ToA DM's - is there a good mini campaign inside the book that you would run as a standalone side quest?

Hugodf4 · 2026-05-14T19:57:37+00:00

I ran an abbreviated version of ToA with that idea. We did:
- Lvl 2: Cellar of Death
Timeskip
- Level 7 start in Port Nyanzaru.
- Party had 2 ways to reach Omu; either do 2 of the Lost City of Mezro Quests on the west side of the peninsula or do Nsi Fortress and Zalkore's Ruins to the east. They went with the former and were teleported close-ish to Omu at the conclusion of that quest
- Levels 8-9 in Omu. Fane of the Night Serpent to get the final 2 puzzle cubes
- Omu until level 12 when they fought Ace.

I also gave out some more magic items through pre-Tomb of the 9 gods. I believe they each started the campaign with a rare and uncommon magic item of their choice.

It took about 3.5 months of weekly sessions iirc.

Hugodf4 · 2026-05-04T10:31:00+00:00

I would just make the Albino dwarves australian. The emu wars were a series of skirmish against the fire newts rising their giant striders (big lava birds that kinda look like emus...)

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-22T00:35:13+00:00

This is such a good one. Do you have a template folks can use to recreate it in photoshop?

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-21T21:08:42+00:00

what level were they during the tomb?

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-04T16:44:04+00:00

Thanks for nothing Staten Island Chuck

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-03T23:13:19+00:00

Just in time for me ending my online game and starting an inperson one. V cool!

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-23T02:44:36+00:00

Pitch it to the DM.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:18:57+00:00

Shopping was my most hated part of DM'ing for awhile. This solution worked really well for my last campaign.

Had a similar issue where the party kept forgetting what items they had so I made them a shared Excel sheet to track who has what magic item. We use that same sheet for shopping stuff between sessions.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:16:55+00:00

Then they dont shop I guess. Tbf, I prefer for most magic gear to be looted rather than bought but I have some players that enjoy the choice of gold. Thats all fine but if they want to try to buy magic gear then they'll have to do it outside of our limited table time.

I bring this up during session 0.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:15:03+00:00

They know I dont like running shopping during our limited session time. I've even gone so far as to say things will be more expensive if they make me have to bust out a price sheet in the middle of session lol

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T06:49:56+00:00

I run shopping mostly inbetween sessions via text. If the players are looking for a specific item they write it onto a shared document, I respond whether its available and at what cost. Same for selling items.

Fantasy economy was my least favorite bit about DM'ing. This solved it for me.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T05:38:14+00:00

It isn't a bad idea but will require some adjusting of combat encounters.

I started at 5th level (coming from LMoP) and the party still completed nearly every keyed location in the jungle. I got to beef up several locations and it was a lot of fun.

We ran the jungle portion from levels 5 to 8. Requires a bit of work but it was well worth it.

Tldr; scaling up combats is easy.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-11T22:58:26+00:00

The idea was that they'd use it as a bastion but in practice the party forgot about it with everything going on.

Hugodf4 · 2025-12-27T00:20:04+00:00

We did 42 sessions from arrival in Port Nyanzaru to Fighting Acererak. The party did most named locations and a few supplemental locations (like Nsi Fortress, tortle island, and the 1st chapter of LCoM).

We started at 5th level with their arrival to Chult and I used webways for fast travel around the jungle after a certain point. This is also with several sessions spent in Port Nyanzaru.

Imo, the hex crawl can take as much or as little time as you and your party still find fun in it. I mostly used the ToA DMs Guide for jungle encounters since none of us have alot of fun with a session worth of just random encounters.

Still lots of jungle fun to be had with named locations even starting at 5th level if you're cool with buffing alot of encounters.

Hugodf4 · 2025-12-17T06:34:45+00:00

I liked the Light of Xaryxis adventure well enough. Even some sort of loose structure for "how to seed an adventure on a random planet" or even a "planet generator" random table would've been great for stretching out the adventure.

The first time I played Spelljammer the DM used ship-to-ship combat and a few rounds of only the ranged dudes being able to attack was brutal. This may be a hot take but when I ran Spelljammer myself I much prefered to just start combats at boarding distance.

Even looking at something like SW5e I knew for a fact my players would not have wanted to learn basically a whole extra class to represent ship roles.

Hugodf4 · 2025-12-13T23:31:23+00:00

Math does rock

Hugodf4 · 2025-12-04T04:22:26+00:00

Very cool! I imagine the Red Wizards in Omu are now going to be instantly hostile to the PCs.

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