A Halloween Treat from 2005

I was pretty busy last Halloween, so there's no way I would have noticed this, but apparently, Wizards of the Coast has updated the canonical Dungeons and Dragons adventure Tomb of Horrors to the new rules, and, in a surprise move, released it as a free download. Out of all their properties, that is perhaps one of the most memorable, so it's pretty cool that they decided to do that rather than charge everyone for an update, something I suspect they could have easily done by having it ride on the coattails of its earlier success.

And I'll tell you, few scenarios would need updating more than Tomb of Horrors. One of the deadliest adventures ever published by TSR (there are places where the entire party could get wiped out with no saving throw if they do the wrong thing - and "wrong thing" is defined as everything but a handful of right things), Tomb of Horrors was very tightly wound around the first edition rules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, making it basically impossible to run in the update rules systems without changes. Even if the tomb was just translated in the usual fashion, it still would need tweaking, since the introduction of specialist wizards would practically guarantee that a party would be doomed with their only hope was a spell from their wizard's opposed magery school.

The reason I stumbled upon this is that my buddy Byron, while a pretty avid and experienced player, has never gone through the Tomb of Horrors and expressed interest in playing. I think it will be a fun nostalgia trip, but I'm in no rush to go back to the 1.0 rules set, so this updated version will fit the bill nicely.