I am going to buy either Tomb of Annihilation or Tales from the Yawning Portal next. I'm not planning on running either of these any time soon, I just want to have them. Which would you pick? Or you would you pick a different sourcebook https://mobdro****/https://vidmate****/ or adventure entirely.
I've reached the point where I pretty much have everything I NEED on Beyond so help me pick the next thing I buy please and thank you.
Tomb of Annihilation is what is known as a “meat-grinder”…something that is designed to kill players; something that the book goes out of it’s way to tell the reader at the beginning.
That being said…it is a whole lotta fun, with so much going on in that jungle. Speaking as a player in that campaign, I had…(quick mental count)…three characters die during that campaign, and it didn’t even matter; because the deaths were so memorable. Just make sure everyone understands that Tomb is Annihilation is intended to be challenging; and they’ll enjoy everything else.
“Tales from the Yawning Portal” has the benefit of variety, what with it being one of those anthology-adventure books…so if you’re looking for a book that has adventures that can be settled in a few sessions, it’d be a good pick.
If you’re looking for a long-term, grand adventure…go with “Tomb of Annihilation”.
Having said that…I actually DM’d “Rime of the Frostmaiden”, and that ended up being a grand adventure (my first DM’ing experience, too!). Great book. Leaves a lot of room for you to put your own personal twist on things.
”Dragon Heist” is a fantastic low-level adventure book; because it makes running an adventure inside an urban city VERY fun. It also has memorable characters & villains. It’s expansion, “Dungeon of the Mad Mage”, provides some material for a sequel…just be warned that it’s a massive amount of content, with minimal narrative drive…you sort of have to create the “reasons” why your players are delving into the Undermountain.
Since it sounds like you are not looking for anything in particular, Yawning Portal is probably the better purchase - it gives you smaller scale adventures that you could more easily slide into an existing campaign if you need some side missions. Additionally, it covers a lot more ground, so if you are just looking for inspiration and some encounter ideas, its greater variety would be helpful.
I must object to the suggestion of Rime of the Frostmaiden by Tony1Adobe above though. While I am happy they had a good experience with Frostmaiden, objectively that book is terrible - lack of real story content, poor writing and extremely poor pacing, an antagonist so one-dimensional D&D Beyond did an entire article on “whoops, Wizards forgot to actually add personality here, let’s give you some ideas to make up for their failings”, and many, many other problems. Would not recommend, unless you wanted to throw everything about it out the window and just use it for some ice-based encounter ideas.
I've gotten a lot of good mileage out of TftYP, mostly using its dungeons to populate open world campaigns, though you could run it all as a single campaign without a ton of heavy lifting on your part.
Tales from the Yawning Portal has one of my favorite of all time classic adventures: White Plume Mountain. I have also really enjoyed the Sunless Citadel and Against the Giants.
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I am going to buy either Tomb of Annihilation or Tales from the Yawning Portal next. I'm not planning on running either of these any time soon, I just want to have them. Which would you pick? Or you would you pick a different sourcebook https://mobdro****/ https://vidmate****/ or adventure entirely.
I've reached the point where I pretty much have everything I NEED on Beyond so help me pick the next thing I buy please and thank you.
Tomb of Annihilation is what is known as a “meat-grinder”…something that is designed to kill players; something that the book goes out of it’s way to tell the reader at the beginning.
That being said…it is a whole lotta fun, with so much going on in that jungle. Speaking as a player in that campaign, I had…(quick mental count)…three characters die during that campaign, and it didn’t even matter; because the deaths were so memorable. Just make sure everyone understands that Tomb is Annihilation is intended to be challenging; and they’ll enjoy everything else.
“Tales from the Yawning Portal” has the benefit of variety, what with it being one of those anthology-adventure books…so if you’re looking for a book that has adventures that can be settled in a few sessions, it’d be a good pick.
If you’re looking for a long-term, grand adventure…go with “Tomb of Annihilation”.
Having said that…I actually DM’d “Rime of the Frostmaiden”, and that ended up being a grand adventure (my first DM’ing experience, too!). Great book. Leaves a lot of room for you to put your own personal twist on things.
”Dragon Heist” is a fantastic low-level adventure book; because it makes running an adventure inside an urban city VERY fun. It also has memorable characters & villains. It’s expansion, “Dungeon of the Mad Mage”, provides some material for a sequel…just be warned that it’s a massive amount of content, with minimal narrative drive…you sort of have to create the “reasons” why your players are delving into the Undermountain.
Since it sounds like you are not looking for anything in particular, Yawning Portal is probably the better purchase - it gives you smaller scale adventures that you could more easily slide into an existing campaign if you need some side missions. Additionally, it covers a lot more ground, so if you are just looking for inspiration and some encounter ideas, its greater variety would be helpful.
I must object to the suggestion of Rime of the Frostmaiden by Tony1Adobe above though. While I am happy they had a good experience with Frostmaiden, objectively that book is terrible - lack of real story content, poor writing and extremely poor pacing, an antagonist so one-dimensional D&D Beyond did an entire article on “whoops, Wizards forgot to actually add personality here, let’s give you some ideas to make up for their failings”, and many, many other problems. Would not recommend, unless you wanted to throw everything about it out the window and just use it for some ice-based encounter ideas.
I've gotten a lot of good mileage out of TftYP, mostly using its dungeons to populate open world campaigns, though you could run it all as a single campaign without a ton of heavy lifting on your part.
Tomb of Horrors that it was based on was the ultimate meat grinder....
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Tales from the Yawning Portal has one of my favorite of all time classic adventures: White Plume Mountain. I have also really enjoyed the Sunless Citadel and Against the Giants.