14 thoughts on “Deathtrap Dungeon World: Moves from the Tomb”

  2. Admittedly that kind of dungeon is not my cup of tea, but do the custom moves look a little excessive to anyone else? I mean, on a 10+ for the Misty Archway, you go somewhere nice but lose your gear, your race, and your gender. On a 10+ for the Clay Vats, you get a key but also get beat up in two separate ways. A lot reads as “Congratulations, you succeed! Your character dies, but your family is able to recover the body and hold a tasteful funeral.”

  5. These are completely true to the source material. The Tomb of Horrors was not designed to be fair…often interacting with a trap at all was a mistake. One big “gotcha” dungeon, pretty much. It was not enjoyable except in the sense of competition with the other teams (it was originally meant as a competition module, I think). 

  6. The problem with Tomb, in so far as there may be one, is that it was one of the first commercially available modules. Back in the days before internettes far too many DMs I knew took it as a a positive example and guide for how all dungeons should be.

    That being said, you do have to appreciate a really deadly trap. These days I would try to provide lots of visual clues to how deadly it might be.

  8. Oh yeah, the Tomb is obviously it’s own beast and problematic to me for a dozen reasons. (And like Doug mentioned, circumstance is part of that.)

    My issue here though is that those outcomes don’t sound like SUCCESS and thus feel odd as DW moves. Do you feel like you’ve outsmarted a difficult trap if you lose all your gear or are murdered by an ochre jelly that was itself part of the trap? Even if you’re into brutal traps, these custom moves look suspect to me.

  9. I agree they do not fit with the spirit of DW. Think of it this way: you as a player have already failed to avoid the trap by the time you trigger these moves. So really this is the GM saying “well give me an Acrobatics check to see if you avoid the worst anyway.” Your “success” is not getting completely screwed over despite the “golden opportunity” you gave the GM by touching a thing.

    These are effectively GM-side hard moves. (Especially apparent in that most of the triggers are simply “investigate” or “touch” the trap.)

  10. While I don’t care for these personally, I think these are great examples of something.

    You can adjust the “difficulty level” of Dungeon World by changing what “success” means.

    In “normal” DW, getting a 10+ on a move means you get everything you want, and maybe even a little bit more. In “Tomb of Horrors Mode”, things are so deadly that getting a 10+ means you only just barely made it.

    These are great examples for people starting to write their own custom moves. You don’t increase or decrease the “difficulty” of a move by applying numerical modifiers to the dice roll. Instead, you adjust what success means.

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