Some time ago, I ran S1 Tomb of Horrors with a group. Here’s a little bit about how that happened, and what I think is interesting about what Tomb of Horrors does.

30 Vermin vs the Tomb of Horrors

More interested in the traps and puzzles than any combat, I used these modifications as the basis of my plan. In short, the party (collectively, not each player) has 30 kobolds (or other low-hd creatures) with which to storm the Tomb of Horrors. They have a small, shared pool of equipment. In fairness to their diminished combat stats, several combat encounters are removed or simplified.

To make things even smoother, we forwent any rolling for kobold classes, but just treated them as statless blobs. Eventually, they grew tired of kobolds, and so started on with imps, goblins, and other low-hd critters.

When one took damage, we rolled 1d4 for hp to see if they had any left. Eventually, I ruled that anything in the module that dealt 1d6 damage would deal 1 damage (they were being lost at a truly impressive rate) and anything that dealt more than that would be instant death for the vermin. This worked well and we had a more reasonable rate of attrition.

To save time at the beginning, I described the situation with the cliffside and asked if they wanted to start digging at the west end, the east end, or in the middle. Coming up with a plan of probing the cliff might allow for skill in a timed, tournament setting, but that wasn’t where we were.

Another modification: the effect that reverses a characters alignment and sex was replaced with one that transforms the evil critter into a good humanoid. I thought this was funnier.

Kaizo

When we’d done with our run-through, I realized: Tomb of Horrors is a Kaizo Module.

Kaizo games are unforgiving. They stress precision in action. A little too far, or not far enough and you’re dead. Everything is there for a reason (although sometimes the reason is to be specifically misleading). They don’t give a lot for free.

Tomb of Horrors also does something that I Want To Be The Guy (perhaps a non-typical) does well. It teaches patterns, then breaks those patterns once the player knows what to expect. Then, once the player knows when to expect a surprise, it breaks from that pattern.

This is not usually something that ought to be done in dungeon design. Players should generally be rewarded for looking for and finding patterns in the world and expecting it to make sense. But Tomb of Horrors is a kaizo, and you should expect to be punished for every reasonable action (and twice for the unreasonable ones). Suffering is the goal and nothing needs to make sense.