Good evening Boils and ghouls and
welcome to another Fright Day Night Blog on ransom topics relating to
the Horror genera in our Hobby.
This week I wanted to take a look at
what is pretty much considered the best,hardest and scariest module
of all time. TOOMB OF HORROES.(Dun,dun,dunnnnn)
S1 The Tomb of Horror's. No one knows
where it is located, no one has ever survived it yet everyone has
herd of it? How is that a thing?
Having run this adventure in it's many
incarnations and played through it multiple time and even survived
it-Once! I can say that for pure terror and horror it is not that
Scary. The main fear in Tomb of Horrors is that either One of the
many Traps will end your characters life or more frightening take
away your characters stuff. Since Death in D&D is pretty much
like to cold in our world-You get over it ! There are just so many
ways to bring a Dead character back to life in D&DF that Death
really is not that big a deal, but the prospect of the dungeon taking
away all your characters stuff(Which it has the possibility of doing)
now that is the main Fear.
Tomb of Horrors though quite deadly is
not that Scary, in that there are no insistence in the Adventure
where you encounter any of the defined tropes of a Scary Movie/Book.
While many of the Puzzles and traps
are brilliant and the adventure it self is one of the best written,
there is no actual story to the dungeon. You never really get an
explanation as to who the demi Lich was, what situations led him to
chose a life of un-death and why he built the Dungeon in the First
place. Just to test his cleverness against any One seeking his
Treasure, well if that was the point then why did the Lich leave
things in the Dungeon that could actually end his un-life? There just
is not enough Explanation behind the Adventure and in order to be a
Truly Scarey Scenario there has to be a Story that captures the
imagination of the audience and presents them with an atmosphere
where they willingly suspend there disbelief.
If the Tomb has a Horror counterpart
it would most likely be the Saw franchise. Clever evil all powerful
Lillian creates a series of clever (And often ridicules) puzzles and
traps for his victims, but each trap can supposedly be escaped?
The Tomb and the rest of the S series
have been often copied but never matched. Even some of the rewrites
of the Tomb are not as good as the original. There is a reason why
tomb of Horrors is so well known. It is perhaps one of TSR/Mr Gygax's
best works and it certainly is One of the best modules of all time.
Every person playing D&D/Pathfinder deserves a chance to go
through this Module once.
Its an awesome, nail biting fun run
but Scarey, in the way Saw is scarey? Again the main threat to the
Module is that a Character can die or more importantly lose there
stuff!
Since Death in D&D is not that big
a threat, the main fear of this module is that it can take away the
characters stuff. Now that’s a concept that is truly horrible.
So there you have it kids, a Halloween
look at the greatest D&D module of all time, S1 The Tomb of
Horrors.
Perhaps you will be the One to survive
the Traps of the Tomb and end the Lich's threat?
Or perhaps you will just be another
Victim?
Either way, have a great weekend and
Unpleasant dreams...MUWAHAHHAHHAHA!
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