3 out of 5 rating for Tomb of Annihilation
OK, first off I’ll admit I suffer from ‘shiny new book syndrome’. I’m seeking treatment, and this book was a giant step towards curing me of that horrid condition.
I check Enworld frequently, and like many was very excited when WoTC announced this book. I was planning to use a combination of DMsguild material, homebrew etc for my next campaign, but got caught up in the buzz. I simply couldn’t help myself.
It may be helpful early on to mention although I’ve played off and on for 30 years, Curse of Strahd & Lost Mines of Phandelver are the only other official 5E adventures I’ve run. More on that later…
First off, this is an amazing looking book, usual fantastic art, and it's absolutely
jam packed with stuff. That’s my #1 issue with the book, and I had similar issue with CoS (along with many, many other gamers). What the heck are you supposed to do with this thing?
Buoyed up by my experience with CoS, I jumped right in and started to get to work. Learning from the past, I visited
http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/ and sure enough Sean had done a lot of the grunt work in whipping this encyclopedic mess into some kind of shape. Although Sean does great work, I think it’s fair to expect these mega adventure books should be ready for the DM to pick up, read, and start using right away. Is that too much to ask?
Much virtual ink has been spilled over the lameness of the death curse macguffin, and I couldn’t agree more. As always, there were many great ideas on the forums, but isn’t that what the book was meant to provide?
Chapter 1: Port Nyanzaru is well done, and there is lots to do if your group is so inclined. That being said, as presented there is an urgency for the party to get crackin’ and dithering around in town didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time.
Chapter 2: The Land of Chult is where the rubber meets the road, and is chock full of locations so a DM should have no problem finding tons for their group to do. I was concerned about endless jungle wandering early on, and had done a rough outline of the locations I personally liked and thought were a good fit for my group. Some of it seems like filler to me, although different strokes and all that. Some locations are top notch, and have plenty of gaming potential: Camp Righteous (an ill-considered first outpost the Order of the Gauntlet), Firefinger (an ancient Chultan signalling tower teeming with nasty Pterafolk – my group had an epic encounter here with Artus Cimber and some Giant friends), Heart of Ubtao (a massive earthmote home to a nasty occupant), Kir Sabal (an Aarakocra monastery – how cool of an idea is that?), Nangalore (an ancient garden built for a cursed queen), Orolunga (a crumbling ziggurat and pivotal point in the adventure), Wreck of the Star Goddess (haha just read it, cracks me up can’t say why!) and of course Yellyark (again – just read it what will those whacky Goblins think of next?!).
Even with all these great locations it gets to the point where the adventure needs to move along to the next phase. Again, much has already been said, groups can get stuck in the jungle waaay too long.
Chapter 3: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. All this jungle wandering finally leads to Omu. Again, there are pages and pages of stuff here for a DM to whip into shape. There are some splendid locations and encounters here (Bag of Nails, Ras Nsi, and of course all hail the King of Feathers!) but it borders on overwhelming. In my case, we were all itching to get to the tomb already!
Chapter 4: Fane of the Night Serpent. Huh? IMO, this doesn’t even need to be in the adventure and we skipped the whole thing. If you’re into yuan-ti you’ll dig it, and might lift the whole thing out into another adventure one day. It seemed like filler to me, and has a huge section of tables for random encounters (Slave Labor / Temple Roster / Temple Reinforcements) which are dubious in their utility and simply pad the page count. Did I mention I wanted to get to the Tomb of the Nine Gods..?
Chapter 5: Tomb of the Nine Gods! Here we go! Finally! It’s rock & roll time! To avoid making this review painfully long, it's 6 levels filled with screaming hot death. There are several areas that require careful reading and have fiddly bits and get boggy with details, pointless rooms with senseless multiple unavoidable fights, several ‘aha gotcha’ traps to make players infuriated (Class 3 deaths shout out to AngryGM lol!). There are also pages of material for EPIC encounters and memorable critters and locations. The less said about the finale the better, although I wish I could do it again. It was lower case epic, and it deserved so much more. Should have taken a whole session for it!
The book wraps up with the usual stuff – NPCS and monsters, discoveries, player handouts, and random encounter tables. I did mention this book was bursting, right? A rather unusual T-Rex deserves special mention!
Wow this went long. Here’s my wrap up.
ToA is a sourcebook for Chult wrapped around an adventure. It’s tricky and challenging to run. I sometimes read on the forums that new DM’s and groups are going to play it and I cringe. Just don’t. Get Phandelver!!
As with other WoTC books, it’s not DM friendly and takes a lot of extra work on the DM’s part to prep and run. I understand these have gotten better with each release, although they still have a long road ahead. I sigh & roll my eyes when I read things like
‘see “Suffocating” in chapter 8 of the Player’s Handbook, rather than
PHB pg XXX! How hard would this be??? Perhaps some more info for the DM on how to run certain critters / scenes (like the finale, Sewn Sisters) and less space used on pointless tables? Room / area descriptions that are tight and provide immediate info? I read a thread on paizo forums ages ago about better ways of doing this, wish I could find it again, but I digress. Anyone who buys this book is never going to know it as well as the fine folks who put it together, but they need to write and organize the book with the end user in mind. Please?!
If you’re going to run it, get this now- Pay what you want! I'm not sure what specifically 'Best Platinum Seller' means, but WoTC are you listening?
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/223510/A-Guide-to-Tomb-of-Annihilation?term=tomb+of+&test_epoch=0
Ask your players if they want to play an adventure where there will very likely be some PC deaths. The finale in particular is a grind and things get ugly, and there are several moments where agency has left the building.
In comparison, I like CoS quite a bit more, and would be more likely to run that again for a new group than tomb. In retrospect ToA was fun, and we had pretty solid weekly gameplay from Sept-Jun and I didn’t use ½ the stuff in the book, and by the end I just wanted it to be over. It easily could have been a 128 page booklet like they used to do in the old days… ahh the old days.
Now's what's this I hear about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist? OOhhhhh shiny...
