Tomb of Annihilation (Dungeons & Dragons)

I love this adventure. It's based on a hugely favorite D&D module from ages ago, Tomb of Horrors. It steps up the play, though, and hands the players a larger environment filled with danger and discovery.There are two parts to the adventure, the first, and smaller aspect, is one of being in a town where players have to uncover the mystery, find clues and become prepared for the trek into the trackless jungle. There is politics, backstabbing, along with lots of potential palace intrigue, areas to poke around in, a whole culture to explore. Plus, dinosaur races!Not into that? Flip past it and dive into the jungle. Lots of encounters and adventures are outlined to keep your party busy and interested. Explore ruins, encounter never-before seen creatures, find treasure and magic items. Zombies, dinosaurs, and zombie dinosaurs! It's a vast, unexplored jungle filled with things to visit.The final episode, delving into the lost city itself, is filled with puzzles, danger, and very nasty creatures. All the while the danger of the Death Curse hangs over your and everybody in the world's head. Come out victorious and your players could become the heroes of all of Faerûn!This adventure is probably one of the best WoTC has put out in a long while. The book is packed with ideas and fascinating settings. As a DM, this book really gets my imagination going, and really gets me excited about the kind of things my party will encounter. The situations and people in the book feel really well-rounded and full of potential. The mechanics of the travel through the jungle will be fun and add incredible dimension.I would say this is not a good book for a beginning DM. It requires a good understanding about how D&D module books work and how to use them to create a campaign. They aren't scripts, they are outlines that require the ability to fill in the gaps, use your imagination, and be able to react to situations. This book benefits from a good amount of preparation prior to each session, mapping out potential encounters and situations. I extrapolate and invent, expand parts of the book I find interesting and skip over parts I don't. If you really want to run this adventure, but would like help, there are companion pieces available for purchase on the Web (I use the DM's Guild). These will help you understand and greatly expand the potential of the book. Don't think the book is the extent of the module. The adventure is what you make it!I guess my only big complaint would be that the maps are too small, as always. I wish there could be full-page maps for every encounter, but that would be prohibitively expensive. It does come with an immense map of the entire map of the Chult peninsula, that is two-sided, showing both undiscovered and fully-discovered aspects.Have fun!

Got for a relative who loves this.

Technically speaking, Tomb of Annihilation is a full campaign between two covers, with a focused objective for the players, a major narrative hook driving them forward, and all you need to run that campaign.But for me, it's just a sandbox of possibilities easily plucked out and dropped into my own campaign with next to no adjustment needed.That's the big selling point for me and it's why I like ToA so much more than many other modern modules / campaigns.Officially, this is a campaign spanning roughly levels 1-11, with the players trying to find a lost city and stop a curse that prevents people from being raised from the dead. This takes place in the jungles of Chult, and includes a major "hex crawl" exploration component, a lost city to find and explore, a mega dungeon inspired in part by the classic Tomb of Horrors, and lots of side locations. There is also a ticking clock on the whole adventure.But in practice, it's a sandbox. By that I mean there are loads of nicely fleshed out, unique and interesting locations that can easily serve as standalone adventures. Just pluck them out and drop them into your own world, no converting needed. There are 20+ such locations here, PLUS the lost city, which itself has a whole series of puzzle-focused tombs, PLUS an epic dungeon, as well as an assortment of small settlements, NPCs, monsters, and more.Lots of variety, too, from a kooky goblin village with a defense mechanism you have to see to believe, to a race of bird people living in a strange circular maze, to an imposing tower, to undead-infested camps and more.You don't need to run it as a pre-set campaign if you don't want. There is LOTS of material here to pillage and use as you see fit. That's what I love about it. I've gotten my money's worth and then some, and my group hasn't even played the actual campaign itself.About the only thing preventing it from being a perfect sandbox is that the main city which will serve as the PCs' base of operations is only lightly fleshed out.Otherwise, if you want to run a cool jungle-based, exploration-focused campaign, just toss out the death curse and ticking clock and run this. Or if you just want a bunch of standalone locations you can use with minimal work, this also fits the bill.For those reasons, this is easy to recommend.

Pros:-Classic high fantasy world, perfect for any DnD group, especially beginners-Unique jungle setting, gives an atmosphere of danger and exploration-Straighforward story with lots of interesting sidequests and encounters-Information in the book is presented in a very easy-to-read way for the DM-The endgame megadungeon is amazingly designed, and gives the campaign an awesome climax-Zombie DinosaursCons:-The starting hook is a little weak, but any experienced DM could easily tweak it-Lots of jungle exploration and random encounters, requires good pacing and encounter-running on the DM's part for it to stray from being boring-Difficult. If run exactly as the book says, this campaign will absolutely kill the whole party. The monsters are tough, the jungle is unforgiving, and the namesake Tomb of Annihilation is filled with "save-or-die" mechanics. I would recommend reducing the damage/difficulty of many encounters so that your players don't lose their characters every single session.Overall, an amazing adventure. I personally think this is better than Curse of Strahd since it appeals to the broader high fantasy audience rather than fans of a niche genre like gothic horror. Heroic, funny, and dangerous, Tomb of Annihilation is sure to be a great campaign for your group.

Exactly as described.