okay I typed half this up but accidentally reloaded the page so I’m going to make this short.
Spent A LOT of money on Tomb of Annihilation. Eventually, half way through the hex crawl 2 of the 5 players told me the game no longer matches their schedule and we never played again.
IMPORTANT: outside of this, these players have never played and don’t have very much experience in D&D. Only one has his own PHB. They liked it though.
It’s been almost two years. I have realised I’m running out of time in my life so if I want to have any chance of finishing ToA I gotta start now. I have tried to “get the band back together” or at least get a group. Of the original five, three have said they want to do it but two of these three said they don’t want to do a long campaign, even going so far as to say that six months would be “crazy”.
I have a couple of plans: 1. Just do ToA. They will probably change their minds. 2. Start ToA from when the old players stopped. It will be much shorter because of this. 3. Do some short campaigns before hand (Saltmarsh or Tales of the Yawing Portal (I have both)) and then ask which of them would like to do ToA. 4. Don’t do ToA, (this will hurt me both mentally and financially) and instead just do shorter campaigns. 5. Scrap everything and give up.
That's rough. But if you want to play with some of the fellows, "kill your darlings". ToA is not going to happen for them and switch over to more of an anthology such as Saltmarsh or Yawning Portal indeed. Or distilate parts from ToA as one- or two-shots.
If you really want to do ToA and have the time, start a new group. Maybe 1 or 2 from the old party want to join and just start from scratch with some more enthusiastic players. Also prep a short Session 0 to lay-out some expectations for you and for the players.
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"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee "Time is relative" - Albert Einstein "It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake "Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
Don't do plan 1. No plan will end well which relies on intentionally going against what your friends tell you they want. Start with the shorter, episodic campaigns and maybe they'll change their mind, maybe they won't. Unfortunately a campaign does not necessarily manifest because you spent a lot of money preparing for it; that's one of the risks of this hobby.
Are you a washed, presentable individual? Maybe you can volunteer to run D&D at a local library or something.
This has not been my experience! We've been playing together since 2018 and we started off doin Adventure League to simplify things and see if everyone liked it. After about 6 months we started our first campaign and it didn't quite last six months before we all died (we took all left turns in a cavern and went straight to the final boss accidentally). One of the guys moved, but we added two more and went to online format. Our next several campaigns were each over a year long. It could be me though, I really like long campaigns, back in the aught years at a different table we ran a WoD game for 9 years. It is possible that campaign would still be going every Saturday, but the Storyteller had an anneurism and never woke up five years ago. He was super creative and a blast to play with!
The biggest killer of D&D campaigns tends to be that once the party becomes adults, they tend to have less free time. My advice is to run Tales of the Yawning Portal for its episodic nature, and if you really want to run Tomb of Annihilation and you have the time to try and find a new group interested in committing to a longer campaign. Do you have a local game store you can run games in? It's usually pretty easy to find some people looking to play if you're willing to GM.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
okay I typed half this up but accidentally reloaded the page so I’m going to make this short.
Spent A LOT of money on Tomb of Annihilation. Eventually, half way through the hex crawl 2 of the 5 players told me the game no longer matches their schedule and we never played again.
IMPORTANT: outside of this, these players have never played and don’t have very much experience in D&D. Only one has his own PHB. They liked it though.
It’s been almost two years. I have realised I’m running out of time in my life so if I want to have any chance of finishing ToA I gotta start now. I have tried to “get the band back together” or at least get a group. Of the original five, three have said they want to do it but two of these three said they don’t want to do a long campaign, even going so far as to say that six months would be “crazy”.
I have a couple of plans: 1. Just do ToA. They will probably change their minds. 2. Start ToA from when the old players stopped. It will be much shorter because of this. 3. Do some short campaigns before hand (Saltmarsh or Tales of the Yawing Portal (I have both)) and then ask which of them would like to do ToA. 4. Don’t do ToA, (this will hurt me both mentally and financially) and instead just do shorter campaigns. 5. Scrap everything and give up.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
That's rough. But if you want to play with some of the fellows, "kill your darlings". ToA is not going to happen for them and switch over to more of an anthology such as Saltmarsh or Yawning Portal indeed.
Or distilate parts from ToA as one- or two-shots.
If you really want to do ToA and have the time, start a new group. Maybe 1 or 2 from the old party want to join and just start from scratch with some more enthusiastic players. Also prep a short Session 0 to lay-out some expectations for you and for the players.
"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee
"Time is relative" - Albert Einstein
"It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake
"Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
Don't do plan 1. No plan will end well which relies on intentionally going against what your friends tell you they want. Start with the shorter, episodic campaigns and maybe they'll change their mind, maybe they won't. Unfortunately a campaign does not necessarily manifest because you spent a lot of money preparing for it; that's one of the risks of this hobby.
Are you a washed, presentable individual? Maybe you can volunteer to run D&D at a local library or something.
This has not been my experience! We've been playing together since 2018 and we started off doin Adventure League to simplify things and see if everyone liked it. After about 6 months we started our first campaign and it didn't quite last six months before we all died (we took all left turns in a cavern and went straight to the final boss accidentally). One of the guys moved, but we added two more and went to online format. Our next several campaigns were each over a year long. It could be me though, I really like long campaigns, back in the aught years at a different table we ran a WoD game for 9 years. It is possible that campaign would still be going every Saturday, but the Storyteller had an anneurism and never woke up five years ago. He was super creative and a blast to play with!
The biggest killer of D&D campaigns tends to be that once the party becomes adults, they tend to have less free time. My advice is to run Tales of the Yawning Portal for its episodic nature, and if you really want to run Tomb of Annihilation and you have the time to try and find a new group interested in committing to a longer campaign. Do you have a local game store you can run games in? It's usually pretty easy to find some people looking to play if you're willing to GM.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Thanks everyone!
I think I’ll start a new group for Tomb and just run TFtYP for the old group.