the last sentence of the last paragraph under the heading: An Early Look at 2010
Though, on the other hand, I wonder how ToH will look if they update it to better match 4e encounter flow philosophies as well: less trial and error, few (if any) "gotcha" traps...
Also, a preview of Revenge of the Giants mentioned that Acererak would be appearing in that. That implies the two super adventures are linked in plot.
I mean, people who sit down to ToH generally know what they're getting into. This definately shouldn't be the norm, but I would like to see some exceptions in this super adventure.
Well. There it is.
Sincerely,
Lord Dreadman
EDIT: Fixed a typo.
I think 4E's skill challenge system makes this dungeon a nature fit for this edition.
Copious use of the Acrobatics and Athletics skills to avoid getting mutilated by the traps in the dungeon would be a very good use of the system. I haven't looked at a lot of skill challenges in books thus far, but there needs to be a lot more physical skill challenges, IMO.
Would have prefered vault of the drow or slavers redo by far.
In any event this adventure always bored me.
I think 4E's skill challenge system makes this dungeon a nature fit for this edition.
I don't really agree. It seems to me that this edition pushes for integrating traps into encounters with monsters, rather than being standalone in nature. ToH was mostly stand-alone traps. Though I do agree that most of them would make good skill challenges, so I am probably going to buy it anyway and see, ToH is my favorite module and I have managed to play it at least once in every edition, so it will be good to ba able to play it in 4th.
Lame.
Would have prefered vault of the drow or slavers redo by far.
In any event this adventure always bored me.
I can't say ToH bored me, but I too would have preferred to see the slavers series redone. To me its kind of like an overlooked classic.
Copious use of the Acrobatics and Athletics skills to avoid getting mutilated by the traps in the dungeon would be a very good use of the system. I haven't looked at a lot of skill challenges in books thus far, but there needs to be a lot more physical skill challenges, IMO.
Forgive me, but this brought back memories of watching Super Sloppy Double Dare years ago.
I can just see Mark Summers as the DM saying "Do you talk to the gargoyle or do you take the physical challenge?"
I don't really agree. It seems to me that this edition pushes for integrating traps into encounters with monsters, rather than being standalone in nature. ToH was mostly stand-alone traps. Though I do agree that most of them would make good skill challenges, so I am probably going to buy it anyway and see, ToH is my favorite module and I have managed to play it at least once in every edition, so it will be good to ba able to play it in 4th.
Some traps are like monsters, others are like skill challenges, and some can be dealt with as both. At any rate, I don't think the dungeon will need many more monsters, but would it be so horrible if they had to throw in a couple extra demons, undead, and elementals?
I think the real challenge will be making this dungeon playable (arguably, the original wasn't) while still preserving the original's lethality or the illusion thereof.
Forgive me, but this brought back memories of watching Super Sloppy Double Dare years ago.
I can just see Mark Summers as the DM saying "Do you talk to the gargoyle or do you take the physical challenge?"
YES!!! I would have never thought of that.
You know, having a D&D module that plays like a 1990s children's game show would be an awesome April Fool's Joke for WotC to do.
Rapan Athuk, now THAT was a TPK machine!!!! We lost the wizard in the first encounter, the gargoyles kept grabbing him and dropping him repeatedly!
Rather than a stream of "You touched that? Bang, you're dead. You opened that? You fall asleep and a guillotine chops your head off.", I'd rather see players consistently challenged by situations that make them wonder how the heck they'll get out of them, then feeling very pleased with themselves when they do.
On thing to keep in mind, when talking about Against the Giants super adventure, they said it was inspired by Revenge of the Giants, not an actual remake.
(Psst... Against the Giants was the original series, and Revenge of the Giants is the one coming out next month. Just remember that "revenge" comes after something. :P)
(Psst... Against the Giants was the original series, and Revenge of the Giants is the one coming out next month. Just remember that "revenge" comes after something. :P)
HAHAHAHAHAHA, oops, my bad, got soooo excited over Dark Sun, I goofed.
Lame.
Would have prefered vault of the drow or slavers redo by far.
In any event this adventure always bored me.
Ugh, no more Drow please, let them rest for a few years & focus on another type of monster. Slavers would be ok. Now the question is, is it Tomb of Horrors or is it the 4e version of a Tomb of Horrors style adventure!
Ugh, no more Drow please, let them rest for a few years & focus on another type of monster.
I gotta say, yeah, enough Drow for now. I'm Drow'd-out. Most of them seem to be just about killing Lolth, anyway. Has any other race been so overdone on so few concepts? Sheesh.
Nonetheless, I encourage people to check out my update of the Tomb; for anyone who's ALREADY checked it out, I've been tweaking, remodeling and updating it constantly based on playtests.
It maintains a lot of the form of the original Tomb, but has corrected a lot of problems that conversion to 4E has introduced.
Check it out, in my signature. And if you already have, check it out again, it's more streamlined and updated since my original 'beta' post on these forums.
Incidentally, to people who have concerns over such an old module being updated... it's actually not THAT bad for updating.
You can get 90% to a viable 4E module without changing any of the gotcha moments or layout. And the rest of the 10% is forgivable... such as combining two extremely dull encounters into one interesting one, or adding more puzzle solving and less 'gotcha' moments to a couple traps... or revealing doors and passages that require Perception checks on every single damn square in a room to find.
You know. Stuff that detracts from a game.
EDIT: Of course, even the most liberal conversion of the Tomb is only two levels worth of dungeon crawling; I'm certain this conversion will be really expansive, more along the lines of Return to the Tomb, which is really exciting to me. Seriously, the Tomb of Horrors really, at best, only has 19-20 encounters--hardly a super adventure, so this conversion of theirs HAS to be larger.
...maybe even something like Return to the Tomb of Horrors, but not ACTUALLY that adventure? An alternate story? That'd be cool..
Unless, of course, they go all mega-dungeon on us.
I'm fairly certain that the titular tomb will be the last part of the adventure, with the adventure beforehand leading up to it.
Unless, of course, they go all mega-dungeon on us.
The only way they can go mega-dungeon and have it be a 'super adventure' is modify the thing far more severely than I have, which I'd actually DISAPPROVE of. Except for where changes needed to be made to make the Tomb fun (which admittedly was not necessarily one of Gary Gygax's intents with the tomb =P), my Tomb is more or less a blow-by-blow conversion. And it's two levels long. That's not even enough adventuring for a regular adventure, much less super adventure.
Nah, I think they'll be doing basically a remake of the Return:
Stage #1: Find the Tomb
Stage #2: Plunge the Tomb
Stage #3: Stop Acererak from taking over the world.
Though, on the other hand, I wonder how ToH will look if they update it to better match 4e encounter flow philosophies as well: less trial and error, few (if any) "gotcha" traps...
ToH & 4e are on compeletely oppisite ends of the spectrum....
So I'll bet cramming ToH into 4e will result in something nowhere near as satisfying to defeat as it used to be.
Hey, folks. Back from GenCon, exhausted as all heck, and my feet are in more pain than I would think possible with a mere 10 toes and two heels. (I committed the cardinal GenCon sin of only bringing new shoes with me. :eek
But I wanted to chime in on this. See, Andy Collins gave me permission to share one (and only one) piece of specific information on the 4eToH. And that is this:
The reason that it has such a wide level range is that it's not a single, play-all-the-way-through-and-stop adventure, the way most published adventure products are. Rather, it's meant to be spread out throughout the length of a campaign, as an ongoing plot arc to which the PCs return time and again. For instance, they might play through the events of the first part at one level, then gain a handful of levels via completely uninvolved adventures*. Then, they experience something that draws them back into the ongoing plot, and go through the second part of the book, and so forth, learning more about the ultimate schemes and objectives of our villain during each step.
*I say "uninvolved adventures," but the DM can certainly choose to link them to the ongoing ToH plotline if he wishes.
So ultimately, it's less a single adventure than a number of linked adventures that form a recurring plotline, much like you'll see villains and plot points recur in a TV series. (The Shadow involvement in Babylon 5, for instance.)
This does sound, though, like the Tomb itself will be significantly less deadly than the original, with the focus shifted to the plot surrounding the tomb rather than the challenge of the tomb itself.
I think I'll run ToH in Darksun maybe in UnderTyr...
Sounds fantastic. I've always been a fan of Acererak and the Tomb. I wonder if they will be using the Bleak Academy and its environs at all in it?