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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7097676" data-attributes="member: 97077">I would recommend that the PCs do NOT begin as perfect strangers, but as people who know and trust each other at least enough to adventure together. This will help move things along and prevents the chance that the players, who perhaps not fully understanding the importance of coming up with a reason to work together, have their characters not trust each other or spin off in different directions as a result. That can often lead to a rocky start.I also suggest having the NPC just be up front with the information so that you can avoid a potential interrogation scene. That can get dark fast and may not be what you want. If you're concerned about the PCs just heading off in that direction without encountering your NPC tribe, just have the captain warn that it will be impossible to make it through the snake-infested jungle without help of the Tongu.I suggest you kill the captain "off screen," that is, the threat of the giant snake is telegraphed by the death of the captain. If you roll it out as normal, you may end up with the captain living or not even being harmed at all because the dice are involved. If it's important to you that the captain die, then don't leave that to the dice. If you use my idea above of him warning the PCs about the snake-infested jungle, it will seem perfectly reasonable that he gets killed by a snake when off on his own.Resistance to poison. It fades a little every time the PC takes poison damage. When a PC has taken three instances of poison damage, it goes away entirely.Alternatively, have the tattoo grant advantage on Charisma-based ability checks in dealing with the yuan-ti, who recognize it as something to fear or whatever. Off the island, it is pretty much unrecognizable by others so should have no further effect.I think this is a good place for a social interaction challenge. Walk across hot coals. Learn and perform the Tongu war dance. Impress the tribal elders with tales of bravery from previous adventures. Etc.Initial setup and exposition, including character intros, will probably take 30 minutes. The giant poisonous snake encounter will take minutes since it's not even as difficult as an Easy encounter for three 3rd-level PCs. So you might beef that up a bit. Exposition and social interaction challenge, well fleshed out, will probably be another 30 minutes. You're probably looking at under 2 hours for all of this. Which might be fine for your first session. Wrap with some closing thoughts from your players that you can use the next session. I'd go with none with the option to forage for healing fruits on the island while they travel. But they need Akira to help them identify the good fruit from the poisonous kind.I think you need to work on the poisonous snake encounter and then at least one or two more combat challenges. Now is not the time to bring out the yuan-ti though. Talk them up to build tension before bringing them out in session two.</blockquote>

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