Freakohollik said:
A lot of posters are claiming that this is a "bomb squad" module and not a "thinking person's" module. I don't see these things as mutually exclusive and it seems that Gygax didn't either. I would say that most of the bomb squad elements are what makes this a thinking person's module.
I feel that a lot of posters think that the module should have a solution to all the problems written into the module. Instead, solutions are often left out and the task is placed soley on the party to figure out what to do. And if even if you do die, you can just get resurrected.
Yes, meticulous bomb squad-style play is a sort of thinking play. But as I've mentioned several times through this thread, that is not the style of play many of ToH fans portray it as.
This is not a matter of some of us wanting ToH to be different than it is, it's a matter of so many ToH fans telling us it is different than it is.
For instance, read this description of ToH:
First, TOH is primarily a test of player ability and not of character ability. There is almost no combat in TOH. There are very few saving throws in TOH. There are numerous traps that by pass hit points completely. Until the very final encounter, which seems by intention to be one that the wiser player avoids, what is on your character sheet is almost irrelevant in determining whether you succeed in the module.
Secondly, this amounts to a spoiler of some sort, but Tomb of Horrors is fair. Acererak plays fair. He's so uncannily and unusually fair given his apparant goal (killing adventurers) that it had to be lamp shaded and explained in the game universe in 'Return to the Tomb of Horrors'. He's not using reverse psychology on the players to force them into guessing what's behind door #2. If you must guess whether to go left or right, then success depends largely on luck. Acererak follows a pattern and sticks to it, so that with care you really don't have to guess after you successfully enter the tomb. If success depends on hitting the target AC or making a saving throw or doing enough damage when rolling damage, then success is at least in part luck and even a party which makes the correct choices might still be defeated in the module. Tomb of Horrors is almost entirely singular in being a killer dungeon where this is not true. If you make the right choices, you can 'beat the dungeon' with practically a party of 1st levels. Of course, with 1st level characters you'd practically have to be perfect in your play, to the extent that I think no one could do it without having first read the text, but really to 'beat the dungeon' requires you to make no big mistakes in play anyway and so even 10th level characters only gain the ability to survive minor mistakes.
This is the main reason why Tomb of Horrors has acquired such a reputation. It really is entirely different from everything else. S2 'White Plume Mountain' is a killer dungeon, but its often a killer dungeon in the obvious sense of having very dangerous monsters. The puzzles are still there, but environment is reduced to being only an equal threat and challenge. A first level party even making all the right decisions still has no chance of defeating the module, because so many dangerous monsters stand in the way. By something like S4: 'Caverns of Tsojcanth' its almost entirely the dangerous monsters and the ability to make saving throws and use your characters abilities effectively that determines success. It's not remotely the same sort of dungeon.
This post, here on ENWorld, received a bunch of xp awards with comments like, "Great analysis," "Exactly right," "Very good explanation."
So many people think/believe/espouse the above as truth about ToH. But as we've seen in this thread, most of it is completely and demonstrably false.
Now, I'm not calling out the particular poster who said all the above, nor the people who gave the post xp. It is just one of many examples around here, (and from outside ENWorld), but it is a recent and extensive example, and it is from the thread that prompted Stoat to start this particular discussion.
I feel that a lot of posters think that the module should have a solution to all the problems written into the module.
No, it's that we have always been told that the module gives a solution to all the problems. But it doesn't. And we're left wondering why this has been misrepresented to us.
Again, this is not all to say that ToH isn't, or doesn't deserve to be, a legendary classic D&D module. It's just very odd that ToH's biggest fans describe it as something very different than what it actually is. The way the ToH's fans describe it, I would think I'd love it. I'd love to run/play a module with the style and features it is said to have. But when you read/play the actual module as written, it's very disappointing to see that it is not at all like how it is described.
It's like hearing that a particular movie is a deep mystery story, but when you watch it you see it's actually a thriller horror flick. When you complain that it's a horror flick, someone else comes back with, "What did you want? A mystery story?" Well, yeah, that's what I was told it would be.
Bullgrit