Tomb of Horrors

It was meant for tourney play, which is such a specific thing of the time it was made that it's a shame it deformed adventure formats for years to come.
Like, run as a one-shot, with a big ol' stack of characters to run through, with a premise like 'these guys are all retired adventurers, but they heard about one last big score, and they're all in', it can have some fun to it.
I've also heard of people treating it as the climax of a campaign that *specifically* revolves around uncovering the tomb. I.e., it's a 'heist story', in the campaign is spent learning as much as possible about Acererak and his tomb beforehand, gathering resources that might be useful to deal with what's inside, etc.

At this point it's pretty much a meme about "killer dungeon".
Absolutely not worth time for playing. Just knowing what it's about is enough.

Let me tell you about Tomb of Horrors:

It's unironically one of the best essays on dungeon design that's ever been written. It's a great adventure that you definitely should run.

HOWEVER, it's absolutely 100% incompatible with modern philosophy on gaming. Gaming today is not about challenge or problem-solving, it's about story and feelings. It's why you can have fucktards like John Wick write entire essays about how a module that literally everyone knows about, has heard about, and knows what to expect from, somehow is still able to be criticized for how much it tries to screw with the player and obfuscate it's own internal logic and rules.

What it does, though, for people who give a fuck, is tell you exactly how to win right in the first room. And I'm not talking about the riddle either. I'm talking about the hallway itself, which is built to teach you every single rule about the dungeon that you'll need later on. And you'll miss those rules, and you'll die horribly, and that's the point.

The reason you wouldn't have fun, is because you need to feel like failure is not your fault.

from Old Geezer aka Mike Mornard who knew and played with both Gygax and Arneson:

>When reading the AD&D Vol 1 materials what you are actually reading is "Gary Gygax' reaction to Rob Kuntz and Ernie Gygax running roughshod over Gary's campaign world for five years."

>Rob and Ernie both ran through Tomb of Horrors and survived. Ernie was 15 at the time. Ernie got about halfway through and figured "Screw this, it's not worth it" and teleported out. Rob, in his run through, got to the end, and when the demi lich started to materialized, grabbed the loot and teleported out. "Fighting when you don't have to is for chumps."

>As early as 1974 Rob and Ernie were ragging on Gary that the game was "too easy" and "not any fun any more because there was no challenge."

>The rules about scrolls fading or potions turning to water are there specifically because Ernie was a total little greedhead and losing even a copper piece of treasure was an agony to him.

>Rob started adventuring solo in 1973, I think, and ALWAYS moved invisibly. In fact Robilar had boots of levitation and a ring of invisibility and a crystal ball (notice how fighters can use crystal balls?) Rob would travel through the dungeon without light, up on the ceiling, moving himself along with his hands. He used the crystal ball to look behind every door, and he would never, ever attack except by surprise.

>Explains a lot, doesn't it?

>Tomb of Horrors? Rob looted it, and when the demilich started to materialize said "I'm not going to fight this guy," grabbed the treasure and teleported out. Ernie got about halfway through and said "Phooey on this" and teleported out.

>I just read Rob Kuntz' introduction to his "Bottle City" module. It turns out Jim Ward was an inveterate gambling addict; Rob said that if there was a lever, you could count on Jim to give it a yank. That's why there are so many "Cake or Death" situations in D&D; Jim and a few other players loved that shit.

>Really, you can derive an incredible amount of information about the early players based on how the original rules are written.

>At the entrance to Greyhawk Dungeon was a sign "The further you go, the greater the danger, but the greater the reward." That's the dungeon design philosophy in a nutshell.

>Now, I'll put in "idiot detectors." There was a nest of trolls in Greyhawk on the first level, and if you ignored the skulls and split bones and the dwarf's complaints of troll stench and wandered into the nest at first level, they'd slaughter you.

>No dwarf? Well, next time you'll know better.

>Also, Rob Kuntz and Ernie Gygax were continually complaining that the game was getting too easy.

>Also also, Gary's favorite fantasy was the Dying Earth books, and face it, the people of Dying Earth are a bunch of utter pig fuckers.

>Well, next time you'll know better.

I think that's a big thing too, back then that kind of trial and error metagaming wasn't just tolerated, it was expected and encouraged since it was more about challenging the players and not neccisarilly the characters.

No one complained when Bob the fighter pressed the wrong rune and exploded then later Rob the fighter "rembered" which was the wrong rune.

Which makes the module now so dated and incompatibile with how even "old school" games are held it defeats the point of playing it.
Knowing it is "required" to be treated seriously as well-versed. But playing it with any other mindset than the original one (Let's meta-game the shit out of this! We are here to kill things and get loot!) will just make you feel bad about all the shit going in the module.

Besides, the whole thing basically runs on the concept of fucking players over this or that way, which even back then took specific group of people to play.

And it has the same problem as most modules from that era - it's a clear and obvious one-off that requires really high-level character to even try. Maybe not the same tier of "one-offfness" as Expedition to Barrier Peaks, but close.

Speaking of which, I've recently played Barrier Peaks with semi-green group of people. Their reaction could be summed up in "Meh, what's the point" and "This breaks the setting in half".
People no longer seek weird adventures. They want coherent, continous story if they are to spent their time on the hobby.

> Grandpa
> This module is on my shelf -> I got it when I was 10.

also, demi0lich un-killable.

I don't know that one, but I do know about the dungeon that drains points from your prime requisites until you complete it.

cute jpg. If you haven't read through - yes, it really is this ridiculous.

I tried to run it a number of times when I was a kid. The party never had fun and always abandoned ship mid-way,

giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187449-Tomb-of-Horrors-Help-Decode-Acererak-s-Poems

Yeah those clues make the dungeon objectively obvious.

But what about the dwarves? They never metagamed and treated the Tomb of Horror as: surprise, an excavation project. They responded to it in a way that a rational IRL team of archeologists probably would, and averted danger entirely by using common sense.

This made me realise how fucking small the Tomb really was.

And just like the other user, I never manage to get a party to have fun playing it, even when trying for the first time in '92

Not the OP, but it's simple to rationalise: the module originally belonged to the father of OP, who left it at family house upon moving out. It stayed there ever since.
Otherwise OP would have to be underage for this to work.