How was Tomb of horrors run in 1975? Intended to be beaten?

[OgreBattle]

From the scattered comments I read it was more about "I check ___, I use a pole to prod ___, I walk through door number 3" than "I use a skill"

[Username17]

It wasn't intendedto be beaten. It was a tournament module where people were judged on how far they made it within a set time limit or until everyone was dead.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Were there any standards to how judgement was passed, or how players interacted with the rules?

There transcripts of how different teams got further than others? I've heard some story of flooding the tomb, or enslaving orcs to set off traps

[Red_Rob]

Were there any standards to how judgement was passed, or how players interacted with the rules?

There transcripts of how different teams got further than others? I've heard some story of flooding the tomb, or enslaving orcs to set off traps

This was the wild and woolly early days of RPG's. Things like "skill checks" or "difficulty ratings" were just a gleam in the designers eye at that point. Outside of combat pretty much everything was adjudicated by the DM based on what felt plausible to them at that moment.

In particular, a lot of interaction with traps and dungeon apparatus was done on the "read the DM's mind" model. The DM would give you a description of something, and you had to describe how you interacted with it until you either hit the right sequence of actions, or did something wrong and triggered whatever bad outcome they had planned. Examples include being told the floor has a pattern on it and having to work out which bits are safe to step on, or having a door with an odd shaped knocker and having to work out how to open it without getting teleported or having your hand cut off.

Whilst this can be fun and immersive when you are figuring out the knacks and quirks of a series of challenges, it can also be frustrating and arbitrary if the DM has different assumptions about things than you do. In extremis it becomes a game of guessing what the DM was thinking when they made the dungeon, rather than using any logical in-game deductions to think your way around the problem.

Old school gamers will tell you the introduction of rules for this type of interaction has robbed RPG's of their flavour and turned them into glorified boardgames etc. etc. The reality however is that many old school dungeons became an exercise in thinking up more and more elaborate and arcane traps, such that interacting with anything was a coin flip on getting screwed over. Because of this tactics like using a Decanter of Endless Water to flood out a dungeon or sending mind controlled orcs to trigger all the traps became the main ways to actually get anywhere. There is also the fact that describing your character checking every inch of a stone altar does get old after the 50th time. Adding skill checks and in-game ways to adjudicate if your Fighter was able to find the hidden button helped speed this process up, and meant that characters that logically should be good at this shit could actually shine.

You can probably find the original Tomb of Horrors in PDF form somewhere on the internet, and also the 3.5ed update WotC put out. It's worth comparing the two just to see the stark difference in difficulty and how much the early edition requires the players to second guess things to avoid horrible death, whereas the 3.5ed version can be cleared relatively easily with a mid-level party.

[Dogbert]

Paraphrasing Lore Sjöberg:

Tomb of Horrors was a tournament module intended to "test the players' skill," read "test their skill" in the same context as "test the dog for rabies."

[tussock]

From what I've read of Gygax running oldschool things during the 3e era, it was easy enough to beat his adventure material if you had enough 3e experience.

Basically, he'd describe a scene and as long as you understood which skill to use in the 3e play of that scene, you could just say your character was doing that and you'd succeed, because there was no skill check to fail in the first place.

From that, my understanding of the original game-play is that it was extremely permissive if you spoke up and described yourself succeeding at the obvious things which needed done, but also that most players could not do that because they couldn't imagine what needed done in the first place. Even if you half-assed it, you'd probably still get a stat check to pass anyway, most tourney teams just didn't really try at all.

What EGG's plan was, even in stuff like the ToH, was to present players with a lightless void and wait for someone to put their head in it. Then laugh "with" them when they did.

--

I think there's an old Dragon article where he complains about player skill, and describes an old gencon where the obvious entry-way had a dark, silenced zone with a deep pit in it, and most parties just set off in perfect combat formation and marched into the pit, because no one used a scout on a rope or even a 10' pole.

Like, if it's unnaturally dark, maybe poke it with a stick first?

[Dogbert]

From what I've read of Gygax running oldschool things during the 3e era, it was easy enough to beat his adventure material if you had enough 3e experience.

Except when you're in front of 2 doors and one of them is instant death as if you were playing Dragon's Lair, the only "skill" that will help you is perhaps your poker skills to read your GM's tells that they're about to smoke your dude.

Other than that? "Skill" meant all of jackshit, it was about luck. There's a reason why "75 goats" became a thing.

[amethal]

Basically, he'd describe a scene and as long as you understood which skill to use in the 3e play of that scene, you could just say your character was doing that and you'd succeed, because there was no skill check to fail in the first place.

As I understand it, it does depend on the GM, but the more detail you give the better (usually).

"I search the room"
a) "You don't find anything of interest" or
b) "Are you including the fireplace in that?"

"I search the fireplace"
a) ""You don't find anything of interest in the fireplace";
b) "What exactly are you doing?"; or
c) "One of the bricks seems a bit loose"

"I search the fireplace. I tap the sides to see if there are any hollow spaces behind, and pull at the bricks to see if any of them are loose."
a) "Yes, one of the bricks is loose"; or
b) "You pull out one of the bricks, and set off a poison needle trap"

"I search the fireplace. I tap the sides to see if there are any hollow spaces behind, and carefully examine the bricks, without actually removing any, to see if any of them are loose."
a) "Yes, one of the bricks is loose." or
b) "Yes, one of the bricks is loose. Do you want to pull it out?"

[OgreBattle]

There were also magic item cards given out for winners of these events right? Read it on a blog somewhere...


I'm gonna use this thread to catalog early D&D stuff, like HP coming from boats

Armor class wasn’t from a battleship game right? Or was that hit points

Both.

I adopted the rules I'd done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class. It meant that players had a chance to live longer and do more. They didn't care that they had hit points to keep track of because they were just keeping track of little detailed records for their character and not trying to do it for an entire army. They didn't care if they could kill a monster in one blow, but they didn't want the monster to kill them in one blow.

Edit - More about Ironclad

The game is intended for 1:1200 miniatures on a table top of at least 3' by 5'. Each turn represents 5 minutes of real time, and ships move 1" (100 yards) for every knot of speed. Each ship gets a card with hit boxes for armor, speed, midships, stacks, draft, guns, and battering ram. A ship is sunk when all draft boxes are gone. Forts get similar cards.
The rules are only about 12 pages, plus a couple more for charts, pictures and background data. There are charts for penetrating and non-penetrating gunfire, critical hits, lucky hits, ramming, minefields, and loss of stack. There are also three different turning circles.

[Prak]

A lot of the stuff that makes ToH hard is that Gygax ignored the normal rules.

Undetectable trap doors

Note: This trap door is 3' thick and cannot be detected by sounding or by any magic which detects secret doors, or even traps. True seeing will reveal a fine rectangle where the stone plug is, but it will not show what it does. Once triggered, the pit remains open thereafter

Invisible gems you can only find by destroying loot

THE THREE ARMED STATUE: When players find this smallish room they will Immediately see what appears to be a broken, 8' tall statue of a 4-armed gargoyle (GRAPHIC #11), with a broken off 4th arm on the floor nearby. No amount of fooling around with the broken arm will enable it to be replaced, and the statue will do nothing at all meanwhile. A close look at its open and outstretched hands, however, will detect that a large gem (a 100 g.p. blue quartz one fits perfectly) will fit in a carved depression in each of the 3 remaining hands, while the broken one has no such concavity. If 3 large gems of any sort are placed within the hands, the stoney digits will close and crush them to powder, dump the grains on the floor, and
return to their normal positions. If this is repeated twice more, and 9 gems are so crushed, a 10th (or more) will cause the triggering of a magic mouth spell to speak the following words:
«YOUR SACRIFICE WAS NOT IN VAIN.
LOOK TO THE FOURTH TO FIND YOUR GAIN.»
As these words are spoken, an invisible gem of seeing will come into being in the palm of the broken off arm of the statue. The gem must be found and the character so doing will need to wipe it free of a magical substance before it can be seen or used. Note that if the arm is carelessly moved, the gem will fall off and roll away.
Detect invisibility or any other sort of searching except by careful feeling will be useless. Describe the gem, once wiped clean and visible, as an oval diamond, with two flat and polished sides, very clear, and about one inch diameter by one-quarter inch thick. It will operate only 12 times, then shatter.

Skeletons arbitrarily immune to magic

When the lid is opened, an animated skeleton of a giant will be instantly teleported into the chest, and it will always strike first. The thing wields 2 (non-magical) scimitars, and it attacks twice/round for 2-12 h.p. of damage per hit. The skeleton has 32 h.p., AC 2, and attacks as a 10 hit dice monster. All edged weapon hits upon it cause only 1 h.p. of damage, but blunt ones score normal damage. Magic does not affect this monster, and it cannot be turned. Holy water will cause 1-4 hit points of damage.

Secret passages only findable by rolling 1 in 6, or having the previously invisible gem

By passing through the illusionary black sphere the party will have crawled along the small tunnel until reaching the end, only to find it is solid stone, it requires a 1 in 6 to find the secret door at the passage end, no matter what the race of the character examining the area, and no form of magic will detect it, save the gem of seeing.

Etc. So it's basically the Tomb of Writer Dick.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Invisible gems you can only find by destroying loot

THE THREE ARMED STATUE: When players find this smallish room they will Immediately see what appears to be a broken, 8' tall statue of a 4-armed gargoyle (GRAPHIC #11), with a broken off 4th arm on the floor nearby. No amount of fooling around with the broken arm will enable it to be replaced, and the statue will do nothing at all meanwhile. A close look at its open and outstretched hands, however, will detect that a large gem (a 100 g.p. blue quartz one fits perfectly) will fit in a carved depression in each of the 3 remaining hands, while the broken one has no such concavity. If 3 large gems of any sort are placed within the hands, the stoney digits will close and crush them to powder, dump the grains on the floor, and
return to their normal positions. If this is repeated twice more, and 9 gems are so crushed, a 10th (or more) will cause the triggering of a magic mouth spell to speak the following words:
«YOUR SACRIFICE WAS NOT IN VAIN.
LOOK TO THE FOURTH TO FIND YOUR GAIN.»
As these words are spoken, an invisible gem of seeing will come into being in the palm of the broken off arm of the statue. The gem must be found and the character so doing will need to wipe it free of a magical substance before it can be seen or used. Note that if the arm is carelessly moved, the gem will fall off and roll away.
Detect invisibility or any other sort of searching except by careful feeling will be useless. Describe the gem, once wiped clean and visible, as an oval diamond, with two flat and polished sides, very clear, and about one inch diameter by one-quarter inch thick. It will operate only 12 times, then shatter.

I find it really obvious that he initially made the puzzle so you just had to have each arm crush a gem and then it would tell you to look at the fourth arm for the gem of seeing, but then he thought that was way too straightforward and thought of several ideas on how to make it more difficult, then implemented all of them.

[Hicks]

Other than that? "Skill" meant all of jackshit, it was about luck. There's a reason why "75 goats" became a thing.

With modern rpg technology, that could probably be reduced down to 30~50 feral hogs.

No. I'm not sorry.

[Dogbert]

No. I'm not sorry.

If only the meme wasn't stale by now, I'd use this in a comic.

[hyzmarca]

Except when you're in front of 2 doors and one of them is instant death as if you were playing Dragon's Lair, the only "skill" that will help you is perhaps your poker skills to read your GM's tells that they're about to smoke your dude.

The skill is getting someone else to open one of the doors.

[Ancient History]

I did an entire OSSR on this: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57262

Suppose I need to do Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Beneath the Tomb of Horrors at some point.

[OgreBattle]

I did an entire OSSR on this: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57262

Suppose I need to do Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Beneath the Tomb of Horrors at some point.

My students are playing the tomb of horrors now, “you know those stupidly hard Mario maker levels...” wasn’t my intro