The Tomb of Horrors is a venerable old lady of adventure modules, the grande dame of horror-themed 'no one gets out alive' adventures, as Wikipedia puts it:The Tomb of Horrors is infamous among players of the game as a "killer dungeon," filled with all manner of extremely deadly traps and monsters that are capable of easily wiping out high-level parties of player characters. Indeed, some players consider Tomb of Horrors to be "unfair"; many of the traps within largely ignore game mechanics and story logic in their operation.
I got to delve into this pit of dead PCs with my gaming buddies this weekend. We were playing good old 'Advanced" Dungeons and Dragons, the ruleset that was for so long king of the castle, until it was toppled by the (now) ever-present d20 System that lies behind D&D 3rd Edition (or '3e' for short).
Personally the weird mix of Egyptian-themed tomb that should not be opened and typical AD&D dungeon crawl makes this a deliciously scary adventure to play. Getting to do it with my suitably paranoid gaming group made it all the more fun - especially as two of us had read the module at some point (>2 years ago).
It helped that we had player characters that were at the upper end of the recommended level range (14) and in fact far beyond the 'typical' strength of such characters (too many late nights playing find-the-artifact or other examples of extreme-adventuring. We've survived the first level through judicious use of Limited Wish, some well applied thieving skills and disposable gargoyles (thanks to a Ring of Gargoyles). Now I'm really looking forward to getting back into it and cleaning up the next level!
1 comment:
Great Review!
Tomb of horrors sounds fairly difficult to survive. I've lately had the philosophy that world is a dangerous place and if you are stupid your character(s) is going to die. Where as I understand weighting a dungeon to the threat level of the party, I also think it makes the game boring.
That's not to say you want to try and kill that party, that would be cruel. I just prefer to force the party to be... wary of the threats they face, be a little more clever and always set a watch when sleeping!
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