Our first foray into using Foundry VTT, we decided to try the 1978 AD&D 1st Edition classic adventure, The Tomb of Horrors. We are playing the Advanced Roleplaying System (ARS) ruleset in Foundry, which is essentially AD&D 2nd Edition with Ascending Armor Class. Rulebooks are available for purchase here in both PDF and print versions:
Alternatively, the retroclone For Gold & Glory rules can be used, as they are compatible and a re-organized version stuffed into a single 384 page book. The pdf is free from both DriveThruRPG, or from the Internet Archive: For those into the Edition Wars, just note that if the ARS team ever supports AD&D 1st Edition with Ascending Armor Class, we might move the ARS ruleset back to it, which would then make it possible to use OSRIC instead of For Gold and Glory.
We started with a bit of history (from Wikipedia): "Tomb of Horrors is an adventure module written by Gary Gygax for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game. It was originally written for and used at the 1975 Origins 1 convention. Gygax designed the adventure both to challenge the skill of expert players in his own campaign and to test players who boasted of having mighty player characters able to best any challenge. The module's plot revolves around the tomb of the demilich Acererak. The player characters must battle their way past a variety of monsters and traps, with the ultimate goal of destroying Acererak. Tomb of Horrors was considered the third greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by the staff of Dungeon in 2004."
Somewhere under a lost and lonely hill of grim and foreboding aspect lies a labyrinthine crypt. If is filled with terrible traps and not a few strange and ferocious monsters to slay the unwary. It is filled with rich treasures both precious and magical, but in addition to the aforementioned guardians, there is said to be a demi-lich who still wards his final haunt. (Be warned that tales told have it that this being possesses powers which make him nearly undefeatable!) Accounts relate that it is quite unlikely that any adventurers will ever find the chamber where the demi-lich Acererak lingers, for the passages and rooms of the Tomb are fraught with terrible traps, poison gases, and magical protections. Furthermore, the demi-lich has so well hidden his lair, that even those who avoid the pitfalls will not b e likely to locate their true goal. So only large and well-prepared parties of the bravest and strongest should even consider the attempt, and if they do locate the Tomb, they must be prepared to fail. Any expedition must be composed of characters of high level and varied class. They must have magical protections and weapons, and equip themselves with every sort of device possible to insure their survival.I mentioned that there is an option in the module to provide possible locations for the tomb and for the party to search to find it, but we're skipping that part to get to the action. So we assume the party found the tomb location.
From the module:
The party has arrived at the site of the demi-lich's last haunt. Before them is a low, flat topped hill, about 200 yards wide and 300 yards long. Only ugly weeds, thorns, and briars grow upon the steep sides and bald top of the 60' high mound. There are black rocks upon the top of the hill, and if these are viewed from a height of about 200' or so above the mound, it will be seen that the whole is shaped like a human skull, with the piles of rock appearing as eye holes, nose hole, and the jagged teeth of a grinning death's head.I paused here to show the illustration from the module, and commented that I think it's one of the worst drawings I've seen in the old TSR modules.
I think it looks like a jack-o-lantern, not a skull. Regardless, more from the module:
A thorough inspection and search of the entire area will reveal only that the north side of the hill has a crumbling cliff of sand and gravel about 20' high in about the middle of the whole. A low stone ledge overhangs this eroded area, and shrubs and bushes obscure it from observation at a distance.
The party looked at the east entrance first:
The corridor is of plain stone, roughly worked, and it is dark and full of cobwebs. The ceiling is only 10' high. The daylight from behind you enables you to dimly see what appear to be two separate doors at the end of the corridor.
The party looked at the entrance in the middle of the map next:
Even a bit of daylight entering through a crawl space or a torch will reveal that this is an unusual tunnel. Bright, brilliant colors are to be seen everywhere, the stones and pigments undimmed by the passage of decades.
The floor of the corridor is a colorful mosaic of stone, with a distinct, winding path of red tiles about 2' wide (the line snaking its way south down the corridor) easily visible to the onlooker. No stonework can be seen on the walls or the ceiling 20' above, for some sort of cement or plaster has been smoothed over all of the surfaces and then illustrated. The scenes painted show fields with kine grazing, a copse with several wolves in the background, slaves (human, orc, elven, and strange human-animal mixture - pig-human, ape-human, and dog-human) going about various tasks. Certain of the frescoes show rooms of some building - a library filled with many books and scrolls, a torture chamber, a wizard's work room. There are chairs, windows, boxes, bales, doors, chests, birds, bats, spiders and all manner of things shown on the walls.The party decided to enter the decorated hallway first. Dumb Cleric (Steve's character) led the way because of his high AC, "tapping" the floor with his mace checking for floor traps.
As the party continued down the passage, they noticed a small chest attached to the wall:
The most outstand-ing feature of this area is actually outstanding! Two jackal-headed human figures are painted so as to appear to be holding a real bronze chest.
Dumb Cleric got excited to go inspect the chest, and moved toward it without tapping the floor, and he tripped a trap door in the floor. He fell into a pit with 5 poison-coated spikes, but managed to miss all the spikes. This effectively made the chest almost impossible to inspect, because what was 3 feet above the floor was now 13 feet above the floor of the pit. After he was pulled out of the pit, Pippin cast a Detect Traps spell, which revealed a lot of pit traps in the corridor. The party followed him as he walked around the traps. The purple areas on the map below indicate where each trap was detected, and it includes the small chest on the wall.
One note, as the team continued down the hall past the first pit trap, the map shows a door on the west wall. This is the actual description from the module:
This area is where the torture chamber is painted, and the wall hiding this passage shows a painting of the iron door which evidently confines some sort of a horrid creature (its taloned and scaled hands grasp the bars of its small window which can be loosed to torment prisoners.The door can be seen in drawing #3 above.
At the south end of the hall, the path splits in two, leading to a devil's head to the right, and an arch to the left.
Here is the description and drawing of each from the module:
One section of the path shown on the floor leads directly into this archway. There is a misty veil across the archway.
The other fork of the path leads right up to an evil-appearing devil face set in mosaic at the corridor's end. The face has a huge "O" of a mouth; it is dead black.
The Holiest. inspected the devil face, and tried to touch the black mouth with her 10 foot pole. The pole started to enter the mouth, and the end of it disappeared from view. When The Holiest. pulled it back out, it was now a 9 foot pole. The first foot of the pole was no longer attached.
When Dumb Cleric approached the arch to within 1 foot of it, three stones on it started to glow. The bottom left stone was yellow, bottom right was orange, and the keystone at the top of the arch was glowing blue. The group pushed on the glowing stones, and noticed that each time they pushed, the stone would stop glowing then light up again (like pushing a button). They tried a lot of different combinations and nothing happened.
Dumb Cleric decided to push his mace through the mist to see what happens, and before he could stop it, it was pulled from his grip and disappeared into the mist. He decided to just step into the mist to go find his mace. He disappeared into the mist, and found himself in a 10 foot by 10 foot room:
This miserable cubicle appears to have absolutely no means of egress. There are 3 iron levers (about 1' long) on the south wall ofthe chamber. These levers will move horizontally or vertically, singly or in combination.Dumb Cleric decided to move them (from left to right) into the Up, Up, and Down position. When he did this, the entire floor opened up and he fell 100 feet to the bottom of a pit. The fall hurt him a lot, but did not kill him. However, the trap floor closed up, and he is stuck there, wounded with no hope of escape.
Meanwhile, at the arch, the party finally touched the right sequence of glowing stones for something to happen (left, top, right), and the mist in the arch disappeared, showing the path continuing down a hallway. Pippen tossed his whole rope through the arch, it disappeared, with no sign of it in the hallway on the other side of the arch.
The party decided to tie a rope to all 5 of the remaining members, and entered the archway one after another, and were all teleported to a new room, with what appears to be a broken, 8' tall statue of a 4-armed gargoyle with a broken off 4th arm on the floor nearby.
MZC attempted to reattach the arm on the statue, while Pippen explored a tunnel out of the room. He saw that there was a dead end around the corner. Meanwhile, MZC gave up on the statue arm, and walked to the end of the tunnel, where she tried to lean against the wall, but fell through, yelling for help. The others came to find her, and found that the wall at the end of the tunnel was an illusion that you could just walk right through. They looked around the new room they'd found, here is the description from the module:
This area is similar to the entrance with the devil head and misty arch, for the floor is of inlaid tiles and the walls and ceiling are painted with figures of animals, strange signs and glyphs, and humans and human-like creatures with spheres of different colors. These globes are 2-dimensional, of course, and their pattern aredescribed below. From north to south on the west wall the figures and spheres appear as follows:From north to south on the east wall the figures and spheres appear as follows:
- GOLD held high above head
- (Door)
- ORANGE held waist high
- (Door)
- PURPLE at feet
- BRONZE held waist high
- GRAY at shoulder
- (none)
- BRIGHT BLUE at feet
- WHITE held high above head
- TURQUOISE at shoulder
- SCARLET held waist high
- PALE GREEN at feet
- PALE BLUE at shoulder
- SILVER at feet
- GREEN held high above head
- YELLOW at shoulder
- PINK held high above head
- BLACK at feet
- PALE VIOLET at shoulder
- (none)
- RED held waist high
- BUFF at feet
- (none)
- INDIGO held high above head
At the south end of the hall is a misty archway similar to the one in the entrance hall.Pippin's Detect Traps spell was still in effect, so he saw that both doors appeared to be trapped (the purple outlines on the map).
Since the party walked through the illusionary wall and came out through the golden sphere in the northwest corner of the hallway, Pippin decided to try to climb through the light blue sphere that was on the opposite wall. This earned him -1 hp and a bloody nose, as the sphere was just painted on the wall.
MZC decided to try to disarm the trap on the north door, but failed. She triggered the trap, which sent a spear flying out of the door opener. She made a successful save vs. spells, so was not hit by the spear. Thinking that the trap had been sprung, Pippin opened the door, which triggered the (magic) trap again. He also made a successful save, so was not hit by the spear. He also opened the door fully, learning that it was a false door, as there was only stone beyond it.
The party continued down the hallway, tapping each painted sphere to determine if there was anything trapped or out of the ordinary. They decided to ignore the arch for now. They determined that only the "BLACK at feet" and "RED held waist high" spheres on the east wall were illusionary, both having tunnels behind them. They decided to go through the BLACK sphere first, moving in single file since the tunnel was so narrow. The tunnel sloped downward, then reversed direction to go back under the hallway.
The tunnel twisted along for a while (Pippin's Detect Trap spell is now expired), coming to a dead end. After spending some time searching for secret doors, Ballador Darkhammer finally succeeded in finding one at the end of the hallway. Opening it, the party moved into the room:
They will see what is obviously some form of temple area. There are scenes of normal life painted on the walls, but the people have rotting flesh, skeletal hands, worms eating them, etc. Yet there are also depicted various religious symbols of good alignment. What a puzzle! Could the demi-lich actually have been of good alignment? There is a mosaic path leading to the altar, and to either side great wooden pews face the worship area. A wooden railing divides the room, and south of it is the altar, a tiered dais with a wooden chair (nicely carved and padded), 2 large brass candelabra holding 5 white candles each, and in each corner a large white pottery urn stoppered with a brass and wood plug. A human skeleton in black chain mail (badly rusted and torn) points to an archway, similar to the others previously encountered. However, the mist in this archway is filled with luminous orange vapors of an exciting hue.
This is where we stopped play for the day. In September we'll pick up play again in this location. Given Steve's character is effectively dead, and Mer doesn't have a character, we'll add 2 new characters in this room next time.
Two more minor items of note. First, we haven't had any combat encounters yet in the new VTT, I'm hoping to change that next time! Second, I had a playlist of some 1976 electronic music that I forgot to start, it plays through the VTT and everyone can control their own volume level. We should try it next time. See you then!
