[OSSR]S1 - Tomb of Horrors

[Ancient History]

1975. Origins Game Fair was being held for the first time. D&D itself had only been released in '74. And the adventure which Gary Gygax brought to Origins that year would become the stuff of gamer legends - the original conga line of death. Three years later they would publish it as a stand-alone module. In the decades since, the demilich Acererak has made many appearances in the game; the original adventure has been expanded with Beneath the Tomb of Horrors and Return to the Tomb of Horrors and ghost knows what else. But it all started here.

Somewhere under a lost and lonely hill of grim and foreboding aspect lies a labyrinthine crypt. It is filled with terrible traps and not a few strange and ferocious monsters to slay the unwary. It is filled with rich treasures both precious and magical, but in addition to the aforementioned guardians, there is said to be a demi-lich who still wards his final haunt. [...] So only large and well-prepared parties of the bravest and strongest should even consider the attempt, and if they do located the tomb, they must be prepared to fail. Any expedition must be composed of characters of high level and varied class. They must have magical protection and weapons, and equip themselves with every sort of device possible to insure their survival.

The Tomb of Horrors is very short (20 pages, with a separate 12-page illustration booklet, plus outer folder), and almost the quintessential tournament module. There is no real setup or plot, the tomb itself is a dungeon that can be dropped anywhere, although it is nominally in the Greyhawk setting. It was designed to be the original meatgrinder. Well, sortof.

As clever players will gather from a reading of the Legend of the Tomb, this dungeon has more tricks and traps than it has monsters to fight. THIS IS A THINKING PERSON'S MODULE, AND IF YOUR GROUP IS A HACK AND SLAY GATHERING, THEY WILL BE UNHAPPY!

This is honestly a good approach for a convention module, because combat even in oD&D when you could count the mage's hitpoints on one hand and have some fingers left over could still take a long time; traps are much better challenges under a time constraint.

But first you have to find your way in.

Unlike most dungeons which have a handy set of doors, the start to ToH is something closer to an archaeological excavation. You arrive at a weed-overgrown hill, and have to dig into the mound to find the entrance.

Note: Characters who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.

Nice try, Tenser.

It is presumed that the PCs will, instead of trying to excavate from the top or sides of the mound, focus on the sandy, easy-to-clear cliff side of the mound. There are three entrances, each of which is promising (they come with individual illustrations to show the payers). Two of them are deadly if fairly mundane traps.

If the roof is prodded with any force, or if the doors are opened, the roof of the tunnel will collapse and inflict 5-50 (5d10) hit points of damage upon each character inside of it, with no saving throw.

No saving throw. You're going to be hearing a lot of that.



Provided the PCs survive or are lucky enough to go down the real entrance...

Hidden doors, hidden messages, hidden levers, hidden puzzles, and hidden pits later (you get used to falling in the Tomb), you may enter the tomb proper...or you can proceed to the end of the corridor and face the Face of the Great Green Devil:

The face has a huge O of a mouth; it is dead black. The whole area radiates evil and magic if detected for. The mouth opening is similar to a (fixed) sphere of annihilation, but it is 3' in diameter -- plenty of room for those who wish to leap in and be completely and forever destroyed.

Welcome to the Tomb of Horrors folks, if you've made it this far you're ahead of the game...

All jokes aside, the care and meticulousness of the design is still a bit naive. High level play in oD&D in '75 is not the same a high-level play by D&D3 standards. There are a lot more options for PCs, for one thing; spider-climb and similar magic makes it easy to avoid floor-based traps, and sufficiently bull-headed PCs can use earthmoving magic to just dig into the hill and avoid a lot of unpleasantness. Descriptions for detect magic are pretty lacking by contemporary standards. Out-of-the-box solutions are also not here: running a herd of sheep through the entrances, for example, will yield a great deal of mutton and save a lot of PC hitpoints. But presumably the PC murder hobos looters are here for fortune and glory the old fashioned way...so we'll continue on by looking at the paths deeper into this dungeon hell next time.

[Thaluikhain]

While everyone has heard of this, one wonders how many people (esp current gamers) have actually played it.

[GnomeWorks]

I played it, with my folks.

I was playing a halfling thief, while my mother was playing a human paladin.

Nobody else.

We didn't get very far.

[Ancient History]

So You Survived The Entrance
There are two ways out of the opening hallway: a concealed door behind a fresco, and the Arch of Mist. The Arch is more interesting, so let's look at that.

If any character stands within 1' of the entranceway upon the path, the base stones will glow yellow on the left, orange on the right, and the keystone 7' above will glow blue. There is a misty veil across the archway, and nothing will cause the vapors to clear, nor will any sort of magic allow sight into the area, until the glowing stones are pressed in the proper sequence - YELLOW, BLUE, ORANGE. If this sequence is pressed, the vapors disappear, and the path appears to go eastwards. If the archway is entered when it is clouded, those characters doing so will be instantly teleported to 7. If it i passed through after pressing the glowing stones in proper sequence, those stepping through ON the path will be teleported to 11., those who pass through off the path will be sent back to 3.

This is not necessarily a very deadly puzzle, except in the sense that it is located at the end of a long corridor full of pit traps, and there are few clues as to how to get things "right." It's more of a time sink. 3 is the beginning of the tunnel; 7 is the Forsaken Prison, and 11 is a room with a three-armed statue. There aren't a lot of clues at this point, so PCs could potentially try a lot of things before they figure out how this thing works...if they ever do. It's basically a one-way teleport trap rather than a portal; one of the advances in game design was making it easier to define how these things work (also, if you have an antimagic shell or something, presumably you don't get the mist and the archway just looks into a small empty room.

The Forsaken Prison is a bare room with no obvious method of escape except three levers on the south wall. Most of the lever combinations do nothing, but if all three are pressed down simultaneously, you drop down a 100 ft shaft, and the trap resets, so you're well and truly fucked. If all three are pressed upwards, a trap door in the ceiling opens and you can crawl through a small jeffries tube, back to the entrance corridor (through a "magical one-way door.") So, again, bit of a time sink, with a maybe 50% possibility of "fuck you, die." At least the demi-lich didn't teleport you into a lake of molten magma or pool of acid or something.

The Three-Armed Statue is a statue of a four-armed gargoyle with a broken arm. There aren't any real clues to how this thing is supposed to work, but if you put large gems in its hands, it will crush them. Do this three times and it spits out a clue. Do it again, and an invisible gem of seeing appears in one of its hands, which can only be detected if you're detecting invisibility, and which you have to scrape the magical goo off of to use, and which only works 12 times before it shatters, anyway. Keeping in mind that you don't know it's a gem of seeing, and you'd have to cast identify to figure that out. Anyway, there's a tunnel from that room that leads back to another tunnel; we'll pick up that thread later.

You might be wondering at the purpose of the Arch of Mist, and more than anything I think it's a shiny thing to distract players with. If you aren't checking every inch of this corridor for traps and hidden doors, you aren't measuring up to Gygaxian standards and deserve to fail. Maybe not to die, exactly, but to fail. So in the Moore Machine that is this dungeon, going forwards sometimes requires lateral thinking.

We'll continue on with the other path next.

[Blicero]

While everyone has heard of this, one wonders how many people (esp current gamers) have actually played it.

I have run it with two different groups, once in 3.5 and once in one of the AD&D retroclones, although neither got to the end. The first group had a fair amount of fun -- one character even stuck his hand in the green devil face in hopes of finding treasure, and everyone chortled afterward. The second group's ideal D&D style was more Mass Effect and less NetHack, and so they kind of hated it.

[erik]

I thought I’d played it but was confusing it with Rappan Athuk. Now I’m not so certain.

[DrPraetor]

I think you have an extra quote tag at the bottom of the first post? I'm OCD-ing over it, sorry.

Question which I'm assuming this module doesn't answer - do various deities and malevolent extraplanar entities know the answers to these puzzles? Because, by level 11, you may have spell slots to burn on commune and shit.

[Zaranthan]

They do, but this is first edition, so your DM always rolls that 10% chance for your contact other plane to get intercepted by a malevolent being.

[Schleiermacher]

I converted the module to 3.5 and ran it for a group I GMed way back in college.

But in the process of adapting it to the modern rules paradigm I made it rather less arbitrary and deadly. Which was for the best since not only did I insert it into an ongoing campaign, but (in order for this sort of "static, trap-filled maze-dungeon" to work at all) the group was under significant time pressure to find certain items in the demilich's hoard.

[OgreBattle]

How much time did Gyoza expect for this to finish

[deaddmwalking]

How much time did Gyoza expect for this to finish

I don't know if that's the right question to ask. Originally, people had a time limit and the 'score' was based off of how much treasure you brought out.

Making a quick trip and grabbing something and going might net you a better score than exploring 90% and never getting out.

I don't think anyone was expected to 'fully complete' all elements of the adventure. Outside of a tournament, that becomes possible, but not always advisable. Exploring the 100' pit trap already described isn't necessarily worthwhile (though there is no way you could know that it doesn't lead to more filthy lucre if you don't explore it).

[infected slut princess]

LEGENDARY! A stupid unfair adventure module that is actually a lot of fun. It can be used in many ways. When you read it it seems impossible. But a clever party can complete the adventure even by playing it rather conventionally (i.e. not bringing in 100 hirelings to "find" the traps").

I love Tomb of Horrors and I wish someone would make a super brutal R-rated "Tomb of Horrors" D&D horror/dark fantasy movie.

[Nath]

A while ago, I started drafting a short story about a mage order venturing into that kind of dungeon in the seemingly only appropriate way: with fifteen or twenty experts applying a CSI-like, tedious protocol, one meter at a time, with colored ropes to show the range of detection spell which were cast during the previous shift, a backoffice that studies the architecture and compare it to other dungeons from the same area, era or architects' order, along with possible cultural or litterary references in wall carvings...

[infected slut princess]

A while ago, I started drafting a short story about a mage order venturing into that kind of dungeon in the seemingly only appropriate way: with fifteen or twenty experts applying a CSI-like, tedious protocol, one meter at a time, with colored ropes to show the range of detection spell which were cast during the previous shift, a backoffice that studies the architecture and compare it to other dungeons from the same area, era or architects' order, along with possible cultural or litterary references in wall carvings...

This would be good for anime or manga. I would watch/read it based on the premise.

[Ancient History]

The Other Path
So, if you're dutifully scouting for hidden doors, there is another way out of the entrance corridor, hidden behind a part of the mural. This leads down a short hallway to an (untrapped) door, and the room beyond contain a mutated four-armed gargoyle held in temporal stasis (remember the statue from earlier? This is mindfuckery.) The only treasure is 10 gemstones (again, remember the statue from earlier? That is almost enough to get you the magical invisible gem!) and a cryptic note from Acererak.

This is as good a time as any to point out that no matter how old this dungeon is, it's running off of magic and some auto-resetting traps. It is virgin. No adventurers have come her before you, unless Acererak has the biggest magical reset button ever. So you don't even have any corpses to help guide you.



If you kill/evade/seduce the gargoyle, there are two other doors. This leads into a den of fuckery: a complex of doors, some hidden, some not, all of which require their own special way of opening. Normally, figuring out how to open a door is not a difficult exercise, only a bit time-consuming. Enter a bit of super-dickery:

Meanwhile, each round that there are characters in a shaded room, a number of bolts will be fired into the area from hidden devices in the walls and ceilings, and 1 character, randomly determined, in each such area will be hit for 1-6 points of damage unless he or he makes a saving throw versus magic. There is absolutely no way to prevent the bolts from being triggered and from hitting, and armor and spells will NOT have any effect either.

This is double dickery, because of course the gamemaster doesn't explain this - the PCs are just in the area and getting random bolts in the dick. The way the trap works is completely unexplained, and doesn't have anything to do with any spell or simple combination of spells. I think the demi-lich must have used a wish to set this thing up, mostly for the sake of being annoying, but also to deliberately fuck with players who have so far been doing well with the whole "slow and thorough" method of things. Even animating a skeleton and sending it in to try things is going to run through dead bodies pretty damn quick. Oh, and have fun mapping while you're doing this.

If your intrepid adventurers make it through the Death of A Thousand Pings, you emerge into... The Great Hall of Spheres. Mostly, this hallway looks empty except for the colorful murals on the walls, which include a number of brightly-colored sphere; some of the spheres are illusions hiding crawlways, false doors, or a secret one-way door that can only be opened by one of four specific spells. One of the crawlways leads to the Three Armed Statue, one leads to The Chamber of Three Chest, and the third leads to the Chapel of Evil. There are also two false doors, which are trapped: whenever you open them, a spear shoots out and stabs you. There is no limit to the number of spears it will shoot.

At the end of the Great Hall of Spheres is another magical, mist-filled archway, with more colored stones. Unlike the last one, there is no magic combination: if living matter goes through, it's transported back to the dungeon entrance...minus all inorganic matter.

characters stepping through will appear at the start totally nude, while everything else with them will go to the crypt of the demi-lich. (Cruel, but most entertaining for the DM...)

Now, this is true dickery, but it's actually not the same brand of dickery that gives you infinitely-reloading, undodgeable traps like before. This is the kind of dickery that preys on the players' ability as humans to recognize patterns. Presumably, anybody that made it this far figured out the combination on the other archway (not totally a given, but let's presume); so thinking that this nearly-identical setup works the same way is natural. Absolutely incorrect, but natural. The fact that the PCs are teleported back to the entrance instead of 100' in the air or over an acid pit or something is down to Ass-rack's sense of humor: cruel and unusual.

The worst part is,the players have done it to themselves. By this point, the average party might have two or three fatalities, or at least be running low on healing...and they haven't gotten any treasure to show for it, except maybe some gems from the gargoyle and a nifty collection of spears.

If nothing else, the misty arch is a kind of last-ditch escape plan. If the PCs just can't take it anymore and don't want to go through the Death by a Thousand Pings again (did you note down how to open each door?) they can take the hit and jump through. Maybe come back later with a couple golems and dig for victory.

But we'll continue this next time with the Chapel of Evil...

[angelfromanotherpin]

[Ancient History]

The Chapel of Evil

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.

I don't mind fucking with the players, but the implicit contract is that you and the players are both using the same ruleset. Having a hidden door at the end of a crawlspace only detectable through an illusion is fair enough; they might well think it's a dead end. Having them then be almost unable to find the damned thing for arbitrary reasons that break the rules is just asinine. Bad design.

It's a chapel. There are rows of pews, prosaic murals on the walls, and a faint aura of good. The pews have hinged seats: the back row contains 4,000 silver pieces; the second row hides 3,000 electrum pieces; the third row 2,000 gold pieces, and greedy bastards hoping for platinum set off gas trips if they open the first row. Ho ho ho, and I hope your DM isn't counting your weight allowance too closely when you're hauling forth mad stacks of coin.

See that is clever. It "rewards" the PCs as a set up for the next trap, possibly killing them with their own greed.

There's a railing, and an altar, and a skeleton (non animated) in chainmail lying on the ground pointing to Yet Another Glowing, Misty Archway.

The altar glows blue, and detects faintly evil on 2 in 6. If you touch it, it sends forth a lightning bolt right down the aisle, possibly frying the entire party. It then turns red. If you touch it again, the altar explodes. That's 60 hp of damage to anybody within 30 feet, saving throw for half.

If you go through the glowing, misty archway:

any character passing through the portal will enter a 10' x 10' room where their sex and alignment are reversed by a terrible curse [...] Re-entering the archway will restore original alignment, but 1-6 hit points of damage will be sustained. Going back a 3rd time will reverse sex again, but the individual will be teleported as arch 10 (i.e. naked and back to the entrance.)

The sex change aspect is a hangover from a time when transgender people were discriminated against more openly and gender bending shenanigans were good for a laugh. Today if feels a bit weirder and more unnecessary. In fact, a lot of things about the altar feel weirdly unnecessary. It feels like it should be a setpiece for a more clever system of traps, and it...isn't. Why does A-dog have an evil temple that smells faintly of good? Just to blow it up?

Anyway, if you're a diligent searcher, you may find a hidden door. The door is only triggered by putting a magic ring into a coin-sized slot. Note carefully how there have been zero magic rings so far, and zero clues that you will need a magic ring to proceed. At this point, brave adventurers might well double back and try a different route.

This is just shit design right here; at least the three-armed statue problem comes (almost) equipped with what the PCs need to solve it after they defeat the four-armed gargoyle.

If they DO double back, and try for the Chamber of Three Chests they face yet another crawlspace with very-easy to discover hidden door at the end. That little bit of luck is part of the bait to draw the PCs in.

The small room has three chests bolted to the floor (gold, silver, and wood with brass bands). There's also the one-way trap door that leads to the forsake prison cell, and a crawlspace back to the entrance corridor, but PCs probably care more about the chests.

They are traps. Of course they are traps. The gold chest is full of snakes.



The silver chest has a ring of protection +1 (huzzah!), and a crystal box (worth 1,000gp). If you lift the box, darts fire out of the bottom and hit people for 1-6 damage, no saving throw.

The wood chest contains the animated skeleton of a giant wielding two non-magical scimitars (how the fuck does it fold itself into that chest?)

Magic does not affect the monster, and it cannot be turned.

Yes, this is a deliberate closet troll.

But you have the ring. Which you may or may not know is magical. Which you can then take to the stone slot in the chapel, and after much trial and experiment (how many coins are going to be lost forever through that slot as PCs try to open the gate?) they might toss it through. If they do, the door opens...and if the person opening the door is not very careful, they will fall into a pit trap.

The PCs are then faced with a rather long corridor.


BYOT: Bring Your Own Torch

[infected slut princess]

The Other Path
This is as good a time as any to point out that no matter how old this dungeon is, it's running off of magic and some auto-resetting traps. It is virgin. No adventurers have come her before you, unless Acererak has the biggest magical reset button ever. So you don't even have any corpses to help guide you.

I haven't looked at the module in a few years, but if memory serves there is a note near the beginning that says Acererak's fiendish servants routinely go through the dungeon to reset traps, remove bodies, clean up messes, etc. It's supposed to be in a fresh state for every new visitor.

[Josh_Kablack]

What gets me about this era of Gygaxian design is that

1: The dungeon does not follow the game's rules for magic.

AND ALSO

2: The dungeon does not follow my understanding of either physics or narrative.

I'm okay with there being a Sphere of Annihilation in the wall. I'm not okay with detection spells giving jack and shit info about it, but beyond that I'm not okay with PCs who attempt to go through it or those who watch other PCs's attempting to go through it not noticing anything wrong. Nobody notices anything like their hands being annihilated first as they climb in or that the other guy started to scream as he was going though the "door". Nope, the assumption is that PCs will always leap, and do so head first. This is about the clearest indication that Gygax clearly expected "high level PCs" to be "trained poodles"

[Bertie Wooster]

What gets me about this era of Gygaxian design is that

1: The dungeon does not follow the game's rules for magic.

AND ALSO

2: The dungeon does not follow my understanding of either physics or narrative.

Well, it is more or less an origin point for the 'rules are the worst enemy of the dungeon master' because they allow players to counter DM shenenigans.

[maglag]

Nobody notices anything like their hands being annihilated first as they climb in or that the other guy started to scream as he was going though the "door". Nope, the assumption is that PCs will always leap, and do so head first. This is about the clearest indication that Gygax clearly expected "high level PCs" to be "trained poodles"

Not sure about the original Sphere of Annihilation rules, but in 3.5 it does say "Any matter that comes in contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void" so going hand first won't help as the rest of the body gets pulled and it's too fast for any screaming.

Now the real issue is that "any matter" would mean air gets sucked and destroyed too meaning no atmosphere (or at least some sort of howling vortex). [/b]

[amethal]

Not sure about the original Sphere of Annihilation rules, but in 3.5 it does say "Any matter that comes in contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void" so going hand first won't help as the rest of the body gets pulled and it's too fast for any screaming.

In the 2nd edition Return to the Tomb of Horrors, you meet an NPC in town who had lost a hand to the demon mouth but was otherwise okay.

(I seem to remember that he doesn't volunteer the information, but if you ask him how he lost his hand he'll tell you.)

[czernebog]

A friend tried to run this for us last year. It was nice of him to do so, and I suspect some of us had fun. He obtained a 3.x conversion of the module from somewhere and had us put together level 10 character builds using the 3.5 SRD only, with a pocket veto for shenanigans like wish chaining or spending your starting wealth on a Candle of Invocation, casting Gate, and wheedling your way into a 20HD angel cohort.

(It was still possible to do something silly like roll up with a party of Cleric/Thaumaturgists who spend all their starting wealth on a pile of gems and a couple of shared Candles of Invocation, use the candles to cast Planar Ally, and then tackle the dungeon as a party of Astral Devas and Trumpet Archons. That might have been more fun.)

I don't think our DM actually liked running this module -- in the hall of Death by a Thousand Pings, he eventually got fed up with the endless cavalcade of doors, Search rolls, and darts, and let our rogue get through to the "end" in exchange for taking X amount of damage from darts (which was then almost immediately healed).

I believe the game died out due to player attrition after 3 weekend afternoon sessions. That's worse than what my circle of tabletop-playing friends usually achieves. The player who I suspect had the most fun grew up playing 2nd edition with trollish traps. (One of his stories was of a trapped room with a doorknob that only turned counter-clockwise, and the DM asked each player who tried it to pantomime how they were opening the door to escape the trap. Only when the left-handed player took a turn at the door were they able to open it. This sounds a lot like "pull levers down, you die, push levers up, you escape for more 'fun'.")

2: The dungeon does not follow my understanding of either physics or narrative.

It follows a meta-narrative, though --- instead of sitting around the table pretending to be characters in a fantastic setting, you are supposed to sit around the table and pretend to be a person who is sitting around the table pretending to be a character in a fantastic setting. I imagine that this could be done in a way that is actually fun, but you'd have to read the room in a way that a pre-written module can't. You can get some genuine laughs by encouraging players to think about what a typical party would do, figure out what would be done to punish that party, and then do something to circumvent that punishment. Punishing greedy players who think they see a pattern of escalation in the coins hidden in the evil chapel is actually kind of funny. Having to adopt this meta-narrative mindset and guess what the DM was thinking for hours on end raises the question of why you're not just playing Paranoia.

[Ancient History]

A Rather Long Corridor
Something readers might not have picked up on at this point is that this dungeon is, for all of its twists, turns, side-treks, dead-ends, and loops, essentially linear so far...and that is broadly true of the module as a whole. The PCs are penetrating further and further in, but there is a definite progression toward an end. The decision-mapping on this is going to look a lot like Choose Your Own Adventure Maps. Yes, you can backtrack to previous areas, but there is usually limited value (and sometimes quite a bit of peril) in doing so.

A lot of dungeons are like that. They aren't sand boxes for PCs to interact with different groups/rooms repeatedly at different times in different ways, they aren't even generally set up like old-school JRPG dungeons where you have to flip all three switches to unlock the door to battle the load-bearing boss. It also isn't really in any way inspired by tombs of the past. If you look at the layout of the Great Pyramid of Giza...

...this is a pretty simple, functional tomb, with ventilation shafts, shoring up, and a false passage. By comparison, Ass-rack's "tomb" is a murder hotel.

The major hallmarks of the rather long hallway is a door. Immediately behind that door is a covered pit, followed by another door. Immediately behind that door is a covered pit, followed by another door. Immediately behind that door is a covered pit.



If the PCs continue down the corridor (probably checking for pits every five feet), it goes on for about 10' and then turns, revealing a very long, featureless corridor (160') ending in another door. The door is heavily locked with multiple locks, has a slight magical aura, and you can hear music and singing beyond it. The door says "fuck you" to knock spells, although disintegrate (the ultimate "fuck you back") works. If you do break down the door, the sound of revelry fade and are replaced by the sounds of running feet. Beyond is a smooth white tunnel.

The tunnel floor is a counter-weighted beam. It's overbalncing point is the 3rd square from the door, and when 1 or more characters step there the floor will begin to tilt downward from the door north, with the north end slowly sinking.

The sounds were an audible glamour; if the PCs slide down to the end, they start taking 1-6 heat damage at 40', then 2-12 at 50', and then they fall directly into a pit of flames and molten lava which is assumed to kill them.

Except for the latter assumption, this isn't a bad trap. The old counter-weight beam is a classic, and having the over-eager PCs slide along to their probable fiery death is also fun. I used something similar in my Crypts of Chaos game, only involving a giant gold coin.

PCs who survive this trap will probably be confused and make their long, slow way back, checking for secret doors every five feet, and if they revisit the third pit after the third door. Once opened, this appears to lead to a short corridor with another dead end, however...

MAGICAL SECRET DOOR; This entrance to the remainder of the Tomb is along the stairway which leads down. It can be found by any means, but nothing will enable it to be opened until the area i either viewed through a gem of seeing, a similar spell is cast, or a detect magic spell is used to pinpoint the magic aura. When the magic of the door is found, it will require a dispel magic or remove curse spell to remove the guard which prevents the door from being opened. Once accomplished, the secret door can be opened easily from either side.

...it's not as stupid and contrived as absolutely possible, but that's damning with faint praise. Just make the door invisible and locked or something. Honestly, what this dungeon needs is for the dwarf to break out a pickaxe and start finding the shortcut through the hedge maze.



All jokes aside, this kind of checkpointing has its game considerations - using the Ancient Powerful Artifact to unlock the door to the Load Bearing Boss at least assures that the Prophesied Heroes have said artifact to face said boss with; even something as stupid an overpowered guardian beast is basically a way to say "You must be this high of level to play this part of the dungeon."


Wait, can't Gohan just fly over the gate? God green god dammit.

The problem with checkpoints is that they aren't visibly different from any other obstacle the PCs come across, and subtle hints like 'Go back and check for hidden gems' or 'Kill another 100 rabbits.' aren't generally well received by players, who tend to be denser than lead. So when they come across doors like this, the instinct is to go around or through them some other way. And you can't really blame the players for thinking that way.

Anyway, we'll pick this up tomorrow with The False Crypt.

[Ancient History]

Through the Secret Door
After you go through the secret door, you're at the top of some stairs leading down to a short corridor, which turns and leads down another set of stairs to another corridor, which is misty and has a closed door. Feels pretty linear, right? That's usually how you know you missed something.

The mist is a fear gas. It's an eye irritant and if you fail save vs. poison you have to run away, which can probably make for a nice dramatic moment. If you manage to hold your breath and open the door, the gas dissipates. You can then descend the steps to the False Crypt.

The stair are covered with webs. The webs are sticky and entangle you. They can only be removed with magical fire.

At the very foot of the stairway is a silver-inlaid mace which will begin to glow with a bright golden light when it is picked up by any character. Whenever this weapon is swung at the pseudo-lich, it will hit.

If it seems like good fortune, it is a trap that will kill you.

The pseudo-lich (a zombie with a few extras) does a good impression of Acererak, being all decadent on a really expensive couch (50,000gp!)


Goddamn that's a lot of money. We going to Applebee's after this.

If you hit the pseudo-lich three times with the glowing mace, the zombie collapses into dust. You won!



The pseudo-lich is a genuine load-bearing boss. When it is destroyed, the room begins to collapse. The gamemaster is supposed to count to ten as the PCs grab whatever isn't nailed down (a jade coffer worth 5,000 gp containing 6 healing potions, the pseudo-lich's crown worth 25,000 gp, a scroll with seven spells, and a fake map to a buried treasure several hundred miles away.

The collapse is a programmed illusion (syke!), albeit one with some impressive FX (real dust billows up from the stairs as the PCs rush out!) A commune spell will tell you that you have not, in fact, won.

Although you could be forgiven for taking the crown and trying to get the gold couch back through the dungeon corridors and traps. I'm not sure how you'd manage that, because it won't fit through any of the crawlspaces. But as fake-outs go, it's a good one. PCs get a sense of accomplishment, a fair chunk of loot - not anything legendary, but definitely mead-and-pretzel money, maybe a downpayment on a small keep - and a glowing mace, for whatever good that does them.

Or...they can do a search back along the corridor and find the hidden door and continue deeper into the tomb of the insane demi-lich.

Through the door and down the corridor they arrive at the Laboratory and Mummy Preparation Room.

Although there is only 1 item of eventual use within this totally plain and cluttered place, the volume of items within it is calculated to waste time for the players.

The "1 item" is actually two halves of a golden key; getting the second half requires defeating a large grey ochre jelly that was chillaxin' in one of the preparation vats. The first half is at the bottom of a vat filled with a mild acid, which even effects magical weapons. On it's recovery:

a reach-in-and-grope-for-it technique has a 1% cumulative chance per round of being successful.

...which is kind of dickish, but definitely suggest you might want to try another approach.

The golden key is designated the FIRST KEY which is...ugh. I hate key item quests. Yes, they're venerable parts of the genre, but it's the kind of shit you associate with grinding and shit. And most of the time, it's stupid. There is always some other way to skin the cat.

Anyway, when you're done playing bobbing-for-keys, you can exit the room, go down a short corridor, down a long flight of steps, turn another corner and you're at Huge Pit Filled With 200 Spikes.

I like basic physical challenges like this: they encourage creativity. A 20'-long pit where you only have a 10' run-up is a fine challenge. PCs might jump, and land on the spikes. They might fly. They might spider-climb on the walls and ceilings. The industrious might even climb down and walk carefully through the spikes (this is a trap-within-a-trap: any pressure on the floor of the last 3' causes the spikes to shoot up into the air toward the ceiling, which spikes are then magically replaced by new spikes.)

Physical challenges are great in part because the players can see the danger, and plan to work around it. If they fuck up and get hurt or die, it's sort of their own fault. It's only the really clever players who take into account what they can't see...