Tomb of Horrors

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Tomb of Horrors
Type: Adventure module
Code/Abbreviation: S1
Edition: First edition
Author(s): Gary Gygax
Series: S1, S2, S3, S4,
Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Publisher: TSR
First Published: 1978
Pages: 12, plus 20-page Illustration Booklet
ISBN: 0-935696-12-1
Class: Officially published material

Tomb of Horrors is a 1978 adventure for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, written by Gary Gygax. It was the original tournament dungeon used at the Origins Game Fair convention. The Tomb of Horrors is a 2002 novelization of the adventure written by Keith Strohm. The Tomb is rumored to be located somewhere in the Vast Swamp south of Sunndi.[1]

Numbered "S1," the adventure was the first in the "S" (for "Special") series of modules. It was followed by S2: White Plume Mountain, S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Although part of a series for the World of Greyhawk campaign setting, the four modules had no connecting plot or theme. Tomb of Horrors is one of the most famous Dungeons & Dragons modules.

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.

The plot of the original module, such as it was, was a simple dungeon crawl; the evil demilich Acererak was said to linger on in his ancient tomb in undead form, and the characters were to fight their way down through it to the demilich's inner sanctum to slay him once and for all. In 1998 a sequel was produced, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, which significantly updated the plot of the original.

Tomb of Horrors was ranked the third greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game.

Updates

The adventure was revised with a new cover in for the 1981 printing. Tomb of Horrors was later included in the compilations Realms of Horror and Dungeons of Dread.

Sequels to the adventure include Return to the Tomb of Horrors for second edition (which included a reprint of the original module), Tomb of Horrors (4e) for fourth edition, and Tomb of Annihilation for fifth edition.

Wizards of the Coast released an updated version for third edition (v3.5), Tomb of Horrors (Revised), as a free download for Halloween 2005 [1]. It retains much of the original content, updated with content from the Libris Mortis.

a fourth edition update for RPGA members;

Tomb of Horrors was included in D&D Next playtest rules in Dungeon[2] and as a bestiary-only conversion in one of the playtest packets.

On August 04, 2015, it was re-released in digital format on DriveThruRPG and Dungeon Masters Guild for $14.99. By 2023, Tomb of Horrors (4e) had reached the rank of "Electrum seller" on DriveThruRPG.

In 2017 the adventure was re-released, updated to fifth edition, as part of Tales from the Yawning Portal by Wizards of the Coast, along with other "classic" modules from Greyhawk.

A reprint of the 1975 version of Tomb of Horrors was included in the special edition of Art and Arcana (2018).

Novelization

Tomb of Horrors was made into the novel The Tomb of Horrors by Keith Francis Strohm for the Greyhawk Classics series. The book was published by Wizards of the Coast in 2002.

In pop culture

The Tomb of Horrors featured as one of the challenges in Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. However, the final confrontation with Acererak was replaced with a best-of-three tournament of the arcade game Joust.

Legacy

Tomb of Horrors has also influenced later Dungeons & Dragons products. Jason Bulmahn used the module, as well as Indiana Jones, as inspiration for some of the traps in the 2007 D&D supplement Dungeonscape.[3] The computer role-playing game Icewind Dale, developed by Black Isle Studios, was influenced by the module; Black Isle Studios division director Feargus Urquhart said, "We wanted something that reminded everyone of their first foray into dungeons like the Tomb of Horrors, with traps around every corner, and the undead crawling out of the walls."[4]

Tomb of Horrors is key to the plot of the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which is set in a virtual reality world created by a man who was a fan of the module.[5] The character James Halliday recreated the dungeon in detail, which the novel's other characters must traverse to advance in the global contest and win Halliday's fortune. In the Ready Player One film adaptation, the graffiti on the back of Aech's van is from Tomb of Horrors, shunning the copper key's original location for a reference-packed race for the key.[6]

Creative origins

The concept of the Tomb of Horrors was conceived by Alan Lucien. Gary Gygax wrote the adventure from his basis with the particular goal of foiling Rob Kuntz and his son Ernie Gygax, whose characters Robilar and Tenser (respectively) had so far been invincible. Robilar ultimately managed to reach the final encounter by expending numerous orc servants. He fled with his loot rather than face Acererak. Tenser actually destroyed Acererak and kept his loot to boot, although the adventure (complete with demilich) would go on to slaughter countless other player characters.

Reception

"This is a D&D adventure created in 1978 for the purposes of testing the wit and fortitude of adventuring parties at game tournaments. "Testing" is used here in the same sense as the sentence "We'll be testing the dog for rabies." Let's just say the subject is not expected to survive the procedure."
—Lore Sjöberg of Wired on Tomb of Horrors[7]

Tomb of Horrors was ranked the third greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004.[8] Dungeon Master for Dummies lists Tomb of Horrors as one of the ten best classic adventures and posits that many of the adventure's traps would kill a character just for making poor choices.[9] Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, calls the adventure "A very difficult scenario".[10]

Don Turnbull reviewed Tomb of Horrors in issue No. 13 of the magazine White Dwarf and gave the adventure a rating of 10 out of 10. Turnbull commented on the adventure's difficulty, noting that the dungeon is "sprinkled extensively with subtle, insidious and carefully laid traps, and it will be a fortunate adventurer who manages to avoid them".[11] He felt that the illustration booklet would add a great deal to the adventure's atmosphere and felt that the pre-generated character roster was useful. Turnbull noted that the adventure is "very hard and will be hard for the DM to learn in advance, though this is an essential prerequisite of running it properly for it is much more subtle than the G or D modules", and he said that this adventure has in common with those modules an "excellent format, for instance, and the comprehensive way in which the scenario is introduced. TSR's high quality has not been in any way compromised, and in S1 it has even been improved upon."[11]

Wayne MacLaurin of SF Site describes the adventure as "a classic" and a "must have" for gamers, saying that when he played the game in high school, most of his group's characters quickly died. MacLaurin explains that Tomb of Horrors is a classic not because of its difficulty, but because it was the first adventure that did not involve killing large numbers of monsters; it was a "collection of puzzles and maps." Its focus on traps rather than monsters was a surprise to gamers at the time.[12] One technique that some players used to get past the deathtraps was to drive cattle ahead of them, which Lore Sjöberg of Wired described as "a bit less than heroic", noting that in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf did not send "50 head of cattle into the Mines of Moria to serve as Balrog bait."[7] The authors of Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom commented that "One of the most famous D&D adventures, the Tomb of Horrors, has grown to have a legendary status amongst gamers [...] It has come to be known as a truly difficult adventure, and obtained enough of a cult following to induce some players to put 'I survived the Tomb of Horrors' bumper stickers on their cars."[13] David M. Ewalt, in his book Of Dice and Men, discussed the adventure's reputation as "the deadliest game ever written", noting that it "unloads a series of complicated puzzles and nightmarish traps" on characters, concluding that "Few survive long enough to collect any treasure, and even fewer manage to find their way back through the deadly maze and escape with their spoils."[14]

Something Awful presented a humorous article about the ways that Tomb of Horrors is the bane of gamers everywhere since it is basically a series of traps that kills off most of the characters. "One of the best (worst) things about this adventure is that Acererak the demi-lich is a huge asshole. He's an asshole for filling his tomb with traps AND treasure, he's an asshole because he leaves little messages throughout his tomb bragging about how he's going to kill the players."[15]

References

Notes

Citations

  1. ↑ Tales of the Yawning Portal (2017) , p.A7.
  2. ↑ Dungeon #213 (Apr 2013)
  3. ↑ Carroll, Bart. Product Spotlight: Dungeonscape. Wizards of the Coast, March 5, 2007.
  4. ↑ Black Isle Studios Presents Icewind Dale. Spong , May 11, 2000.
  5. ↑ The Tomb of Horrors. Readyplayerone.com.
  6. ↑ Ready Player One: Complete Easter Egg and Reference Guide. Den of Geek. Dennis Publishing , April 1, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b Sjöberg, Lore (March 12, 2008). "What Real-Life Dungeon Exploration Might Look Like, Graduate Students in Tow". Wired. Retrieved January 20, 2009.
  8. ↑ (November 2004). "The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time". Dungeon 116. Paizo Publishing.
  9. ↑ (2006) Dungeon Master For Dummies, For Dummies, pp. 320 ISBN: 978-0-471-78330-5.
  10. ↑ Schick, Lawrence (1991) Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games, Prometheus Books, p. 113 ISBN: 0-87975-653-5.
  11. ↑ a b Turnbull, Don (June–July 1979). "Open Box: Dungeon Module Review". White Dwarf (13): 16–17. Games Workshop.
  12. ↑ MacLaurin, Wayne. Return to the Tomb of Horrors. SF Site, 1999.
  13. ↑ Silcox, Mark; Jonathan Cox (2012) "The Laboratory of the Dungeon" in Jon Cogburn , ed. Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom, 70, Open Court Publishing Company, p. 122 Retrieved on 2023-11-17. ISBN: 978-0-8126-9796-4.
  14. ↑ Ewalt, David M. (2013) Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It, Scribner, p. 144 ISBN: 978-1-4516-4052-6.
  15. ↑ Parsons, Zack. Tomb of Horrors. Something Awful.

Bibliography

———. Tomb of Horrors (Revised). Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2005. Available online:[2]
This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).

Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index

The Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index (EGI) is based on previous work of Jason Zavoda through '08, continued by numerous other fans. The EGI article has a list of sources, product names, abbreviations, and a link to the full, downloadable index.

Topic Type Description Product Page/Card/Image

Below the tomb of horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Dragon magazine #249
Return to the Tomb of Horrors Boxed Set (Tomes) Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Dragon magazine #249 38
Return to the Tomb of Horrors Boxed Set (Tomes) Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Into The Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook, D&D 4e 108
Return to the Tomb of Horrors Boxed Set (Tomes) Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Tomb of Horrors (Revised), D&D 3.5e 2
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Dragon magazine #225 49
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Dragon magazine #249 38, 39
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Into The Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook, D&D 4e 108
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Dungeon magazine #213
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, From the Ashes: Atlas of the Flanaess 73
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, D&D 5e 28
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, D&D 5e 28
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Living Greyhawk, Living Onnwal Gazetteer, D&D 3.5e 5
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Return to the Tomb of Horrors 3
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, S1-4 Realms of Horror, Adventure Booklet 3, 4, 5, 6, 7-20
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, S1-4 Realms of Horror, Illustration Booklet #1-18
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, S1-4 Realms of Horror, Inscription and Map Booklet 1, 3
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Tomb of Horrors (Revised), D&D 3.5e 1
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Tales from the Yawning Portal, D&D 5e 4, 5, 212
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, Tales from the Yawning Portal, D&D 5e 210-227
S1 Tomb of Horrors Adventure Located in: Vast swamp, World of Greyhawk boxed set (1983) 30
Tomb of Horrors Place LT2 Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad 29
Tomb of Horrors Place Player's Guide to Greyhawk 27
Tomb of Horrors Place Return to the Tomb of Horrors 6
Tomb of Horrors Place The Adventure Begins 2
Tomb of Horrors (D&D 1e) Adventure Reference SEE S1 Tomb of Horrors
Tomb of Horrors (D&D 4e) Adventure Into The Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook, D&D 4e 108
Tomb of Horrors, Revised (D&D 3.5e) Adventure Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Web Update
Tomb of Horrors, Revised - Illustrations (D&D 3.5e) Adventure Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Web Update
Tomb of Horrors, Revised - Maps (D&D 3.5e) Adventure Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Web Update
Tomb of Horrors, Revised - Maps (D&D 3.5e) Adventure Map-A-Week Archive, 2005 Web
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