Dungeons and Dragons, "Tomb of Annihilation" ep. 1

             Continuing with my first real attempt to run a published Dungeons and Dragons adventure (and planning to use additional adventures from Kobold Press to make things more weird and interesting).  This is going to cover the first two sessions (you know, with a lot of superficial details cut to keep things manageable) which together form a sort of prequel to the actual adventures in Chult.

The Characters

            I have 3 players currently, with a half dozen others in the wings dealing with life event stuff like children and the plague.  Ultimately a strength of “Tomb of Annihilation” is that players can make new characters without too much difficulty, and new players can enter the game without much trouble, “we are also on jungle safari trying to find the cause of the Curse of Fatal Death” or “I am a big game hunter in the jungle to get at dinosaurs, but I could join your team to save the world”.  There are plenty of options.

            The first member of the team is a Tortle Barbarian following the Ancestral Guardian path from “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”.  He took the Anthropology background from “Tomb of Annihilation” and decided to make himself quirky by being a food tourist.  He plays him as a good-natured bumbler with this delightful character illustration he found online (which has disappeared, so it is no longer featured here).

            The second player decided to go with a Tabaxi Monk, with the Drunken Master path… except instead of booze the cat-man uses catnip to get wasted and fight.  The first thing that jumped to mind when I looked over his character was the Kajit from Skyrim and their use of Skooma.  Beyond that his backstory involves being trained for ages to combat a prophesized great evil that threatens the world.

            Lastly is the party’s human wizard using transmutation magic and is based off the villainous wizard from “Conan the Destroyer” who talks like a raving lunatic but is highly knowledgeable.  He is an egomaniacal shouty guy who believes his power comes from the spirit of his dead wife.  His wife having died in Chult years back and now he believes that he should go to the continent to investigate her death.

The Adventure

            I may have mentioned this in past entries, but I am a frequent user of Humble Bundle when it comes to them releasing a bunch of digital 5e content, mostly in the form of adventure modules, so much so that I now have many more adventures than I could ever expect to use, and those I do use I will be modifying the heck out of because I also have lots of books that have monsters and NPC’s that I want to use.

            I settled on “The Hallowed Ring” a 5^th Edition Adventure by Stephen Chenault.  Overall I found the premise quite solid, and it would serve as a great introductory adventure for most Dungeons and Dragons games, as it presents a fully fleshed out location to serve as an adventure hub, the Gum Log Inn and Tavern, while at the same time having plenty of lore and hooks to help set up the rest of the campaign: a cult, a legendary heroic duo of a dwarf and giant, a stone book that traps evil outsiders, and a potent magic item that I don’t feel is unbalanced and fits surprisingly well as a useful tool in Chult which involves Giants and Dwarves.  There is even a cool monster, the Flesh Crawler, which I was able to tie into the lore I added to the “Tomb of Annihilation” background in my own game.

            For the stuff I added I pulled on Kobold Press’ Creature Codex.  It is a robust and well-designed collection of monsters that I highly recommend, so much so that I contributed to its sequel’s Kick Starter campaign.  The “Megapede” a giant acid spiting caterpillar which destroys weapons was a good addition to the theme of “Worm Monsters” and I threw in the Void Cultists as part of the ongoing story (I plan to play up the worm monster theme as the machinations of a great classic Dungeons and Dragons bad guy, Kyuss).

How it Went

            I fault myself for putting too many monsters up front and playing them a little too well, a few bad rolls and I had almost steamrolled my players.  Unexpected because they are level 3, even with me pumping up the encounters they still should have had an easier time.

            That being said the theming and lore went over well, I was able to give them several useful magic items, and their success in the dungeon ultimately introduced them to the lore I wanted to introduce and gave them a logical reason to be recruited to go to Chult by the “Tomb of Annihilation” NPC, Syndra Silvane.

            I also added another element, that the cultists of Kyuss had been growing something in the dungeon the group had ventured into, a massive (like the size of a refrigerator) purple heart that had tendrils of violet cartilage reaching out thru the whole dungeon and bleed a thick, stinking, and sticky fluid when cut.  They ultimate took a sample and told Syndra Silvane about it before leaving for Chult, with her assurances that she would look into it.

Recommendations to Others

            I have a feeling that some DM’s will look at my additions quizzically, but I have to say, putting in a bunch of weird elements and allowing the players to fixate on certain elements while the rest fades into the background is a good way to keep them interested over the long haul.

            I have answers for what the big Purple heart is, I have an answer for what Kyuss has to do with things, and I have ideas for how it fits in with Chult, but those things can change to better fit the story as it evolves with my player’s actions.

            You might consider that sloppy, but I find games with too much information and too many definitive answers to be inflexible.  A big problem I had with playing “Curse of Strahd” was how there is always one (and precisely one) answer to a given mystery.  It is possible for the players to guess the right answer easily or for them to wrong foot the whole thing because the clues are too obtuse.  If there are 3 possible bad guys and depending on what clues the players find the bad guy can change (like old adventure game logic on computer) then it allows for twists in the narrative.

            Don’t write out and decide everything ahead of time.

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Dungeons and Dragons "Tomb of Annihilation" ep. 1/2

             Leading up to my first game of “Tomb of Annihilation” I did what I think many good DM’s should do, lay out ground rules, explain the premise of the campaign, and creating places where all of those things can be easily kept for reference.

            Let’s start with the most basic thing I just mentioned, creating a place to keep things.  My group is playing on Roll20, using the digital items that come default with the program.  Additionally I have numerous maps and other items gotten from Humble Bundles over the years (more on them later).  In addition to setting up the character sheets and some maps (not enough, my fault) I made use of something that has been my default for years, the Facebook group.

            I have real problems with Facebook as a company, but they are my default way of keeping in contact with people I know, far more than email or texting, and the group feature allows for the posting of documents for easy reference later.  If your group needs to keep track of a lot of information finding a social media platform you all share and creating a group within it may prove to be the best option for you, but Facebook is…. Sadly… the default.

 

The Art in this book is rather top notch.

Ground Rules, Guidelines, and FAQ’s

            So let me show you the other two items that might give you an idea of how to run a game in the future.  Let’s start with the Crunch, that is to say, relevant rule changes that will crop up in the campaign, both at the stage of creating characters and those that are more long term.  These are “The Guidelines” more accurately described as “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)”.

1)      I ask that you not look up spoilers for the "Tomb of Annihilation". Even tho I plan to change a few things, adding some monsters from the various supplements I own and throwing in NPC's from my own campaign setting I plan to use the puzzles and traps provided, so don't try to cheat.

2)      We will be starting at Level 3, this will allow every to start off as a somewhat established adventurer being recruited to go on a dangerous journey to a foreign land full of danger, rather than a bunch of Level 1’s who would make as much sense going into this situation as throwing a handful of corn at a charging dinosaur as a means of stunning it into submission.

3)      You all will be using the Elite Array for your stats, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.  You can then add a +1 to any of those numbers in addition to your racial statistics or any bonuses you might get from feats.

4)      You all are going to start off as an established group of adventurers on a short adventure at the beginning.  The success of this short adventure is what gets the attention of the NPC who is doing their best to coordinate teams and send them to Chult to combat the Curse of Fatal Death.

5)      You are going to have the sort of boring equipment a level 1 party would have; you will get more stuff over the course of the first introductory adventure.

6)      I plan to use my kind of healing items for this adventure.  Which means cheap healing potions that can be used as a quick bonus action… but that expire over time, and other healing items that work slower but keep for much longer.

7)      We’ll be using the various religions I have cooked up in the past, the 5, the 3 (I will post a long blog about it, just like the others, I have it written it will be on the way), the Preserver, Orc Maltheism, the High Arcana, and the local religion of Chult which worships several regional deities after their chief creator and protector god abandoned them in ages past.  If you would like to create an off the beaten path custom religion I am welcome to hear your input.

8)      Please write up a character background (Good to note this is roughly the same setup I use in my own neglected blog series about creating characters), try to include:

·         Name

·         Class

·         Race

·         Background

·         History

·         Goals

·         Methods

9)      More rules might be added to this as time goes on, I will try to keep things consistent, but as always, I lend toward “Rule of Cool” which means if you have a good idea I am inclined to let you go for it, rather than simply saying “No”.  I am also more of a roleplaying guy rather than contriving combat… but this is a much more savage environment, combat will be more typical. 

10)  Lastly, there is a story in this, and I plan to give you guys a chance to make some decisions during this, rather than just jumping thru the hoops, you guys can gather more resources and allies along the way until you have a lot of power for the final boss fight, I find that kind of adventuring rewarding.

 

The Premise

            I am going to go on the record as saying that the premise of “Tomb of Annihilation” that people who have died are not coming back to life… To just be an inherently silly idea.  Welcome to the REAL-WORLD JACKASS!  That is why I titled my campaign the joking name “The Curse of Fatal Death” which is a reference to a Doctor Who comedy sketch.  That being said, I attempted to write all of this diegetically.

            Something terrible has started to assault the peace and security of the world.  People who die, cannot be brought back from the dead.  While the common people of the world have hardly noticed the difference, the rich and powerful see this development as a major crisis, as they now might suffer the same mortality that the common folk have always experienced.

            At first this might not seem like a massive issue, but there is an additional problem, those who have been brought back from the dead before are now wasting away, slowly being consumed by whatever horrible force that has made death final.

            This too may not immediately seem like a massive difficulty, until you realize how many of the various super powerful and capable heroes in the world have been brought back to life, and all the various horrors that exist just outside of our plane are readying themselves to attack our world the as its defenses and champions begin to wither and die.

            Expeditions to oracles, divinationists and other seers have resulted in conflicting messages about what the cause of the curse is, only that its power is growing, and more death will begin to creep in around the edges of the world until everything is swallowed.

            Adventurers of all stripes not yet affected by the Curse have begun scrambling to locate the source of the problem and currently the best leads have taken many to the land of Chult, a savage land of dinosaurs, undead, and barbarism that has pushed their great people to the coasts.  Deep within this continent is the promise of combating the Curse of Fatal Death. 

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