Tomb of Horrors

Dungeon Module S1  Tomb of Horrors
Once Judges Guild had demonstrated to TSR that there was money to be made in publishing Playing Aids for their popular role-playing game, TSR began to publish their own Playing Aids, which they often termed modules. Dungeon Module S1  Tomb of Horrors was not the first such product from TSR, but it's the one that stands out best in my memory. The copy I have is a 1981 reprint, but a friend who frequently refereed for our group acquired the original around 1978 and it is that original monochrome cover edition that gave us so many hours of gaming fun. The module for high level PCs comes with a 20-page illustration book that really takes the player inside the "tomb" as most of the rooms have accompanying illustrations. TOH is notoriously deadly and I believe was designed to be so. According to gamer legend, Mr. Gygax is supposed to have designed TOH to be a challenge for the best players with the most powerful characters (or to humble some fellas who kept bragging about their PCs). My friends and I certainly enjoyed testing ourselves as players by sending into the Tomb our highest level characters, usually to die. The number of monsters in TOH is relatively small, but traps and puzzles abound. This is old school, save-or-die White Box D&D and we knew most of our characters would die in the dungeon, but the challenge to make it to the end, defeat ol' Acererak (it's his tomb) and take his treasure was irresistible. We would play our PCs up until they were high enough level to have a chance at the "Tomb", then hopefully send them in. Most died, but any that survived had passed the ultimate test and had earned eternal fame at our gaming table. The short list of survivors of the TOH were our PC celebrities. Sometimes we didn't have any high level PCs ourselves, but were impatient and begged the referee to let us play in TOH with the pre-generated PCs found at the back of the module. TOH is one of the reasons our little group never did much with high level PCs as barons, temple high priests and retired old wizards playing at politics...we killed most of them off in Acererak's Tomb. I recently revisited TOH in the form of reading the novel, given to me by that same friend who refereed TOH years ago.

The Tomb of Horrors uses the old module S1 as setting for a story involving two rival groups who enter the Tomb for competing reasons. The story unfolds as they struggle with each other as well as to overcome the traps, puzzles and monsters Acererak has left for them in his Tomb of Horrors. Inspiration for creativity takes a twist with The Tomb of Horrors, a novel inspired by a module for a game inspired by fantastic fiction. And with that I am feeling a bit trapped yet again by the Tomb of Horrors.