Monday 9 February 2015

The Joy of the Tomb of Horrors

I'm currently running the party through the good old Tomb of Horrors, much to the disgruntlement of one of the players who has been complaining endlessly about how everyone is going to die horribly. Whine, whine whine.

Anyway, it's a bit of a side-step from the main campaign, and I've been struggling with the old D&D3.5e freebie version, trying to run it pretty much on the fly and convert to 5e at the same time. That rewrite was, as I've said before, not very good, either in terms of layout, nor as regards the placement and explanation of various features of the dungeon. I've missed (or misinterpreted) several things simply because the full description of what should be going on was located in some completely different location in the document, and it's really been pissing me off. Add to that the fancy-schmancy 3e-style map, which adds a whole lot of needless fooferaw and consequently decreases its actual clarity and usefulness.

I've just got hold of another rewrite, this time one that appeared in Dragon #213, for the then-named D&D Next — the working title for the playtest version(s) of D&D5e. It is so much better in every way than the 3.5e version. It is a model of clear, rational layout and description (with the exception of a couple of stat-blocks that crowd the text somewhat) and I really wish I'd had it to begin with.

Ah well, not to worry. I can switch over to it quite seamlessly as far as the players are concerned.

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