Post with 1 note

This is an ongoing series, detailing the adventures and happenings of five players running through the classic Tomb of Horrors, from the 1st edition of Dungeon and Dragons, converted to 5th edition.



At the end of the previous session, I was determined to give the players something new to deal with in the dungeon, since all they’d encountered so far were traps, and I wanted to avoid the gameplay becoming repetitive.

The session opens in the new hallway, the “second grand hallway.”

The floor of this great hall is covered with inlaid tiles, and the plastered walls and ceilings are painted with signs and glyphs. Spaced along the walls are life-sized portraits of humans, humanlike creatures, and monstrous beasts holding 2-foot diameter spheres painted in different colors. Twin iron-bound doors are set into the western wall among the carious portraits. An archway stands at the south end of the corridor, the area beyond it filled with thick roiling mist. You look behind you at the crawlspace you just came out of and are surprised to see there is no opening. Instead, you are facing the painting of a smiling man pressing down a cider-press into a circular red barrel. Only when you put your hand against the barrel do you the barrel is an illusion covering the passageway you just emerged from.

I don’t like this hallway. Its main purpose is to confuse the players and (if they take the archway) loop them back to the first hallway. It is the “hall of delay,” and that sucks for everyone. My goal in the first part of the session was to rush them through this hall as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to lead them in the right direction, but I wanted to get certain things out of the way.

For instance, traps. There are NO traps in this hallway. But that, of course, is counter to what any party would be thinking by this point. Especially as this is kind of a mirror copy of the first hallway, the danger feels real… even if it isn’t. Making it worse is that most of the passages out of the hall are concealed in the paintings on the wall, and there are TWENTY-TWO of them to examine. Again, none of them have traps, but every player will think they have traps. So this is set up for a long, arduous session of rolling just to figure out what their options for proceeding are.

I don’t want that. So I have the party make one big perception roll (adding all their results together and comparing it to DC 65). The result will be the same regardless: I’m going to tell them EVERYTHING that’s in this room. But I will have the roll affect how long it takes. If they roll really poorly, I’ll not only say that several hours have gone by (that mysterious Harrower draws ever nearer) but I’ll give them a level or two of exhaustion as well. They roll fine, though, so I avoid any major penalties, decide only an hour or two has gone by, and lay out their options.

The two doors are trapped. They don’t know how, but Geth definitely knows the doors are faked and he can’t think of any reason for that except to hide a trap. Four of the circles lead to other rooms—one of them the chest chamber they came from, and which the players have now dubbed the snake room, assuming that Otto’s force cage has worn off and the room is slowly flooding with snakes.

I also throw in one piece of world-building, of my own design, just to spice things up. They find a journal on the floor, from a previous explorer of the tombs, and it talks of his time here. It… doesn’t go well for him. For one thing, he brought his wife along and she, of course, dies. To be fair, she was an adventurer, a Cleric, but… still. Bad move. My favorite part is a piece about a strange elephant juggernaut that traps the explorer in a dead-end staircase. He waits there, hearing his dead wife call to him from under the crushing weight of the juggernaut. He sits there, slowly losing his mind, until something else finds him.

And that’s where the journal ends, with a splash of blood across the page.

At work that day before the session, I mock up the pages of the journal, typing them in a cursive font, and then covering them with butter and baking them in a popcorn machine for an few minutes to make them look old and yellowed—yes, this is insane, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as I’d hoped, and so I end up crumpling the pages up and stomping on them a few times to at least make them feel worn.



I think it goes over well. Everyone likes hand outs. Even if they smell like popcorn.

Altar Room

The players thankfully move on pretty quick (though they insist on setting off one of the trapped doors, just to see what Ikbaldi looks like with a spear through his pancreas), and by reading the riddle again (”night’s good color”) they end up choosing the right passageway to progress further in the dungeon. Another crawlspace takes them to a dead end hiding a secret door. “Wouldn’t it be terrifying,” Geth muses, “if something were to attack us in here?” The thought makes me think that a GM could easily have fun in these crawlspaces by inserting a burrowing creature (like a souped up Carrion Crawler or a dumbed down Grey Worm) into one or more of them, but I let it go for now. I’ve already got something planned for them in the next room.

This temple has scenes of normal life painted on the walls, but the people have rotting flesh, skeletal hands, worms eating them, and so forth. Yet there are also depicted various religious symbols of benevolent faith. A mosaic path worked into the floor extends from the secret door in the north wall down the middle of the room to an altar made of opalescent blue stone that glows with an inner light. A wooden railing divides the room, with wooden pews north of the railing facing the worship area to the south. Behind the altar rests a nicely carved and padded wooden chair atop a dais flanked by two large brass candelabras holding five white candles each. In the corners are two white pottery urns stoppered with brass and wood plugs.

An archway filled with luminous orange mist is set into the west wall beyond the railing. Nearby it, a skeletal corpse lays with one outstretched, pointing towards the orange mists. The corpse has been here a long time: its armor has rusted so that links of metal have sunk into the bones.

Otto has special knowledge here that I give him: this room shows the fall of several gods and seems to imply that the best way to weaken a god is to remove its followers. It is a concept called “Sacroisolationism,” and some scholars propose that it was the death of certain fabled gods, such as The One Who Was.

*Side Note: the concept of Sacroisolationism I gleaned from reading the extended works of Acerak. Return to Tomb of Horrors, and the 4th Edition rendition of Tomb of Horrors both state that Acerak’s greater goal is to join the pantheon of death as a mortal made into a god. In some way, his plan to do this always invovles stealing the life force of the gods. In my timeline, this room represents Acerak’s initial efforts towards that end. When he was young (in my cannon) he was excited simply to discover that gods could die and built this room as a testament to and reinforcement of that fact. It wouldn’t be until much later that he would realize their deaths could be engineered and his plans would become more nefarious.*

This room is cool. There’s a lot here, and we will get to each piece of it in time. First, though, I want to mention a new addition to the room, something I added:

There is also a large tapestry hanging down behind the altar. It depicts two Minotaurian creatures fighting each other. The one on the left has has a more humanoid face, almost ogreish, and it has a red beard. It must stand at least eight feet tall, and wields a spear just as large. Its hind legs are bent backwards at the knee joints, like a goat’s, and seem incredibly, disgustingly muscled. The spear’s blade is serrated on one side, so it looks like it could saw as well as stab, and the blade drips greenish blood.

Facing him is a more thick creature, wide and hairy, with a classic minotaur’s bull face. It wields an impossibly large axe. Its dead black eyes seem to follow you instead of its opponent, as you examine the tapestry.

When I was a kid, my very first RPG was a series of books called Lone Wolf, by Joe Dever. As the books and the community have remained a part of my life for over twenty years, I could spend a lot of time talking about them here. I’ll skip all that and give you this link to where you can check them out for free online.

In Book 13, you infiltrate the fortress of a group of evil druids. In one of the rooms there is a tapestry depicting the “Exterminus,” who crawls out of the tapestry to fight you. He is a tough friggin’ fight, and the inspiration for the tapestry here. I wanted to basically recreate that fight, but Lone Wolf uses a far simpler system, so I needed to stat from the ground up a minotaurian beast.

Building a Beast

First of all, why? I talked about this a little bit in my last blog post, but my gaming philosophy is that when players build characters what they are really building is a set of “solutions” to potential problems. That is what everything boils down to: character backstories and plot hooks are solutions to story problems. Skills are solutions to non-combat problems, like traps and environmental dangers. Combat abilities are solutions to monster problems. Character personalities are solutions to roleplaying/interaction problems. Player’s OWN intellect and wisdom are used as solutions to riddles and puzzles. A good campaign lets players explore all of these solution aspects. When DMs complain that their players are min-maxing too much, or that the game is starting to feel dull, more often than not it is because the game is focusing too heavily on one or two of these solutions and not presenting enough of the other problems.

Tomb of Horrors falls into this trap (no pun intended). It presents a lot of trap and secret door challenges, and a lot of puzzles and riddles, but very little combat and no social interaction or roleplaying opportunities. So part of my goal in redesigning it for 5th Edition was to add in as many as these other problems as possible. Thus, the deeper room descriptions, the time limits, and (in this room) a tough combat encounter.

I went onto Reddit and Giant in the Playground and asked for some cool builds for a high level minotaur. Two ideas that were presented really stuck with me: One was for an invisible minotaur. Another was for a minotaur who had a permanent jump spell, and could gore as part of a leap action. I mixed the two ideas together, added in a spear poisoned with a “slow effect” poison and BAM had my first minotaur figured out, the one with the red beard and the goat legs. I named him Exterminus, after the Lone Wolf monster.

For the second minotaur, I wanted something a little more bruiser, and something that would distract the players from the more mobile minotaur. So I built a brick shit house of a minotaur, and then gave him the phase ability to go into and out of the ethereal plain (to keep him from being trapped in a corner) and also a “bloodied” effect. Bloodied effects aren’t really included in 5th edition, they are a part of 4th edition. I love the concept though: when a boss monster reaches half health, its abilities change and it gets meaner. In this case, the minotaur has acidic blood that begins to splash over everyone nearby, acting essentially like aura damage. Even worse, after a certain number of turns go by, he explodes in a wave of acid, like the boomer from Left 4 Dead, or the bombs from Final Fantasy. I gave this guy a gigantic axe, named him the Axeterminus (I know, I’m clever like that) and BAM had my second minotaur.

I designed the monsters this way because I wanted the combat to feel like it had elements of a trap. Axeterminus is essentially a moving trap after he becomes bloodied. It feels like something Acerak would create.

A Fun Little Discovery



In any case, the players don’t fight right away. First some other interesting things happen. Chad summons a Fire Elemental and totally botches the rules on how it works. First, he misinterprets the way damage is written in DnD 5 and instead of realizing that 5 (1d10) damage means he deals an average of 5 damage with a hit, he thinks the elemental deals 5d10 damage upon contact with a creature. Offsetting this is his misunderstanding of its movement rules. There is a rule that when a Fire Elemental moves through water, he loses hit points. Chad thinks this is for EVERY space he walks on, so his elemental drains hitpoints from itself when it moves.

Still, doesn’t matter much, because his messed up monstrosity deals an average of 25 fire damage every time it touches you, on top of whatever melee strikes it makes. I’m too busy running the other mechanics of the room, so I don’t notice the error, and thus is created UBËR FLAME, the Fire Elemental from the deepest pits of the nine hells. More on him later.

Otto investigates those pews, and when the first one doesn’t set off a trap but reveals gold coins, he tries another. That does it: poison gas is released in the room, permanently reducing Otto and Geth’s strength scores. They now walk around like hobbled kobolds. But Otto finds in the pew a scroll of Speak to Dead. They decide to use it to talk to the skeletal corpse.

But not before slamming it into the altar. They are convinced the altar does SOMETHING—and they are right—and they are pretty sure a sacrifice is what activates it—and they are wrong—so they figure the skeleton might set it off. It does nothing except shatter upon it, the head rolling off across the floor. The party still avoids touching the altar. Darn.

Now Chad uses the scroll, and casts Speak to Dead.

Enter DM’s demon voice.

Chad: What is the best way out of this room? Skeleton: The Portal…… Take…. the archwaaaaay….. Otto: What does the altar do? Skeleton: It grants POWER…. To those who can…. Who are powerful….. Geth: Can it hurt us? Skeleton: Power…. Always dangerous….. Now I rest.

The adventurers (except Tiniya, very vocally and Britishly) decide that the skeleton is completely trustworthy, and Ikbaldi enters the archway.

Geth: What do you see? Ikbaldi: It’s just a room! There’s nothing here. Geth: your voice sounds different. Ikbaldi emerges from the misty archway, and…

Here I break down with laughter. I can’t help it. I find this trap hilarious. Geth and the others stare as Ikbaldi emerges from the gate. Ikbaldi never wore a shirt, and now that fact is highlighted by the two behemoth sized breasts swinging free, unencumbered by even the most basic of chainmail bikinis.

Ikbaldi has become a woman. I picture gamers from Gary Gygax’s day cursing and pounding the table, refusing to continue playing their manly dwarf if he’s now a woman. We live in more enlightened times. Ikbaldi’s player thinks its funny, too, though he does have Ikbaldi tear off a strip from her pants to use as a makeshift bra.

Geth is still convinced there is something to this archway. The trustworthy skeleton told him so, after all! He convinces Otto to go with him to investigate the archway, and moments later a blonde haired, flat chested, and somewhat sickly looking female rogue emerges from the mists, followed by a scowling raven-haired female necromancer of approximately middle age. Ottolina doesn’t look well—in fact, the gateway doesn’t only reverse sex, it reverses alignment as well. Otto was Lawful Evil, which means Ottolina is Chaotic Good, which means she is regretting her entire necromantic life. It also means that Ikbaldi is now Lawful Evil, and eyeing the party of mostly do-gooders with distaste while she distractedly rubs the edge of her axe.

Geth is True Neutral. She doesn’t give a shit as her alignment can’t change. But she’s still convinced there is something to this archway, that the skeleton was a total bro when he said it’s the best way out of the hall. So she and Otto go through a second time. Their alignment is reversed again, and they lose a permanent 2d6 of hit points. Only, Otto’s necromantic class means he can’t permanently lose hit points. And Geth’s True Neutral alignment means there is nothing to reverse. So the end result is that Otto gets her evil back, while Geth… loses life permanently. And is still a woman. And getting nowhere in this dungeon fast.

But of course, there’s no way the skeleton was being dishonest, so Geth goes through the archway a third time. This time, she doesn’t reemerge. Or at least not here. Instead, Geth finds himself (yes, sex is reversed again) back at the sphere hallway, completely naked. All of his equipment has disappeared, except for the fate dial.

Which he loses no time (pun intended) in using. Six seconds are reset and Geth, still a woman, still 8 permanent hit points weaker, stands cursing next to the archway. Then she walks over and stomps the skeleton’s head into a fine powder.

Such is the group’s distraction (Chad happily points out he is now the only man in the party) that no one notices that one of the minotaurs seems to be missing from the tapestry…

And that’s where we will stop for now. The session goes on, but this post is getting long. In actuality, this session ended mid combat, so next time what we’ll do is cover the full combat, taking out the break and make it one big post. That’s More Exciting Anyway (which is also the name of the next post).