Tomb of Annihilation

Creating your character

We will handle character creation during our first meeting. I like to give the party a chance to coordinate their characters and get to know each other while bouncing ideas around. If you already have a fairly concrete idea you want to bring to the table that is okay too, but I will give time to work on and finalize characters during the first session. I can help in any capacity including walking the entire party through the whole process. Either way we will discuss ideas for backup characters as well. I want everyone to already have a character idea in mind that they would like to play in the event their current character dies. It helps the transition. We don't need to have it fully fleshed out session 1 but if you die at any point, if you have an idea and a sheet ready to go we can get your new character in ASAP. If you want to have a fully prepared character before the first session, that is fine, just use Standard Array and you are welcome to use any 2014 official material in terms of class/species/character options. If the entire party wants to use the 2024 rules I will give them a whirl but I am less familiar with them so it would need to be more or less unanimous and I will adjust. I don't mind trying them I would just need to brush up a bit before we get in the thick of it. Players creating or finalizing their characters during our first meeting can use Standard Array or roll for their ability scores. Since we will presumably all be meeting each other for the first time I just think it is best to roll scores together so any lucky stats don't seem fishy. It's not good to start out with people wondering about someone's 3 18's.

Preparing for the session

You will need a Roll20 account, a Dndbeyond account and a Discord account, as well as a microphone/headset and reliable internet, of course. The free options for all of these is more than enough on your end. If you are having trouble with any of these I can assist. Once you are in my Dndbeyond campaign you will have access to all of the extra character options for creating your character(s).

What Kevin Ferreiro brings to the table

I have run Tomb of Annihilation to completion twice. I know and love this module back to front. I have learned a lot to help polish the adventure and I'm excited for round 3. I have the official Roll20 Package for Tomb of Annihilation complete with maps, tokens, handouts and more. I am adept at handling complex combat scenarios and running the survival and travel of the hexcrawl. My GM style meshes well with this module. I run the world, and respond to player actions. I tend not to pull people along and instead will let the world and the environment generate emergent stories and drama for the player characters to react to. The sandbox nature of the jungle means we will get to see what your party discovers along the way, and it isn't up to me where you go. In addition to my fondness for this sandbox style of play, my real bread and butter are classic dungeon crawls. Scattered throughout the jungle are dungeons of various size with different types of challenges. I have a knack for running puzzles so that they don't get too frustrating, and I have a really strong familiarity with spells, so I am quick with arbitration when crazy solutions like freezing bars or fabricating walls start coming up. I really enjoy letting players get creative and use their noggins to come up with novel solutions to things.

Homebrew rules

I run 5e more or less by the book. I have an ongoing game that is more heavily homebrewed but for these modules I tend to adhere to the rules, because I want things to be clear and easy for everyone to reference and predict. This is not to say that I NEVER bend things if I think that it is necessary or if there's something I think is clashing, but I know how to make things work the way they need to for the most part.

How Kevin Ferreiro creates a safe table

Player safety and comfort is key. We are here to have fun and it's pretty hard to have fun if you are uncomfortable. I will send a google form with some questions about any sensitivities players might have that they would feel more comfortable telling me privately, and I will adjust if and where I need to in order to make sure nothing is going to cause someone any mental anguish. This adventure is not overly graphic other than violence and dark imagery, but I do tend to embellish the grit and violence of combat and survival in my descriptions to set the tone for this kind of deadly, undead-filled adventure. I am more than happy to slide that down or up or avoid specific things because guts and gore are way less important than a safe group. At ANY TIME if something is bothering you, please DM me on Discord immediately. Running the game can get hectic at times but I hear the notifications and will check as soon as I get a second, and address whatever concern you may have as best I can. I have been running games for almost 20 years now and have seen a lot go down at a lot of tables. We're all human, things happen. I make a point about handling bleed and heated emotions because they can be hard to manage especially when the dice are choosing violence. The goal of the game is to have fun, and if we need to take a break or talk about how work is terrible or someone pissed you off for a few minutes before jumping back in, let's do it.