Wonderful adventure with a mystery, flexible paths forward, tons of NPC motivations to expand on (which is great if players do something unexpected- you can adapt based on the NPCs wants), and also fun 'puzzle', lore and combat. I'd reccommend playing this over 2 sessions, but we were able to trim it to 1 session.

Every NPC/Monster Stat block was fun to play as many of the play like leveled characters with interesting features, multiattacks and/or spells.

Ran this adventure for only 3 PC (experienced players at level 9 using 2024 rules, all with +1 weapons (barbarian, rogue, wizard) and the players loved it saying it was the most satisfying adventure elements we had ever packed into one night.

Modifications and our experience running this at a higher level, and with fewer players than suggested : We finished in 4 hours by cutting a bit of content/some rushing along: We skipped the night 1-2 at the inn, and they started at the shore of dreams speaking with murrasa - who I described as having a dark ring around her eye - to hint at her fight the night before. PCs snucking around the kitchen, and questioned Murassa, which put everyone on edge. 2 of 3 PCs passed out, while the remaining barbarian resisted, and as a mercenary in his backstory he instead asked why not hire him for the job rather than drug them. The PC barbarian negotiated an unstable accord for the PCs to bring the crown back to her if paid. My players saved time by skipping the secret treasure room, & quickly releasing and dismissing the prisoners. Since my PCs were not captured, I combined the Tempest beast and skeleton encounter to have the beast come from behind the moment they break into the temple. As soon as the PCs obtained the crown, the doors reopened, water poured out of the room, and Pisca showed up with Scortch and the Tiefling Monk and 4 minnion style guards. At the end of that fight, PCs were down to only 1 standing character. Pisca cast sleep on the person carrying the crown, she raised it toward her face when the rouge sprung from hiding to finish her as she held the crown at last.

Curtain Call: When Scortch sprinkles the powder on the plate in secret - I wish that was more clear where that is intended to happen: in the kitchen/the bar. I imagined it happening at the dining table, which was incredibly hard to role play a plausable excuse. It makes so much more sense to happen in the kitchen since Scortch is the cook.

Scaling for 3 players lvl 9: I had to scale back the final trap room's damage to reduce the passive damage and save their HP for the big fight. I may have buffed Pisca by allowing her to upcast shatter (using her 5th level slots) which was (too) highly effective. I also scaled hitpoints down to a max of 100 for the croc & Pisca, brought scortch's multiattack down to only 2 attacks rather than 3.

Great Adventure. I've been looking forward to run this one for a long time, and it did not disappoint!

-Review by GM with 1 year of weekly DMing experience, and a decade of D&D.

Overall fantastic, I do feel like the formatting or how information presented to you the DM can be a little confusing just in terms of how it flows. For example there's events and things that can happen if your players make X decision or X thing happens, but you have then find that outcome somewhere else, but then ultimately the players end up in the final act regardless, but if a certain event happened it feels like it's not addressed, but should be? I don't want to post any spoilers, but yeah it feels like some ideas aren't as fleshed out as they should be and it creates some confusion when you're trying to prep it because there's a real possibility the core insighting event leading into the final act just won't happen to your players and the adventure sort of barely touches on it, or touches on what occurs if it doesn't so then you're kind of in just a slightly weird place again because the final act sort of assumes it all played out as written while other sections give you some sort of guideline if they don't it- it just gets to be a bit much. But otherwise it's a pretty cool oneshot with some great puzzles that maybe are a little too vague? But maybe that's just for my players. But they definitely had a bit of a hard time with the final "encounter" and just reaching it, but again overall pretty cool and for the most part NPCs are pretty fleshed out, they at least allow for a great base to work off of even though some don't necessarily tie into the plot very well, or the hints to what's going on that they can provide are just really, really easy to miss or overlook as written by players. But again very fun regardless, I run a homebrewed setting so I can't be 100% sure how it is running it RAW, but- I know my players seemed to have a good time with what I adapted which too be fair was- mostly unchanged in terms of the overall "story".

It is a great quest for one to two sessions. The one thing that could be improved on, is the wrighting in the shore of dreams section, as refering to the order of events. Other than that I think that it is a realy fun story.

Had it for ages but got to run it as a one shot with the group trying out the 2024 rules. It worked wonderfully. The players loved it, the flavor of the setting, it was great. I played up the setting, describing the music (and playing a more asian musical playlist), made a point of the food, and the weapons. I can say it is 2024 compatible with no problem. My players were level 5 instead of the suggested level and there was no issue. The whole thing is more skill and roleplay based than combat. They ended up being knocked out by the food. Awesome product!

It's a great little adventure, especially for the money. I adore these printable minis included, please give the artist all the love and then some more. Incresibly fun to play too. My players really hopes to set sail for the treasures :D

Playtesting for now to change my initial review. Lorem Ipsum.

A charming island adventure marred by problematic racial tropes.

FINALLY got to run this after AGES of having it my library! This mod has a great atmosphere, a brilliant amount of depth to its key NPCs, an enticing and easy to pitch plot hook, and a structure that is supremely comprehensible. Never once was I confused which part of the PDF I ought to reference based on the choices my players made, nor did my players find their questions lacking sufficient answers (given sufficiently high Persuasion or Investigation checks where appropriate). By the end of this one-shot, I found myself burning with a desire to place this little island village in my main campaign world and weave these NPCs into it. I'm genuinely bummed I won't get to see where they all end up long-term.

I don't have any negatives to speak of (except that Scorch and Chung have no character art to match the rest of the cast). I will say there's a fair amount of Investigation that can be done in the earlier phase of the storyline, and having run at Level 7, some of those Investigation thresholds were easy for my players to surpass. This meant that one of the branching paths near the midway point of the module - the one I might argue would be more fun for the DM - was closed off fairly early, in favor of a path that's vastly more favorable to the players. HOWEVER, given that the prep information for either of these avenues is so clearly accessible, I wouldn't say this is a bad thing. Just something to consider before running.

I will also say, for a module with so much vibrancy to it, I believe "three to six hours" is inaccurate. I ran the opening as tight as I possibly could without forcing my players straight into the tavern, trimmed the overall timeline down, and still found myself needing to run the final encounter in cinematics rather than an all-out combat because we had a hard cutoff at the four-hour mark. My players loved the ending, but I know a couple of them were looking forward to trying some subclass abilities they hadn't tried before, and I was looking forward to running the rather elaborate (but again, VERY clear prep instructions for the DM) final encounter chamber, and the person inside. Therefore, unless you're running this for a group that is primarily into pursuing the loot and not RPing to a large degree, I think five hours would be a more accurate time estimate. This isn't a knock on the module, just an observation on my part.

In short, this is a brilliant adventure that's really easy to prep for! ... just don't expect to actually run it start-to-finish in only three hours.

Great module, wonderful art and descriptions, the paper minis are awesone!

This one has more flavor text and background, so prep takes a bit longer to learn the personalities and motivations; but definitely worth it as it makes for a better story and RP.

Highly recommended!

This is to date the best one-shot I have run. In addition to the wonderful adventure itself, it has so much polish: the full-color maps are beautiful and the paper minis really bring the characters to life. The adventure itself is clear and easy to run which I have come to appreciate in comparison. I have been spoiled by this wonderful adventure.

One of the best third party modules I've ever run! So many cool tricks in the 'dungeon' portion, so many interesting and memorable encounters, and I LOVED playing the main NPC, she was a blast! It fit perfectly into my homebrew-mixed with saltmarsh adventures, and I was able to tie it to a larger narrative by changing the true nature of the main NPC's allegiences pretty easily. It took my group two 4 hour sessions to complete, with lots of interesting character moments for all of my players. I made mochi treats as a snack for my players and served green tea.

The artwork is stunning, the maps are useful and well rendered. My favourite add-on was the printable minis, they were gorgeous and have led me to make purchases from the creators. There are many possible choices for the players and outcomes of the encounter as well, and tips on playing each of the NPCs, their motivations and eventual plans. One of the 'dungeon' rooms caused three of five players to become unconcious and is potentially deadly. Stakes are high, but the combat was thrilling! DMS who are comfortable with some role play and interesting lore will get a lot out of this material. My players were obsessed with reuniting Murasa with her true love (might have played that up a bit, as my players enjoyed that aspect of the story and really loved that NPC).

I love this publisher, and hope they create many more games! I will be playing online for the forseable future, so one request would be that with all of their gorgeous artwork, if Roll20 type tokens could be included fro the main NPCs, as many more people are playing online during these times.

I played the adventure. It was a good adventure with interesting setting. My DM also said they changed a couple things and was easy to do and keep the adventure in tact.

My group loved this fun adventure! They instantly fell in love with the setting and characters and had a fun few hours roleplaying in the town and inn before getting deeper into the mystery. There is a huge variety of things to do (RP, combat, skills, intrigue, puzzles) and everyone had a chance to shine. My only (mild) criticism is that there is a LOT of information to take in, especially in the last section where many things may be happening simultaneously, so be sure to read the adventure well beforehand.

In the end my group spent a full 3 sessions playing through this, so I'd say we all got our money's worth and then some!

Ran this as a side mission/story arc for my home campaign as a means to get the party prepped for a long sea voyage (i.e. training wheels for sea exploration) and gosh, what a fun adventure.

It's very open-ended, and has some fantastic opportunities for excellent roleplay. Great brute strength fights, chances for good sneak/subterfuge gameplay, nice interlacing with Zhentarim and some other factions if you choose, diplomacy/deception is DEFINITELY an option, and excellent trail of breadcrumbs you can get your party involved in. In particular, my group LOVED the cook leaping from behind the counter to engage in the bar battle with her chef's knives as a rogue, loved the betrayal section as a party member tried on one of the magical items and turned his coat, and loved piecing together the mystery/sneaking around the island after breaking out of prison. I had gave the big bad a few extra escape spells (dimension door, etc) and had her harry the party as they explored further into the temple (I extended the temple in the area where it's possible, went very underwater indiana jones style of temple with odd globs of barnacles sticking precious items to the walls/ceilings... the other end of the temple on the other side of the island was a Morkoth's Lair - SUPER fun boss fight and was fun to extend the adventure!)

Awesome little threads to follow. Would definitely run it again. Art was beautiful, enemies and stat blocks were easy to read and worked well (had to modify them since my party was at 7 players when we ran it, but that wasn't too hard).

Only critique was that I found the layout a bit confusing, would have loved to have a few reminders as to where certain items were when reading (i.e. section 3, page # so that when reading it was easier to find things on the fly) but after memorizing the surprisingly short booklet for... nearly 20+ hours of play? it became a non-issue. I made a map but when the party destroyed it, i destroyed the map i made... Strongly encourage others to make maps of the island as well if you intend to extend the adventure!

Without a doubt the best thing I've bought on DM Guild. This is exactly the kind of fun "side-quest" stuff that I like to plop into my adventures when it fits, and this works great for Tomb of Annihilation. The story is simple (I mean that in a good way), interesting, and provides options for if the players go against the grain. The production quality is what sets this apart though. The adventure is designed and formatted in an incredibly accesible way, and the art is FANTASTIC. The art of the cover is not a one-off - it is filled with art of this quality. If you have any inkling of getting this, then stop second-guessing and buy it.