Tomb of Annihilation (Dungeons & Dragons)

I love this adventure. It's based on a hugely favorite D&D module from ages ago, Tomb of Horrors. It steps up the play, though, and hands the players a larger environment filled with danger and discovery. There are two parts to the adventure, the first, and smaller aspect, is one of being in a town where players have to uncover the mystery, find clues and become prepared for the trek into the trackless jungle. There is politics, backstabbing, along with lots of potential palace intrigue, areas to poke around in, a whole culture to explore. Plus, dinosaur races! Not into that? Flip past it and dive into the jungle. Lots of encounters and adventures are outlined to keep your party busy and interested. Explore ruins, encounter never-before seen creatures, find treasure and magic items. Zombies, dinosaurs, and zombie dinosaurs! It's a vast, unexplored jungle filled with things to visit. The final episode, delving into the lost city itself, is filled with puzzles, danger, and very nasty creatures. All the while the danger of the Death Curse hangs over your and everybody in the world's head. Come out victorious and your players could become the heroes of all of Faerûn! This adventure is probably one of the best WoTC has put out in a long while. The book is packed with ideas and fascinating settings. As a DM, this book really gets my imagination going, and really gets me excited about the kind of things my party will encounter. The situations and people in the book feel really well-rounded and full of potential. The mechanics of the travel through the jungle will be fun and add incredible dimension. I would say this is not a good book for a beginning DM. It requires a good understanding about how D&D module books work and how to use them to create a campaign. They aren't scripts, they are outlines that require the ability to fill in the gaps, use your imagination, and be able to react to situations. This book benefits from a good amount of preparation prior to each session, mapping out potential encounters and situations. I extrapolate and invent, expand parts of the book I find interesting and skip over parts I don't. If you really want to run this adventure, but would like help, there are companion pieces available for purchase on the Web (I use the DM's Guild). These will help you understand and greatly expand the potential of the book. Don't think the book is the extent of the module. The adventure is what you make it! I guess my only big complaint would be that the maps are too small, as always. I wish there could be full-page maps for every encounter, but that would be prohibitively expensive. It does come with an immense map of the entire map of the Chult peninsula, that is two-sided, showing both undiscovered and fully-discovered aspects. Have fun!

Now that we're winding down this campaign, I decided to give my impressions and some advice. WARNING: DM SPOILERS FOLLOW! So, here's what I did differently. First, exploration of Chult got simplified: rather than using the provided fold-out map with all the blank hexes, I scanned the DM map from the book and photoshopped all of the location names out. This meant no need for a giant bulletin board (which the game store where we play doesn't have) and also no cartography skills needed by the players. Second, I integrated Lost Shrine of Tamoachan and Dead in Thay from Tales from the Yawning Portal into this story. Lost Shrine became a way for them to discover a map to lead them to Omu, and Dead in Thay was made into an epilogue. Third (and this was a really tough decision that the players will never never know about), I decided not to run the city of Omu the way the book says. It was going to be a massive pain, so I just wrote a script for events that would happen each day they were in the city. So, they thought they were moving around on the map, but in fact I had them arbitrarily find what I needed them to find. So, no random encounters, and no measured movement on the map. I picked the five shrines I thought the group would have the most fun with, and guided them to those; all the others they found pillaged. So yeah, maybe that makes me a crap DM, but it's all about having a good time, and that was the best way. Fourth, I had to give a lot - a lot - of ad hoc XP awards to keep the party at a reasonable level. Random encounters just aren't enough if you only use them as often as the book says. So ad hocs for each puzzle/room/trap, and that keeps the party level just about right. Finally, a mistake I should have seen coming and didn't: don't give your players 50 temporary HP each turn during the fight with Acererak. I think 20 or 25 would be better. With 50, you have to do more than 50 damage to any player each turn in order to make a dent in them at all. Seems obvious, but even Acererak had a hard time putting out that much damage. And that's assuming they don't use healing potions or spells! When I manage to kill only one player character in the final showdown, there's a balance problem. Anyway, those are my lessons learned. It's been a great time for everyone, and I'll definitely do this campaign again some day. Cheers, everyone, and carpe DM!

Pros: -Classic high fantasy world, perfect for any DnD group, especially beginners -Unique jungle setting, gives an atmosphere of danger and exploration -Straighforward story with lots of interesting sidequests and encounters -Information in the book is presented in a very easy-to-read way for the DM -The endgame megadungeon is amazingly designed, and gives the campaign an awesome climax -Zombie Dinosaurs Cons: -The starting hook is a little weak, but any experienced DM could easily tweak it -Lots of jungle exploration and random encounters, requires good pacing and encounter-running on the DM's part for it to stray from being boring -Difficult. If run exactly as the book says, this campaign will absolutely kill the whole party. The monsters are tough, the jungle is unforgiving, and the namesake Tomb of Annihilation is filled with "save-or-die" mechanics. I would recommend reducing the damage/difficulty of many encounters so that your players don't lose their characters every single session. Overall, an amazing adventure. I personally think this is better than Curse of Strahd since it appeals to the broader high fantasy audience rather than fans of a niche genre like gothic horror. Heroic, funny, and dangerous, Tomb of Annihilation is sure to be a great campaign for your group.

Heb het boek sinds ik het heb gekocht meerdere keren gelezen, en er zit zo veel detail in deze prachtige module dat ik er elke keer van geniet. En heb stiekem een paar traps en lore er al uitgehaald en in andere verhalen verwerkt. Great book!

Das aventuras da quinta edição, Tomb of Annihilation é o melhor livro disparado e que mais me deixou empolgado para jogar essa aventura. Além de ser um livro um pouco maior que os outros, vem com um mapa-poster para destacar e usar durante o jogo... a temática da uma escapada de leve nos já batidos orcs e goblins da fantasia medieval sem perder a pegada, ta na medida. No Capitulo 1 temos Porto Nyanzaru, uma bela cidade tropical, recheada de vida e npcs... perfeita para quem gosta de interação social e interpretação. No Capitulo 2 temos a Selva de Chult, uma navegação e Hex Crawl de fazer cair o queixo. Capitulo 3 temos uma investigação e quebra-cabeças, muito divertido explorar e desvendar o mistério para poder avançar na aventura. Capitulos 4 e 5 temos o Dungeon Crawl que não poderia faltar em uma aventura de D&D, uma masmorra mortal e perigosa.

Il manuale è arrivato secondo le tempistiche comunicate e in perfette condizioni.

Esta campaña de exploración me parece muy divertida y emocionante, además me encanta la ambientación de jungla con algunos dinosaurios, qué más puedes pedir, está edición es en inglés, te recomiendo verificar primero si acaso no le sabes mucho al inglés. Es una aventura muy divertida, emocionante y misteriosa.

If you were to ask me which campaign setting I would love to run as a DM, or go in as a player, Tomb of Annihilation is without a doubt the answer to both. A deep, role-playing filled campaign similar to Critical Role style of play will not be found here; the roleplaying takes the back seat in this adventure. If you have an easy-going group of friends who want to sit around, roll dice, drink, smoke, whatever, and not take themselves too seriously, this is a slice of fried gold. Don't get attached to your characters, don't expect to make it out in one piece, but expect to have an absolute fricken blast playing through this. I loved it, from the top of the island of Schult, to the bottom of the Tomb. 5 Stars, must play adventure.