~This post does contain spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation and Cellar of Death~
Jungle exploration, dinosaurs, pirates, secret cults. Tomb of Annihilation (ToA) promises the chance to play out your wildest Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft meets Lord of the Rings fantasies. A few years ago, my partner and I decided try out co-Dungeon Mastering (co-DM) a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for some of our friends. The group of us brainstormed what we wanted to get out of the adventure: some open world; about 50/50 combat to roleplaying; in-depth story that would tie together past events and in-game character actions with the latest storyline. My partner described ToA to me, and I was immediately enthralled with the prospect of giving the players the opportunity to race dinosaurs one day, straight out of Dinotopia, chase pirates the next, and encounter all kinds of crazy jungle and undead monstrosities. This was going to be so cool!
Cellar of Death one-shot
We started the adventure by running Cellar of Death (CoD) as a one-shot. It took us about 2 x 3 hour sessions to complete. The party consisted of three brand new players and two more experienced ones. My co-DM and I spent a couple hours on our own, reading the material for Cellar of Death and the hook for ToA. Then we picked rooms of the CoD dungeon crawl to run.
For the first 20-30 minutes of session 0, we guided the players, a cleric, druid, barbarian, ranger, and rogue, to build their common thread. Before we jumped in to the action, we wanted to set the stage for how they would be coming together. We had our friends come up with a hero they all knew or admired.
Yevelda, a half orc warrior, a saviour, friend, and most recently, all-knowing innkeeper. Each of our friends described how they met her, what she means to them, and together they shaped the character.
Pinning her hopes to save her forest from a mysterious decay, our druid had not met the famed hero before, but hoped to obtain wisdom from famed Yevelda. Strong and revered, the half-orc who had worked her entire life fighting battles and wars in the name of freedom, finally earned her retirement finding a quiet nook hidden in the masses of Baldur’s Gate. She became known as the worldly yet modest innkeeper over the past few years, and gained a reputation as storyteller, wisewoman, and connector with nature. She had been killed on the dawn of one of her greatest victories of the battlefield, our barbarian and cleric fought side by side her and then watched her suffer as a devilish foe slipped past their defenses, poisoning her. But through the strength of Kelemvor and some powerful herbs, Yevelda had been brought back to life. Our party was connected to her, as real as their own newly created characters, if not more so. She was the reason they would meet. Then we introduced the characters to the death curse suddenly set plague to the Sword Coast of Faerun. Yevelda, fit as a fiddle one day, withering and dying the next, had succumbed to this plague. Our friends were gathering for Yevelda’s final passing beyond the mortal realm, at her funeral just outside Baldur’s Gate. The news was gut wrenching, and our friends actually yelled at us out of character for a bit, for putting them through this. It was here, however, that Remallia Haventree and Syndra Sylvane of the Harpers organization approached them and they took on their first quest as a party.
Since this was a bit of an intro to D&D, and the players all started at level 1, we decided to ease them into it, throwing a lot of your standard low-level baddies at them. Skeletons first. A swarm of spiders. Creepy crawling hands as part of a jail cell trap. Ooze. Ghouls. And then, for a more challenging fight, we topped it off with a couple of deadly specters. Very deadly because, as the players would only later find out, specters’ hit point maximum reducing effect of ‘life drain’ in the death curse ridden world of ToA, is permanent.
In addition to combat, we let the party composition develop with some traps, simple puzzles, and a chance for roleplaying dialogue against the one-shot’s “big bad” at the end. From my perspective, the group was nicely balanced, they worked to each other’s strengths and watched out for each other’s weaknesses. Some of the players were more bold, while others less so, but they all gave each other time, space, and opportunities to interact with the imaginary world we built for them and they helped shape. I loved the way our first-time rogue dove head first into being the trap monkey, and our first-time barbarian leaned into the brainless meat shield trope. In the heat of a hot summer day, no air conditioning, and the afternoon sun blazing through the open doorway, the group of us got lost in a dungeon crawl retrieving a lich’s sacred phylactery, the key bargaining chip for information about this death curse, and redemption for their beloved Yevelda.
With the mission completed, and leverage gained, the Harpers were able to extract information about the death curse. The party paid Syndra a visit to get their reward, only to find her in a much more weakened state than just a few days earlier. Clearly the death curse was catching up with her as well. She bade the party to follow the breadcrumbs, to the jungle peninsula of Chult, “Somewhere there lies the source of this curse. The Soulmonger. A dangerous route, but the fame and fortune that awaits you will be great!” All they had to do was charter a ship to Port Nyanzaru, without much other information, they would need to resort to their own wit and resolve to complete the rest of the mission.
Getting to Chult
In between Cellar of Death and Tomb of Annihilation, two of our friends got busy with life and decided that while CoD was fun, they wouldn’t be joining the full campaign. Another one of our friends decided playing a barbarian had some perks, but to make things more interesting for roleplaying and to balance out the party mechanics they wanted to bring a rogue back in to the mix. Our cleric and druid happily signed up for the mission, and an old acquaintance of Syndra’s, a mysterious and brooding half-elven ranger, joined the party as well.
I was really excited about the prospect of running some at-sea material, so I brainstormed some options to give our party to sail from Baldur’s Gate to Chult. I had a lot of ideas of how they could get there, but my co-DM and I settled on providing two options. We would work them into the adventure and give the party the semblance of choice, without actually planning out an entirely detailed harbour. We did have some backup plans if they didn’t like either of those options too. One option was a fancily clad boy and his decadent boat, clearly possessing very little practical experience but exuberant nonetheless. His backstory being, he was a young lordling who’s father had died recently of an “accident”. Tyrond Williams, of House Ashbridge, along with his elderly ‘butler-type’ advisor, Bartholomew, was hellbent on making a name for himself. Seemingly arrogant, he was really just trying to get the family out of a dire financial situation so his mother wouldn’t have to get re-married to one of the grimy nobles lined up the door as suitors. If he could just prove he could provide for the family, he could retain the lordship and all their lands. The other option would be a leathery sea-hardened captain and her bucket of bolts “cargo ship”. Captain Yashira Onu, rapier in one hand and a large flask in the other, along with her First Mate, Debbie the Bug Bear, would take anyone willing to pay and stay out of their way on The Banshee – the fastest ship in these here waters. One of the key takeaways for any DM new to the space, is that whatever you plan, your party is bound to have you throw it away about 10 minutes in to your session. Needless to say, we had at least an hour of ship-finding and RP-ing lined up for them, but as soon as our sailor cleric met Yashira he knew she was his Captain. They never even met Tyrond or saw his ship, and happily steered clear of the political roiling of Baldur’s Gate and the surrounding area.
Before setting out, the party stocked up on supplies in the city. We purposefully hand waved a lot for this, and allowed them to transactionally stock up their reserves in exchange for some of their well-earned coin. Passage negotiated, and travel sacks stuffed, the party was ready to sail across the Sea of Swords to Chult.
Encounters at sea
Sailing straight through most nights, Captain Onu was on a tight schedule and wanted to get her cargo to Chult and off-loaded as quickly as possible. What was the cargo? She was pretty vague about it, and Debbie made sure no one was getting past her to snoop around in the cargo hold. There wasn’t much room on the small ship, but there was room enough for our adventurers to make do. Yashira was running a lean crew with just a sorcerer, Reed Warmwater, and a fighter, Manu Owai, after a recent pirate attack. Our cleric was able to help them out a bit and improve the journey’s efficiency sailing, but that didn’t avoid all excitement on their passage.
Through the Captain’s spyglass, a small island, a shabby fishing vessel, and a few stooping figures were identified. The party wanted to check it out, and coming closer, they could see the figures were snatching and bagging something in the sand. There were baby sea turtles making their perilous way across crushed white sand beach to the relative safety of the ocean. Angered by the clear disrespect for living things, our druid approached them convincingly demanding they quit their evil ways and return to the mainland. As DM’s, we shaped the ‘bandits’ to be well intentioned folks, just down on their luck, but also assumed the party would steamroll them. Different from some previous campaigns, our party was not interested in being murder hobos. Just the opposite in fact, and they used diplomacy to avoid killing, for the most part at least.
Back on the open ocean, a speck in the distance alerted them of a dangerous pirate ship, the dreaded Dragonfang and her Captain Elok Jaharwon. With all their might, magic, and cunning combined they were able to outrun the ship, sailing into dangerously shallow reef-filled waters, on the leaner and magically boosted Banshee. Yashira disclosed that members of her crew had been captured and murdered by Jaharwon, showing a brief crack in her otherwise steely demeanour, but then quickly recovering again taking a few swigs from her flask. Continuing to sail through the night and navigating the reef, they were attacked by merfolk and got to stretch their combat muscles in the darkness of midnight. Finally, after all this excitement, the glistening aqua waters in the Bay of Chult and its colourful backdrop of Port Nyanzaru stood on the horizon. An explosion of colourful buildings, blues, greens, salmon pink, and all the colours of a sunset. Bursting with greenery, flowers, and vines. The choking jungle forest spread beyond as far as the eye could see.
A giant whirlpool materialized just ahead of The Banshee, a large swell almost upending those unprepared on the ship, revealing the giant scaly head of a great old dragon turtle. Aremag’s deep rumbling voice echoed in the character’s ears, demanding payment for safe passage. The Captain made sure her crew were well paid for, but let the party decide for themselves what kind of offering to leave. Two of them decided it was well worth their wages to pay up, but the other two pulled a fast one on him, getting the better of the old timer… for now at least. With Aremag paid, the ship made its way safely into the bay, and pulled up to anchor nearby the quieter and unofficial docks of Tiryki Anchorage. This is where the party would say their goodbyes to the Captain, but not before our cleric got one last swig of her delicious home brewed liquor. Still not knowing what ‘goods’ she was ferrying to Chult, or many details of the lurking pirates, they prepared for the next leg of their journey.
Introducing Chult
Settling back in to their land legs, they took in the heat and smell of the jungle for the first time. It was hotter than any hot they had experienced before, instantly dripping in their own sweat, the clothes they were wearing too thick, and clinging to their bodies. Each inhalation filling the nostrils with warm thick air, laboured breaths, with the odd brief respite of a breeze off the sea. They took in the sounds and colours of the bright port city. Unfamiliar languages, their refreshing musical qualities. Strange aromas, spices and sweetness of fruits mixing with the briny sea air, fish, tar, and sweat. They noticed the varied dinosaurs in pens, and the hustling of people in and out of the city gates. Painted murals on the city walls of heroes and large mysterious creatures, vines beautifully integrated with the buildings and doorways, grand temples and villas sitting atop the raised hills of the city.
They had made it to Chult, where they would start their exploration for this Soulmonger. Would they find what they were looking for? Would our druid save her decaying forest? Would our ranger ever reveal his true past? Would our cleric convert the masses to his lord and saviour Kelemvor? and would our rogue survive on his first foray outside the safety of the Candlekeep libraries? But most importantly, would the co-DM-ing work out well enough for everyone to have fun and keep playing D&D?