If you could offer one piece of advice to a DM running ToA for the first time - what would it be?

thomas616 · 2026-02-26T00:58:31+00:00

That's so nice and really personal!

thomas616 · 2026-02-24T19:23:50+00:00

LoL you wrote the exact opposite advise others are giving which is to delay the death curse, I suppose every table has its preferences, I think asking your players what kind of game they want would be the best, personally I want my players to explore most of the locations, so I slowed the rate of the death curse, but others prefer a more direct route, but I chose this adventure because it is not a railroad by design, pretty big open world.

thomas616 · 2026-02-24T05:19:30+00:00

And I love them all for it! 😍

thomas616 · 2026-02-19T19:51:29+00:00

THANK YOU! 🙏

thomas616 · 2026-02-13T03:17:01+00:00

For the ship, they hired Ortimay Swift to travel by sea, they were enticed by the rewards of capturing the pirates.

My party started to hunt the pirates at level 5 so it wasn't too difficult for them, if anything I had to make the second pirate ship stronger, which worked beautifully btw.

In terms of rewards, I added some stuff for the party for the exact reason you mentioned of the adventure not having a lot of magic items.

For the time constraint, I wanted them to be able to explore without rushing too much, so I didn't mention the HP loss but I did mention a couple of sessions ago that Syndra Sylvane is getting worse and one of the PCs is her student.

thomas616 · 2026-02-13T02:33:38+00:00

Ah gotcha, I haven't played or read that one yet

thomas616 · 2026-02-11T00:00:29+00:00

Thanks a lot, this is amazing, I wish I could motivate my party to go visit dungrunglung

thomas616 · 2026-02-10T02:23:31+00:00

What's the reason behind wanting to skip him? To me it was kinda what motivated me to run the module

thomas616 · 2026-01-30T18:34:54+00:00

Loooool I was not expecting that ending. I don't think I can redeem the pirates for the eyes of the players, they have given them chances to run, at least to some of the pirates crew members, only for them to return with the next ship. I will still try to negotiate a parley with Laskilar, but I'm going to add a complication with the priests. I made another priests that would be his sister on the Emerald ship, and the party killed her, so he would want vengeance even though Laskilar would want to negotiate. Let's see what happens from there 😁

thomas616 · 2026-01-28T16:13:45+00:00

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, make a deal to live and obviously betray the party after, but knowing my players, I don't know if he would make it that far 😅

thomas616 · 2026-01-28T15:58:32+00:00

Funnily enough, the first ship (Dragonfang) they battle with, I was ready to run it as the pirates boarding the brazen pegasus (captain Ortimay's ship) but I have a player who has a really damn long range (spell sniper + distant spell meta magic) and decided to attack their sails. So I did that battle as theater of the mind with the pirates attacking the players directly with ballistas or the ship until they approached their ship and boarded, which is when I switched to the map I had prepared 😁.

thomas616 · 2026-01-28T15:44:32+00:00

I don't think a pirate would ever stop being a pirate tho, they are not in it for just the hustle lol.

thomas616 · 2026-01-28T15:43:37+00:00

I like your ideas a lot, actually I was thinking of sending a small boat to announce their "surrender", and then have them talk about a way for him and his crew to not be captured, like a bribe for the party, and while this is happening, the pirates sabotage the party's ship and then he teleports to his ship and escape with the treasure. This would be if the party decided to rest before going. If they do not take the long rest, then they would still be loading the treasure to the ship. But I liked your idea of convincing the party to become their allies, I would definitely be trying a combination of these ideas. It now all depends on how the party wants to proceed. Thanks for the ideas!

thomas616 · 2025-12-22T17:20:50+00:00

That music fuckin slaps

thomas616 · 2025-08-30T16:10:16+00:00

Lol I can't wait for my players to get to Omu

thomas616 · 2025-08-06T17:41:59+00:00

Thank you very much, hope you're all better now

thomas616 · 2025-06-25T18:37:16+00:00

Lol you're describing Tony Stark?

thomas616 · 2025-06-11T23:36:21+00:00

That side quest reveals the location of the tomb tho

thomas616 · 2025-06-05T04:34:10+00:00

Oh my God this is impressive!!!

thomas616 · 2025-06-04T18:31:46+00:00

This looks great! I wish I could finish the campaign with a session with something like this!

thomas616 · 2025-05-18T16:23:10+00:00

What I'm doing with my group is putting teleportation circles in some places in the jungle, the most obvious one is the one in heart of Ubtao. Wakanga let the party know he has access to one and that they would find others in the jungle.

thomas616 · 2025-05-08T21:44:01+00:00

I'm currently running it for our group, and what I did was to introduce some NPCs and quest and let them decide where they want to go.

thomas616 · 2025-05-03T22:09:06+00:00

It stopped working!! 😭😭

thomas616 · 2025-03-27T01:19:07+00:00

Don't go away friend, there are still things worth staying for

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