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Tomb of Horrors: Actual Play Podcasts (Part 2)

What do you get when six experienced gamers that have never played the Tomb of Horrors try to survive a delve into the most infamous dungeon adventure in D&D history? A whole bunch of exciting actual play podcasts. With a DM who plays for keeps, the players continue to match wits with a dungeon famous for killing all who dare to enter. So far none of the PCs have died, although there have been a few very close calls.

In this article we bring you episodes #4 and #5, which make up the second night of our ongoing adventure. Before diving intop these podcasts, make sure you listen to the first three Tomb of Horrors: Actual Play Podcasts.

Tomb of Horrors Episode #4, session 2 part 1

The PCs find themselves in the hall of spheres. Along the walls various monsters are depicted, each interacting with a different coloured globe. The PCs discover that some of the globes are merely illusionary and behind the globes are tunnels. Proceed with caution.

Episode 4 | Launch Podcast

Tomb of Horrors Episode #5, session 2 part 2

The adventurers navigate a series of tunnels before finally discovering a bizarre room that radiates holy energy. How can room dedicated to the powers of good be buried so deep within the tomb of an evil lich? The next room contains three chests. Will the PCs tempt fate and open the chests? They wouldn’t be adventures if they left chests unopened, would they.

Episode 5 | Launch Podcast

Photo Gallery

Realizing we missed out on a great visual element during the first session, we remembered to take some pictures of the wonderful Dwarven Forge set pieces that made up the rooms during subsequent games. Below are images from Episodes #4 and #5 to help you visualize each chamber of the Tomb of Horrors.

The Hall of Spheres

The Chapel

The adventurers in the Chapel

The Chamber of Three Chests

The adventurers in the Chamber of Three Chests

The False Crypt of Acererak

The adventurers in the False Crypt of Acererak

The adventurers in the False Crypt of Acererak

We’ll continue posting the remaining actual play podcasts over the next few weeks. In upcoming articles many of the players are also going to share some of their thoughts about the Tomb of Horrors and whether or not they feel it’s living up to its killer reputation. We’ll also share out thoughts on our character creation process and the reasons we believe that this party has what it takes to succeed where so many others have failed.

You can find all episodes of our Tomb of Horrors actual play podcasts in iTunes. Search for “The Shattered Sea” in the iTunes store’s podcast section. The artist is Liam Gallagher (Bauxtehude’s name in real life). You can also subscribe to The Shattered Sea with any feed-reader of pod-catcher by visiting The Shattered Sea and clicking on “Subscribe in a Reader.”

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8 replies on “Tomb of Horrors: Actual Play Podcasts (Part 2)”

Hello, it’s been a while since I was on the site. I took a break as DM and played as a PC for a while. It’s been a real vacation basically. Now I’m DMing again so I’ll be back on here catching up on what I missed. I must say I’m very excited to hear these podcasts. I was not aware of an Adventure called Tomb of Horror (I started D&D in 4th edition), I’d love to puchase this adventure, but when I looked it up on Wizard’s site, and Amazon it seems to have a different cover than the one pictured in this series of articles.
Could you please explain the cover, will I be buying the same adventure as the podcasts are about if I buy the tomb of horrors 4th edition adventure?
I appogize in advance if the information I’m requesting is in the podcasts themselves (because I haven’t listened yet) and I appologize if the information is in one of the articles’ text but I have overlooked it.

I found the unfortunate answer to my questions a few articles back:
https://dungeonsmaster.com/2010/09/unearthing-the-tomb-of-horrors/
“Wizards of the Coast’s recent release of an updated version of the original adventure through the RPGA Rewards Program made for the perfect opportunity to play the Tomb of Horrors under the 4e rule set.”

I find this sucks, I want a copy, I doubt I’ll listen to the podcasts if I can’t get run the adventure. I guess I’ll look for a torrent, man Wizards is an annoying company at times.

@chase_dagger
Welcome back. We were wondering if you were still reading and just not commenting. It’s been a while since we last heard from you.

The Tomb of Horrors is one of the oldest and most popular D&D adventures ever written. It has a well-earned reputation for killing entire adventuring parties. In it’s original incarnation there were traps that were quite literally save or die. The 4e version is still lethal but not nearly as unforgiving of one bad roll. So far I’m having a great time playing.

As you discovered, the 4e update was a free adventure sent out by Wizards as an RPGA reward and is not available for sale. However, that shouldn’t discourage you. If you can get your hands on one of the previous renditions of the adventure the encounters still contain the same maps, traps and monsters. They’ve just been updated with 4e stats. In most cases the descriptions and flavour text is identical.

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Nice, that is great news. Thanks Ameron, I think I can get the old book directly from Wizard’s site.

Hey, first time reader.

In a month’s time I am running the updated 4th edition Tomb of Horrors to a group over a weekend. Being that I love this dungeon I want to make it as epic as possible. That being said I would love to create the entire dungeon out of dwarven forge pieces as you have.

Can you tell me what sets I would need to do this? What sets did you use? How much did you spend on them roughly.

Any other details you can provide with insight on running ToH would also be nice. How did you run the devourer? I know what the stat block says but how to flavour it. Do you tell the PCs what is happening? That seems to defeat the purpose.

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