Retro RPG review 7: The Tomb of Horrors

An in depth look at this classic adventure, its history, and the reasons behind its insidious reputation, as well as some tips on how to include the adventure in your ongoing campaign.
Download the 3rd Edition version of the module for free here:
www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=...

[@joycekoch5746]

A warm memory. Forty years ago when my son was 15 and his friends were 13 or 14 the seven of them played in my husband and my den each Saturday night starting at 7pm over several weeks. I didn't understand much about D&D then but I remember their laughter and being intrigued myself and listening to their jabber. It created a rather interesting several weeks and sticks with all of us even forty years later.

[@captcorajus]

Awww, that's a sweet memory. Thank you so much for sharing!

[@animorph17]

Two major stories from when my DM tried to run this game for us, he expressly stated we could use any feats, spells, and items from any combination of books to make the most broken and overpowered characters possible. As well as make lots of them per player, because we should expect them to die. Given what I've seen after actually reading the book it's clear that our GM seems to have altered a few of the rooms to add more combat encounters. First instance involved our party stepping into the "Rocks fall, everybody dies" room right at the start. My character was a human monk with a feat that lets him start at large size, and a magical item that grants him enlarge person so he can bump up to Huge, and as many things to stack on strength as possible so he could juuuuust barely, at level 10, have the 25 strength and size needed to qualify for the monstrous feat "Awesome Blow" ... Lots of feats into grappling, a tower shield in one hand and his open fist in the other, every magic item I could get that increases his carrying capacity. This was a massive guy named "Ahsome" who picked up sailboats for a living and carried them across a land bridge so they wouldn't need to use a cannal further south, saving time on the trip. Alongside loading and unloading carts. Cue: We first enter the room and rocks fall, exactly one player (wizard) dies to HP loss and we're quick to revive him and get everyone healed up. We clear the rocks out of the room and then toss a stick inside to test if it was safe, once again rocks still fall. Realizing the trap resets, we clear all the boulders away again with magic and have an open room to go through ... Ahsome puts his tower shield over his head and spends a standard action to use it as total cover. A castle wall sized tower shield that barely fit through the halls and covered the room almost completely. Then he walked forward. Rocks fall, they land onto the massive enchanted shield, and with his magic items and insane strength Ahsome was just able to hold the entire mountain above his head and casually let everyone else walk between he feet. Couldn't FOLLOW the group mind, but he could stay there and hold the door open while others passed. Everyone goes into the next room, and what the DM had for us was an empty chamber with some CR 15 pit fiend or something, really high level demon that the players tried to fight and were loosing to, badly, getting a bit of damage done for a few rounds before deciding to just run or risk a total party wipe. Ahsome lets all of his allies run out between his legs as he's holding guard keeping all the piled up rocks on top of his shield. Demon chases after them. "When Rocks Fall and everybody dies, I'LL BE THE GUY THROWING THE ROCKS!" I shouted, and tilted my shield to drop that entire mountain down on top of the demon. Killing it instantly. ... There were other cool moments in the campaign that mostly revolved around broken mechanics and being able to do stuff the module never accounted for, though what actually destroyed our session and made the game unplayable was an NPC class called the peasant, who put all of his money in cows. Just stampeded all the cows to flood every trap and then walked over the corpses, always sending cows in first so we could see what happened to them.

[@jackhartford521]

Oh my gosh Robilar and Tenser were the players original characters! That's great to learn that kind of history! With Gary Gygax running it that's legendary epic!!

[@TreasuredHarte]

They need to take the old modules and make them RPG video games

[@diarrhealatte2881]

SSI style

[@richardadams4928]

Most of the well known ones, including Tomb of Horrors, have already been translated into modules for Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures. Gog.com currently sells FR:UA as part of Forgotten Realms: The Archives Collection 2 for the EXORBITANT price of ... $2.49, including a BUNCH of other Forgotten Realms D&D games like Pool of Radiance, Secret of the Silver Blades, Hillsfar, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, and several others. The modules are mostly, if not (probably) entirely, free for download from sites like frua.rosedragon.org. Currently 629 PC modules, and 148 Mac modules at that site. Enjoy!

[@richardadams4928]

@@diarrhealatte2881 Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures IS from SSI, and can do this (for details, look at my other reply on this thread).

[@BX-advocate]

I think they would loose the magic if you did that

[@dreamakuma]

Another great, Affordable way to get the Module is in the "Dungeons of Dread" Book WOTC released. I picked it up on amazon for $25 and includes s1-4. Tomb of horrors, White plume mountain, Barrier Peaks, and Caverns of Tsojcanth. 4 great adventures to run.

[@BlackJar72]

1977: D&D Module, $1 for 36 pages, cheaply stappled 1985: D&D Module, $6 for 56 pages, cheaply stappled 2020: D&D Module, hardcover, hundreds of glossy color pages, basically a campaign ... but @^%*&# it's $50! I guess that's just what happens when the players grow-up to find that (most of them) have less prep-time but more money to spend.

[@captcorajus]

I'm not a fan of the full campaigns. I like them for certain things, but its too railroady to me. I like more of an open world kind of thing.

[@athos1029]

It would be nice if the people making these things remembered that A. The players who are being introduced to this pastime are 12=15 year old children who don't have a lot of money to begin with, and aren't going to stick with what is essentially a phase. If the product costs too much money they aren't going to buy it. B: The established fans are 25-50 and have other bills to pay that have to take priority. They need to keep their product to a price point that doesn't border on an addiction.

[@DamienValentineKoguntetzu]

You can also get the Tomb of Horrors in "Tales From the Yawning Portal" for roughly half that price. (along with 6 other famous adventures of the past updated to 5th edition for a total of 7 classic modules)

[@rickeymariu1]

You put up a picture of Grimtooths Dungeon of doom. Not only have I had a party run through it, but survive both it and the ToH.

[@captcorajus]

Yeah, that is a serious 'funhouse' dungeon. lol

[@shaunhall6834]

I love our hobby! I started in 79 with a friend in my neighborhood.

[@jeromepeters9842]

the return box set was great, my players still talk about the vampire scion fight to this day, as well as the journey to the negative plane

[@Cyberpuppy63]

"i say bring a group of dwarfs and some digging tools". I used a Wizard with multiple summon monster spells, plus Legend Lore and Bind-demon, plus a [x2] potion of gaseous form. Great nullifications.

[@VilhjalmrVilhjalmrsson]

I remember the bloodbath very well. Good times.

[@elliotvernon7971]

This was the first module I played - in 1979 - I died pretty quickly but I found it to be so cool, I got my parents to buy it for me a week later and read it over and over again. In my group everyone had a copy, but no one wanted to play it with their hard developed characters….Still have my pink monochrome, but it is looking well used, held together with yellowed sellotape

[@SirMillz]

Love the NWN sound efx intro!

[@captcorajus]

Seemed appropriate! Good call! :D

[@Jorphdan]

I just finished DM'ing Tomb of Horrors and this was really well done and insightful. Thanks!

[@RPGmodsFan]

BTW, your 2 videos on the Tomb of Horrors were great and entertaining. :-)

[@williammindflayer4956]

Don't forget the (old) HackMaster homage/rendition 'Tomb of Unspeakable Horrors' - Made Gary's 'Tomb' look like a training ground.

[@captcorajus]

ROFL... you know I totally have that module. It's hilarious. One of these days I'm gong to have to actually run it.

[@theoutsiders6898]

Loved this review and will be watching more

[@andrewtomlinson5237]

This was the module that convinced me and my friends to switch to AD&D from BX. There weren't a lot of BX Modules available in our local game store back in the early 80s, but I'd found that just buying the AD&D stuff and adapting the stats worked fine. Mainly by just rewriting the NPCs monsters and treasure it got us through OK. I saw this on the shelf and unfortunately the price sticker was sitting right over the Advised Character Level. So where it said 10-14, all I could see were the 1 and the 4... Since my guys had just started a new party I thought "Cool.. I'll ad lib them to L2 for a couple of sessions, and that will give me a few days to make the modifications I need..." As soon as I got home I pulled the plastic wrapper off and saw the truth... Oops. I read it quite a few times, as it was unlike anything I'd run before. I was about 13 or 14 and most of our games were essentially multi level dungeon crawls with a simple, balanced, "Reward to Risk" ratio. This was not that... I realised that for the most part, level wasn't as important as in most modules, since there aren't a lot of monsters, and most of the traps that couldn't simply be downgraded were pretty much Instant Death Traps anyway. Saving Throws would be an issue, but... I decided against running it until they were a higher level anyway, and when they asked why we weren't going to be doing the new mod that I'd bought I actually showed it to one of the players, and his conclusion was, "Oh, man... we have GOT to start playing Advanced!!!" It was probably well over a year before we got round to running it, as the shift up to AD&D took quite a while. (I remember the first time I opened the DMG, turned to "Combat" and saw that Weapon vs Armour Type table and thought, "Shit... I will NEVER get my head round all this..." But when we DID get round to doing it, they all immediately wished we hadn't. Until it was finally over... when most agreed it was the toughest thing they'd ever played. From a DM's point of view, it needs a lot of re-reads, as it is not as linear as you might think and there are a lot of connections going on that the original version is not as clear about as it could be, and if you don't have your head round that stuff, it could all go horribly wrong, and the whole thing could simply feel like an unwinnable scenario, which it isn't... not quite, anyway.

[@lateadoptergamer4659]

Thank you so much for this review. I was so amazed by it that I got my copy and I'm planning on playing it with my group in the future (they are still beginners). Side note, I was really upset that a certain 2018 movie disregarded its source material and didn't show this module.

[@captcorajus]

Right? That sort of disappointed me too.

[@TalismancerM]

I gave the players a "Reset Stone" that sits outside the dungeon. It's time travelling powers return them to the start if they don't press the button on it's surface (signalling success) before a set period of time. That way they could decide if any loss was "acceptable" before proceeding.

[@captcorajus]

That sounds cool. I would have probably given them limited uses though.. maybe 3, and perhaps only rolled the time back 5 seconds... to keep it edgy.

[@phildicks4721]

This is just a typical Gary Gygax module. It requires players to use brains before swords. I always liked to use the module to test the party. I used it as a one shot, and usually let the PCs use the pre-generated characters.

[@JoeSchmoeVideos]

Awesome review!!!

[@AAron-gr3jk]

my 5e players were shocked when there was a player death at the very entrance. they likely never even had characters die on them before. I made sure they played easily replaceable characters

[@OtakuNoShitpost]

Do you think you'll ever take a look at or compare the S series compilations? (That is, Realms of Horror, and Dungeons of Dread, both of which compile S1-4)

[@wildandwackywade]

I ran this adventure for my group. We changed a few things to make it less deadly but over all it was awesome.

[@OrdinaryTrevor]

Hoping to run the 5E version of the Tomb of Horrors for my group in the coming months!

[@jonathanduplantis1403]

So happy that I found this . Thank you

[@fredrickwheeler3123]

I've run part of the Tomb of horrors, but never completed it.

[@robertmoorhead2406]

Fifth Edition is releasing updated versions of a bunch of classic dungeons, with Tomb of Horrors as it's finale, as "Tales from the Yawning Portal"

[@MarshalTennerWinter]

Thanks for the warning.

[@mikem4432]

I think Tales from Yawning Portal is a redo of the old box set The Ruins of Undermountain that has 3 levels, but was expanded in later releases to about a dozen or so more levels.

[@b.o.353]

This was the way I ended all my campaigns. Always a slaughter. I never modified it. I Dm’ed it as written. My players often never made it there. But if they did, they never came out alive. I’m old school and that’s they way we played it. I enjoyed it as a player character and died there. Found it very enjoyable. I don’t play EGG first Edition AD&D modified in any way. I play it as written. Chess ain’t chess without following the rules. Yes there are very few dinosaurs like me around. Yes EGG didn’t play it that way either but that’s okay. My players knew what to expect. The dice rolled what they rolled. I really enjoy your videos. Good stuff.

[@TheSwartz]

I love this review, thanks!!

[@condensermike]

Great channel. Thanks for the content

[@captcorajus]

Thank you!

[@alm5966]

Anyone know what a mint monochrome first print would be worth? I have one and wondered what I might get for it.

[@ClayHales]

Our group was around level 16-18 and getting ready for the level 18+ Bloodstone series. We used this as a solo adventure to get everyone up to 18. We were generally up to the task of fighting the demilich, but everything else was a challenge. Great experience.

[@johnnyo3535]

Ah yes, the Dungeon of many deaths. Well done my liege

[@larryreddecliff2284]

Does anyone know where you can find the 3e WOTC free release of Tomb of Horrors, the above link to WOTC no longer works

[@captcorajus]

Sorry about the lateness of this reply. If you haven't found it already, this link seems to work. rpg.rem.uz/Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons/D%26D%203rd%20Edition/WOTC%20Web%20Archive/3.5/Tomb%20of%20Horrors%20Revised.pdf

[@mikrogamis721]

"Mwahahahahahahaha!" said the DM.

[@YorkshireMatt]

The kobayashi Maru of Dungeons and Dragons.

[@XX-sp3tt]

One of the most stupid things 4E ever did was have the siren escape all by herself, and the demons replacing her with an undead look alike who attacks the heroes on sight... a straight up no frills combat encounter in the tomb of horrors... WTH?

[@davedogge2280]

Bravo man

[@dunkydog1676]

legend of grimrock

[@TheBreezus]

Ready Player One brought me here! Excellent review by the way!

[@tradisyonkrallg8312]

What is intro song name??

[@captcorajus]

Its 'Halav's' Theme from the old 'Hail the Heroes' module edited so that it includes just the opening, and the finale of the piece.

[@tradisyonkrallg8312]

Thanks

[@alutheranlearningspanish1719]

@@captcorajus , what about the song you use to introduce the tomb of horrors, starting around the 0:22 mark? I swear I've heard it somewhere before, and it's driving me nuts trying to remember where.

[@salvagebar]

I gave this a good reading a while back and it is just plain wrong to say that it only "punishes the foolish". I get that the Tomb is particularly meant to punish CURIOUS behavior - players like Gygax's group that liked to tinker with dungeon apparatus. However, there are plenty of places where serious injury, and life and death, are just random chance.

[@captcorajus]

Yes, it would wrong to say that.. but I didn't say that. What I said was 'GENERALLY only punishes the foolish', which means... 'for the most part but not always'. If you're going to quote me, great, but please use the entire quote. Yes, the tomb absolutely can kill you through no fault of your own... I don't think I've made any claim to the contrary here. But the traps, as I said, and you agreed... are set up to 'entice the curious and lure the inquisitive to their doom.' :D

[@lindy9196]

Anyone who says they completed this module (as written) is a liar. A LIAR!

[@Cyberpuppy63]

It is theoretically possible to complete this module - but it takes a very long time, and the chosen spells must be "perfect".

[@RtB68]

Yes, I agree...but a skilled party I played with ultimately did get to the demi-lich at the end with 2 near-dead players still alive on perhaps our 5th play-through?. Suffice to say it ended there. No one survives the Tomb. No one.

[@BillyBobBeauBenson]

The legendary meat grinder...

[@blackjackrabbit1970]

looks like the link at wizards is down

[@captcorajus]

Just clicked it, it worked for me. You can also just goggle, '3E tomb of horrors'

[@blackjackrabbit1970]

captcorajus your link works .. the link on wizards page is still down for me but i will just google it

[@markusnavergard2387]

i say bring a group of dwarfs and some digging tools

[@828et]

I am here cuz ready player one

[@woodwwad]

Great review. I find reviews of this product interesting. The idea of challenging the players as you say, instead of challenging the characters is something that makes me a bit ill to be honest. It seems to be a great collection of just what I don't like in a D&D game. The idea of wizards making super trap dungeons just rarely makes any sense for so many reasons.

[@captcorajus]

Well... this is old school D&D.... and while its fun to play 'theater of the mind' and role play your character, it is sometimes fun to just indulge in tricks and traps, as being able to figure them out and get through them is a rewarding exorcise and certainly entails bragging rights and tales of adventure for years to come... even if its 'not what your character would have done' so to speak. I'm not exactly sure I understand your claim of, "wizards making super trap dungeons just rarely makes any sense for so many reasons." In any proposed scenario the plot should have clear reasoning for such to exist, and if not that is the fault of the DM, not the game or its reasoning. I can, and have thought of literally hundreds of reasons for wizards to create trap filled labyrinths in the 35 years that I've been playing the game. In this particular module, Acererack's existence as a demi lich is predicated on his remains being left undisturbed. Thus, it is reasonable for him to construct a tomb that would discourage robbers and looting. Further, in the Tomb of Horrors boxed set it is revealed that all the souls that died in the tomb are actually trapped in an artifact, and designed to give Acererack fantastic power! An even MORE insidious reason for the evil wizard to construct such a complex.

[@natanaelapreutesei]

First of all, I agree with everything said but sometimes I think that modules like this are needed. Let me explain. I think that the idea of challenging the players and the character at the same time is awesome. More often than not the people at the table will be distracted, checking their phone or whatever. In this cases, something that "force" you as a player to really use your intelligence and creativeness is a blessing. The players are fighting against the dungeon in every level, both as characters and player. You have to think or you will die. Sometimes players forget this. But that's my opinion anyway.

[@sillym3xican]

om here because im reading ready player one!

[@nozzer2002]

its fun to dm but its a pretty unfair module to be honest ,just don't take your favourite character thats all ! :]

[@programmer6394]

About to run this with my group, haha hahaha hahahahahahahahahahaha!

[@RPGGamer]

A classic, but fairly horrible adventure, the number of times you can just die, for the hell of it are countless. Fun with disposable characters, but I'd be seriously pissed if I lost a character I played for years on this one.

[@kevinbrennan-ji1so]

A test. No, this dungeon was meant to kill high-level players. Most of the traps can be failed without an ounce of stupidity, with resulting deaths. So, it's a completely unfair module. Period. An excellent, experienced group of genius and thoughtful role-players still has no chance.

[@captcorajus]

Its definitely not a test. Acererack wants to kill you! Yet, Players go though it all the time successfully and the original players that went through it bested it. Sorry your assertion is not supported by the evidence. NEXT!

[@sebbonxxsebbon6824]

We found no reason for our party to enter and left. The weakness of the module is it has no compelling reason to enter. With no striking army housed within the party could demolish the place and avoid the traps with a flood or many disintegration spells or just bury it.

[@captcorajus]

Nah, sorry, there's plenty of legends about the massive amount of treasure contained within the tomb. That's what's been drawing adventurers to their doom for centuries. That's the reason people seek it out. If the party isn't motivated by treasure.. then the DM will have to come up with another reason to go. Conversely, this is an adventure game, that's about exploration and finding treasure... so... Further, the background explains that the tomb is located in a vast swamp, far from civilization. GETTING a large army to the tomb will be logistically expensive, So, that's not likely to happen either. The module explains that any damage done to the tomb is repaired by demons, and that teleports into and out of the tomb will attract the attention of powerful demons as well. Finally, the Tomb is located within a large HILL, so unless there's a vast amount of magic expenditure to get all that water to go against gravity, THAT'S not going to work with. Sorry, but if you read the information on the tomb and its construction, none of those things would likely be successful.

[@christophergkassel6611]

Tomb of Horrors has a tendency to disrupt Murder Hobos hahaha. A thinking person's Game. The HUGE change from Original DnD and 2nd+ editions is the Original strongly depended on the DM to regulate, modify and Guide the game. Where as by the 2and edition modules were Heavily written, giving the DM extensive pathways, scripts et c.. Players had to THINK in the Original games hahahahaha. I'm 51>> Played more DnD than Video games in the 80s! Was no way to just Goggle Up a guide line or whatever. The kid with the books controlled the action. As a DM in today's world, I would save Tomb of Horrorz for a Group that wants to just Kill, Collect and move on. Good luck with that in this module! If you are a Generous DM... One of the NPCs the players have hired has a Wish that Conveniently says> I wish we never came to this Tomb and resets the party AFTER they have all died hehehehehe.. My Personal way to keep my friends Friendly.

[@BTsMusicChannel]

Love you reviews! But your pronunciation of many words needs some work. :D

[@captcorajus]

Welcome to the channel

[@ndowroccus4168]

Black screen

[@Darman0430]

Look, I know this was made three years ago, and you maybe have bettered this, but keep in mind this is a recording. You can redo a line if you fumble it, it's incredibly distracting, at least for me.

[@captcorajus]

Lol, yes, I've gotten a bit better. :)

[@ricardocastillo5485]

Only play this with pregenerated throwaway high level characters. Not worth it to play it with characters you put months or years into building--they'll just die, easily, EVEN if you play smart and skilled and cautious.

[@koumorichinpo4326]

Who else is here because of a shit movie nobody will remember in a year?

[@aaroncorbett6352]

What movie is that?

[@timmyp34]

Elegant? Bullshit. "Here is another trap you cant detect and cant save, and you die." Gfys

[@captcorajus]

I sense much anger and hostility in you. Relax and have fun!

[@ClutchSituation]

Gary Gygax was a crappy DM. If anyone in the audience wants to actually improve at DMing, stop worshiping him and replicating what he did. Or, if your goal is to alienate everyone around you, go ahead and DM like him.

[@captcorajus]

Gygax wrote the core seminal modules that define how people play the game to this day. From 1976 to 1979, in addition to writing the 1e rules DMG, MM, and PHB, he wrote the G series, the D series, T1, B2, S1. Gygax defined the game, and people play those modules to this day. I see no 'worship' of Gygax, but I do see respect for what he accomplished. Maybe his style wasn't your style, but you have to basis at all to say he was 'crappy'.

[@johntunney1864]

Clutch Situation okay. Thats one opinion.

[@diarrhealatte2881]

That's like a Christian saying Jesus Christ is a lackluster savior.