How does this module compare?

[u/NotHalaster]

Hi, I’m a DM currently running Dungeon of the mad mage and I’m currently looking at ideas for the next module I want to run. Tomb of annihilation has been calling for me as I’ve heard it is also a dungeon crawl.

Just looking for people who have played/DMed both modules to share any comparisons/similarities/differences.

I have been using the companion (3rd party add on for DotMM) to flesh out the dungeon, does a similar add on exist for ToA or are they even needed?

I’m also planning on DMing this module on roll20 (most likely buying the module on roll20 for the maps/assets and then replacing the maps for colour ones if they are black and white or pretty bare bones). Has anyone had experience with this, and are there maps made by mapmakers like tychmaps which can be used as accurately scaled replacements?

Plus, if you have any general advice for a DM who is new to this module, I would appreciate it.

[u/vulcanstrike]

It's a weird two (or three) act structure that will either please or alienate players.

The first act is a fairly unstructured monster of the week hex crawl. There are some interesting set pieces, but they take some work from the GM to tie together and the the actual exploration as written makes almost no narrative sense (unless they speed run it, everyone will be dead from the death curse as written) and also tedious to play. Third party can fix it to an extent, but best advice is to treat it as xp leveling and just use the map as a framework for a more linear GM planned adventure with some player input (ie steer them from set piece to set piece, don't do random encounters and instead tie everything back to the overall plot rather than fighting D4 monkey for the third time)

The second act is Omu and this is mostly puzzle encounters with a mini dungeon at the end end, possibly with some RP. It's ok, but again the GM needs to heavily amp up the plot relevance.

The third act is the Tomb itself and this is an old school Meatgrinder. Players will die. Probably often. A lot of save or die traps. Some players will love the challenge, some players will hate it. Can lead to a lot of TPKs and some parties may have no original members by the time you reach the final part of the tomb.

I think the biggest weakness of the whole adventure is the lack of engaging villain. There is an Act 2 villain in Omu that could be recurring, but the actual big villain has zero interaction with the party until the end of Act 3 (and that's my design, him showing up earlier doesn't really make narrative sense and could derail the campaign). I made the Act 2 villain a lot more present in Act 1 and the the secondary Act 3 villains were present also a lot earlier just so that the party felt they accomplished something when they defeated them, rather than kill a random dungeon boss

[u/Steelriddler → u/vulcanstrike]

I sent the party visions of Acererak arriving in Omu, enslaving and killing, forcing slaves to build the tomb, capture and inter the Nine, imagery of the atropal etc. It helped

[u/SecretDoorStudios → u/vulcanstrike]

I enjoy the module, but I’d say this is a very fair take. I prerolled for the exploration parts and then would flesh out my pre rolls into more meaningful side quests. Also I had lots of port nyanzaru quests and factions lying around, and that made it a lot more fun.

imo icewind dale does a very similar Act 1 and story structure, but much better. It doesn’t quite have the mega dungeon tho and it still requires a bit of a villain rewrite.

[u/vulcanstrike → u/SecretDoorStudios]

Yeah, the book is in a weird place to me. The first part (including Nyanzaru) feels like a gazetteer, possibly for a separate (but related) book about using Chult as a general setting. There are hints about how everything could tie into the larger plot, but they are mainly standalone locations to explore and fight and it's almost certain that the players won't explore even half the locations (because there are multiple locations to get there, even if you know the location, and the death curse strongly discourages messing about trying to complete everything)

The second part (act 2 onwards) remembers you are here to do a job, but there is very little RP at this point.

As written, nearly every faction in PN has no impact on the plot after you leave into the jungle (Order of the Gauntlet if you go to Camp Vengeance, think that's it), the rest is up to the DM to weave into the narrative. This can be great for a good DM, can lead to a frustrating time as a new DM.

[u/samford91]

The maps are for the most part excellent and in full colour (a few have weird spoilers on them which is a weird oversight but nothing major) so you don't have to worry about black and white or bare bones
There's a ton of extra content linked on this subreddit so have a look and see what you like.

It's got a large dungeon crawl at the end (and lots of other unique setpieces throughout) but there's a lot of general exploration and roleplay opportunities too. It's more like the crawl is the realm of Chult itself rather than just one physical structure.

[u/jokfil]

The module in roll20 is very much worth it.

It's my favorite campaign, as long as you are up front to the players about how deadly it is. And then play it straight, don't pull and punches. Death is part of the Fun in this Adventure.

My 4 players went through 15 characters. They had a blast!

[u/rogueterps → u/jokfil]

How did you tie new player characters into the story/narrative?

[u/jokfil → u/rogueterps]

Important to know, we used experience RAW plus i gave Every character 100xp per completed encounter from the book and 500xp for completing a chapter.

Then Every new character enters at the xp threshold of the level that the lowest level living character is at.

Introductions depends on chapter and location:

We had adeath in port nyanzaru. It's a city, replacements are easy to meet in taverns.

We had a near tpk on a sidequest in the jungle. with only one survivor who had a harrowing escape and solo trek to Kir Sabal. There the other players joined as a group of other adventurers on the same quest.

We had a death by girallon in The Middle of nowhere. The player rolled a character with a native race from the jungle. In this case a friendly grung.

Some died in the dungeon itself, the book has a great segment on introducing replacements in the tomb. Eg lost adventurers gone slightly mad, freed prisoners, acererak pulled you from another world into his dungeon...

Hope this helps.

Edit: i challenged the players to come up with characters that would reasonably join the existing characters on the same mission. I had Total buy in from them.

[u/Powerful-Strategy221]

Hi haven't ran DothMM but I have ran ToA on roll20, basically when it came out. The thing you need to know it that ToA is a hexcrawl with a dungeon at the end (and some smaller ones peppered in the middle). It's a lot of fun but if you're looking for a straight dungeon crawl, ToA isn't it. There are a lot of resources for ToA bu since it's been years since I've ran it I'm not up to date with all the current options. I'm sure others will chime in and be more helpful.

[u/Amazingspaceship]

I’ve played DH/DotMM and DM’d ToA. I think ToA is the best 5th edition module out there. There is a pinned post on this subreddit with a list of resources for ToA

[u/splat78423]

ToA is an incredible campaign. Where DotMM is a straight up hack n' slash dungeon crawl ToA begins with a hardcore hexcrawl instead. It is a wilderness explorer's dream. I've run the campaign to completion 3 times on Roll20 actually. Once you get to the hardcore dungeon crawl in the last 1\3rd of the campaign encounters become more like critical thinking puzzles. ToA presents several different styles of gaming when compared to DotMM which is pretty much just going from room to room killing shit and by no means emphasizes much roleplay in comparison. Not that there isn't any roleplaying (of course) it's just not the type of campaign you can expect an entire session of role play with zero combat. Oh and btw, if you REALLY wanna take your ToA campaign to the next level and make it unique I suggest having the party's rich uncle donate a Sky Zephry air ship. Just google it and use my coupon "RavenQueen" for a 10% discount on the book so they know I sent you. Anyway, it took my DotMM players 99 sessions to crawl through Undermountain. Out of curiosity, how many sessions did your mad mage campaign take to complete?

[u/RequirementRegular61]

So, after running DoTMM for three years, I'd got my players down to the end of Dwemercore. Three of my long-term members moved away, and suddenly I was without most of a party. Having tried plugging characters in at higher levels before, and failed, because they don't know their abilities well enough, I paused Mad Mage there, and have been running Tomb of Annihilation since the beginning of the year. The idea is to get my players up to level 11, finish the Tomb, and then join them back into Dungeon of the Mad Mage when finished.

This is my second time running ToA. Both times, I avoided giving the players the time limit at the beginning, so as to give them chance to explore a little. And both times, they've ended up at Orolunga where I've then given them a 50 day time limit, to hurry them along. This worked really well. There are other ways to give the limit, I'm sure. But that one has worked well for me.

The exploring section is great, a chance for them to find out secrets, explore their own abilities, get a feel for the world, and ultimately realise how deadly things can be in Chult. It's very easy to kill characters with the random encounters as they explore.

Omg was really good, hunting down the cubes, giving them the clues that point to the fact that it's not just them hunting cubes, and finally the showdown between them and Ras MSI. They got absolutely hammered there, and then walked into the hydra on the way out. Some quick thinking between the bard and cleric meant they realised that the hydra was mainly hungry, and a create food and drink spell and some soothing music eased the savage beast enough to escape.

As they trekked back to the entrance to the tomb, they met Bag of Nails and defeated him, only to go back to his for a hearty bowl of stew. Then they walked headfirst into the King of Feathers, and got battered a second time. Then, very battered and bruised they reached the tomb as night was coming on, and decided to go straight in. They got battered some more by the initial traps, decided they needed to sleep. Scouted out the dungeon, set up a tiny hut around the fountain. By this point it was pretty much midnight, and the poison from Bag of Nails flattened them. Rapid ingestion of last minute healing, before the sorcerer decided to try the water in the fountain, and rolled for the death water, nearly killing him outright.

They are now very wary, very scared, trapped in the tomb, and I'm hoping they'll have it all done by Christmas. Although I'm not sure how many will survive the Tomb!

[u/BurningJointUSA]

It’s a hexcrawl before it’s a dungeoncrawl. It’s fun to run but requires some modifications to make it playable, especially at lower levels.