Walk through of the first edition Advanced Dungeon and Dragons module, We will discuss the deadly tomb of the Demi Lich Acererak. We will go over some iconic rooms and traps like the Green Demon Head room.
Thank you so much. That mean a lot. I posted my first video a month ago. I am just trying to make interesting videos. Let me know if there is anything that you would like to see next.
I have a reputation for running this adventure over a dozen times. In one of them, a human 29th level Barbarian, who supposedly killed over 6 gods and took their weapons, died in the first third of the adventure, rotting away in a sealed room. The player was foolish. In another, a halfling 8th level Cartographer got through the entire dungeon and mapped almost ALL of the tomb! The player played wisely. (The map disappeared later, replaced with a scroll letter from Acererak himself stating he was impressed and wanted to hire the halfling for further explorations the lich had in mind, and gave a demon companion who ethereally followed the Cartographer around everywhere. Some blessings are worse than a curse.) In my opinion, the real joy in this adventure is that more than any other classic D&D module it challenged the PLAYERS as much as the characters!
I think the more modern way of playing (4-6 players) is just not enough for this type of adventure. Of the 15+ People that went inside back in the day, only like 4 or 5 usually came back out. Sometimes even less. This dungeons has so many dead PCs buried beneath it.. it really earned the notorious reputation it has lol
As kids (13 or so) in the 80's my friends and I played this module with the same mentality as kids in the arcade playing video games. If the party had a TPK, let's roll up some new characters and go at it again. After two TPK's we made it to the final grand finally. It was fun then, but after reading it again (as an adult), it was not as good as I remembered because it was not geared for a storyline. Just a meatgrinder made by Gygax who got tired of listening to people who were running their mouths about being so good at D&D and could not lose a character... so Gygax came up with this gem.
When I ran this one, my party pretty much easily made it through the tomb. They were all puzzle enthusiasts and loved the puzzles and challange. However they fared much worse against the Demi-lich. 4 out of 6 players were killed(two irreversible) and the two survivors both had less than half their hit points. All in all it gave us years of stories to tell...good times.
@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler I still recall when we first played it, at the time it was well known as a party killer, and it did just that.. When it came out, although I bought it before i knew, it caused quite a stir in the D&D world and even said it was daft and stupid for wrecking peoples long time characters, now I know I'll definately keep hold of it. Oh and at the time I took photocopies of the in game images so as to protect the ones that came with it, this was mostly for further use at the time.
@@Sarah-JaneR32 I've got the original 1978 version with the pink cover and that has a roster of 20 characters (incl. their magic items) plus a matrix of number of players vs. the recommended character mix. It's a "Death Test" tournament meatgrinder dungeon, with the players vs. Gary Gygax, so you're not really meant to use your regular characters with it.
This dungeon taught me how to explore every dungeon. The tournament version had time pressure, but as a stand-alone, you should take your time. Recon with spells like clairvoyance, locate object, etc. You can literally walk all over the top of the hill and map the whole dungeon. Legend Lore Acererak and that should give you an idea of what you are up against. A familiar or animated skeleton or zombie should be point man and trigger any traps without damaging the player characters. Passwall or disintegrate your way through the dungeon. A few simulacra can make initial contact with the demi-lich, so that you can see what works. Good luck!
In my running of the adventure, any plowing through walls would most likely summon demons from the ethereal or astral to where the walls disappeared. If you looked at the map staircases you can see that the pillared throne room was over 120 feet below the top of the mound, so what horrible things were buried in that vast section of the mound, the party would soon find out. Oh, and any teleport spells simply would not work in the tomb. No cheating 😁
@@justifan So the God King DM can change the rules to TPK, because the party may not use spells to do literally what they exist for. I believe your aim is off on who is cheating.
Hey Richard, it's criminal how many subs you have got. Please keep producing this stuff I reference your videos a lot and like how you explore these old modules.
'I got sucked into a hole that formed the mouth of a devil face mosaic, and now I'm standing in front of another one like it. If I climb into the new hole, oresumably I'll be teleported back where I came from.'
Besides our host, did anyone else ever play this module in a serious way and do well? Just finding your way round is hard. There are tons of opportunities to make unforced errors with deadly consequences which is fair enough - but there are at least a couple of traps which can easily mash everyone whatever you do. Not everyone's idea of a fulfilling time.
I played it, i still have the module, but never did well, actually many wanted it changed and were upset as it was a 'party killer' at the time, as many traps are death with no chance of saving
@@SwampCritter-df4od If I played the module I'd do as much mud-moving as I could get away with. If the dungeon insists on playing dirty and hard to navigate, I see nothing wrong in the players exploiting their strengths to the full and reshaping the place like beasts. It'll still be a tough experience even with extensive rock blasting and the spraying around of information-gathering spells.
In my running of the adventure, any plowing through walls would most likely summon demons from the ethereal or astral to where the walls disappeared. If you looked at the map staircases you can see that the pillared throne room was over 120 feet below the top of the mound, so what horrible things were buried in that vast section of the mound, the party would soon find out. Oh, and any teleport spells simply would not work in the tomb. No cheating 😁
thhinking persons module> No way. The traps were not "well thought out" they were designed to f**k with the players. Oh, you go through this door? Fine you are teleported to the front, naked. Why? To guote Gygax, it was very amusing for the Dungeon Master.
The horror is all coming back to me now. My group played this when it first came out on the market. I had to Nerf it hard to keep from killing everyone at the get-go.
A fake lich that is actually a zombie?? You mean to tell me after all the character deaths we had playing this module back in 1982 we actually did not complete module? OMG! LOL
