Tomb of Annihilation Is Here - What Do You Think?

Today's the day - WotC's latest Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, is out! Head on down to your friendly (or unfriendly) local (or not so local) gaming (or comic) store and pick up your copy. Alternatively, if you use a virtual table top, it's available for Fantasy Grounds and Roll20.

 

[Stormdale]

Re: Bullywugs. Not sure which came first Fiend Folio or Dwellers of the Forbidden city (both were 1981 and both had bullywugs).I recall the frog-folk Grippli in the AD&D MMII but have never bought any Chult related products so no idea of Grungs are from any of those in the 2E or later eras.

I intend to run the adventure in the Amedio Jungle area of Greyhawk and use existing Greyhawk based monsters rather than newer versions of similar monsters where possible. I love what I've read so far but will be making plenty of changes to fit my campaign better, changing monsters will be one of them.

Stormdale

 

[Shasarak]

Tomb of Annihilation is here? With all the excitement with Starfinder looks like this is one to pick up for Christmas.

 

[Stormdale]

I see it mentioned online as Greyhawk Adventures 1988. Never owned that book though.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Hey, you are right. I have Greyhawk adventures right here and never even noticed them- not that it has been used much.

Stormdale

 

[Echohawk]

JesterOC is correct that the grung's first appearance was in Greyhawk Adventures (August 1998), closely followed by MC5: Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix (April 1990). Grung don't really have much of a history in the Realms prior to Volo's Guide to Monsters.

 

[Azzy]

I certainly didn't know this. Bullywugs come from the Fiend Folio. Where do Grungs originate?

Greyhawk Adventures

Never mind: Massively ninja'd

 

[JesterOC]

Greyhawk Adventures

Never mind: Massively ninja'd

You might have been ninja'd but you brought more firepower (the link)

 

[Jester David]

I much prefer the older and more classic grippli to the grung, which fill the D&D niche of small tree frog people. Only they're neutral rather than evil, which is a nice way of differentiating them from the toad bullywugs. And the grippli were in the MM2 for 1e and the Monstrous Manual for 2nd Edition, plus actual adventures. So they have a little more heritage than the lame grungs.

 

[Jester David]

No, I just don't think there are very many Realms-centric adventures out there to begin with. Most Realms stuff has all been mainly setting material and gazetteer stuff, with most adventures made specifically for the Realms falling in the 'Living Realms' type of thing. On top of that, Realms-cetric modules are all from like the mid '80s on... and all of these repurposed "classic" adventures that are being used for the 5E APs are the really old ones that came out before then back in the '70s and early '80s. I mean, it's not like WotC is repurposing 2E or 3E generic adventures either.

I mean, if anyone can name an actual classic Forgotten Realms module and what that module's central story is about... maybe that could eventually become the story basis for another AP down the line.

The catch is, Realms adventures fell into two camps:
The first was the super generic adventures, as FR was taking over Greyhawk's place in the '90s as the location of generic adventures.
The second was the "living" stuff you mention where events advance the world. The Avatar adventures. The Horde adventures. The Spellplague adventures. The Sundering adventures.

The former tend to be less memorable. Just because they're competing with twenty years of older generic adventures.
The latter don't make good APs since their stories already "happened".

There are a few. Ruins to Undermountain kinda counts, and its sequels/ revisits. It's the most likely as it was touched on in Expedition to Undermountain in 3e and Halls of Undermountain in 4e.
Bloodstone Pass is another. How the Mighty Are Fallen is neat but set in the past; could be fun as a time travel tale. There's the Marco Volo adventures. Pool of Radiance is an iconic name, being a video game and novel prior to a 3e adventure.
City of the Spiderqueen is likely too simmilar to Out of the Abyss to do anytime soon, but a drow centric adventure with Lolth is needed.

 

[HonorBoundSamurai632]

Acererak was only loosely in Greyhawk.
His Tomb was always meant to be modular and fit in any world, and the references to Greyhawk in that module were weird as it predated the first Greyhawk product (the Folio) by two years.

I'm more annoyed he's a lich and not a demilich...

Normally, I'd agree because I remember those late-70's and early-80's modules were very campaign-neutral since the game was marketed more for homebrew playing. Unfortunately, right at the beginning of ToA on pg.6, it clearly states that Acererak's home world is Oerth.

 

[Remathilis]

The catch is, Realms adventures fell into two camps:
The first was the super generic adventures, as FR was taking over Greyhawk's place in the '90s as the location of generic adventures.
The second was the "living" stuff you mention where events advance the world. The Avatar adventures. The Horde adventures. The Spellplague adventures. The Sundering adventures.

The former tend to be less memorable. Just because they're competing with twenty years of older generic adventures.
The latter don't make good APs since their stories already "happened".

There are a few. Ruins to Undermountain kinda counts, and its sequels/ revisits. It's the most likely as it was touched on in Expedition to Undermountain in 3e and Halls of Undermountain in 4e.
Bloodstone Pass is another. How the Mighty Are Fallen is neat but set in the past; could be fun as a time travel tale. There's the Marco Volo adventures. Pool of Radiance is an iconic name, being a video game and novel prior to a 3e adventure.
City of the Spiderqueen is likely too simmilar to Out of the Abyss to do anytime soon, but a drow centric adventure with Lolth is needed.

Without dredging up too many "best adventures of all time" debates, most "setting-exclusive" modules rarely crack the all-time greats. For example, I6 excluded, is there really an iconic Ravenloft adventure from the setting that could be counted as an all-time great? Or a Dark Sun one? Or a Spelljammer one or Eberron one? The only ones who might be able to vie for "setting-specific and classic" are Dragonlance's War of the Lance modules and Dead Gods from Planescape.

When people are polled on the all-time classic modules, they tend to name the ones from late 70's through mid-80's which either were retconned into Greyhawk (if AD&D) or Mystara/Known World (if Basic). Naming modern classics tends to pull from the 3e era, which was rooted in pseudo-hawk (using the Greyhawk gods, but none of the setting or geography, such as Sunless Citadel or Red Hand of Doom). None of those greats rely heavily on their setting and barely even define what world they are supposed to be on. Which is what helps makes them iconic; they don't tie you to a setting like the DL series or Avatar Trilogy or Grand Conjunction modules do.