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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