I ran this adventure for the first time a few days ago and it was a lot of fun, I think it's one I will do again so looking for discussion on things that have worked for you so I can improve.
Here are some of my thoughts and tips to get the ball rolling;
- I decided to run this as a 2 hour timed 'tournament' for 3 fairly inexperienced players. I wanted to give the game an urgent feel and I explained beforehand that this was going to be challenging, more so than the level 1-3 adventures we have been playing together so far.
- I used a mix of support material from the original adventure (which you can buy on DM's Guild as pdf for $4.99) as well as the Yawning Portal version (I bought the DNDB version and I also own the hardback).
- The original version has 3 pre-generated characters, a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard/Rogue - I recreated all of these in DNDB which took a while but was worth it because I learnt a lot about the spells, equipment etc which are all tailored to the adventure (even some of the seemingly normal items are useful, for example the cleric has soap which is useful for dealing with the caustic lime). The pre-gen characters have a lot of personality and also helped with my immersion into the scenario.
- I printed the player character sheets out and spent 10-15 minutes going through them to explain some of the spells and equipment.
- It would be good if DMs could somehow 'transfer' or copy and paste characters to players this way in DNDB, my players just had the printed sheets which didn't have spell descriptions etc and they definitely suffered a bit for not knowing what all of their spells did exactly.
- The original module also has an illustration book which is awesome. I printed these out to have on hand and printed out the map from the DNDB content and then marked in each room where each illustration should be used (it's a bit confusing because the number for each illustration doesn't actually relate to the number of a particular room). This prep took about 20-30mins and was totally worth it. I had a better sense of space and some visual aids ready for when (if) the PCs got to particular parts of the dungeon.
- At the table I had DNDB open on my iPad with 6 tabs - one for each PC character sheet (just for my reference and to help answer questions), the adventure itself and the spells and monsters search pages (which I didn't end up using). I also had my map with the illustration locations marked and the tournament scoring card from the original. My hardback TFTYP was to the side and I barely used it during the session.
- For the poisonous gas I used a 3 minute sand timer and hit the PCs with 3 damage, reduced to 1 when they used the slow poison scrolls (not even sure if 'slow poison' is still technically a spell). Taking damage over 2 hours every three minutes meant they would take damage 40 times. This made things feel pretty brutal, 3 minutes comes around very quickly.
- The group managed to explore most of the first half of the lower chambers and ended up bargaining with the Lord Of Snails before the 2 hours was up.
- I decided not to instantly kill the group but instead to pull the camera away and leave things un-known - perhaps another group can uncover the fate of Rhialle, Cair and Myrrha
- I decided not to instantly kill the group but instead to pull the camera away and leave things un-known - perhaps another group can uncover the fate of Rhialle, Cair and Myrrha.
Funny story, there are a few bodies sprinkled through the upper levels that look to have died anywhere from a few months to a few years ago. I'm pretty sure I know their fate.
Anyway, I'm almost finished running the module for my Adventure League group and so far I've gotten a lot of work out of the curses that they have wracked up along the way. The best way I've found to handle any curses that they run across is to hit them with a permanent option from the Bestow Curse spell until they get around to dealing with it. Some of my party have up to three of the four options lingering on them. It has made the game rather interesting.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I’m thinking about running this for my group. Is there a story-line or plot anywhere in this? It seems like they just start at the dungeon and GO!! I don’t see any kind of hooks or anything in the introduction.
I’m thinking about running this for my group. Is there a story-line or plot anywhere in this? It seems like they just start at the dungeon and GO!! I don’t see any kind of hooks or anything in the introduction.
It's mostly just a dungeon crawl yeah! There's some cool self contained story within the dungeon itself but it was initially written for "competitive D&D" which is.... Yeah haha. If you're running Tomb of Annihilation though it's great there! Otherwise you can kind of just drop it wherever it serves you best!
Not really, I hooked my party in by having an NPC friend of theirs get a message to them that he was on an expedition in the jungle and he found something really cool. The party went to meet up with him at the dig site and fell into the sinkhole that starts the adventure enroute. At the end, they finally met up with their friend at the top of the pyramid, who has been trying unsuccessfully for days to dig them out or find another way in to help them.
I also added something of a boss fight at the top with some vampire cultists because the top of the pyramid, which is the traditional end of the adventure, is a real anticlimactic letdown.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
- The original version has 3 pre-generated characters, a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard/Rogue - I recreated all of these in DNDB which took a while but was worth it because I learnt a lot about the spells, equipment etc which are all tailored to the adventure (even some of the seemingly normal items are useful, for example the cleric has soap which is useful for dealing with the caustic lime). The pre-gen characters have a lot of personality and also helped with my immersion into the scenario.
Awesome. Do you still have the DNDB pre-gen? I would love to have a look at them.
- For the poisonous gas I used a 3 minute sand timer and hit the PCs with 3 damage, reduced to 1 when they used the slow poison scrolls (not even sure if 'slow poison' is still technically a spell). Taking damage over 2 hours every three minutes meant they would take damage 40 times. This made things feel pretty brutal, 3 minutes comes around very quickly.
Interesting. In the original, poison damage was received every 10 minutes. Any reason you made it harder?
I found giving the damage more quickly just helped speed things along. It was blurring game time and real time a bit. The 3 minute timer works wonders to get people at the table to act. I should note though that I haven't play-tested this much and 10 minutes might be the better bet.
Haven't had time to run it yet, but I will be using the classic 1st edition score sheet and trying to run it multiple times to see what different approaches groups take...
I hate to revive a dead thread but I'm actually doing the Yawning Portal campaign for my group. Just started Sunless Citadel and I didn't realize that the book does a poor job in connecting each adventure (once in a while they give little excerpts or advice to hook the next one which is good though).
To connect I was thinking of having sidequests for both the cleric and bard in my group. The cleric ran away from [noble] home but I had his mother reach out to him via sending stone that the family is in dire trouble and need his help, (after SC, they will reconvene in the Yawning portal -- Their central hub -- the mom will meet him in person explaining that the family has gotten hold on some rare artifacts from their art dealer/adventurer/whatever (they thought all genuine), turns out the relics/coins were cursed and they don't know how or why. Only that they know its from an ancient civilization - Tamoachan. Nothing else, and the family needs him to continue on his travels until he finds out where the shrine is and return some of the relics/coins to stop the curse. Leave it be for now.
After Fury of the Forge, have the changeling bard (one persona used to be a rogue/thief) get contacted by his old guys asking his help with this 'heist', they need him to steal the relics/coins/artifacts from the shrine of Tamoacan and that their client would like this very much. Even knowing where exactly it is.
I actually want to be some conflict between the 2 players. Maybe give a letter to the bard that only he reads it. I'm not sure if I will announce the cleric's family issues to the table, there's no real way to do it 'in-game' without announcing it to all the players. I don't want to do the note first. Besides, if I announce it to all the players the bard will (should) recognize the name when given to him from his client and he can then choose to share his heist plans or just information on how he magically heard rumors on how to help the cleric out.
That being said, how do I narrate getting to the shrine? The book recommends that it can be set in the jungles of Chult but should I have this written in the client's letter? Should I have a contact ready for them to just drive them there? Should I just say "it's in the jungles of Chult" and let them find their own way there (other than the Yawning Portal and maybe an occasional skilled worker to craft things they find materials for, I really don't plan on going too in depth into Water Deep, place is too darn big). Honestly I plan on 'fast traveling' to most locations and don't want to spend 3 sessions just traveling places (since every adventure in this book is at least a few days if not weeks away from each other) but do I 'hand wave' all the minor details?
My advice with Tamoachan is to just put characters there - get them captured or teleported there after touching some kind of evil artefact. I find the whole intro premise of running through the jungle and falling in a bit contrived...players will always want to make dex saves, fly, or otherwise escape. If I was running the Yawning Portal campaign I would just hand-wave the travel, the party gets where they are going by entering the portal to look for treasure...where will it take them next?
That said, if you can get character backstories and motivations going, good one, but i wouldn't depend or plan on it - check out https://slyflourish.com/lazydm/ if you haven't already, not sure how much prep time you have but this book helped change the way I run games for the better.
I've only used Yawning Portal as locations to visit as part of other campaigns where it works well - best example being using Forge Of Fury instead of Wave Echo Cave in the starting adventure, just seemed more of an epic location. I'll also use White Plume Mountain in a Storm Kings Thunder campaign, and replace the weapons with Ostorian artefacts.
I'm currently running through the book, stringing the adventures together. Linking Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury together wasn't too hard, but the others took a bit of imagination. I've decided to introduce the Red Wizards of Thay in Forge of Fury, using their quest for powerful magical items. The party was visited by a Thayan Knight on the way out, and have found areas of the countryside that look like jungle landscape smack in the middle of a snowbank or wheat field.
Eventually, that will turn into them investigating a very large anomaly near Waterdeep where they will fall through the ground, beginning the Hidden Shrine. They'll find a Thayan Apprentice half-phased into the floor in a teleport-like accident. Maybe another Apprentice will show up near the end.
The hook into White Plume will probably something similar, with the mountain being summoned and the legendary weapons being taken from notable people in Waterdeep (Mirt, Durnan, etc). All feeding into Dead in Thay.
Haven't thought about how Against the Giants links in, but that's 4 modules away. :-D
I'm currently running Forge, and my plan is to tie all the adventures together by having the characters meet an Elven mystic at the YP that entices them to search for remnants of a lost artifact. The pieces have been spread throughout the Forgotten Realms, and he will reward them handsomely if they find them all. That is the high level view of it, and I try to incorporate other subtle ties throughout. I plan on running a short HB campaign after the last module as the conclusion. They will then find out who their mysterious benefactor is, if he is friend, or foe, etc.
I ran the hidden Shrine of tamoachan as part of my tomb Annihilation campaign using heavy lore reference and a high intrigue, High Divine campaign.
The hidden shrine was in chult and during the spell plague parts of chult were taken to other worlds specifically Greyhound this is referenced by lore I had originally designed the shrine to have been a prison / Labyrinth created by ubtao and used by his people to imprison powerful and heretical beings, mages aswell, playing into their magephobia that threaten the land well also allowing the option to stumble upon it or treasure hunt to it.
The first room contains a massive Labyrinth symbol of ubtao that is also a transmutation circle much like the one in the Tomb of annihilation that prevents Magical Escape communication and other effects and if those that are banished there can complete the maze then they earn will pay us forgiveness and blessing.
When the shrine and surrounding Mountain got transported to Grayhawk it was tooken over by the evil vampire God of Grayhawk
Mictlāntēcutli
And due to The Madness of the spell plague it was thrown even further back in time and spent several thousand years under his control until the spell plague was fixed and the shrine was transported back to chult on the edge of the Mist cliff mountains north of Vorn, with the vampire God intombed inside...
My players decided to align heavily with both the Lord's Alliance and zhentarim and use the standard Democrat Playbook by creating a school and using a real estate scheme to take over Port nyanzaru but also educate the populists according to the Lord's alliances schemes of replacing the merchant princes with a royal heir to chult, and a loyal educated Workforce.
It all went downhill when they went to the Temple of sovereigners to get a divination and came across a deck of many things drawing the card for three wishes and using the multiple Wishes the same time to ascend to godhood which under 5th edition and mimicking 3.5 Edition I had them do a level 20 character and then add on a separate charactersheet leveled up to their level of godhood. Their first wish of course was for everyone in their party to become level 20. They had made a few NPCs official martyr members of their party among them namely xandala and a black dragon that had been severely injured that they were nursing back to health.
Zandala according to the module joins the party to try getting the Ring of winter from art December so she can become powerful and immortal and they just made her a level 20 sorcerer and their black dragon friend, who was severely scarred with his wings ripped off his tail bitten off his eyes gouged out and was modeled off of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, is spent his time surviving on the ground weekend because he does not have access to his Dragon board to heal and reconnect with his Elemental Energies, a level 20 sorcerer as well. Using the remaining two wishes they elevated themselves to come a hood and not their NPCs.
One particular party member however decided to turn himself into a sugar baby for xandala getting her to pay him to play the role of her daddy.. well another party member decided to turn it into a love triangle with her as well...
The merchant princes and the yeptuo society had enough of them at this point they had tolerated their school they had tolerated their muscling in on the market but they not would not tolerate heretical gods in short breaking the pact between ubtao and the Gods, even though by ascending in chult they bypassed the treaty.
The merchant princes rally to the entire city into a riotous religious fervor and aligned the gift house society and several other hired assassins and assaulted their compound / private school at once.
It didn't help that they use their Newfound Divine Powers while still in the temple to discover what was causing the death curse and some of the information about the necromantic machine of the soulmonger was revealed they decided to talk about it and share it in public in the middle of the Temple which caused a ripple effect of panic because all the sudden everybody learned that Not only was the soulmonger causing a death curse preventing Resurrection but it was capturing and consuming The Souls of everyone throughout the entire Multiverse bypassing access to the afterlife making the gods and meaningless and Powerless after the long lines of billions of their petitioners run out and they finally take notice.
It triggered the seven stages of grief that Ripple affected across the entire planet of torale causing riots in the burnings of temples as it was discovered that now you get only one life and that's it and all of your piety has been useless to this point and may well be so for forever that also added to the anger and fervor that led to the assault on their compound.
During the assault on the compound several of the spirit Lords of the Jungle began chanting and casting a ritual that sent all of the humanoids into the hidden shrine like all the other powerful threats to chult imprisoning them there! This sent xandala with them...
I then mostly ran the module as written with a few changes the first room had a massive maze on the floor like the symbol of Luke Teo the player is attempted to solve it with a few succeeding resulting in them getting epic booms I also greatly raised the CR rating of all the monsters inside and included several dead adventurers one of them in the first room had attempted to summon and bind a demon to a Talisman that was in prison I believe in Room 5 he had succeeded and I was going to use the demon as an excuse to lure drop as the demon was going to be bound to service to the characters in telling them a whole lot of lure however my character is decided to kill it instead.
I then in either room 6 or Room 5 the one that contained a whole bunch of mud placed large murals describing the separations of aspects of the world serpent into others such as Tiamat Bahamut the five-headed Queen the serpent gods of the auntie and lizard folk jazzerin of the couatls and the massive serpent that is the real body of asmodeus etc. And described how there's many iterations of the creation myths and they all changed throughout all the pantheons but they're all basically the same but the original one and the truest version originates from the world serpent splitting into all the other aspects and how the guns did not notice the effects of the soulmonger because they were too busy squabbling amongst themselves in dealing with extra planar threats but the Elder Gods such as jezurin and his brother the real Beast of asmodeus. Took notice.
This led to all sorts of other things happening the aspects of the world serpent noticed Muhammad Who currently has been weakened and is in Mount Celestia but is too busy dealing with a squabbling of the other lesser gods Tiamat in the nine Hills squirming knowing that all of the dragons will not be able to move their souls on to the afterlife attempting everything she can to get the cult of the Dragon to summon her this was the tea the tie in to the hoard of the Dragon Queen in the rise of Tiamat campaign... the beast in Baltimore that is the real form of asmodeus noticing and ordering zerial to invade Boulders gate causing the events of the descent into everness, with the blood War spilling over and the demons invading the underdark in the events of the out of the Abyss.
Because the tomb of annihilation was written early and fifth edition a lot of the books that came out later in modules that came out later such as the soul Point trade and other things when applied to two move Annihilation if you think about it logically the soul coin trade becomes one of the few ways in which the gods the devils and the demons are still able to maintain possession of souls meaning that should this effects of the soulmonger continue the only way for the gods to maintain any level of power would be to make Soul coin deals with creatures while they're still alive forcing them to be more present in the actual lives of people's while still being weakened.
The party met the sea creature chick later on and made friends with her and then later met the slug Lord who was in love with her and gave him his Talisman and played up great to his pride and also received a boom from him as they encouraged him to go after her.... eventually the party got deeper into the tomb and in making friends with one of the vampiric Guardians of the Tomb was granted access to the entombed vampire God, who bid them to drink a potion that put them to sleep for 5,000 years after welcoming them and acknowledging them as fellow gods, one of my players resisted until the the end when all the other players had fallen asleep and he had the option of killing the other players and assuming they're Divine aspects and being powerful enough to fight him or to go to sleep himself ultimately deciding to go to sleep leaving xandala still there.... at the mercy of the vampire god... she had been turned into a vampire guardian of the Tomb and for 5,000 years watched over her lovers and her sugar daddy all the time still seeking her Immortal supposed father artus cimber!!!
I use the module and the sleeping potion and traps there to show my players that it doesn't matter how powerful you become you can still be defeated with basic things in the modules and dmgs and a humble them a little bit and also to not let them think they can be full of themselves.
They awoke to a hellscape of Multiverse proportions equated to the trench the French trenches of World War I as Torell was brought to the center of the universe above sigil and all of the factions of the Multiverse continuously invaded Toril specifically short trying and vying fighting for the power of the Soul hunger either to control it or to stop its effects..... resting in the sky above next to the moon of selune, gazing down at the planet was a Giant floating eye the final form of the anthropol nursed into godhood feeding off of the chaos and death having slaughtered both of its parents who abandoned it and most of the pantheons sending its tendrils down to the planet like a toddler playing and torturing little animals, yes portals were formed just from eberron bringing in triple-decker havor trains with giant warforged, and artificers maned trenches, and githyankii red dragons dropped from orbit like meters bombarding the waste land of demonic miasma brought about by the blood War spilling onto toril, twisted abominations crawling from pits, and angels and devils fighting sideby side, as drow enslaved humans rush the front in pairs like Russian draftees in pairs of two.... one with a ritual blade,, the other a sacrifice to turn the frist into a yaun ti. This is because one of my players had access to a wish earlier granted by the God jezeran and decided to from level two become a dreadlord of and then pay back the God by building a temple to jezerin which by the way is worshiped as a God in Mezica both by the tabaxi the albino dwarves and by yaunti...)
true Eldritch world War 1.
We took a break from there because of the time Skip and decided one of the ways for their characters to continue the story was to reincarnate back in time.... as it turns out the evil God had been going off of the information from a book of the skilled pump and was given tidbits of information to go off of by the god Victor which by the way is the only God to have ever stepped foot in sigil.... who since he had done that has been living there trapped ever since with Advanced knowledge of necromantic devices and has been communicating to different beings through the books of the skilled tongue the whole time and who originally was trying to bring the party that ascended to godhood bypassing the treaty between the primordial in the Gods and using them as their ability to reincarnate as Divine beings back through time to stop the soulmonger and the rise of the Eldritch death God the anthropol which is the aborted and forgotten child of two of the gods, home has been nursed to godhood by a sirach Who doesn't care for becoming him God himself when he can make gods like playthings...
We then decided to start the Lost minds of fandover module and run it parallel to the time they started their original campaign in short where they got to see first hand the after Ripple effects of the decisions they made and the soulmonger one of my players later during one of our side quests the group had transported to a different plane of existence where the events of the rise of the Dragon Queen was taking place as well and playing a Dragonborn who knows nothing of dragons and wanted to be one of them joined the cult of the dragon and successfully summoned Tiamat who later possessed her and went with her to the Council of waterdeep which instead took place in response to the riots and Temple burnings and learning of the soulmonger instead of the rise of Tiamat where she personally testified to the dragon Council that had come there and sounded the dracorn herself to prepare all dragons for an epic holy Crusade Yet to Come For The Souls of all the living and told the Council of waterdeep to prepare themselves.
The plan to fix and undo some of the craziness was that when their characters who finish the Lost Minds entered short then their Divine spark would reactivate granting them legendary resistance and epic booms so they still would have some benefit from their actions.
I will be running the hidden Shrine again soon where one of the characters in playing what his original characters nephew is seeking him out and when he finds him in the temple well activate that Divine Spark as well as some of the other players and then with those new abilities be prepared to take on the tomb of annihilation acerrack and the antoerpol, they will be led there by zandala herself who has been operating off of the information received from that book of the skilled tongue it's been only a couple of months since she has become a vampire and become a powerful sorcerer she still can't control it and she barely understands the cryptic messages being given to her by veccna she's frustrated and still doesn't know what she'll do when she finds artus cimber....
Soon during our next game she will reveal some of this information to the party and inform them that in order for them to find his uncle and more answers they must defeat the vampiric blood king that has reclaimed the temple and banished her out from her sacred duties. The entire time the party has noticed that she's a vampire and notice that she's a very powerful sorcerer however to leverage out how she's not solving every situation for the party she's only been able to copy all the more powerful any spell cast by the sorcerer in the party now, so that the game hasn't been completely broken and to Showcase that she's not fully in control of her powers nor always useful....
The character sheet links don't work any more. Is there any way these could be reposted, either to Beyond or as a PDF or image somewhere?
I would really love to run this in the original convention style, but I don't know enough about 1e characters to feel confident in my ability to convert them myself. I'm really having trouble finding anyone else who has done this.
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Hi DMs,
I ran this adventure for the first time a few days ago and it was a lot of fun, I think it's one I will do again so looking for discussion on things that have worked for you so I can improve.
Here are some of my thoughts and tips to get the ball rolling;
- I decided to run this as a 2 hour timed 'tournament' for 3 fairly inexperienced players. I wanted to give the game an urgent feel and I explained beforehand that this was going to be challenging, more so than the level 1-3 adventures we have been playing together so far.
- I used a mix of support material from the original adventure (which you can buy on DM's Guild as pdf for $4.99) as well as the Yawning Portal version (I bought the DNDB version and I also own the hardback).
- The original version has 3 pre-generated characters, a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard/Rogue - I recreated all of these in DNDB which took a while but was worth it because I learnt a lot about the spells, equipment etc which are all tailored to the adventure (even some of the seemingly normal items are useful, for example the cleric has soap which is useful for dealing with the caustic lime). The pre-gen characters have a lot of personality and also helped with my immersion into the scenario.
- I printed the player character sheets out and spent 10-15 minutes going through them to explain some of the spells and equipment.
- It would be good if DMs could somehow 'transfer' or copy and paste characters to players this way in DNDB, my players just had the printed sheets which didn't have spell descriptions etc and they definitely suffered a bit for not knowing what all of their spells did exactly.
- The original module also has an illustration book which is awesome. I printed these out to have on hand and printed out the map from the DNDB content and then marked in each room where each illustration should be used (it's a bit confusing because the number for each illustration doesn't actually relate to the number of a particular room). This prep took about 20-30mins and was totally worth it. I had a better sense of space and some visual aids ready for when (if) the PCs got to particular parts of the dungeon.
- At the table I had DNDB open on my iPad with 6 tabs - one for each PC character sheet (just for my reference and to help answer questions), the adventure itself and the spells and monsters search pages (which I didn't end up using). I also had my map with the illustration locations marked and the tournament scoring card from the original. My hardback TFTYP was to the side and I barely used it during the session.
- For the poisonous gas I used a 3 minute sand timer and hit the PCs with 3 damage, reduced to 1 when they used the slow poison scrolls (not even sure if 'slow poison' is still technically a spell). Taking damage over 2 hours every three minutes meant they would take damage 40 times. This made things feel pretty brutal, 3 minutes comes around very quickly.
- The group managed to explore most of the first half of the lower chambers and ended up bargaining with the Lord Of Snails before the 2 hours was up.
- I decided not to instantly kill the group but instead to pull the camera away and leave things un-known - perhaps another group can uncover the fate of Rhialle, Cair and Myrrha
OW
Thanks I really like this idea - more interesting than being put to sleep for 5000 years!!
How long would you say this takes to run?
Depends on how speed-runny your party is. My party knocked it out in two-ish months at one game a week.
I’m thinking about running this for my group. Is there a story-line or plot anywhere in this? It seems like they just start at the dungeon and GO!! I don’t see any kind of hooks or anything in the introduction.
Not really, I hooked my party in by having an NPC friend of theirs get a message to them that he was on an expedition in the jungle and he found something really cool. The party went to meet up with him at the dig site and fell into the sinkhole that starts the adventure enroute. At the end, they finally met up with their friend at the top of the pyramid, who has been trying unsuccessfully for days to dig them out or find another way in to help them.
I also added something of a boss fight at the top with some vampire cultists because the top of the pyramid, which is the traditional end of the adventure, is a real anticlimactic letdown.
I'm integrating this into my Tomb of Annihilation campaign. Can't wait to get this one going...
Awesome. Do you still have the DNDB pre-gen? I would love to have a look at them.
Interesting. In the original, poison damage was received every 10 minutes. Any reason you made it harder?
Yes I do have the pre-gens, here they are;
Rhialle The Wanderer - ddb.ac/characters/335583/dDbAUt
Myrrha The Disgraced - https://ddb.ac/characters/374770/ft6ZM8
Cair The Apprentice - https://ddb.ac/characters/374989/B04ukt
I found giving the damage more quickly just helped speed things along. It was blurring game time and real time a bit. The 3 minute timer works wonders to get people at the table to act. I should note though that I haven't play-tested this much and 10 minutes might be the better bet.
I have also set this up as a 'tournament' event on Roll20 - https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/2975574/the-hidden-shrine-of-tamoachan-tournament
Haven't had time to run it yet, but I will be using the classic 1st edition score sheet and trying to run it multiple times to see what different approaches groups take...
I hate to revive a dead thread but I'm actually doing the Yawning Portal campaign for my group. Just started Sunless Citadel and I didn't realize that the book does a poor job in connecting each adventure (once in a while they give little excerpts or advice to hook the next one which is good though).
To connect I was thinking of having sidequests for both the cleric and bard in my group. The cleric ran away from [noble] home but I had his mother reach out to him via sending stone that the family is in dire trouble and need his help, (after SC, they will reconvene in the Yawning portal -- Their central hub -- the mom will meet him in person explaining that the family has gotten hold on some rare artifacts from their art dealer/adventurer/whatever (they thought all genuine), turns out the relics/coins were cursed and they don't know how or why. Only that they know its from an ancient civilization - Tamoachan. Nothing else, and the family needs him to continue on his travels until he finds out where the shrine is and return some of the relics/coins to stop the curse. Leave it be for now.
After Fury of the Forge, have the changeling bard (one persona used to be a rogue/thief) get contacted by his old guys asking his help with this 'heist', they need him to steal the relics/coins/artifacts from the shrine of Tamoacan and that their client would like this very much. Even knowing where exactly it is.
I actually want to be some conflict between the 2 players. Maybe give a letter to the bard that only he reads it. I'm not sure if I will announce the cleric's family issues to the table, there's no real way to do it 'in-game' without announcing it to all the players. I don't want to do the note first. Besides, if I announce it to all the players the bard will (should) recognize the name when given to him from his client and he can then choose to share his heist plans or just information on how he magically heard rumors on how to help the cleric out.
That being said, how do I narrate getting to the shrine? The book recommends that it can be set in the jungles of Chult but should I have this written in the client's letter? Should I have a contact ready for them to just drive them there? Should I just say "it's in the jungles of Chult" and let them find their own way there (other than the Yawning Portal and maybe an occasional skilled worker to craft things they find materials for, I really don't plan on going too in depth into Water Deep, place is too darn big). Honestly I plan on 'fast traveling' to most locations and don't want to spend 3 sessions just traveling places (since every adventure in this book is at least a few days if not weeks away from each other) but do I 'hand wave' all the minor details?
How would you best advise to do this?
My advice with Tamoachan is to just put characters there - get them captured or teleported there after touching some kind of evil artefact. I find the whole intro premise of running through the jungle and falling in a bit contrived...players will always want to make dex saves, fly, or otherwise escape. If I was running the Yawning Portal campaign I would just hand-wave the travel, the party gets where they are going by entering the portal to look for treasure...where will it take them next?
That said, if you can get character backstories and motivations going, good one, but i wouldn't depend or plan on it - check out https://slyflourish.com/lazydm/ if you haven't already, not sure how much prep time you have but this book helped change the way I run games for the better.
I've only used Yawning Portal as locations to visit as part of other campaigns where it works well - best example being using Forge Of Fury instead of Wave Echo Cave in the starting adventure, just seemed more of an epic location. I'll also use White Plume Mountain in a Storm Kings Thunder campaign, and replace the weapons with Ostorian artefacts.
I'm currently running through the book, stringing the adventures together. Linking Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury together wasn't too hard, but the others took a bit of imagination. I've decided to introduce the Red Wizards of Thay in Forge of Fury, using their quest for powerful magical items. The party was visited by a Thayan Knight on the way out, and have found areas of the countryside that look like jungle landscape smack in the middle of a snowbank or wheat field.
Eventually, that will turn into them investigating a very large anomaly near Waterdeep where they will fall through the ground, beginning the Hidden Shrine. They'll find a Thayan Apprentice half-phased into the floor in a teleport-like accident. Maybe another Apprentice will show up near the end.
The hook into White Plume will probably something similar, with the mountain being summoned and the legendary weapons being taken from notable people in Waterdeep (Mirt, Durnan, etc). All feeding into Dead in Thay.
Haven't thought about how Against the Giants links in, but that's 4 modules away. :-D
I'm currently running Forge, and my plan is to tie all the adventures together by having the characters meet an Elven mystic at the YP that entices them to search for remnants of a lost artifact. The pieces have been spread throughout the Forgotten Realms, and he will reward them handsomely if they find them all. That is the high level view of it, and I try to incorporate other subtle ties throughout. I plan on running a short HB campaign after the last module as the conclusion. They will then find out who their mysterious benefactor is, if he is friend, or foe, etc.
I ran the hidden Shrine of tamoachan as part of my tomb Annihilation campaign using heavy lore reference and a high intrigue, High Divine campaign.
The hidden shrine was in chult and during the spell plague parts of chult were taken to other worlds specifically Greyhound this is referenced by lore I had originally designed the shrine to have been a prison / Labyrinth created by ubtao and used by his people to imprison powerful and heretical beings, mages aswell, playing into their magephobia that threaten the land well also allowing the option to stumble upon it or treasure hunt to it.
The first room contains a massive Labyrinth symbol of ubtao that is also a transmutation circle much like the one in the Tomb of annihilation that prevents Magical Escape communication and other effects and if those that are banished there can complete the maze then they earn will pay us forgiveness and blessing.
When the shrine and surrounding Mountain got transported to Grayhawk it was tooken over by the evil vampire God of Grayhawk
Mictlāntēcutli
And due to The Madness of the spell plague it was thrown even further back in time and spent several thousand years under his control until the spell plague was fixed and the shrine was transported back to chult on the edge of the Mist cliff mountains north of Vorn, with the vampire God intombed inside...
My players decided to align heavily with both the Lord's Alliance and zhentarim and use the standard Democrat Playbook by creating a school and using a real estate scheme to take over Port nyanzaru but also educate the populists according to the Lord's alliances schemes of replacing the merchant princes with a royal heir to chult, and a loyal educated Workforce.
It all went downhill when they went to the Temple of sovereigners to get a divination and came across a deck of many things drawing the card for three wishes and using the multiple Wishes the same time to ascend to godhood which under 5th edition and mimicking 3.5 Edition I had them do a level 20 character and then add on a separate charactersheet leveled up to their level of godhood. Their first wish of course was for everyone in their party to become level 20. They had made a few NPCs official martyr members of their party among them namely xandala and a black dragon that had been severely injured that they were nursing back to health.
Zandala according to the module joins the party to try getting the Ring of winter from art December so she can become powerful and immortal and they just made her a level 20 sorcerer and their black dragon friend, who was severely scarred with his wings ripped off his tail bitten off his eyes gouged out and was modeled off of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, is spent his time surviving on the ground weekend because he does not have access to his Dragon board to heal and reconnect with his Elemental Energies, a level 20 sorcerer as well. Using the remaining two wishes they elevated themselves to come a hood and not their NPCs.
One particular party member however decided to turn himself into a sugar baby for xandala getting her to pay him to play the role of her daddy.. well another party member decided to turn it into a love triangle with her as well...
The merchant princes and the yeptuo society had enough of them at this point they had tolerated their school they had tolerated their muscling in on the market but they not would not tolerate heretical gods in short breaking the pact between ubtao and the Gods, even though by ascending in chult they bypassed the treaty.
The merchant princes rally to the entire city into a riotous religious fervor and aligned the gift house society and several other hired assassins and assaulted their compound / private school at once.
It didn't help that they use their Newfound Divine Powers while still in the temple to discover what was causing the death curse and some of the information about the necromantic machine of the soulmonger was revealed they decided to talk about it and share it in public in the middle of the Temple which caused a ripple effect of panic because all the sudden everybody learned that Not only was the soulmonger causing a death curse preventing Resurrection but it was capturing and consuming The Souls of everyone throughout the entire Multiverse bypassing access to the afterlife making the gods and meaningless and Powerless after the long lines of billions of their petitioners run out and they finally take notice.
It triggered the seven stages of grief that Ripple affected across the entire planet of torale causing riots in the burnings of temples as it was discovered that now you get only one life and that's it and all of your piety has been useless to this point and may well be so for forever that also added to the anger and fervor that led to the assault on their compound.
During the assault on the compound several of the spirit Lords of the Jungle began chanting and casting a ritual that sent all of the humanoids into the hidden shrine like all the other powerful threats to chult imprisoning them there! This sent xandala with them...
I then mostly ran the module as written with a few changes the first room had a massive maze on the floor like the symbol of Luke Teo the player is attempted to solve it with a few succeeding resulting in them getting epic booms I also greatly raised the CR rating of all the monsters inside and included several dead adventurers one of them in the first room had attempted to summon and bind a demon to a Talisman that was in prison I believe in Room 5 he had succeeded and I was going to use the demon as an excuse to lure drop as the demon was going to be bound to service to the characters in telling them a whole lot of lure however my character is decided to kill it instead.
I then in either room 6 or Room 5 the one that contained a whole bunch of mud placed large murals describing the separations of aspects of the world serpent into others such as Tiamat Bahamut the five-headed Queen the serpent gods of the auntie and lizard folk jazzerin of the couatls and the massive serpent that is the real body of asmodeus etc. And described how there's many iterations of the creation myths and they all changed throughout all the pantheons but they're all basically the same but the original one and the truest version originates from the world serpent splitting into all the other aspects and how the guns did not notice the effects of the soulmonger because they were too busy squabbling amongst themselves in dealing with extra planar threats but the Elder Gods such as jezurin and his brother the real Beast of asmodeus. Took notice.
This led to all sorts of other things happening the aspects of the world serpent noticed Muhammad Who currently has been weakened and is in Mount Celestia but is too busy dealing with a squabbling of the other lesser gods Tiamat in the nine Hills squirming knowing that all of the dragons will not be able to move their souls on to the afterlife attempting everything she can to get the cult of the Dragon to summon her this was the tea the tie in to the hoard of the Dragon Queen in the rise of Tiamat campaign... the beast in Baltimore that is the real form of asmodeus noticing and ordering zerial to invade Boulders gate causing the events of the descent into everness, with the blood War spilling over and the demons invading the underdark in the events of the out of the Abyss.
Because the tomb of annihilation was written early and fifth edition a lot of the books that came out later in modules that came out later such as the soul Point trade and other things when applied to two move Annihilation if you think about it logically the soul coin trade becomes one of the few ways in which the gods the devils and the demons are still able to maintain possession of souls meaning that should this effects of the soulmonger continue the only way for the gods to maintain any level of power would be to make Soul coin deals with creatures while they're still alive forcing them to be more present in the actual lives of people's while still being weakened.
The party met the sea creature chick later on and made friends with her and then later met the slug Lord who was in love with her and gave him his Talisman and played up great to his pride and also received a boom from him as they encouraged him to go after her.... eventually the party got deeper into the tomb and in making friends with one of the vampiric Guardians of the Tomb was granted access to the entombed vampire God, who bid them to drink a potion that put them to sleep for 5,000 years after welcoming them and acknowledging them as fellow gods, one of my players resisted until the the end when all the other players had fallen asleep and he had the option of killing the other players and assuming they're Divine aspects and being powerful enough to fight him or to go to sleep himself ultimately deciding to go to sleep leaving xandala still there.... at the mercy of the vampire god... she had been turned into a vampire guardian of the Tomb and for 5,000 years watched over her lovers and her sugar daddy all the time still seeking her Immortal supposed father artus cimber!!!
I use the module and the sleeping potion and traps there to show my players that it doesn't matter how powerful you become you can still be defeated with basic things in the modules and dmgs and a humble them a little bit and also to not let them think they can be full of themselves.
They awoke to a hellscape of Multiverse proportions equated to the trench the French trenches of World War I as Torell was brought to the center of the universe above sigil and all of the factions of the Multiverse continuously invaded Toril specifically short trying and vying fighting for the power of the Soul hunger either to control it or to stop its effects..... resting in the sky above next to the moon of selune, gazing down at the planet was a Giant floating eye the final form of the anthropol nursed into godhood feeding off of the chaos and death having slaughtered both of its parents who abandoned it and most of the pantheons sending its tendrils down to the planet like a toddler playing and torturing little animals, yes portals were formed just from eberron bringing in triple-decker havor trains with giant warforged, and artificers maned trenches, and githyankii red dragons dropped from orbit like meters bombarding the waste land of demonic miasma brought about by the blood War spilling onto toril, twisted abominations crawling from pits, and angels and devils fighting sideby side, as drow enslaved humans rush the front in pairs like Russian draftees in pairs of two.... one with a ritual blade,, the other a sacrifice to turn the frist into a yaun ti. This is because one of my players had access to a wish earlier granted by the God jezeran and decided to from level two become a dreadlord of and then pay back the God by building a temple to jezerin which by the way is worshiped as a God in Mezica both by the tabaxi the albino dwarves and by yaunti...)
true Eldritch world War 1.
We took a break from there because of the time Skip and decided one of the ways for their characters to continue the story was to reincarnate back in time.... as it turns out the evil God had been going off of the information from a book of the skilled pump and was given tidbits of information to go off of by the god Victor which by the way is the only God to have ever stepped foot in sigil.... who since he had done that has been living there trapped ever since with Advanced knowledge of necromantic devices and has been communicating to different beings through the books of the skilled tongue the whole time and who originally was trying to bring the party that ascended to godhood bypassing the treaty between the primordial in the Gods and using them as their ability to reincarnate as Divine beings back through time to stop the soulmonger and the rise of the Eldritch death God the anthropol which is the aborted and forgotten child of two of the gods, home has been nursed to godhood by a sirach Who doesn't care for becoming him God himself when he can make gods like playthings...
We then decided to start the Lost minds of fandover module and run it parallel to the time they started their original campaign in short where they got to see first hand the after Ripple effects of the decisions they made and the soulmonger one of my players later during one of our side quests the group had transported to a different plane of existence where the events of the rise of the Dragon Queen was taking place as well and playing a Dragonborn who knows nothing of dragons and wanted to be one of them joined the cult of the dragon and successfully summoned Tiamat who later possessed her and went with her to the Council of waterdeep which instead took place in response to the riots and Temple burnings and learning of the soulmonger instead of the rise of Tiamat where she personally testified to the dragon Council that had come there and sounded the dracorn herself to prepare all dragons for an epic holy Crusade Yet to Come For The Souls of all the living and told the Council of waterdeep to prepare themselves.
The plan to fix and undo some of the craziness was that when their characters who finish the Lost Minds entered short then their Divine spark would reactivate granting them legendary resistance and epic booms so they still would have some benefit from their actions.
I will be running the hidden Shrine again soon where one of the characters in playing what his original characters nephew is seeking him out and when he finds him in the temple well activate that Divine Spark as well as some of the other players and then with those new abilities be prepared to take on the tomb of annihilation acerrack and the antoerpol, they will be led there by zandala herself who has been operating off of the information received from that book of the skilled tongue it's been only a couple of months since she has become a vampire and become a powerful sorcerer she still can't control it and she barely understands the cryptic messages being given to her by veccna she's frustrated and still doesn't know what she'll do when she finds artus cimber....
Soon during our next game she will reveal some of this information to the party and inform them that in order for them to find his uncle and more answers they must defeat the vampiric blood king that has reclaimed the temple and banished her out from her sacred duties. The entire time the party has noticed that she's a vampire and notice that she's a very powerful sorcerer however to leverage out how she's not solving every situation for the party she's only been able to copy all the more powerful any spell cast by the sorcerer in the party now, so that the game hasn't been completely broken and to Showcase that she's not fully in control of her powers nor always useful....
I know it's been a bit.
The character sheet links don't work any more. Is there any way these could be reposted, either to Beyond or as a PDF or image somewhere?
I would really love to run this in the original convention style, but I don't know enough about 1e characters to feel confident in my ability to convert them myself. I'm really having trouble finding anyone else who has done this.