My journey through the Tomb of Horrors (Gaming Log, session by session)

[Zippdementia]

The first two posts can be found here (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149539814045/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-preamble) and over here (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149571057460/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-an-inauspicious) and the link to all of the posts, which will automatically update when a new one is added, is right here. (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/tagged/tomb-of-horrors)

I'll post every time a new session is added!

[Zippdementia]

Update with a new session. (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149607525515/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-riddles-and)

[Zippdementia]

Session #3 (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149751923095/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-how-many-licks-does): Wherein the players open a lot of chests, and I contemplate Dungeon Design.

[Zippdementia]

Session 4: (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149840078880/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-a-place-where-gods) Wherein my players get in touch with their feminine side and I invent a monster

[Zippdementia]

Session 5: (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149872891395/its-more-exciting-that-way) Wherein we have a big combat

[Hooligan]

Zipp, I just want to say thanks for this. It is wildly entertaining. Sounds like you guys have a very fun group

[Norgrim Malgus]

lol, since Geth is what I go by in LOTRO, I feel a certain connection to your Rogue ;)

[djreynolds]

Zipp, I just want to say thanks for this. It is wildly entertaining. Sounds like you guys have a very fun group


lol, since Geth is what I go by in LOTRO, I feel a certain connection to your Rogue ;)

Yes this is very fun to read, thank you

[Zippdementia]

I'm glad you are all enjoying it! I love it when my Geth player plays a rogue. It fits his personality and gaming style so well that everything becomes twice as humorous, like it is all happening directly to the player and not even to his character any more.

New session (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/149983325160/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-missteps) up! This one is one of my favorites.

[Zippdementia]

New Session (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150129828200/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-will-the-real-acerak): Wherein my players defeat Acerak. Sort of.

[Zippdementia]

New Session, part one of three (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150216213575/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-traps-traps-traps): wherein i discover my players hate riddles

[Zippdementia]

New Session, Part two of three (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150264004680/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-traps-traps-traps): Wherein the players fight some nasty creatures, and I ruminate on active vs passive dangers.

[TrinculoLives]

I have four unique dungeons coming up in my next campaign, and reading this has inspired me to include more decoration in them. I particularly enjoyed the idea of tapestries on the walls depicting various scenes that may, or may not, contain monsters that can leap out at the party or simply slink to a new area when the party is not watching... :)

[Zippdementia]

I have four unique dungeons coming up in my next campaign, and reading this has inspired me to include more decoration in them. I particularly enjoyed the idea of tapestries on the walls depicting various scenes that may, or may not, contain monsters that can leap out at the party or simply slink to a new area when the party is not watching... :)

For me, the tapestry was a one-time use monster, but I love your idea of making it a contiguous thing throughout an entire dungeon! That's super cool on a lot of levels. One, it makes the players pay attention to the scenery. Two, it gives your monsters access to rooms that the players don't—ways to jump around them and cut them off. And three, it's kind of creepy. Not just for the surprise, but what are these tapestry worlds? Do the players ever get to enter them? What would such an experience be like?

Just be sure to include some mechanic which keeps your players from easily destroying the tapestries. Maybe magic just changes the scenery or the monsters. Like, fireball cast on a tapestry could suddenly have a sun appear in the scene, or could turn all the monsters in fiery versions of themselves, giving them fire-aura damage. Trying to tear the tapestries could have arms reach out from the paintings and start suffocating the one pulling on them. Lots of ideas.

Hope that turns out well! I'd be curious to know how it goes.

[Zippdementia]

House buying and wedding planning made this one take a little longer than usual to get out.

New Session (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150596267835/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-traps-traps-traps)! Part 3 of traps traps traps, wherein my players make some new friends.

[Zippdementia]

New Session! (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150691203180/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-long-live-the-queen) Wherein my players fight a mummy queen, and I talk at length about big-bad bosses. Something for everyone, lol

Getting close to the end now. Maybe two more sessions....

[Zippdementia]

New Session! (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/150851852835/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-harrowed) Wherein the players meet Acerak's most loyal minion.

[Hooligan]

More! More!

[MrCeeJ]

^^^ right? I find myself checking this thread nearly every day to see if the new session is up.

[Zippdementia]

I have heard your cries for more! And deliver unto you the finale of the Tomb of Horrors (http://zippdementia.tumblr.com/post/151913735415/journey-log-tomb-of-horrors-men-of-visage-grim). Wherein my players... well, you'll just have to read and find out.

This is the last post in the series, but if people have enjoyed it and want more, I may blog my next campaign, which hopefully carries on for a good long while.

[ClintACK]

Really excellent. Sounds like you guys had a blast, and your write-ups convey that well.

And for once, I timed it right -- I started reading it yesterday. So no waiting for the next episode. :)

[King539]

This is AWESOME. I love it.

Are you, by any chance, going to release the adventure, or at least the monster stats, as a PDF? I'm thinking of running my players through this adventure.

[Zippdementia]

This is AWESOME. I love it.

Are you, by any chance, going to release the adventure, or at least the monster stats, as a PDF? I'm thinking of running my players through this adventure.

First of all, thanks for reading! I have been asked to do this by several people who read the blog and am toying with the idea, but it is not something I can do immediately.

The barrier is that most of my monster notes are on graphing paper that has tons of scratches and changes just written into the margins or (at worst) directly over the text. I do have quite a bit of notes on changed mechanics in a word file, but nothing that is in any order to put directly into a PDF—some of it references things only applicable to my set of players, some of it is guidelines I later changed on the fly after the party did something unexpected, a lot of it cross references the original module and the Dungeon 213 remake in a way that makes sense only to me. It would really take me sitting down and making a concerted effort to make it publishable before I'd want to PDF it.

But in the meantime, if you had specific questions you wanted to ask, I'd be happy to answer them! And I can probably PDF the monsters easier than the rest of the document. It's just a matter of typing them up. Were there a couple you were interested in, in particular?

[King539]

First of all, thanks for reading! I have been asked to do this by several people who read the blog and am toying with the idea, but it is not something I can do immediately.

The barrier is that most of my monster notes are on graphing paper that has tons of scratches and changes just written into the margins or (at worst) directly over the text. I do have quite a bit of notes on changed mechanics in a word file, but nothing that is in any order to put directly into a PDF—some of it references things only applicable to my set of players, some of it is guidelines I later changed on the fly after the party did something unexpected, a lot of it cross references the original module and the Dungeon 213 remake in a way that makes sense only to me. It would really take me sitting down and making a concerted effort to make it publishable before I'd want to PDF it.

But in the meantime, if you had specific questions you wanted to ask, I'd be happy to answer them! And I can probably PDF the monsters easier than the rest of the document. It's just a matter of typing them up. Were there a couple you were interested in, in particular?

The Harrower should be easy, I'll just make it enormously powerful, but I'd say the Exterminus, the Axeterminus, and Acerecak, if it came down to it.

[Zippdementia]

The Harrower should be easy, I'll just make it enormously powerful, but I'd say the Exterminus, the Axeterminus, and Acerecak, if it came down to it.

I can probably manage that! I'll make a blog post about it.

[King539]

I can probably manage that! I'll make a blog post about it.

Thanks a lot!

[Tanarii]

Awesome reading. So far I've gotten to "Missteps". But something you've said repeatedly at this point jumped out at me, and it made me wonder if you were unaware of the purpose of the original module.

"I hate traps like this. It doesn’t actually do anything, it just slows down the game. Basically it forces players to keep doing the same thing over and over until one of them rolls well enough ..."

Tomb of Horrors was written (originally) for convention play. Competition play between different groups. That meant that not being delayed was part of the goal of the party. They had to make it as far as they could within the time limit. Which meant balancing the risk of making hasty decisions with caution. As well as making time delaying puzzles or traps a critical part of the adventure.

It also makes simpler (often blank) rooms that allow players to not potentially get distracted by details important. Unless getting them distracted by details (and thus delayed) is part of the trap of that room.

It's also one reason it's low combat. Combat was not only far more deadly, and as such to be avoided by smart players ... but also it was far more random in terms of deadliness and time spent. And as such less dependent on player skill. So things that were dependent on that to reduce time were emphasized.

For a single play group, it doesn't make as much sense. So your view that these puzzles and traps are (effectively) pointless and needed to be changed or replaced makes perfect sense. As well as the benefit of spicing up the decor and descriptions, and adding in more combat. But I thought you might be interested in why these things existed in this form in the first place.

[Estrillian]

Just wanted to post and say that I *loved* your writeup. It was very well written and very well described and ate more of my Saturday than it should :) I am looking forward to the next one!

One note, Zombies don't save against death on a flat DC 10, they save on a DC of 5 + the damage taken, so big hits are much more likely to take them down than multiple small ones.