teleport spells simply would not work in the tomb. No cheating 😁
@@justifan Ah!
These are tough rulings - and entirely in the spirit of the module!
All best from Over Here
@@justifan 'There's only one fella running teleports round these parts - and it ain't you, son. Now git!'
Bit of history. Tomb of Horrors was not created or written by Gary Gygax. He provided the artwork, graphics, editing, and packaging for publication. As with many other things D&D, it was plagiarized by Gary. ToH was written by Alan Lucien, one of the group of the original designers of the game, and ruthlessly DMed it at Origins. For his contribution to D&D rules, Alan created the majority of the original Magic User spells. Gary disappeared with all the game notes then returned months later having published the game under his own name, giving the other creators "a free copy of the rules." At Origins, after seeing no group get through the dungeon, Gary loved it and asked Alan if he could publish it as a module (seeming reasonable this time). Alan said, "sure." Gary published the game, having added the artwork and graphics since Alan just had it all in pencil, as "Tomb of Horrors, created by Gary Gygax. The author wishes to express his thanks to Mr. Alan Lucien who was kind enough to submit some of the ideas for this dungeon," as seen on the cover of the original module, and on the 1981 version, but omitted in all later versions. As with D&D, Alan never got a penny of the profits, just a free copy of the module. In later years, Alan (and many other creators) declined to "submit some ideas" to Gary.
As for myself, I have played a character in ToH twice (the first time with Alan himself at his house) and never made it past the first hallway!
The horror is all coming back to me now. My group played this when it first came out on the market. I had to Nerf it hard to keep from killing everyone at the get-go.
It was such a grueling adventure but I have many fond memories the module.
I ran the adventure for two groups each one faired differently but it was fun.
@@wildandwackywade That's what is most important!
Hard times!
Yo Dungeoon Crawlers,,,can you pls do a movie review of Dungeons and Dragoons: Honor Amonst Thieves? Thanks
That's a good idea. Thanks!