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S1: Tomb of Horrors

2020-06-06T23:43:37Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:517D:53B7:DEE6:995F: /* How bad is it? */

{{Oldschool}}
[[Image:TombOfHorrors icecream.jpg|thumb|It's Sphere of Annihilation flavored.]]
The original "bust your ass and then hand it to you on a silver plate" dungeon itself, the '''Tomb of Horrors''' is an adventure module for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] that proved to be a legendary source of considerable [[rage]], with [[Gary Gygax]] listed in the author credits. It's used as the textbook example of an adventure that's meant to make players cry; while most of the "intruders keep out" traps in D&D tombs are designed to lightly tickle PCs without killing them because character death is Bad, the Tomb of Horrors's "intruders keep out" traps are designed to ''keep fucking intruders out'' by killing them as gruesomely as possible.

''(If you kids had any grey in your neckbeards, you'd know the Tomb is nothing compared to Gygax's [[Isle of the Ape]]. [[Grandpa Dreadnought|Now get off my lawn!]])''

It was the first module to have an inset booklet with illustrations of key areas in the dungeon, so players could get a feel for what it looked like.
The better for them to picture how they die brutally of course.

== How bad is it? ==
It's an [[Old School Roleplaying|old school]] module, so if you're not used to that play style, expect culture shock. The introduction also carries a [[Troll|warning]] that it is a module for thinking people, destined to frustrate [[Rip and Tear|kick-door-fight-orc]] gamers. If you prefer adventures that challenge your problem-solving abilities, then this will be a very difficult test and good fun.

{{Spoilers}}

Just to get INTO the damn thing, you have to probe a marshy hillock with that 10' pole every character buys. When you find the entrance, there's a 2-in-3 chance it's one of the fake entrances, which have either [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|a rigged cave-in for 5d10 damage]] or a 10' thick airtight stone crusher blocking off the exit. If your DM mentions a rumbling sound and starts counting at 1 1/2 second intervals, run out of there as fast as you can.

The real entrance has concealed pit traps with save vs. poison or DIE spikes. If you somehow lost that 10' pole you used to find the entrance and you do your probing for traps with your feet, you have about a 15% chance of getting spiked, not that the pole will be completely useful since there's a decent chance (1 in 3) that you don't trigger a pit while checking for them. A mosaic path will lead you around the pits, and has a poem engraved in it with clues for the tomb's traps you have to be reeeeal close to read, and the path goes over all the pit traps in the hallway... except one pit where the path leads you around it. What a [[Eldrad|dick move]].

There's the glowing archway at the end of that path that you have to touch the archstones in the right order, otherwise it teleports you into an oubliette with a 100' pit trap if you guess incorrectly with the unmarked release levers. The path also leads into an engraved mouth large enough to enter; it's the exit point of a few teleport traps elsewhere in the Tomb. The mouth is actually a [[Sphere of Annihilation|Sphere of Fucking Annihilation]]. Just in case the players think they can climb back in to return to the trap they triggered, the mouth helpfully detects as evil. Lastly, the main exit can be found by breaking away a relief of a door to find... a door.

There's a gargoyle statue with three arms that are carved to hold gems. It's likely that this will be encountered after fighting a four-armed gargoyle wearing a collar studded with ten gems. If you put expensive enough gems in the three hands (like the ones from the collar), they get destroyed, and nothing happens. If you use ten gems in this way, you get a gem of True Seeing, but the gem itself is invisible so you don't know it's there unless you cast a True Sight spell to detect it... or listen to the Magic Mouth that tells you where it is. Since so many illusions in this place are impenetrable without True Sight, you are doomed without this gem.

Many of the doors you see are actually fake, opening on a solid wall, and two of them conjure a spear that jabs the nearest person in the chest. Even if you went straight to the demi-lich's tomb, you'd have to successfully detect 11 secret doors, including one at the bottom of a pit trap (still with the save-or-die spikes) and another is a fake door that has a secret door in it AND a secret trapdoor in the floor on the other side.

Then there's the fake boss-fight room -- which is shown in the illustration on the outside of the module just to fuck with people who saw it in the game store. The description for the fake boss-fight actually instructs you how to be a dick by telling the DM to count to 10 while a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|Rocks Fall]] illusion is going on, and tells the DM to put the game away, after asking if the module was too hard.

The real end-boss monster is a floating wizard skull that steals someone's soul every time someone touches it -- [[Old School Roleplaying|NO SAVING THROW]] -- turning their body and equipment into dust. Fighters need '''+5''' magic weapons to hit it; thieves can throw gems at it, causing 1 hp of damage for every 10,000gp of value in the gem; clerics can dispel evil for 5 HP of damage; and magic users have to be in the astral plane for any spells to affect it. After stealing eight souls, it teleports everyone else 100-600 miles in a random direction and curses them so that anyone that attacks you never misses (and you lose 2 points of charisma permanently if the curse is removed). '''Fighting him is entirely optional,''' since the skull only reacts if someone's stupid enough to touch it. The awesome treasure on the floor is protected by a phantasm that will threaten players, but can't actually do anything unless the players attack it enough, which gives it the juice to turn it into a ghost. If the players are still in 'touchy-touchy' and 'hack-and-slash' mode by the time they got this far, they get what they deserve.

Don't even think about jumping into the ethereal or astral planes at any time; there's a 1 in 6 chance that you'll run head first into a type I-IV demon every round you remain in them.

There are 20 pregen characters in the back, and it's recommended that players bring two characters each if there are less than six players.

The funny thing is that the module actually isn't ''really'' directly unfair as such; it just challenges the players' assumptions about how the game is played. While there are some obviously dickish parts, the problems you need to solve aren't shockingly abstract, you just need to be really ''really'' careful.

== Versions ==
[[File:SpeedTombofHorrors.jpg|thumb|right|homebrew variation on the original map; fewer dead-ends]]
* Adventure Module S1, ''Tomb of Horrors'' (1978)
* Adventure Supermodule S1-S4, ''Realms of Horror'' (1987). Has several differences from the 1978 version, including the mouth turning you into a zombie.
* Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Tomes, ''Return to the Tomb of Horrors'' (1998): Actually gave a reason to go there other than graverobbing. Added a village of evil cultists outside the tomb, then you went through the Tomb itself (the original module was included in the box), but in the final room you found instead a portal to the demi-lich's fortress anchored in the motherfuckin' Negative Material Plane, yet another module designed for maximum [[TPK]]. Came with an even bigger book of illustrations to show the players.
* novel, ''The Tomb of Horrors'', by Kieth Francis Strohm (2002) holy shit, it is bad.
* 36-page pdf, ''Tomb of Horrors (Revised)'' (2005) You can [http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a (Dead Download Link, no longer available)] for free.: This is a re-edit for [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|D&D 3.5]]. It was less deadly with "save or die" instead of instant death, made the end-boss a tiefling lich, and added an extra room with a brain-in-a-jar.
* ''Tomb of Horrors 4e''. This is actually a series of four tombs, designed to build a campaign around (although the tombs vary in difficulty from 9th to at least 25th level, so it'll be a looooong campaign): a Feywild graveyard, the wreckage of the 2e negative-material-plane module, the wreckage of the ''original'' tomb which now hosts a bunch of evil squatters, and a tomb to dead god''s'' in the Astral Plane. The plot of the adventure concerns the demilich who built the original tomb coming up with a plan which will allow him to ascend to godhood by draining power from various planes It's been [[nerf]]ed to match the 4rry attitude ("instant death" is now encounter powers with "fail three saving throws then die"), but it's still pretty deadly with encounters that have endless streaming monsters and boss monsters you're supposed to run away from instead of pwn outright. The fourth tomb has plenty of those 'Aspect of [God's name here]' monsters for extra fun. Players are supposed to return to the original tomb to fight the demilich final boss -- /tg/ highly recommends making them go through the full old school Tomb.
** It should be noted that the intro to the module specifically says that if you're the old-school kind of DM, use Rule Zero to turn those "three saves" into "one save" or "no save". Remember, gaming is about fun for everyone!
* There's also another 4th Ed version of the module, which is closer in spirit and content to the original O/ADnD Module (as in, you can actually die easily. In 4th Ed. What the Christ.)
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''[[Tales From The Yawning Portal]]'' (2018): Includes a conversion of the Tomb as the final adventure, for "high-level" characters. It's actually rather faithful to the original on paper, but 5e's carebear attitude to character death means that only the obvious instakill traps can really threaten your players' magical little snowflakes. And they didn't include the handouts from the original module. '''''FUCK.'''''
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''[[Tomb of Annihilation]]'' (2018): More of a spiritual successor than a remake. A mini-campaign balanced for organized play that focuses on one of Acererak's pet projects in the [[Forgotten Realms]] that threatens to create an undead god-abomination.
* In Act I of [http://thiefmissions.com/info.cgi?m=Calendras_Legacy_v1a Calendra's Legacy], a fan mission for ''Thief II'', there's an easily missed mini-version of the Tomb.
* A [http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=197 Neverwinter Nights version] of the original Tomb is available if you want to see your savegame characters get killed repeatedly.
* A [[Minecraft]] version of the original Tomb can be found. No monsters, no save-or-die, but it's a nifty first-person perspective on the Tomb.

[[Category:Modules]]
[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]]

Scorrow

2020-06-06T22:47:01Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:517D:53B7:DEE6:995F:

'''Scorrow''' are a monster indigenous to the [[Eberron]] setting of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. Natives to Xen'drik, they are essentially their world's analogue to [[Drider]]s, being half-drow and half-arachnid [[aberration]]s and tied to the arachnid-themed drow deity. Who in this case is the Scorpion God [[Vulkoor]] instead of the Spider Queen [[Lolth]].

Unlike driders, though, scorrow are not transformed drow - they're a true breeding race in their own right. Their numbers are relatively low, because they reproduce infrequently and, frankly, they're not very good parents. See, scorrow hate weakness, and as such any child of theirs who can't keep up with the clan is swiftly left behind, a fate that few, if any, survive. Never mind that Scorpions don't do that shit at all in real life, in fact they are remarkably GOOD parents.

The scorrow believe that they were once the most skilled tribe of drow hunters in all of [[Xen'drik]], so much so that Vulkoor himself was impressed. As a sign of his approval, a monstrous god-touched scorpion came to the village and stung every member of the tribe, with its magical venom transforming them into the first scorrow. They say it still lurks in the jungle, and may reappear to the worthy to offer them a gift. They still follow their old life-style, living alone or in small clans that migrate through the jungle in pursuit of food.

As you can probably tell, scorrow definitely have a heaping helping of elven arrogance. Combined with their predatory nature, they disdain all other races, although not to the point of being impulsive killers - you can reason with them, but it's hard.

Despite common roots, the drow/scorrow "alliance" only extends so far as drow respecting the scorrow and the scorrow not seeking to war on their former kinsfolk. Working together happens rarely, and only if the scorrow feel the drow are worthy of their company.

Scorrow traditionally practice dual-wielding the machete-like "drow long knife", pairing it with boomerangs for ranged combat. A small minority, called the Clawborn, have rending pincers in lieu of hands; these can't use weapons obviously, but they're skilled and powerful enough that they are no less lethal.

Sadly, unlike the drider, the scorrow never really reached the mainstream audience of /tg/, and thus it did not spark a surge of interest in sexy scorpion-based [[monstergirls]].

See also: [[Girtablilu]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]] [[Category: Monsters]] [[Category: Monstergirls]]
[[Category:Eberron]]

Drider

2020-06-06T22:46:45Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:517D:53B7:DEE6:995F: /* Monstergirls */

[[File:Pale Drider.png|300px|thumb|right|Fun fact: originally, driders were supposed to turn pale white as part of the transformation, perhaps to mimic a freshly molted spider?]]
'''Driders''' are a creature that originated in the [[Forgotten Realms]] of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. They are basically [[centaurs]], but replace "human half" with "[[drow]] [[elf]] half" and "horse body" with "giant spider body". Basically, the batshit crazy [[Lolth]] has a history of transforming her followers into half-spider monsters for shits 'n' giggles.

In the original lore, transformation into a Drider was supposed to be a punishment for those drow who failed one of [[Lolth]]'s various psycho-tests or for a male who pissed off a high priestess so bad murderraping him to death wasn't punishment enough. [[Wat|It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense]] considering that [[Lolth]] herself is basically half-drow and half-spider in her favorite avatar-form, that she considers spiders sacred (her original title was ''Demon Queen of Spiders'' for chrissakes) and Driders are actually ''more'' powerful in crunch than the drow they were made from. So when 4th edition came around, the fluff got changed to match the crunch and getting Drider'ed became a cherished reward for her most worthy followers instead. 5th edition went back to the old fluff, arguing that Lolth is batshit insane and that few if any of her actions makes sense at all.

[[Pathfinder]] made driders into the results of twisted mutative "[[fleshcrafting]]" done on failures with no divine connection at all. It also introduced a classic [[monstergirl]] sexual dimorphism; female driders look like sexy half-drow half-black widows, whilst male drow are hideous spider-faced half-tarantula brutes.

In Eberron, Drow instead worship the scorpion god Vulkoor, and thus have [[Awesome|drow/scorpion hybrids]] called [[Scorrow]].

==Monstergirls==
{{Monstergirls}}

Since the basic picture of a Drider is inevitably a sexy black-skinned elf-lady atop a giant spider, centaur-style, it should be no surprise that they have taken off as one of the more common forms of [[monstergirls]]. Non-explicitly D&D based ones tend to be called Arachnes, however, since, y'know, trademarks and Arachne being the woman who became the first spider in Greco-Roman myth and all. These monstergirls are often depicted as dominatrixes (if not outright vorarephiles, more on that later), particularly favoring bondage, since they can spin restraints out of their own silk - though there is an almost equally strong tendency to portray them as surprisingly timid and demure. Some actually invoke both, either by having the arachne possess a facade of shyness or demure mannerisms that gives way to domination in the bedroom, or by having them act assertive and domineering in public, but be shy and tender lovers in the privacy of the bedroom. Surprising if you look into actual spider behavior, it's not too far removed depending on the species. Some have elaborate 'dancing' such as with the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratus_volans peacock spider] (watch it, it's pretty cute, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYIUFEQeh3g and quite memeable.]) others males 'pluck' the web of the female like a musical instrument to serenade. Others do 'cuddle' after reproduction, and there are at least a few species of spider that do the bondage thing and tie up their mating partner... although it is typically the male that ties the female down so he can have a chance to have his way with her without getting eaten by the much larger and stronger female (Yeah, Mother Nature is something of a /d/enizen like that at times...). Driders might also be into super hard core (i.e. mutilation) chastity play. In some species of spider males will mutilate the female after having sex so that potential rivals can't grab hold of the female to mate properly. In some other species, male spiders have been known to break off their dick to plug the reproductive organs of the female (this presumably also counts as CBT).

Oh, and while we're on the subject, the idea that the female spider eats the male as a post-nookie snack is only partly true. Most species of spider do have a documented cases of a female eating the male, but her actually doing so is the exception rather than the rule. What's more, different species have the female eat the male for different reasons, the above one being particular to black widows; females of other types might eat a male because she doesn't like his mating dance, for example. Since spider penises don't grow back, males that break their dick off tend to let themselves get eaten without resistance.

It's also surprisingly common for [[monstergirl]] Driders to [[/d/|parasitically lay eggs inside of humanoid hosts with an ovipositor]], [[Rule 34|especially through the vagoos of nubile human or elfin maidens]]. Precisely why, nobody freaking knows, especially since first, Driders are almost always depicted as sterile in D&D (Lolth might be crazy but she doesn't want to create a self-sustaining rival race to her beloved/hated Drow - she has the [[chitine]]s for that) and second, spiders just don't do that sort of shit in real life. Like, at all. Among arthropods that's mostly a wasp thing, [[Grimdark|the eggs are usually injected into the body like a syringe rather than deposited in a space with a tube, it's done with the idea that when the young hatch they feed by eating the recipient - '''alive or dead''' - from the inside out]] and as an ironically fun fact, spiders are known for being at the receiving end of it; there is a reason why Tarantula Hawks have that name.

So all in all, a race of driders whose sexuality accurately reflects that of actual spiders would have the following characteristics:
* [[Vore]] would be the single most common paraphilia amongst them, but still a paraphilia.
* Being into bondage however would be the norm, and not at all a paraphilia for driders like it is for humans.
* Depending on the species of spider you want to draw from, the females could be aroused by things like Dancing or String Music (although this probably wouldn't help to curb the stereotype [[bard|bards]] have gained in 3e).
* Parasitic egg-laying would be the subject of primal (potentially even freudian) nightmares rather than anything they engage in as part of ''their'' reproduction.
** If you are such a hardcore /d/eviant that you absolutely ''must'' include this, then invent some sort of wasp monstergirl and make the driders the victims.

===MGE===
The [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] has no fewer than 6 varieties of spider-based mamono:
* The '''Arachne''' is the common variant, and is basically a typical dominatrix spider-girl.
* The '''[[Hengeyokai|Jorogumo]]''' is a Zipangu variant who acts polite and demure during the day, but reverts to the same aggressive, sexually dominant behavior as her mainland cousin at night.
* The '''Ant Arachne''' is an arachne variant that has adapted to resemble the appearance of a Giant Ant mamono; these lazy bums infiltrate Giant Ant dens, where they freeload off of the food and captured men that the Ant-girls work so hard to provide. In case you're wondering, this is actually biologically accurate and there is a whole Taxonomy family of spider which mimic ants.
* The '''Ushi-oni''' is another Zipangu arachne; based upon a yokai that resembled a giant spider with an ox's head, it's essentially a [[minotaur]]-girl from the waist up and a giant tarantula from the waist down. They are amongst the most brutish and uncivilized of the Zipangu mamono, being essentially even more aggressive than minotaurs.
* The '''[[Girtablilu]]''' is essentially the [[Scorrow]] of the MGE world, taking its name from an actual scorpion-taur monster. It uses aphrodisiac venom to ensnare victims. If your wondering why Scorpions and Spider monster girls are in the same family, it's because Scorpions and spiders are in the same biological order: ''Arachnid''.
* The '''Atlach-nacha''' is a Mythosian mamono, and as such one of the freakiest; in its native form, it resembles a [[loli]] with spider legs growing out of her back, but she uses her magic to transform men into giant spider-like abominations, with a "head" that is basically an orifice full of sexual organs and aphrodisiac venom-injectors into which she slots herself to take up the traditional "tauric" appearance.

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Fireside Spinning Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Atlach-Nacha.jpg
File:MGE Ant Arachne.jpg
File:MGE Jorougumo.jpg
File:MGE Ushi-oni.jpg
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]][[Category: Monstergirls]]

Scorrow

2020-06-06T22:44:11Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:517D:53B7:DEE6:995F:

'''Scorrow''' are a monster indigenous to the [[Eberron]] setting of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. Natives to Xen'drik, they are essentially their world's analogue to [[Drider]]s, being half-drow and half-arachnid [[aberration]]s and tied to the arachnid-themed drow deity. Who in this case is the Scorpion God [[Vulkoor]] instead of the Spider Queen [[Lolth]].

Unlike driders, though, scorrow are not transformed drow - they're a true breeding race in their own right. Their numbers are relatively low, because they reproduce infrequently and, frankly, they're not very good parents. See, scorrow hate weakness, and as such any child of theirs who can't keep up with the clan is swiftly left behind, a fate that few, if any, survive. Never mind that Scorpions don't do that shit at all in real life, in fact they are remarkably GOOD parents.

The scorrow believe that they were once the most skilled tribe of drow hunters in all of [[Xen'drik]],i so much so that Vulkoor himself was impressed. As a sign of his approval, a monstrous god-touched scorpion came to the village and stung every member of the tribe, with its magical venom transforming them into the first scorrow. They say it still lurks in the jungle, and may reappear to the worthy to offer them a gift. They still follow their old life-style, living alone or in small clans that migrate through the jungle in pursuit of food.

As you can probably tell, scorrow definitely have a heaping helping of elven arrogance. Combined with their predatory nature, they disdain all other races, although not to the point of being impulsive killers - you can reason with them, but it's hard.

Despite common roots, the drow/scorrow "alliance" only extends so far as drow respecting the scorrow and the scorrow not seeking to war on their former kinsfolk. Working together happens rarely, and only if the scorrow feel the drow are worthy of their company.

Scorrow traditionally practice dual-wielding the machete-like "drow long knife", pairing it with boomerangs for ranged combat. A small minority, called the Clawborn, have rending pincers in lieu of hands; these can't use weapons obviously, but they're skilled and powerful enough that they are no less lethal.

Sadly, unlike the drider, the scorrow never really reached the mainstream audience of /tg/, and thus it did not spark a surge of interest in sexy scorpion-based [[monstergirls]].

See also: [[Girtablilu]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]] [[Category: Monsters]] [[Category: Monstergirls]]
[[Category:Eberron]]