Sorry for the late post, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for players who experienced this during yesterday’s session. Around Christmas, my group will be doing a session that is a one-shot adventure with a Christmas theme. This year, I decided to try Halloween as a theme!
A while back, Draconic wrote a post about putting a group of kobolds into a meat grinder-like dungeon. This brought me back to this Reddit post about someone converting part of the Tomb of Horrors from Tales from the Abining Portal into a kobold meat grinder.
Let’s be honest. In D&D, nothing is considered more of an iconic meat grinder than the Tomb of Horrors. No one is safe from the deadly traps, difficult encounters, and absolute barbarity of the Tomb of Horrors.
Using kobolds instead of high-level PCs saved me the time of having everyone create multiple high-level characters and the heartbreak of losing most of those high-level characters. Just roll for new kobolds and keep moving forward.
White Plume Mountain in Tales from the Yawning Portal was a fun time for my group, so I already had high expectations for the adventure. Needless to say, I was not disappointed
Prepare a Tomb of Terror for the Kobolds
The kind folks at Roll20 provided me with a review copy of Tomb of Horrors, which is part of the Tales From the Yawning Portal pack. This is my first time using the company’s Adventure add-on, and I think it’s well worth the $8.99 price tag.
These adventure add-ons allow you to create new games using modules purchased from the Roll20 marketplace. When you start the game, everything is already ready.
All creatures are in place, all handouts are filled in, all the monsters you need are in your library, and dynamic lighting is set up.
Like when I ran White Plume Mountain, it saved me hours of time setting everything up from scratch. I also noticed that for all the traps I use reference materials, which are much more convenient to look at on the spot, rather than using a copy of the book.
With all that being said, you don’t need to use Roll20 to run Tomb of Horrors: All Kobolds Must Die Edition. This can be done directly, on a virtual tabletop program using simple map drawings or copies of official maps, or by creating your own maps using cartographic software. Masu.
No matter how you slice it, this will require a map. If you use the Theater of the Mind playstyle and try to track down every random trap, location, and secret passageway, you’re doing your group a disservice. Players need every tactical opportunity they can get.
encounter change
Now, we had to make some changes to Tomb of Horrors to allow for completion and to make it fair for players using kobolds instead of high-level characters. I used all the necessary and recommended changes in the Reddit post, but I’ll summarize them here in case you don’t click on that link.
Remove the gargoyle. The giant skeleton instantly kills everyone in the room. Greater Zombies can only attack once per turn. Remove the ocher jelly and replace it with the acid in the tank. Remove the mummy owner. Acererak can be defeated with a single use of Disintegrate Wand. Otherwise, it is TPK.
The idea is to remove many fights where a small group of kobolds has zero chance of success (see Kobold Fight Club post for details). The Gargoyles, Ocher Jelly, and Mummy King just waste everyone’s time fighting unwinnable battles.
Greater Zombies can be defeated by brave kobolds, but you’ll need to remove a bit of their action economy to increase your chances of success.
Greater Skeletons now pose a greater threat, but are housed in chests in side rooms, so this is a completely optional fight. The instant kill mechanic only speeds up the encounter. I get the same results when I run it, but it takes 20 minutes to run.
It is also OK to change the ocher jelly. For our kobold party, there isn’t much addition to the dungeon other than long and frustrating battles.
Device
1x 5′ Pole 10x Piton 1x Thief’s Tools 5x Detect Magic Scroll 1x Disintegration Staff (2 Charges)
All of these supplies are basically needed outside of the Wand of Disintegrate, which exists solely to provide players with a way to defeat Acererak.
Unlike higher-level characters, kobolds do not come with consumables, magical equipment, or spells (with the exception of the Sorcerer variant). Tomb of Horrors requires each item listed at some point throughout the dungeon.
That being said. There are many ways to lose these items. Death will be the most common, as these items will not teleport to reserve kobolds outside of the tomb. However, there are also traps and rooms that strip items from characters and teleport items to Acererak’s lair.
However, it is, in a word, a “tomb of fear.” Unless you’re playing a character you’re attached to, it’s unfair, harsh, and hilarious. All you have to do as a DM is give them the tools to succeed. After that, it’s up to the dice and the player’s wits.
checkpoint
ViCaelestis also recommends adding checkpoints to make your adventure a little easier. These are simple blue circles that become active when a kobold steps on them for the first time. When a checkpoint is activated, a new kobold can step on the blue circle at the entrance and will be teleported to the last activated checkpoint.
1st Checkpoint: Sphere Hall 2nd Checkpoint: False Tomb 3rd Checkpoint: Pillared Throne Room
I decided to add these because I wanted to speed up the game a bit, and this helped a lot. Additionally, you can only teleport to the last activated checkpoint, so it’s not like you can just fly around the tomb to encounter cheese.
It definitely helped streamline the game, and I don’t think it hurt the experience at all.
Running Kobold Meat Grinder
Tomb of Horrors has always been a super fun game, but the Koboltstorm version was something else entirely. First, it’s hysterical to see a small, unsuspecting group of kobolds tasked with a suicidal mission to defeat a lich in a lair of death traps.
That being said, Tomb of Horrors is designed to be a struggle for high-level PC parties. Almost every trap here has a very high chance of instantly destroying unsuspecting kobolds. They don’t have the luxury of resting, healing, and moving forward like regular groups.
However, Kobolds have numbers. The party gains 30 “lives” to run through the Tomb of Horrors. Their deaths and failures will usually be visible to their new kobolds. They will see their friends impaled, slammed to the bottom of a pit, and countless other deaths, but they will learn what not to do in the area.
To begin with, you won’t encounter many battles in Tomb of Horrors. But in this homebrew, they are even fewer in number, but much more dangerous. Like most traps, each player has a 50% chance to completely kill a normal kobold in one hit.
Depending on how cautious your group is, I think this adventure will require 6-8 hours of play, or 2 sessions. My group started very slowly and cautiously, but after the first few deaths from spike traps, we started gaining momentum and threw caution to the wind.
What I want to change
Removed many of the DC 20 Perception checks required to find some secret doors. Because kobolds have such profound wisdom and intelligence, many of these secret entrances remain secret, making dungeons a little more difficult than they need to be.
The Secret Door Complex in particular is one example of turning a complex door into a simple illusion. Another option is to simply make the DC much lower than 20. This makes sense for high-level characters, but not for kobolds.
That being said, this is not a required change. I simply wanted to speed up the game a bit.
Roll20 specific comments
Especially in the Roll20 module, there are a few spaces where the dynamic lighting needs a little work. Two particular places that lack dynamic lighting are the two false entrances to the tomb. All you need is a simple line that can be removed by the DM after the players have cleared the tunnel.
There are also some secret passageways that you can’t see. The Great Hall of Spheres was one particular location where dynamic lighting was an issue. Please take a quick look at all secret passages before playing this adventure.
These issues are easy to fix yourself before or during the game, but we hope to see them fixed in a future update.
That being said, it was great to have the creatures, maps, lighting, and handouts all already created. All I had to do was read the module (also on Roll20), make some homebrew and lighting adjustments, and my group was ready to play.
conclusion
This is a thorough meat grinder. Be upfront with your players that they will die over and over again, sometimes in unfair ways. But to be honest, they play as NPCs with no attachment whatsoever. They should have no hesitation in dying.
I had a lot of fun planning and executing this, and I think the players enjoyed the madness too. When running Meat Grinder, I always have my players create disposable characters, but giving them a creature to control is an out-of-the-box solution that works surprisingly well in high-level dungeons like this. did.
This was a nice break from the usual games and very suitable for a Halloween session. This iconic adventure is filled with death, immortality, and bizarre antics.
