/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>223620

>>223657

Talk about why you like them.

>>223932

What is that, and has it been translated into common?

>>223605

>tomb of horrors

>best

Tomb of Horrors is.. Entertaining. In a sadistic sort of way. It's meant to just punish players for every little decision. It's the ultimate "rocks fall, everyone dies" dungeon, and it might be funny or entertaining, merely on the basis of how creative it all is, if it were even possible for most parties to survive the first few rooms.

>>223998

Hence

>Pic may or may not be related

It's certainlly important to history of D&D and table top RPGs in general, but it's not anything that should be played as more than a one off joke.

>>223998

>>224164

Sounds horrible and un-fun. Unless the party has that whole Dark Souls style immortality going on, then it might be fun.

>>224268

It's an entirely different kind of fun, for a different kind of game.

I've largely adapted to the new way of doing things, but I really do sometimes miss randomly generated characters and oldschool lethality.

The idea was that instead of building a cool character via backstory and carefully designing all your abilities and stats, you took what you got, and tried to keep them alive, and they became cool through survival and actual play.

It's not wrongfun, just a different flavor of fun.

>>224268

>>224279

There's a reason Tomb of Horrors is a joke. It's not even the Dark Souls idea of "tough but fair", it's just something like Paranoia, but without normally telling your buddies it's just for a laugh at first. It can be fun, but you have to know what it is and running it as a normal adventure is just waiting for the players to die and then calling it a day.

With 7th Sea coming back, I recently looked into John Wick's blog, and he talks in detail about running it twice and playing it once:

http://johnwickpresents.com/updates/the-worst-adventure-of-all-times/

I'd probably send Paranoia clones through it, or use the "Death is just the beginning" idea I read in an old KODT using a similar "most dangerous dungeon ever". Though making it some sort of cursed place that keeps bringing the party back until they beat it could be interesting, if you got the time for it. I never read the entire thing, because just looking at it you realize most groups have a high chance of dying within half an hour. Maybe it gets really good by the end.

>>224284

Yeah, but

1) Players know and expect that it's possible to go through several characters each session.

2) Henchmen are a resource to manage, just like hit points or gear. "Hey, put your hand in that hole." "Hey, walk down the hall, we'll cover you." "Okay, you're the torch carrier, so you have to be first in line."

and 3) Think of old NES games, you play, you miss the jump and die. You play, you get the jump but you got shot and die. You play, you make the jump, duck under the shot, and carry on.

Characters that actually survive get to become precious.

Like I said, if you play it for what it is, oldschool murderdungeons aren't wrongfun, they're just an entirely different flavor of fun.

>>224268

Tomb of Horrors is indeed a horribly unfun module. But it's a very important adventure, because it's the one that proved, decisively, that the idea of "players vs. GM" as a concept was nonsense. It seems obvious that the GM is all-powerful now and the idea that the players can beat him fair-and-square is absurd, but the hobby is full of idiots who only understand that because it's conventional wisdom, and it only became conventional wisdom because Gygax personally enjoyed Tomb of Horroring the fuck out of everyone who boasted to him about how unbeatable their characters were.

There was also that one guy who beat it by amassing an army of orcs and using them as extra lives, sending them in ten at a time and getting regular progress reports so that he could figure out what was killing them and what the next set should try to stay alive.

>>223915

>but there's a rival faction exploring it at the same time, which adds some dynamism

That's such a simple idea, I wish that happened more often.

Adding some competition can help motivate a lot of people. At least, when they aren't the type to just kill the competition from the get-go.

>>224284

>John Wick

Isn't he the guy behind stuff like this?

>>212435

>>222678

I don't think he has any room to criticize anything.

>>224284

The first man to beat the Tomb of Horrors was a Fighter. He hurled orcs into the damn thing and refused to touch or interact with anything. He beat it without any other players. When he got to the end and saw the treasure, he grabbed some of it and ran without facing the final encounter.

>>224341

If he wasn't there they would have just died in the other rooms, I don't see what's unlikely about that.

Anyway, of the people who defend Tomb as anything more than an elaborate joke, have you guys actually played it? I haven't heard a first hand story from the one or more of you that defend it. Besides "Hurr it's so deadly!" does it have any real appeal?

>>224343

Yeah, but he was playing a thief, and got them to all take off all their valuable gear and climb into the demon mouth of death whilst he stayed behind. Stranger things have happened, but given what we know of the guy I don't buy it.

>>224345

I'm not saying Tomb is good, I'm just elaborating on anon's claim that JW's full of shit. I don't think even the guy I was replying to was purposefully implying that about Tomb's quality.

>>224348

Okay, then have you already posted what you think a damn fine adventure is? Cause I'd rather get back to hearing about more of those.

>>224344

I never played Tomb, and it sounds pretty stupid, but I don't see how the stupid sphere of annihilation just kills everybody all the time. The whole party just leaps headfirst into it because they don't know what it is and assume it's a portal? In a scenario notorious for being full of super unfair death traps? They're retarded. Nobody sticks their hand into it and brings back a bloody stump? Nobody tries probing it with a stick and brings back half a stick?

Hell, if I were running it and a character going through the "portal" just tried to step through instead of making a dramatic leap, I'd think it would leave a severed leg or foot behind and clue-in the rest of the group immediately.

>>224574

Is that bit why the 10 foot pole is standard adventuring gear, or was it standard prior to it?

>>224576

It probably helped push the idea, if it didn't start it.

Are any of the 5th ed modules out so far looking like they could be legendary in anyway? I'm getting Curse of Strahd, but I know that's mostly just Ravenloft updated for now. I know Temple of Elemental Evil has also gotten a release in every, or nearly every, edition, but no one's mentioned it in this thread.

>>224345

I ran it once as a oneshot with 6 players, warned my players that it is deadly, had everybody roll up three chars but slightly underleveld in return.

Was fun because it palyed like lemmings.

Spoilers ahead

Highlights include:

Having two hirelings in a row crushed by the stone wall/door in front of fake entrance number 1

A melee cleric losing his arm to the sphere of annihilation, becoming fatalistic because he is now useless in melee and using his remaining arm to touch everything else in the dungeon. Except he was so unlucky at being suicidal he missed the all the other dangerous things, which then proceeded to kill functional party members.

Losing one rogue-type character and having a second one massively hurt trying to defusing a magic missile trap on the ceiling, which ultimately leads to a room the characters already visited

A halfling fighter being teleported into a metallic 10x10x10ft cube with levers at one side.

He pulls them randomly, drops into another pit with vermin at the bottom. Both roll so horrible that they spend almost 5 minutes trying to kill each other until the halfling finally succumbs. During that time the rest of the party was desperately mounting a rescue operation, which found the metal cube 2 rounds after his death. another character climbs in, pulls the levers, drops onto the dead halfling, dies from the fall since he already took damage earlier.

A paladin like character getting dominated by a brain in a jar, attacking other characters. The rest of the party believed he he is acting on paladinly instinct, assists him at first.

2 small party members with heavy armor drowning in the room that floods with blood.

The party running out after killing the caster in the crypta, already in the process of packing up as they realise their mistake, stone-to-sanding their way back in, expending their highest level spells before continuing.

Touching the skull.

>>224284

Wow, read his blog post.

John Wick seems like an asshole. It's not the adventures' fault he got beaten up. It's not the adventures' fault it was written for people who actually know how to play batman-level-paranoid elite murder hobos.

Also he is flat out wrong, none of the two fake entrances are TPKs if your party is prepared which it should be. Because if you're not playing a game of "stack ridiculous magic effects to overcome arbitrary challenges", why are you playing DnD and not another system?

>>223896

I think it was the first honest attempt at a "being a dragon" setting that was good.

>Scaled adventures for different age categories

>A real setting for dragons that worked

>Dragons have real flaws

>Tools to create non-furry dragon adventures

>Tools to create normal PC's inside this setting, with an emphasis on how weak they are

>Badass artwork

If they did Council of Wyrms today it would probably be shit.

>>224586

How underleveled was the melee cleric? Shouldn't he have regeneration at this point?

>>224586

What I'm left wondering is, who built the damn place? Was it the lich? If so, how? How was he smart enough to do it and how did he do it at all? I'd imagine he'd die repeatedly putting together his own traps only to come back the next evening.

>>224587

And from what I've read John Wick has done proudly done worse to his players. Overall he seems like a whiny baby and his friends probably should have punched him more as a child.

>>224604

Being a dragon doing dragon things sounds cool. What kind of dragon adventures can you go on?

>>224604

>>223620

I always wanted to try it out. I wonder how hard it would be to convert to 5th ed.

>>224606

I don't think so. You get Regenerate at level 13 and the party ranged from level 9 to level 7 (Everybody had a level 9, a level 8 and a level 7).

>>224631

>What I'm left wondering is, who built the damn place? Was it the lich?

Yes.

> If so, how? How was he smart enough to do it and how did he do it at all?

He's a high level wizard, he probably has like a shit ton of Int. And he probably subcontracted a few demons for construction, I mean, he has his own demi plane, he can do that.

>I'd imagine he'd die repeatedly putting together his own traps only to come back the next evening.

lol

>>224631

Depends on the age category.

You can do normal adventuring type things or you can fight other dragons and their minions. Hell the grand campaign gets really political if you're into that, and the BBEG is a Dracolich controlling one of the larger dragon clans.

The setting gives you an entire world where dragon-adventuring is feasible.

>>224635

I don't think it would be overly difficult.

>>224662

>Gygax acted like an asshole

How so? To me it just seems DnD was played differently back then.

>>224656

Can I play as a dragon who always takes the form of a little girl (but still maintaining the phenomenal cosmic power of a dragon)?

>>224698

Was this meant for the "make your fetish PG-13" thread?

>>224698

>>224717

It may have been meant for the Fire Emblem thread.

Seriously, that's a thing that happened. One of the lolis in Fire Emblem is literally a dragon. But she looks like a loli.

>>224722

I know, I'm just giving you shit. I don't know about 5th ed, but I THINK in 2nd ed nearly every dragon could change shape, at least past a certain age range. If you can change into something as small as a halfling, then a human child is roughly the same difficulty.

>>224684

It's not the Tomb of Horrors that made Gary kind of an asshole for a while. Nothing he did at the table was mean spirited or wrong or even "killer DM". It's how he managed TSR As a company until he was forced out in the same way he forced Dave out.

>>224724

True.

The question is, will the DM allow it?

>>224726

What's the story?

tomb of horrors was a tournament module, and not really representative of what regular d&d looked like at the time

Are there 3E conversion rules for Council of Wyrms?

>>224726

Details?

>>225052

This, except Gary never pretended to claim wargaming as a whole. He was quite clear that he had taken great inspiration from earlier infantry and ship-based wargames.

He claimed to have invented fantasy wargaming.

And his hate of book learning isn't 100% true. He Loved language, as is clear in all things AD&D1E.

>>225197

That was an interesting read if for no other reason than seeing the problems that can arise from a decay in team cohesion. And as someone who's been long building a concept that now uses only the faintest spark of someone else's original direction, it potentially hits pretty close to home.

Also yeah, that Tim Kask guy sounds like a dick. Near the end there he goes into way too much detail on how he's a perfectly nice and likable fellow, I don't think any actual nice guy feels it that necessary to prove such. And feeling the need to go into detail on why "the toad" was so ugly he deserved to be called that doesn't reflect well either, regardless of his disclaimers. Nobody looks perfect in my gaming group either, but you know what I call them? Their names.

>>224741

I remember reading a blurb about tournament d&d in an old module or book or something and I always thought how the fuck does that even work. So, how the fuck does that even work?

>>225525

You get points for completing objectives and not dying as hard as the other team. The further you get, the more chance you have to get points, but obviously the sloppier your approach can end up, leading to mistakes. At least, that's how I understood it.

So if team A finds the secret passage in room 17, defeats the ghast in room 20 or avoids getting setting off the trap in such and such corridor, all those things would be minor objectives. I've never actually been in a tournament, but I guess it's all about clearing the place out better and not dying as hard as the other guys, within a time limit.

>>223620

Anyone have a PDF for it? I've been looking for it for a good bit of time.

>>225515

Isn't that the fault of Disney

Fucking tire scales.

>>225628

here you go

https://mega.nz/#F!AUIFVDRa!lU7RHG54mxzv6kluF_4mbA

>>225650

Thank anon, from what I've heard about this I might be co-dming this with a friend for my group.