So, I've been playing Tomb of Annihilation with my family for a while, and its been fun, but they've already spent 2 sessions of the first floor of the Tomb of the Nine Gods, and I'm worried that they're going to spend the next year in one dungeon. Can I get some advice on how to shorten the dungeon?
Each room in the tomb has a trap, puzzle or encounter of some sort. They have the trickster spirits and their special items. There are some parts you could possibly leave out (the corridor with the "steamroller" trap near the bottom for example) and possibly some of the other trap rooms.
When I played this the entire campaign took 36 x 4-5 hour sessions. The tomb of the Nine Gods itself took about 10 - so you might figure the tomb is roughly 1/3 of the entire campaign. We ended after defeating the BBEG at the end and simply narrated the few rooms that came afterward - so there could be an extra session you play it out.
However, we did have Nolzur's Marvellous Pigments and made generous use of them to help bypass some of the traps which made some of the tomb run faster.
When my party started dawdling, my DM used one of the trickster gods to inform us that the longer we wait, the more tomb guardians are created and sent on patrol. Those things wrecked us on multiple occasions and were enough of a motivator to us get through the dungeon quicker, especially after we saw them starting to patrol in groups.
So, I've been playing Tomb of Annihilation with my family for a while, and its been fun, but they've already spent 2 sessions of the first floor of the Tomb of the Nine Gods, and I'm worried that they're going to spend the next year in one dungeon. Can I get some advice on how to shorten the dungeon?
Orange Juice!
Have them play faster? :)
Each room in the tomb has a trap, puzzle or encounter of some sort. They have the trickster spirits and their special items. There are some parts you could possibly leave out (the corridor with the "steamroller" trap near the bottom for example) and possibly some of the other trap rooms.
When I played this the entire campaign took 36 x 4-5 hour sessions. The tomb of the Nine Gods itself took about 10 - so you might figure the tomb is roughly 1/3 of the entire campaign. We ended after defeating the BBEG at the end and simply narrated the few rooms that came afterward - so there could be an extra session you play it out.
However, we did have Nolzur's Marvellous Pigments and made generous use of them to help bypass some of the traps which made some of the tomb run faster.
When my party started dawdling, my DM used one of the trickster gods to inform us that the longer we wait, the more tomb guardians are created and sent on patrol. Those things wrecked us on multiple occasions and were enough of a motivator to us get through the dungeon quicker, especially after we saw them starting to patrol in groups.
Call it Mausoleum of Decimation
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.