Tomb of Annihillation

Publisher WotC

256 pages

5 chapters

6 appendices

Tomb of Annihilation is tied to a classic adventure; Tomb of Horrors which was extremely difficult.  Keeping that in mind it should be noted that this isn’t for the weak at heart- there is a good chance that players will have several characters die. I suggest that they show up to play with a few back up options because Tomb of Annihilation is just as difficult. The players are intorduced into the adventure by learning about the Death Curse. Which is really nasty if you’ve ever died. Basically the disease attacks the health of anyone who has managed to brought back to life, that is their health begins to decay. Oh, and if you die the Death Curse prevents your soul from being reanimated by any means, it seems even the gods are powerless. With the mission set first level PC’s begin their adventure to deal with the Death Curse that if they are lucky enough to complete will put them up to about eleventh value.

Before talking about the adventure let me express a few things.  Chult is everything a GM wants; beautiful, exotic, and enticingly deadly. This combination creates an insane amount of fun while the curse infects players. Chult also adds several new arrangements for the dead; eight new fauna in all. The cities are every bit as rich as the jungle too. Each city is full of content that is both ordinary and exotic enough to give it it’s own personality.

Which brings us to the Port of Nyanzaru,the real start to the adventure. This is where players will kind set up their base of operations (we did). It is from here that the players will initially gather information, possibly find a guide, and most likely get outfitted. The port city is also full of great little side quests to get the PC’s started. Beyond that the players can explore several npc’s.  We used the port as our safe haven from the jungle.  It’s where we rested and even relaxed. With that being said we aren’t running through Tomb of Annihilstion like a meat grinder. That is something you can do if you want, but it’s extremely difficult without a crazy pace.  I highly suggest that PC’s try dino racing I had a blast.

The jungle is by far one of the most exotic places written about for 5th ed. The new fauna has some pretty extreme effects, but jungle have always been dangerous. My favorite is the Monkey Fruit.  Because it is a diabolic kind of fun I plead the 5th. There are several other encounters for players to deal with like dinosaurs and undead. Not to mention the threat of diseases, dehydration and insects.  That is why a guide for the jungle is suggested.  The jungle has several key locations for the players to discover.  What’s great about is that they can really takle them in any order.  That doesn’t mean they will pickk the right place, but it really gives the players a sense of control in the story, which is something many adventures don’t do very well.

The Next stop for the adventure is the Forbidden City. Which is nescessary for us to visit if we are going to get into the Tomb of the Nine Gods.  It is gurded by a Yuan-ti “cult”. If I say anymore then that I will be giving players some super ammunition – no spoilers here. But I can tell you that the city is just full of puzzles, traps, and violence if you want to play it that way. One good thing about the is the way the writers tie the NPC’s to the Death Curse. Our GM actually allowed us to ally with the major NPC instead of fight him. Since, our party is largely filled with holy rollers we will most likely have to fight him after exiting the temple – providing we live that long.

The temple is a massive dungeon, 65 pages, that is really the only part of the adventure that you have to play. Thatt’s right the rest of the book can be played pretty much like a sand box. The temple is a nasty place, difficult puzzles protected by deadly traps and often hideous monsters too. This is where we are in our adventure and I suspect to die a few more times before completing the adventure. Again no spoilers, What I can say about this part, and every part of the book really, is that if the players look hard enough there is almost always another way to accomplish their task.

The appendices are absolutely amazing and needed.  If Tomb of Annhilation didn’t include them the gm would miss important parts of story while reading things like the wandering monsters.  The first appendix gives us two new backgrounds that are fiting for this campaign, the Archeologist and the Anthropologist.  Of course most of the new material like fauna and monsters can be found here. But one of the most important resources the book has is appendix E, the player hand outs.  I found that the hand outs were super helpful.  I have often felt that for too many GM’s have overlooked them, not realizing how valuable a tool they are.

Tomb of Annihilation is an extremely dangerous adventure where I believe players should expect their characters to die! The Death Curse pretty much makes the parties mistakes a TPK.  Which limits the people who might want to play the adventure. It isn’t really for people who don’t want a challenge, and even then you shouldn’t fear death. With that said there are several work arounds that allow players to avid death if they spend the time working together. I think that the authors have done an excellent job with Tomb of Annihillation. It does a great job of bridging the gap from AD&D to 5th ed.  Being someone who has played both I feel that they have respected the original motifs in Tomb of Horrors, while expanding on them without damaging the original job. Thgis is als a great reference books for GM who want to create nasty jungles, temples, and puzzles. Further this adventure offers players a change of pace allowing them to save Sword Coast in a new way.