Our stranded heroes struggle to survive an arduous safari, as the players insist on making it harder than necessary.

When last we left our heroes, they had failed to save their floundering ship following a tragic encounter with a very angry dragon turtle. Inconceivably, they managed to keep the ship afloat and ran her aground before she succumbed beneath the waves. Our heroes were lucky to be alive, but the Narwhal II will never sail again. Her crew was dead (except for one), she had a gaping hole in her side, and now her hull was crushed upon the rocks just off shore somewhere in the terrifying Land of Chult.

They were lost, stranded in an inhospitable wilderness, completely unprepared for the dangers that await them. Night was fast approaching and they decided to rest aboard the crippled ship rather than risk camping on an unknown beach just a few yards from the looming jungle before them. They were wise to take this course of action, as it gave them a brief respite before the storm that I had coming for them.

I was thrilled at the prospect of this coming session. A key story element that I wanted to explore was to take a group of inexperienced adventurers, drop them into a hostile environment that they were completely unprepared for, and watch them struggle to survive. Of course, with time they would become masters of this domain, but first I wanted them to appreciate and respect the danger that the Land of Chult presented.

I had not planned to shipwreck the party. I expected to have them arrive at port safely, and then make their first expedition (which presumably would last 30 in-game days) a harrowing ordeal to showcase the lethality of the jungle. There was just one problem with my original plan. It would have been cruel, vindictive, and worse, boring. I have no problem with and frankly love adventures that kick the players’ asses (usually at the hands of the main villain) at the start of the story. Obviously, the villain will defeat (but not kill) the adventurers and players will be strongly motivated to have their revenge when they are powerful enough to do so.

It is fine to have this unbalanced encounter occur once or even last for a single session, but to consistently beat down your players, just because you can, so you can prove that you can kill them whenever you want is just mean. Players want to be heroes not victims, and to treat them as victims for the length of a 20-to-30-day jungle expedition would be horrible. But a 1- or 2-day terror trek through the unknown as they desperately try to make it to safety while I throw every deadly thing the jungle has to offer at them. Perfect.

Sadly, despite all my efforts, this session also continued my collision course of contention with one of my players. And I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it. When we started this whole thing, I only asked that the characters to not be familiar with Chult and to have no jungle survival experience. I refused to let my son, James, pick jungle as his favorite terrain, and when Jane wanted their character to be a native of Chult, we tweaked the backstory that so that Scáth was stolen from Chult at a very young age and was trying to go home. Terrific.

The problem is that Scáth was still played as a master of all survival skills. There was nothing I could throw at her that she could not dominate. Scáth was a master of navigation, cartography, hunting and tracking in all terrains, ocean travel, astro-physics, and alchemy to name a few. Plus, Jane is an excellent player who knew every rule in the rulebooks and even when the rule went against her plans, she had a real-world example of why the rules are wrong and she is right.

Prior to the session, knowing all these issues would come up, I studied all the D&D rules (and their real-world counterparts) that dealt with survival. But it was all for naught, we argued about everything. Of particular note was the debate over food and water management. All I wanted was to run this single session on survival mode so that they had to subsist on the bare minimum of food and water and run the risk of starvation and dehydration. And then never worry about those rules again because they are tedious and not fun. But Jane wants to feast on a surplus bounty from the start and thwart my plans.

But the rules are clear. A character that passes a survival check can forage/hunt/collect (1d6 + Wisdom modifier) pounds of food. But one could argue, a single real-world pig (which they caught) would provide over 50 to 100 pounds of meat. That may be true, but you only harvest 1d6+2 pounds of food off this carcass. The same was true regarding the desalination of salt water. The PHB Alchemy kit (which they bought) lists several specific purposes that it can be used for and removing the salt from sea water is purposely not one of them. But desalination is a real-world process and should be allowed and my character knows all about it was argued. Except that it requires numerous glass beakers, bowls, a sustained fire, and an exorbitant amount of time that you don’t have; so no free water. Needless to say, we were both annoyed. Enough griping, let’s adventure!

In the morning, the party woke to their world being turned upside down. Or at least sideways. During the night the tide receded, and with nothing to support its weight, the Narwhal II keeled over onto its side. Any chance of salvaging the ship was lost; she would never sail again. The group was bumped and bruised and buried in battered furniture but unharmed. They salvaged what they could; A single barrel with 30 gallons fresh water, 1 barrel of Wardhavian wine, the equivalent of 20 rations, 2 unbroken crates and 1 empty barrel, one fishing rod, a dozen spears from the armory, 6 tridents and 1 harpoon (from the sahaugin attack), 1 rain catcher and 3 canvas tents that they stitched together from the ship’s sails. They also have a sea-worthy row boat that holds 8 people and their supplies. Mighty convenient.

They don’t even need any of this. I purposely stranded them on the narrowest part of the peninsula so that a single-day, 10-mile hike (and one-half of a session) would bring them within view of Port Nyanzaru and safety. Several players argued for this option, but they were drowned out by Jane’s plan to follow the shoreline on a 100+ mile (and now two sessions long) ordeal to the same destination. To be fair, they were not certain of their current location, and Jane’s plan may be more logical, but I am convinced that this route was chosen because it was simply not the plan I expected them to do. But hey, I’m all about player agency, so we’ll take the long way around.

I wasn’t even upset about this development, since it allowed me to utilize the beach random encounter table which is never used in the adventure as written. When using these encounter tables, I suggest rolling for several days’ worth of jungle encounters prior to any wilderness session. Just as you would prep a dungeon, consider the jungle to be the dungeon and plan out the encounters. Still use the tables, they are excellent and found on page 193, but create a plan. Nothing bogs down a game faster than watching the DM roll a bunch of dice and confer with his charts over and over again.

I also roll for all my weather condition during this prep time. I’ve included my weather chart as part of my custom DM Screen tables that you can find here. ToA DM Screen Remember, DM’s prerogative allows you alter, exchange, and ignore the dice in favor for a more dramatic scenario. If you’ve rolled 3 snake encounters in a row, you can ignore the 4^th and swap it for something new and exciting. For example, I switched the times of the encounters on Day 1 to provide a better escalation of danger and to present a more thematic encounter.

Sorry, I keep going off on tangents. While the party is salvaging supplies on the capsized Narwhal II, the sole survivor of the crew, Carlos, and the other NPC passenger, Undril the cleric, buried the ten deceased sailors they could recover from the wreckage. (Most were washed overboard.) Miche wanted a full roster of all the lost and deceased, which I created, but was never asked for again. Among the interred dead were Diggory the boson, killed by the dragon turtle’s steam blast, the quartermaster, Abhad Itzi, impaled on weapons in the armory, and Maccus the cook, who was crushed in the galley. This isn’t important now, but will come back to haunt them later. Okay, okay, adventure time.

Lost Expedition DAY 1 – The survivors of the ill-fated Narwhal II row north, hugging the shoreline, hoping to reach safe harbor before they succumb to the perils of the jungle. It is a balmy 94℉ and the party takes turns rowing to ward off exhaustion. Those wearing metal armor have already stripped down under the relentless heat. A short rainfall in the late morning offered the only relief.

At midday, the boat was jostled by several bumps from underneath. Shortly, three reef sharks revealed themselves, trying to knock any poor soul out of the boat for an easy snack. The rowers doubled their efforts to make a hasty retreat, while the others threw spears to drive them away. One shark was impaled, sending the others into a feeding frenzy. We attempted to pull the dead shark aboard for the meat, but we were rewarded with just half a carcass, the sharks took the rest and left us alone to enjoy their cannibal feast.

This encounter illustrated another example of the growing tension between Jane and I. Jane’s character, Scáth, threw the spear that impaled the first shark and kicked off the feeding frenzy. Scáth’s next action was to pull the shark toward the boat.

“With what,” I asked.

“With the rope I tied to the spear.”

“You did not say that you were tying off a rope to the spear.”

“Well, of course I would. I’m a hunter and that’s just something I would always do.”

This is a trivial detail, so I allowed it, but I was bothered about it. Players and DMs alike make mistakes and forget details all the time, and I never mind retconning anything. But this was handled so unapologetically that it bugged me.

At dusk, the shore turned west, but was it the tip of the peninsula on just another inlet? It was too dark to tell. They could tell that the beach was strewn with the debris of countless ships. The current must deposit all the wrecks in the bay right here. Among the flotsam we find a waterlogged flag of Baldur’s Gate. This could be all that is left of the ship we saw destroyed by Aremag, just prior to our own tragic encounter with that damned dragon turtle. We made camp on the beach halfway between the debris field and the jungle. We were serenaded by the terrifying hoots, howls, screeches and screams of gods-know what creatures of this gods-forsaken wilderness.

In the middle of the night, Miche was on watch when he saw a light coming from a jumble of large rocks further down the beach. Investigating, Miche discovered that the light was coming from a small cave that formed the entrance into a hidden grotto. Listening intently at the mouth of the cave, he heard two female voices arguing.

“Give me the knife Anastasia. I wanna carve them out this time.”

“Forget it, Drizella. The last time you held a knife you killed our sister, Tremaine.”

“Fine, forget it. Just do it now. They are so pretty they sicken me. Cut them out now.”

The air is rent with a man’s blood-curdling scream of agony, then an eerie silence. Moving closer to hear, Miche slips on some rocks (he failed his stealth roll), sending some stones clattering into the cave.

“Shh, something’s outside.”

“I can see him. He’s right outside. Use the eye.”

“I see him too. What is it? It looks like a devil. Can we eat it?”

“How should I know? You are so stupid!”

While the mystery voices bickered, Miche looked around his immediate area. At his feet was a normal sized crab, except one of his eyestalks ended in a human sized eyeball and it was staring directly at him. Disturbed by this grotesque sight, Miche took out one of his kitchen knives and stabbed the creature right in the eye, killing the crab instantly. Two high pitched screams echoed from the grotto. “My eyes! My eyes. I’ll gut him for this!”

Not waiting around for whatever is in the cave to come and gut him, Miche slunk his way to the top of the cave mouth. However, Gwen and Roland were awakened by the screams and headed to the cave to investigate. At the cave, there was no sign of Miche, so the two crept inside. The narrow entrance sloped down into a small grotto filled with debris. Piles of wet, rotting refuse littered the cave. The entire floor is covered in a thick oozing muck that sucks at the players boots. The stench is horrible. A small pool of murky, brackish water is in the south-east corner. There are ripples upon the surface.

Slumped on the floor is the bedraggled body of a man. He is drenched in water and his clothes bear the insignia of Baldur’s Gate. He is barely alive and unconscious. His body seems to be uninjured except he is missing both eyes. The eyes have been plucked right out of the sockets and the optic nerves have been severed. These wounds are fresh, a tangle of nerves dangle out of the sockets and blood still drips down his face.

But whatever had committed this atrocity was nowhere to be found. Roland searched for hidden doors or for anything that might shed some light on this mystery. All that remained of the assailants was an obsidian dagger with fresh blood on it near the victim. He also found a small pouch with a few gems, and a rotted quiver with nine silver arrows which ultimately went to the ranger. The blind mystery victim also had a signet ring which the paladin pocketed.

As for the victim, Gwen stabilized his wounds and bandaged his eyes, but he remained unconscious and nothing would revive him. They didn’t know it but he was suffering from a madness induced coma and he could not be revived at this time. To the party’s credit they still chose to take him along, taking up valuable space in the rowboat and more importantly, decreased their rapidly diminishing water supply by another gallon each day.

Most of my players were experienced enough to know what was going on, but a couple of were in the dark. The two eye thieves were a pair of sea hags. The hags have been feeding off the stranded souls who wash up on their beach. These hags had previously killed the third member of the coven because of some unknown argument. Of course, the real reason is that if the group ever got into combat the all three, they would have been easily killed, given their current level. Just these two alone would have been a tough challenge. Sea hags also use their foul magic to fuse magic eyes to object and creatures (such as a harmless crab) that allow them to see beyond their current location.

But this boon comes with a severe risk. If the magic eye is destroyed, it inflicts serious damage to the hags and blinds them for 24 hours. Injured and incapacitated, the hags dove into the murky pool and swam to their actual lair to hide. If the players had chosen to dive into the pool and investigate, they could have had a final confrontation with them and uncovered their full treasure horde. Sadly, they didn’t do this, so I never got to use the hag’s Fearful Visage or Death Glare abilities. Oh well, we’ll just have to wait til Chapter 5.

Roland’s player, Theo, stated that he was going to submerge his head in the foul, pestilent water to look around and the rest of the players lost their minds. “Are you nuts?!” was the general consensus. But none of them were in the cave, so Roland plunged his head into the filthy pool and looked around but couldn’t see anything (such as the entrance to the hag’s underwater lair) in the murk. I was just giddy that he opened his eyes because that opened up another disaster for the players to overcome. Diseases.

Another key feature that this adventure wants you to explore is the Disease mechanic. The adventure provides you with three new diseases unique to the jungle and when added with the three provided by the DMG, that gives you six maladies to unleash on your players. 2^nd level is the perfect time to expose your players to these calamities, since 3^rd level characters have more healing options and some (like paladins) become outright immune. Stupid Paladins ruining all my fun. For my game, I adjusted some of the causes and effects to remove some duplicate entries. See the chart above for all my changes. These diseases are also listed in my DM Screen inserts. Remember that Mad Monkey Fever is a magical disease and thus there is no immunity to it. Have fun with that one, Paladin!

As it was, Both Gwen and Roland were exposed to Sewer Rot from crawling around in the filth and Roland further exposed himself to Throat Leeches when he opened his eyes in that disgusting pool. And every character was exposed to the constant barrage of stinging insects in the jungle. The Shivering Sickness these bugs inflict can be avoided by using repellent that can be purchased in town. But first they have to get to town, so no repellent.

Jane argued that slathering her character in mud is a natural insect repellent rendering her immune to this disease. The internet jury is deadlocked on this solution. Some say it works, others say it doesn’t. I am in the “it does not work” camp, so I shot her idea down. But this was my mistake. In hindsight, I wished that I had allowed her an advantage on her saving throw for her ingenuity rather than cut her off completely. Just another example of a snap decision on my part inadvertantly alienating a player.

Everyone passed their disease saving throws, except for Gwen and Roland. In spectacular fashion, they failed all their saving throws. Gwen now has 1 level of exhaustion, disadvantage on attack and ability rolls plus bouts of fatigue and shivering fits. While Roland has two levels of exhaustion, plus his rolls disadvantage along with cramps, fatigue, shivering and shortness of breath. In addition, neither player will heal any hit points during a long rest until cured. Basically, they’re a mess. Unfortunately, the clerics can perform Lay on Hands in the morning and cure some of these afflictions.

Speaking of resting, I altered the benefits of resting. I’ve always felt that the base resting rules are too lenient toward players but the optional resting rules for “hardcore” play are too harsh. I have a full post on Death & Dying in D&D that explains my views and offers my slightly harder, homebrewed rules for healing.

I won’t list them all here, but the basic gist is that a Short Rest will heal 1 maxed-out Hit Dice of hit points, while a Long Rest will heal your maximum Hit Dice with no Constitution modifier added to either rest. You roll the appropriate dice to determine the hit points regained. Thus a 3^nd level fighter would heal 10 hp following a short rest and 3d10 hit points following a long rest (with a minimum of 10).. Only by resting in a “Safe Harbor”, such as in town or other fortified area, will a Long Rest heal you up to full. Spell slots regained are not affected by this and follow the usual rules. Sorcerers, you’re welcome. Needless to say, no one rested well this night, although the hags never immerged from their cave to gut anyone.

Death & Dying in D&D – Homebrewed rules to keep those pesky clerics at bay.

DAY 2 – After a restless night we were grateful to see the dawn. An even greater sight was the mountain range we could see just over the horizon to the west. The welcome sight of the Mistcliff Mountains meant that we were along the Inside Passage that would eventually lead to Port Nyanzaru and not further east which could have extended this expedition indefinitely. If all went well, salvation lay just 3-4 days south of here. But a long, uncertain journey still lay ahead and it seemed that every conceivable thing that could go wrong, did.

This day, even the very sun conspired against us. The temperature quickly swelled to 110℉ and stayed there all day without a single cloud to offer any respite. Even removing all our armor provided no relief from the heat. Miche (the heat-resistant teifling) bragged that the heat couldn’t affect him, but he was the only one exhausted from heat stroke at the end of the day. (Optional Rule – Any exertion during a day over 100℉ requires an extra gallon of water intake or a roll on the Dehydration table.)

In the early morning, just after shoving off from the ship’s graveyard with our blind and unconscious burden in tow, we spotted several eyestalks break the surface of the ocean 50 yards to starboard. Fearing that they were friends of the mutated crab we killed last night, we doubled our efforts and rowed past them before they could accost us. (They were something else entirely, but we’ll encounter these mysterious eyestalks again.)

The rest of the day passed uneventfully and we made camp 20 miles closer to salvation. But we were completely out of fresh water and our food store was critically low. Scáth headed into the jungle to hunt. She found a few voles, adding a few pounds of meat to their supply, but more importantly she found a small spring and filled everyone’s canteen with life-saving water. I hope they remember to boil it first. They did, darn it. Miche attempted to hunt as well despite his exhaustion. He immediately became lost and had to be ultimately rescued by Scáth.

While Scáth saved her friends from dehydration and death and Miche became a liability, Roland and Thames attempted to fish. Roland with the fisherman backstory failed miserably, while Thames the neophyte angler caught 4 pounds of perch. Meanwhile PC Gwen, cleric of Kelemvor, and the NPC Undril, cleric of Torm, discussed philosophy.

Ever since Gwen failed to revivify the Narwhal II captain’s daughter, Jeanette, Gwen has been the easy target of many jokes about what a bad cleric she is. Plus, having a higher level (and more competent) cleric NPC in the group has only made the mockery even more pointed. Lines like, “Do not lose faith little acolyte, maybe if you just prayed harder your god might someday answer one of your prayers,” have driven Gwen crazy. The player, Ian, has been a great sport about all this and I can’t wait to have a moment that redeems this character in front of the smart-mouthed, sarcastic NPC.

Just then a pack of peccaries (wild pigs) stampeded through camp, trashing one of the ramshackle tents. They are being pursued by two cheetahs. The ensuing combat was fun and chaotic and in the end, two cheetahs and one suckling pig lay dead. This is where the debate sparked over how much meat a pig has. I am already sick of arguing about every single, stupid, survival rule (they are not stupid, they are good, but I was annoyed at the time) and I can’t wait until I can forget all about them.

I feel really bad about all this. The other five players are all on aboard with the survival scenario as I’ve presented. I don’t intend to kill anyone before they get to Port (although it could happen), and they seem to be enjoying this not often explored element of escalating tension and want to see how much worse it can get. But this drama does not work if one player is able to solve every single problem immediately after I present it.

The sad part is that this is the only thing that Jane designed this character to be. Scáth is actually pretty weak in most other areas just so that she can be this master survivalist. So, do I make six people unhappy or one? Even worse, if there had just been one or even a few moments of inspiration that defeated one of my difficulties, this wouldn’t have even been an issue. I actually like to reward out-of-the-box thinking. But now it feels like I am punishing exceptional ingenuity. In my defense, it feels slightly dishonest, because I know that Jane has read and played the entire adventure and thus had unlimited time to create solutions to all my specific and situational challenges. Jane is an excellent player (and DM) and thus always had a in-game reason to justify her superior skills, but it still felt disingenuous.

I talked with Jane after the session and conceded that she could win any debate about real world survival skills. But this isn’t the real world and I’m using the rules as written (for now) because they are designed to create limits on the player’s awesomeness and I’m trying to present a real challenge to the players. I do want Scáth to become this master survivalist, but not just yet. Once we get to the first real expedition, I’ll have other things to worry about, and won’t care that Scáth can super-solve everything the jungle throws at them. I thought the matter was resolved, but I was wrong.

Next week, we continue our castaway’s desperate expedition to salvation, filled with monsoons, deadly flowers, and some very determined undead.

Don’t forget to check out my Tomb of Annihilation Resources Page, filled with all the stuff I use to make this epic campaign even more epicier: My full Campaign Diary, plus Handouts, Maps, Charts, PDFs, Images, and more to use, abuse, or ignore at your peril.

And written specifically for this adventure, read my Explorer’s Guide to Chult to delve into all the legands, lore, history, religion, and culture that I used to bring even more life to this adventure.

No need to get your feet wet or your hands dirty, I’ve done all the research for you.

As always, strive harder to find that middle ground between the scenarios you want to present and the stories your players want to tell, and Game On!