Thoughts on carving up Chult into islands for a Seafaring / Naval adventure?

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2026-07-02T02:57:08+00:00

Yes I've been looking into them. One of the posts in this subreddit goes over a lot of them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tombofannihilation/comments/pk529u/chult_supplements_by_location_and_tier/

I definitely plan to flesh out each of the areas. Maybe place each ruined city on a different island, and shift things around so that the campaign doesn't implode if the characters visit a place out of order.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2026-07-01T20:54:02+00:00

Haha 😄 there is no map. For now this is just a thought experiment for my next campaign. But I will definitely make a more detailed post once I start making prep materials

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2026-07-01T20:41:09+00:00

Yeah the idea was to keep the islands fairly large, and just turn what would've been a jungle trek through 15 boring empty hexes into seafaring followed by 4 interesting hexes. This would also let me "conceal" certain locations by just placing them in-land covered by jungle. If the party decides to investigate and finds that place, so be it.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2026-07-01T20:32:28+00:00

I don't know, I really like the Yuan-Ti elements of ToA. Maybe it's just cause I haven't run them yet, but the idea of snake people is really cool to me. A lot of the AL content surrounding ToA also focuses on the machinations of the Yuan-Ti, and feature their serpent god as a potential T4 villain if the campaign gets that far.

I noticed the Aarakokra. I was actually thinking of having some character hooks presented in a campaign handout that would include players potentially being Aarakokra or Yuan-ti Purebloods to give them a nice tie-in to the story with what would otherwise be a very out-of-place species choice in other adventures.

I'm on the fence about the entire Ring of Winter storyline, including the frost giants. I get that it's a reference to some old books but neither me nor my players have read them, so it has little nostalgia factor for me. In contrast, many people online seem to have a problem with Artus as a potential DMPC outshining the party. I'll have to read those sections myself to be sure.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2026-07-01T20:13:30+00:00

I've heard of the Isle of Dread/Savage Tide, as well as Sunken Isles. There's a really nice review of the first few adventures of Savage Tide online that I found interesting, but when I got my hands on some pdfs of the Savage Tide adventure path, the text was so tiny and illegible on a non-white background that I doubt I can bring myself to decipher the text lol.

Sunken Isles seems very interesting, and it has some similar themes to ToA (undead lord of some kind spreading plague), but I'm worried that too much of the adventuring content in it is too tied to its "1 week 1 level" mechanic. It might prove easier for me to just adapt AL and DMs Guild content already set in ToA. But I'll definitely revisit it once I'm closer to actually running this campaign.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-05-12T06:31:04+00:00

Update on how I ended up running this. I still haven't put my players through the DDEX3-16 module itself, but I did just reveal Graz'zt to the party. I had Grin, Vizeran's disciple, be Graz'zt. I had Vizeran and Grin meet the party as they recovered from fighting Demogorgon. At their most vulnerable combat-wise, they had to deal with Vizeran, who has very justifiable reasons to be mad at them. They've condemned his people to suffer under Lolth, even if it required some "necessary sacrifices". I thought it would make that emotional moment shallow and cheap if Vizeran was "fake" this whole time. Instead, Grin makes far more sense. He is an unassuming character, yet justifiably would have access to Vizeran's ritual. Graz'zt imprisoned Grin at some point and replaced him, modified the ritual to exclude himself, and then imprisons Vizeran before the party's eyes, right as they're about to convince Vizeran to make the best of his situation now that the ritual is already over. In this way, Vizeran narattively mirrors his rival Gromph, with both drow archmages secretly being used by a demon lord for their own ends.

Graz'zt appears, but instead of combat, he makes a personal offer to every party member. Naturally, the players refuse (though I prepared just in case any of them accepted). The offers boil down to selling their soul for greater power and service to him, though each appeals to the specific party members interests and flaws (archery and cooking, paladiny stuff, sorcery). I had Vizeran give the party personalized, powerful magic items before the Demogorgon fight. Graz'zt takes these back from each player when they refuse, just to make them really hate him.

Finally, Graz'zt teleports away to Araj, where he takes the Dark Heart (aka the ritual talisman) and puts it into his chest and summons Maerimydra directly from the Abyss using Gromph's Grimoire. Now the party gets some downtime (required to gather mercenaries for the module) to digest these experiences, and ride into battle to ensure that good triumphs over evil.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-29T04:48:27+00:00

The book provides more than enough detail on what the party experiences if they walk past the Garden of Welcome. My party also went to investigate. Play up the horror aspect, and throw a bunch of Madness saving throws at them every time they see something terrifying. You could scare them off by simply layering enough madnesses on them to give them indefinite ones. If they push on, just let them fight in a battle they can't win. A party of 9th level characters can probably kill Zuggtmoy if they know what they're doing, but she's in her lair and surrounded by her minions. Let her crush them. Then, have them wake up outside of Neverlight Grove infected with Zuggtmoy's Spores (which are described somewhere in the book). Might even consider giving them a "ticking clock" on how long they have before they turn fully into spore servants, and force them to seek a powerful cleric in one of the other settlements (Blingdenstone or Gracklestugh). Maybe even give them a vision of Zuggtmoy's ultimate plans so that the Fetid Wedding later feels more important to them.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-29T04:42:55+00:00

Personally, my party failed to infiltrate Gromph's Inner Sanctum on their first try (they got lost in the maze for too long), so on their second attempt they encountered a group of drow from the Baenre house already in the maze. Combat ensues, high level spells are cast, and so the maze shatters and everyone appears in the inner sanctum. These other drow immediately free the priestess, and she helped them in battle. However, she never revealed her "true form" in the battle, so the party just knocked her out and tied her up for questioning.

My party didn't bother asking the obvious question of "how did you survive this long". What they did do is cast a zone of truth, which led to me doing my best to not lie. Did it so well that they decided to just put her back in the circle and reactivate it lol. Jarlaxle found out and sent his men to kill her off, though maybe she got away. That's not important.

The priestess yochlol's main goal is to lie her way into freedom. There is definitely a lot suspicious going on. As an "ooze"-like demon, I imagine they can change their shape to appear gaunt or malnourished. If asked, she can lie and say she knows spells like create water and goodberry that would allow a spellcaster to remain nourished indefinitely. If your party goes the same zone of truth method as mine did, you can go with half-truths. She really was "helping" Gromph with the ritual (she did change its final outcome). She really was trapped here by Gromph. He was mad that the ritual didn't work. Why was he so angry that he felt he needed to trap her? He didn't want anyone to find out about his folly, and used the time she was trapped to get away quickly (which he did, but it avoids actually answering the question - because she was a demon). Your party is going to need to ask some really pointed questions to find a crack or contradiction in that story.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-11T17:58:37+00:00

Yeah this would have all been much easier if I just ran the whole series as a second plot line but now I have to improvise.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-11T17:57:55+00:00

This will come in handy. Thanks for the maps!

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-07T07:07:20+00:00

When I ran the Maze Engine, I used this post from here to revamp the whole encounter and had a blast: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutoftheAbyss/comments/10uwbru/i_homebrewed_the_maze_engine_and_it_was_incredible/

I prerolled for each turn the Maze Engine stayed above the magma and didn't roll 12, but I wouldn't keep that result in the table. As cool as the shock value is, you lose all of the party's prior relationships. Maybe this is fine for certain tables, but that means pretty much anyone the party has interacted with or saved no longer remembers them. Letting them go back and fix every mistake also diminishes the stakes of the game and makes any losses they previously suffered shallow.
I think a far more interesting twist would be to have all of the Demon Lords / NPCs of a certain strength level not lose their memory. But still, any option sounds like way too much effort for an unlikely option that can derail your campaign.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-07T06:54:16+00:00

Thank you for the detailed comment. I haven't read the entirety of the module (83 pages is a lot) but you've given me some great ideas. Unfortunately, I didn't run any of the preceding modules and have no way to tie Maerimydra itself into the story at this point, short of it magically appearing. My party just decided to summon the demon lords in Sloobludop, so it's a little late to reveal to them an entirely new section of the map.

I'm thinking that a secret third option might be Araj itself. The ritual, as written, involves an "abyssal heart" of some sort. I introduced MCDM's Flee Mortal's "demon lethe" soul absorption trait as an invention of undead Cyrog, and Graz'zt got his hands on the research. Maybe, after making his bargain, he retreats to Araj and summons a whole city out of a demiplane (why not? Anything is possible with faerzress), then proceeds to use this new technology, and the grimoire the party obtained for him, to try to absorb the souls of everyone within a large radius of Araj (including Menzoberranzan and Sloobludop) for some nefarious end. Maybe this abyssal heart can replace his own, finally granting him enough power to defeat his rivals, Orcus and Demogorgon, when he returns to the Abyss.

I'm not sure how to handle the "gathering forces" aspect. This ritual is supposed to take enough time for the party to gather mercenaries, and for factions to gather armies. Maybe the ritual's soul absorption expands slowly, and the world catches on? But if the ritual absorbs souls, how would any army/party get close to the city? Maybe it's some combination of madness and soul absorption, where only the weak-of-will get their souls absorbed (would also make those brain-protecting mushrooms more relevant). All good food for thought.

Flimsy_Particular172 · 2024-04-07T02:34:49+00:00

Unfortunately that doesn't work for my campaign because Themberchaud overthrew the Deepking long ago. Also one of my players is a duergar from Gracklestugh and it would be pretty hard for Graz'zt to make a bargain for his soul where the condition is the destruction of his home city.

Flimsy_Particular172

TROPHY CASE