In a few short weeks I’m going to run the Tomb Of Annihilation campaign. I was wondering if any DM who have run it have any advice in playing it specifically help with chapter One where it feels too vague with all the content in getting the player what to and not have them just skip to chapter 2. I really want to run this but the starting and getting the players involved is not coming together for me so I hope I can leverage some people who have ran the campaign for advice.
As a player, it did feel like a throwaway chapter. I have no clue who the employer is or any of that secret DM stuff, so I don't know everything. Here are some suggested modifications:
I don't see why they can't be employed in port nyanzaru, they don't need to be anywhere else beforehand
You could just say they've been hired, what the job is, and what the employer looks like.
Make the employer acererak with a mask -- again, I don't know if this is what it actually is, and if you go with this, maybe explain at the end WHY acererak did this. I mean, he is legitimately insane...
So there you go. Remember, my status as a lowly player limits my knowledge.
If you search online for "Tomb of annihilation dm guide" you'll find several well-written, in depth guides that give all kinds of suggestions. A lot more info than could be typed into the forums.
As a player, it did feel like a throwaway chapter. I have no clue who the employer is or any of that secret DM stuff, so I don't know everything. Here are some suggested modifications:
I don't see why they can't be employed in port nyanzaru, they don't need to be anywhere else beforehand
You could just say they've been hired, what the job is, and what the employer looks like.
Make the employer acererak with a mask -- again, I don't know if this is what it actually is, and if you go with this, maybe explain at the end WHY acererak did this. I mean, he is legitimately insane...
So there you go. Remember, my status as a lowly player limits my knowledge.
Thank you for the information. My question, as a player if you can recall, how or what information did you know to get prepared and find a guide in port nyanzaru. The book just outlines port nyanzaru and all it's regions but nothing how to get the players ready for their journey. I just see them leaving without doing much prep outside of me telling them. You need a guide, you need supplies, etc which kind of is a disappointment that the DM needs to lay it all out.
When you final left port nyanzaru did it seem like the camping trip from hell, not that you know where to go, or was it mostly just wandering around hex to hex with random encounters thrown in?
What did you think of the adventure as a whole? Was it worth the time?
If you search online for "Tomb of annihilation dm guide" you'll find several well-written, in depth guides that give all kinds of suggestions. A lot more info than could be typed into the forums.
Thanks for the information. I'll give those a crack and see what I can come up with.
If you start with the patron in the book hiring them and sending them to their Port N cont, that contact can explain the need for a guide, etc. But I second the idea of looking at online guides. There is also an “enhancing tomb of annihilation” thread at enworld.org that mat be helpful. (I found the posts by quickleaf in that thread to be particularly helpful.
i did find that I needed to develop alternative means to get the party some of the clues they needed. One device I used for that was finding an adventurer’s diary. I used a different patron than the book as my quest giver, and she had a pseudo dragon familiar; he made periodic appearances with messages from the patron. Sending stones would do something similar.
I've been flipping through some guides at the moment, not getting too deep just yet, and there are some good ideas to get things moving especially if I'm willing to ignore the starting Patron. I'd like to fire up a lot of the side-quests to at least give the party some options what to do in the Port but especially helpful to give them some guidance once they are outside the city walls. I'd like the party to hit everything but that may be too linear running the adventure.
The journey through the forest feels a lot like, pick a hex, navigate, random encounter(s), night. Rinse and repeat. I can see that getting old fast but I'm seeing it more of a level grinding experience so when they hit the Lost City they will be 'adequately' ready.
It's a "time crunch" adventure, and how you present that aspect will probably impact what your players do. I played it before I ran it, and the DM definitely over-indexed on the time aspect. After it was over, he mentioned that he would have liked to run the dino races and other Port N things. We told him that the way he set it up it made us think that if we spent more than 24hrs in the Port we were putting ourselves way behind. When I ran it I think I added a week or two to the time it gives.
The “hex crawl” through the jungle does get old fast. I eventually sped it up by taking it in several day chunks, narrating most the encounters, and only playing out the more interesting combats. I also found tracking bug repellent and water to be tedious. I had a whole system worked out at the beginning, but it ended up detracting from the fun for us. I’d suggest that if they buy enough bug repellent and rain catchers, you just not worry about it at all. If you want some element of that, think about a roll Every x days, with some potential negative consequences (rain catchers dumped, bug repellent washed overboard, etc.).
I “rolled” for weather and encounters ahead of time in a spreadsheet. (Used the random number generator in the spreadsheet rather than rolling). I found that it sped things up. When I started taking multi day chunks, it made it easy to select the more interesting encounters to play out.
My group has been playing it for a long time now (we only get together once a month). The port has so much you can do, but as others have said, the time crunch makes it skipped, that said, my group did manage to start a civil war there on our way out.
The hex crawl is absolutely the weakest part of the adventure. At first you are basically like "Well I have no clue where to go, so i guess roughly that way"
We eventually just did a highlights of the hex crawl (just doing a few of the coolest encounters) as we had spent nearly a year in that jungle. It gets repetitive, and boring for both players and DM.
My suggestion is, skip ch1 and 2, have the players start at lvl 6 and chapter 3. Or skip the module, and jsut use the port itself as a seed for a game, without the death curse even existing (I have heard of groups that just want to dino race and adventure in the jungles in a more traditional way, without having to rush rush rush from place to place.
Yeah, the time crunch does bother me as well as I can knowing my party well enough they will just jump to the search. Some of the guides for the campaign I've read do give some good suggestions on the Hex Crawl through the jungle plus, as was mentioned hitting the interesting spots along the way. The guide also has a 30-day travel breakdown, while it seems like a lot it at least gives a sense of travel. I'm also thinking of giving the players map of the outlining region but not work so much with the official locations shown on the DM map and just give some linear travel by the guides, which I am going to whittle down to a more manageable choice size.
Maybe this is normal per published books but there seems like a lot more work, regardless of pre-game prep, to get the game off the ground.
To follow up on one of Hekiryuu's suggestion, it would be pretty easy to set aside the whole death curse thing, and use Port N as a jumping off point for a series of quests into the jungle in search of treasure (or missing family members, or.....). You could even incorporate the death curse later on, starting the clock on that at a later point, when travel directly to the ruins is more likely and when it's possible they've built a relationship with someone affected by the death curse and have more incentive to address it.
While there were some aspects of Tomb of Annihilation I struggle with, one of the things I liked about it was that it was essentially a mini-setting guide and there was enough material to do a lot of adventures there, whether or not one followed up on the death curse. This is especially true when one takes into account all the material available on DMsGuild to supplement the hardcover.
One thing I did like about the jungle section was that since I knew where the party was, and where they were headed, I could just prep the "next" areas along their route, and not everything at once.
Oh, by the way, here's the link to the enworld discussion I mentioned earlier.
I had Syndra and Wakanga give most of the vital information, such as the importance of a guide and good places to find one. Then the guide helped them prepare for things a little before heading off to Fort Belurian. In Nyanzaru I gave them 5-6 key locations to do with getting items or meeting potentially useful people and got them to pick their route
it was a quick one, in game spending just one day in the city. There are options and reasons they might head back, at which point I can add and expand what was first presented as necessary.
I am currently DMing Tomb of Annihilation (ToA). We are about half-way through the campaign.
This post is going to get out of hand if I list all my thoughts. I had to trim a lot of fat to keep it manageable.
Ask on anything you want me to follow up on.
tl;dr Give the PC's some info up front. Let them buy-in. As written, the plot is clunky. throw it away and do your own thing, especially for Port Nyanzaru.
Getting Started for the DM:
Decide on the timeline. You are not required to start 20 days into the Death Curse. You can choose to start before the Death Curse is activated. I feel there are three valid options:
Prior to the Death Curse. The players have traveled to Chult of their own free-will to pursue their own goals (turtle hunting, snail hunting, scavenging, Indiana Jones the Chultan ruins, dinosaur hunting, etc.). This gives you time to just hang out in Port Nyanzaru and explore the environs. Get acclimated so to speak. Once the Death Curse is activated the players are already “on-scene”.
Day Zero: The PC’s either have advanced information (for example running “Cellar of Death” from the Dungeon’s Masters Guild), or they already had plans to travel (or be) in Chult when the curse is activated. This starts either just before or just after the Death Curse activates.
Running “Cellar of Death” has the advantage of putting the PCs ahead of the curve and the ones with the most knowledge of what is going on. It also buys them some more time.
As written: The PC’s arrive on scene 20 days after the Death Curse has been active. In this case they PCs should know what is going on and have their own reasons for making the excursion to Chult.
Patron: I did not like the Patron idea from either the book or “Cellar of Death”. They both felt clunky to me. “Cellar of Death” is better but still feels a bit forced in getting PC’s to Chult.
How I did it:
I got their buy-in to run this adventure. I told them the premise and the setting, Death Curse, jungle, hex crawl, etc. My players had some fore knowledge of what they were getting in to. This helped them make characters they would enjoy playing (Ranger, Druid) in this campaign and forced them to write back-stories about why they were going to Chult in the first place.
2 PC’s chose to have afflicted relatives. They were traveling to Chult to try and save them. Note: Having PC’s with loved ones they were trying to save really emphasized the time crunch, perhaps negatively. Be aware if your PCs go with this option, they are going to be far more interested in skipping content and moving along as quickly as possible. I highly recommend giving them a bit more time in this case.
2 were scholars, traveling to try understanding what was happening
1 was an “exiled” noble. His family wanted the goody two shoes paladin out of their hair and “sponsored” his jungle excursion. This is the PC who chose to ignore the premise, but still buy-in to “I am going to the jungle.”
Had I tried to blindside my characters, or not introduced them to the setting and premise, my characters would have ended up all over the place. This got them all pointed in the same direction.
I started with the “as-written” timeline. In retrospect being in Chult prior to the Death Curse might be more interesting.
I started them all on the same boat headed for Chult and Port Nyanzaru.
I started my PC’s at level 2. I had them tell ME what their first adventure was and why they were “adventurers”.
I had them start off-scene and tell me how they learned of the Death Curse, why they chose to go to Chult, and how they ended up on the boat.
I ran “Cellar of Death” for one of the PC’s, my wife. It was her first D&D game and I wanted to introduce her to the game and mechanics before our first game. Having one PC with more knowledge than the others turned out to be an interesting roleplay option. When working with the other PC’s on their backstories I slipped each one different bits of lore, pieces of the puzzle, they could share via roleplay. This worked very well. Puzzle piece ideas: the primordial deity Ubtao, the pillaging of Chultan ruins like Mezro, the yuan-ti civil war (my own homebrew idea I tossed in for fun), the cult of Dendar, Azzerak, the hidden city of Omu.
Obviously, I gave my players a lot of agency from the very beginning. They knew why they were going to Chult and what they were trying to accomplish before they ever set foot on the boat. I think this was the single biggest contributor to the ongoing success of this campaign.
I did not use the Patron idea. It is just to clunky and forced.
I changed how the Death Curse works. Afflicted characters roll a “Curse saving throw” everyday against a DC 15, no modifiers. If they fail, they suffer from the death curse, if they succeed, they are not afflicted that day. This bought the players a bit more time. (You could also accelerate the death curse if you really wanted to play up the time crunch aspect.)
Other thoughts to follow up on later if you are interested:
Started the campaign with a frenetic “Wild West Gold Rush Fever” pitch. Everyone was going to Chult to plunder, search for the death curse, and generally find their fortune. The PCs were only a drop in the bucket of the hordes swarming to Chult. They were NOT unique flowers!
The boat: they were attacked by pterafolk (not pirates, Twist!). I introduced Nephyr and Aremag here as well.
This led to a meeting with Zindar who exposition dumped all the information on Port Nyanzaru the PC’s could want including things like the Ytepka society and the merchant princes. This was the big opportunity to acclimate the PCs to the port and the opportunities unique to the city, dinosaur racing, executioners run, temple of Savras, Grand Souk, and the coliseum.
This led to their reward a 500gp writ only usuable at “Olu Dawa’s” the Cabela’s of Chult. One stop shopping for all their survival needs and a chance to introduce rain catchers and bug repellent. If they had these things, I did not worry about tracking them. If they did not have these things I would “punish” them.
This led to an introduction of the guides.
In other words, the first adventure, intro to Port Nyanzaru was a bit of a lead em by the nose. My players appreciated the setup. Treasure that could only be used in one place (the writ), go here then go there. And a job board that opened up all the other side quests so they could pick and choose.
Syndra Sylvane is just an NPC with a map. She still has the Curse, but she is sponsoring the Yellow Banner group. Distrubuting the map to other adventures to hedge her bets. Her "payment" is that any points of interest the PCs discover must be reported to her (eventually) so she can update the map and increase the odds of each successive group being successful.
Using Milestone progression they had three key milestones in Port Nyanzaru: The map, a guide, and gear.
They did explore a lot of the city. 3-6 sessions covering 2-3 days. Very fast paced and frenetic, but it let them explore the city without feeling like they were losing time. In other words, I ran about 3 sessions (morning, afternoon, and evening/night) per day they were in the city.
That was alot, sorry. I will gladly give more information on anything you are interested in.
I am currently DMing Tomb of Annihilation (ToA). We are about half-way through the campaign.
This post is going to get out of hand if I list all my thoughts. I had to trim a lot of fat to keep it manageable.
Ask on anything you want me to follow up on.
tl;dr Give the PC's some info up front. Let them buy-in. As written, the plot is clunky. throw it away and do your own thing, especially for Port Nyanzaru.
Getting Started for the DM:
Decide on the timeline. You are not required to start 20 days into the Death Curse. You can choose to start before the Death Curse is activated. I feel there are three valid options:
Prior to the Death Curse. The players have traveled to Chult of their own free-will to pursue their own goals (turtle hunting, snail hunting, scavenging, Indiana Jones the Chultan ruins, dinosaur hunting, etc.). This gives you time to just hang out in Port Nyanzaru and explore the environs. Get acclimated so to speak. Once the Death Curse is activated the players are already “on-scene”.
Day Zero: The PC’s either have advanced information (for example running “Cellar of Death” from the Dungeon’s Masters Guild), or they already had plans to travel (or be) in Chult when the curse is activated. This starts either just before or just after the Death Curse activates.
Running “Cellar of Death” has the advantage of putting the PCs ahead of the curve and the ones with the most knowledge of what is going on. It also buys them some more time.
As written: The PC’s arrive on scene 20 days after the Death Curse has been active. In this case they PCs should know what is going on and have their own reasons for making the excursion to Chult.
Patron: I did not like the Patron idea from either the book or “Cellar of Death”. They both felt clunky to me. “Cellar of Death” is better but still feels a bit forced in getting PC’s to Chult.
How I did it:
I got their buy-in to run this adventure. I told them the premise and the setting, Death Curse, jungle, hex crawl, etc. My players had some fore knowledge of what they were getting in to. This helped them make characters they would enjoy playing (Ranger, Druid) in this campaign and forced them to write back-stories about why they were going to Chult in the first place.
2 PC’s chose to have afflicted relatives. They were traveling to Chult to try and save them. Note: Having PC’s with loved ones they were trying to save really emphasized the time crunch, perhaps negatively. Be aware if your PCs go with this option, they are going to be far more interested in skipping content and moving along as quickly as possible. I highly recommend giving them a bit more time in this case.
2 were scholars, traveling to try understanding what was happening
1 was an “exiled” noble. His family wanted the goody two shoes paladin out of their hair and “sponsored” his jungle excursion. This is the PC who chose to ignore the premise, but still buy-in to “I am going to the jungle.”
Had I tried to blindside my characters, or not introduced them to the setting and premise, my characters would have ended up all over the place. This got them all pointed in the same direction.
I started with the “as-written” timeline. In retrospect being in Chult prior to the Death Curse might be more interesting.
I started them all on the same boat headed for Chult and Port Nyanzaru.
I started my PC’s at level 2. I had them tell ME what their first adventure was and why they were “adventurers”.
I had them start off-scene and tell me how they learned of the Death Curse, why they chose to go to Chult, and how they ended up on the boat.
I ran “Cellar of Death” for one of the PC’s, my wife. It was her first D&D game and I wanted to introduce her to the game and mechanics before our first game. Having one PC with more knowledge than the others turned out to be an interesting roleplay option. When working with the other PC’s on their backstories I slipped each one different bits of lore, pieces of the puzzle, they could share via roleplay. This worked very well. Puzzle piece ideas: the primordial deity Ubtao, the pillaging of Chultan ruins like Mezro, the yuan-ti civil war (my own homebrew idea I tossed in for fun), the cult of Dendar, Azzerak, the hidden city of Omu.
Obviously, I gave my players a lot of agency from the very beginning. They knew why they were going to Chult and what they were trying to accomplish before they ever set foot on the boat. I think this was the single biggest contributor to the ongoing success of this campaign.
I did not use the Patron idea. It is just to clunky and forced.
I changed how the Death Curse works. Afflicted characters roll a “Curse saving throw” everyday against a DC 15, no modifiers. If they fail, they suffer from the death curse, if they succeed, they are not afflicted that day. This bought the players a bit more time. (You could also accelerate the death curse if you really wanted to play up the time crunch aspect.)
Other thoughts to follow up on later if you are interested:
Started the campaign with a frenetic “Wild West Gold Rush Fever” pitch. Everyone was going to Chult to plunder, search for the death curse, and generally find their fortune. The PCs were only a drop in the bucket of the hordes swarming to Chult. They were NOT unique flowers!
The boat: they were attacked by pterafolk (not pirates, Twist!). I introduced Nephyr and Aremag here as well.
This led to a meeting with Zindar who exposition dumped all the information on Port Nyanzaru the PC’s could want including things like the Ytepka society and the merchant princes. This was the big opportunity to acclimate the PCs to the port and the opportunities unique to the city, dinosaur racing, executioners run, temple of Savras, Grand Souk, and the coliseum.
This led to their reward a 500gp writ only usuable at “Olu Dawa’s” the Cabela’s of Chult. One stop shopping for all their survival needs and a chance to introduce rain catchers and bug repellent. If they had these things, I did not worry about tracking them. If they did not have these things I would “punish” them.
This led to an introduction of the guides.
In other words, the first adventure, intro to Port Nyanzaru was a bit of a lead em by the nose. My players appreciated the setup. Treasure that could only be used in one place (the writ), go here then go there. And a job board that opened up all the other side quests so they could pick and choose.
Syndra Sylvane is just an NPC with a map. She still has the Curse, but she is sponsoring the Yellow Banner group. Distrubuting the map to other adventures to hedge her bets. Her "payment" is that any points of interest the PCs discover must be reported to her (eventually) so she can update the map and increase the odds of each successive group being successful.
Using Milestone progression they had three key milestones in Port Nyanzaru: The map, a guide, and gear.
They did explore a lot of the city. 3-6 sessions covering 2-3 days. Very fast paced and frenetic, but it let them explore the city without feeling like they were losing time. In other words, I ran about 3 sessions (morning, afternoon, and evening/night) per day they were in the city.
That was alot, sorry. I will gladly give more information on anything you are interested in.
As I mentioned in the PM, thank you so much for all the detail you provided here I appreciate it.
So do the Guides really serve any use besides some side mission or extra NPC? I don't see a penalty or disadvantage on not having one.
Some of the know locations of specific sites. Presumably they know more about the hazards of the jungle and can sometimes provide lore. A few of them tie in to larger plotlines. I don't know that there is a specific mechanical advantage or disadvantage to having/not having one.
Instead of starting on Day 20 of the Death Curse, start on Day 18 or 19 and contrive something that forces the players to stay in Nyanzaru for a few days. Nothing big, just have Syndra tell them she has a few more potential sources (which turn out to be dead ends) before they head out. This way, players can explore the city and the stuff going on there.
Have the players go into the jungle at level 2. One way to do this is to have an undead assault on the outer city, which the players could help defend. A few guards could join in the fight to make it feel bigger and also make sure the players get exactly 300 experience each.
Foreshadow Ras Nsi before the party gets to Omu. Nothing big, just name drop him. Maybe have an intelligent undead at some point speak his name.
Don't tell the party that the death curse is coming from Omu. Have them know only that it is coming from an artifact called the Soulmonger hidden somewhere in Chult. Let the party make a few guesses as to where it might be. They could ask around Port Nyanzaru or amongst the guides for information about where a necromantic artifact might be. After they've been in the jungle for a bit, they'll have hopefully bumped into the guardian naga, the aarakocra, Valindra, or someone else who can definitively point them towards Omu. By doing it this way instead of just telling the party "it's in the city of Omu", you plant an air of mystery.
Consider switching some of the magic items around, especially inside the Tomb itself. I noticed that unless you buy the magic dagger in Port Nyanzaru (and who can even afford it at level 1?), all of the weapons in the module are strength based melee weapons. I can't give you any specific ideas, but by the time you're at the doors of the tomb, you'll know what your party needs better than I do right now.
So do the Guides really serve any use besides some side mission or extra NPC? I don't see a penalty or disadvantage on not having one.
They do provide one other thing. They may outline a plot, subplot, or path through the adventure that you might not otherwise thought of. Sometimes they show a way to connect some of the locations into one cohesive story, and some of them add elements to one of the presented subplots to flesh out the details of that subplot.
Example 1: One of the guides outlines a nice story arc for getting through the jungle by having the PC's go to firefinger: rescue Nephyr, go to Kir Sabal: learn of the wind dance, go to nangalore to get the reagent. Explore jungle from the air. Seed enough intel along the way and they can directly go to, or close to, the final destination.
Example 2: Some of the other guides focus on the Mezro-Artus Cimber connection. One guide I looked at focused on the Ubtao-Dendar storyline.
The one i used the most was the https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion. The updated dinosaur racing rules were very fun to run. (Din Viesel and his young T-rex "Muscle" stole the show! My own addition but I used their rules.). The guide also provided some jungle travel and foreshadowing tips that have proved useful.
Ultimately the guides are best if you are feeling overwhelmed with a certain aspect of the adventure and need help getting "unstuck", OR if your players go off on an unexpected tangent (chasing down Mezro, or going after Dendar for example). Then you can find a guide that focuses on that aspect of the adventure if you don't have the time to figure out your own story.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion is the other guide I have referenced most. Both have been very valuable for my campaign. I have a few others, but end up only using snippets here and there from them. There are a few gems scattered throughout the other ones, but I have found these two to be my consistent go-to's.
So do the Guides really serve any use besides some side mission or extra NPC? I don't see a penalty or disadvantage on not having one.
They do provide one other thing. They may outline a plot, subplot, or path through the adventure that you might not otherwise thought of. Sometimes they show a way to connect some of the locations into one cohesive story, and some of them add elements to one of the presented subplots to flesh out the details of that subplot.
Example 1: One of the guides outlines a nice story arc for getting through the jungle by having the PC's go to firefinger: rescue Nephyr, go to Kir Sabal: learn of the wind dance, go to nangalore to get the reagent. Explore jungle from the air. Seed enough intel along the way and they can directly go to, or close to, the final destination.
Example 2: Some of the other guides focus on the Mezro-Artus Cimber connection. One guide I looked at focused on the Ubtao-Dendar storyline.
The one i used the most was the https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion. The updated dinosaur racing rules were very fun to run. (Din Viesel and his young T-rex "Muscle" stole the show! My own addition but I used their rules.). The guide also provided some jungle travel and foreshadowing tips that have proved useful.
Ultimately the guides are best if you are feeling overwhelmed with a certain aspect of the adventure and need help getting "unstuck", OR if your players go off on an unexpected tangent (chasing down Mezro, or going after Dendar for example). Then you can find a guide that focuses on that aspect of the adventure if you don't have the time to figure out your own story.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion is the other guide I have referenced most. Both have been very valuable for my campaign. I have a few others, but end up only using snippets here and there from them. There are a few gems scattered throughout the other ones, but I have found these two to be my consistent go-to's.
Both of the links are to the same guide. Also, I think the OP meant the NPC guides in TOA, but your suggestions are still very helpful.
In a few short weeks I’m going to run the Tomb Of Annihilation campaign. I was wondering if any DM who have run it have any advice in playing it specifically help with chapter One where it feels too vague with all the content in getting the player what to and not have them just skip to chapter 2. I really want to run this but the starting and getting the players involved is not coming together for me so I hope I can leverage some people who have ran the campaign for advice.
As a player, it did feel like a throwaway chapter. I have no clue who the employer is or any of that secret DM stuff, so I don't know everything. Here are some suggested modifications:
So there you go. Remember, my status as a lowly player limits my knowledge.
Proud poster on the Create a World thread
If you search online for "Tomb of annihilation dm guide" you'll find several well-written, in depth guides that give all kinds of suggestions. A lot more info than could be typed into the forums.
Thank you for the information. My question, as a player if you can recall, how or what information did you know to get prepared and find a guide in port nyanzaru. The book just outlines port nyanzaru and all it's regions but nothing how to get the players ready for their journey. I just see them leaving without doing much prep outside of me telling them. You need a guide, you need supplies, etc which kind of is a disappointment that the DM needs to lay it all out.
When you final left port nyanzaru did it seem like the camping trip from hell, not that you know where to go, or was it mostly just wandering around hex to hex with random encounters thrown in?
What did you think of the adventure as a whole? Was it worth the time?
Thanks for the information. I'll give those a crack and see what I can come up with.
If you start with the patron in the book hiring them and sending them to their Port N cont, that contact can explain the need for a guide, etc. But I second the idea of looking at online guides. There is also an “enhancing tomb of annihilation” thread at enworld.org that mat be helpful. (I found the posts by quickleaf in that thread to be particularly helpful.
i did find that I needed to develop alternative means to get the party some of the clues they needed. One device I used for that was finding an adventurer’s diary. I used a different patron than the book as my quest giver, and she had a pseudo dragon familiar; he made periodic appearances with messages from the patron. Sending stones would do something similar.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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I've been flipping through some guides at the moment, not getting too deep just yet, and there are some good ideas to get things moving especially if I'm willing to ignore the starting Patron. I'd like to fire up a lot of the side-quests to at least give the party some options what to do in the Port but especially helpful to give them some guidance once they are outside the city walls. I'd like the party to hit everything but that may be too linear running the adventure.
The journey through the forest feels a lot like, pick a hex, navigate, random encounter(s), night. Rinse and repeat. I can see that getting old fast but I'm seeing it more of a level grinding experience so when they hit the Lost City they will be 'adequately' ready.
It's a "time crunch" adventure, and how you present that aspect will probably impact what your players do. I played it before I ran it, and the DM definitely over-indexed on the time aspect. After it was over, he mentioned that he would have liked to run the dino races and other Port N things. We told him that the way he set it up it made us think that if we spent more than 24hrs in the Port we were putting ourselves way behind. When I ran it I think I added a week or two to the time it gives.
The “hex crawl” through the jungle does get old fast. I eventually sped it up by taking it in several day chunks, narrating most the encounters, and only playing out the more interesting combats. I also found tracking bug repellent and water to be tedious. I had a whole system worked out at the beginning, but it ended up detracting from the fun for us. I’d suggest that if they buy enough bug repellent and rain catchers, you just not worry about it at all. If you want some element of that, think about a roll Every x days, with some potential negative consequences (rain catchers dumped, bug repellent washed overboard, etc.).
I “rolled” for weather and encounters ahead of time in a spreadsheet. (Used the random number generator in the spreadsheet rather than rolling). I found that it sped things up. When I started taking multi day chunks, it made it easy to select the more interesting encounters to play out.
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My group has been playing it for a long time now (we only get together once a month). The port has so much you can do, but as others have said, the time crunch makes it skipped, that said, my group did manage to start a civil war there on our way out.
The hex crawl is absolutely the weakest part of the adventure. At first you are basically like "Well I have no clue where to go, so i guess roughly that way"
We eventually just did a highlights of the hex crawl (just doing a few of the coolest encounters) as we had spent nearly a year in that jungle. It gets repetitive, and boring for both players and DM.
My suggestion is, skip ch1 and 2, have the players start at lvl 6 and chapter 3. Or skip the module, and jsut use the port itself as a seed for a game, without the death curse even existing (I have heard of groups that just want to dino race and adventure in the jungles in a more traditional way, without having to rush rush rush from place to place.
Yeah, the time crunch does bother me as well as I can knowing my party well enough they will just jump to the search. Some of the guides for the campaign I've read do give some good suggestions on the Hex Crawl through the jungle plus, as was mentioned hitting the interesting spots along the way. The guide also has a 30-day travel breakdown, while it seems like a lot it at least gives a sense of travel. I'm also thinking of giving the players map of the outlining region but not work so much with the official locations shown on the DM map and just give some linear travel by the guides, which I am going to whittle down to a more manageable choice size.
Maybe this is normal per published books but there seems like a lot more work, regardless of pre-game prep, to get the game off the ground.
To follow up on one of Hekiryuu's suggestion, it would be pretty easy to set aside the whole death curse thing, and use Port N as a jumping off point for a series of quests into the jungle in search of treasure (or missing family members, or.....). You could even incorporate the death curse later on, starting the clock on that at a later point, when travel directly to the ruins is more likely and when it's possible they've built a relationship with someone affected by the death curse and have more incentive to address it.
While there were some aspects of Tomb of Annihilation I struggle with, one of the things I liked about it was that it was essentially a mini-setting guide and there was enough material to do a lot of adventures there, whether or not one followed up on the death curse. This is especially true when one takes into account all the material available on DMsGuild to supplement the hardcover.
One thing I did like about the jungle section was that since I knew where the party was, and where they were headed, I could just prep the "next" areas along their route, and not everything at once.
Oh, by the way, here's the link to the enworld discussion I mentioned earlier.
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I had Syndra and Wakanga give most of the vital information, such as the importance of a guide and good places to find one. Then the guide helped them prepare for things a little before heading off to Fort Belurian. In Nyanzaru I gave them 5-6 key locations to do with getting items or meeting potentially useful people and got them to pick their route
it was a quick one, in game spending just one day in the city. There are options and reasons they might head back, at which point I can add and expand what was first presented as necessary.
I am currently DMing Tomb of Annihilation (ToA). We are about half-way through the campaign.
This post is going to get out of hand if I list all my thoughts. I had to trim a lot of fat to keep it manageable.
Ask on anything you want me to follow up on.
tl;dr Give the PC's some info up front. Let them buy-in. As written, the plot is clunky. throw it away and do your own thing, especially for Port Nyanzaru.
Getting Started for the DM:
Decide on the timeline. You are not required to start 20 days into the Death Curse. You can choose to start before the Death Curse is activated. I feel there are three valid options:
Patron: I did not like the Patron idea from either the book or “Cellar of Death”. They both felt clunky to me. “Cellar of Death” is better but still feels a bit forced in getting PC’s to Chult.
How I did it:
Other thoughts to follow up on later if you are interested:
That was alot, sorry. I will gladly give more information on anything you are interested in.
So do the Guides really serve any use besides some side mission or extra NPC? I don't see a penalty or disadvantage on not having one.
As I mentioned in the PM, thank you so much for all the detail you provided here I appreciate it.
Some of the know locations of specific sites. Presumably they know more about the hazards of the jungle and can sometimes provide lore. A few of them tie in to larger plotlines. I don't know that there is a specific mechanical advantage or disadvantage to having/not having one.
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They do provide one other thing. They may outline a plot, subplot, or path through the adventure that you might not otherwise thought of. Sometimes they show a way to connect some of the locations into one cohesive story, and some of them add elements to one of the presented subplots to flesh out the details of that subplot.
Example 1: One of the guides outlines a nice story arc for getting through the jungle by having the PC's go to firefinger: rescue Nephyr, go to Kir Sabal: learn of the wind dance, go to nangalore to get the reagent. Explore jungle from the air. Seed enough intel along the way and they can directly go to, or close to, the final destination.
Example 2: Some of the other guides focus on the Mezro-Artus Cimber connection. One guide I looked at focused on the Ubtao-Dendar storyline.
The one i used the most was the https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion. The updated dinosaur racing rules were very fun to run. (Din Viesel and his young T-rex "Muscle" stole the show! My own addition but I used their rules.). The guide also provided some jungle travel and foreshadowing tips that have proved useful.
Ultimately the guides are best if you are feeling overwhelmed with a certain aspect of the adventure and need help getting "unstuck", OR if your players go off on an unexpected tangent (chasing down Mezro, or going after Dendar for example). Then you can find a guide that focuses on that aspect of the adventure if you don't have the time to figure out your own story.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/225854/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Companion is the other guide I have referenced most. Both have been very valuable for my campaign. I have a few others, but end up only using snippets here and there from them. There are a few gems scattered throughout the other ones, but I have found these two to be my consistent go-to's.
Both of the links are to the same guide. Also, I think the OP meant the NPC guides in TOA, but your suggestions are still very helpful.
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