GAME REVIEW: Dungeons And Dragons 5e: The Hidden Shrine Of Tamoachan

(The Unforgiven III - Metallica)

 

Dungeons and Dragons might not be the granddaddy of Pen And Paper RPGs, but it's absolutely the reigning champion, full stop.  The child of Gygax has been around for over 40 years now, and in that time, many memorable adventures had emerged based on its rules.  2017's 'Tales From The Yawning Portal' plays like a greatest hits list, pulling several adventures from past versions of the game and modernizing them for Fifth Edition.

This review will be focusing on The Hidden Shrine Of Tamoachan, an adventure designed for 5th Level characters.  It asks you to venture into a strange land and do battle in the long dark of a mayan undertomb.  Has this adventure survived the test of time?

(This review was written from the perspective of the DM, not the player.  HUGE thanks to Kevin Saugier for basically letting me keep his copy of 'Tales' while I've run our group through the various adventures within it.)

 

THE SHORT VERSION:

Yep.

 

THE LONG VERSION - Mild Spoilers

While the fundamentals of D&D haven't changed since 1974, 'Tamoachan' exposes the fact that people absolutely play the game differently in 2018.  This is seen in two very big ways:

• With the rise in popularity of video game RPGs, completionist tendencies drive most runs through open worlds like Skyrim and Breath Of The Wild.  You can spend hours and hours running around these open worlds, discovering and examining to your heart's content.  'Tamoachan' will kill you stone dead if you try this.  Exploring every nook and cranny of the dungeon is a guaranteed ticket to complete annihilation if you try it, for a variety of reasons.
• One of the most controversial things about 5th Ed is that owners Wizards Of The Coast seems hell-bent on making sure that every character can do everything.  The clearly defined roles of Fighter, Mage, Rogue, and Cleric are still there in 5th Ed, but the lines between each class are so blurry with the addition of Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Ranger, Paladin, and Monk that you can really have a character be anything you want.  This is cool in and of itself, and 5th Ed doesn't really penalize you for this, but 'Tamoachan' was written back when Men were Men.  There were bold character archetypes back in the day, and this adventure contains elements clearly designed for those archetypes.  Failing to observe this is a very quick way to a variety of deaths or TKOs that will probably have you sitting back from the table, rubbing your face, and mumbling, "What. The. Fuck?"

As previously stated, 'Tamoachan' is designed for level 5 characters, and should be played with at least 4 characters.  Any less and some of the adventure's key moments will absolutely swamp you.

Some quick Like/No Likes:

• NO LIKE: As a DM, I like having a good story hook and setup for my adventures, and this story just doesn't have a good one.  I had to write an intro to the story and think up a way to get the party out of the adventure once it was over.  'Tamoachan' originally took place in the Greyhawk universe, so anyone coming from a different world is going to need to do some quick thinking to get back to whatever world they came from.
• LIKE: While I know that some people don't JUST want to be a Trap Monkey or a Skill Monkey, there's call for both of those things during this adventure.  I love seeing homage paid to the Old School, and I love seeing faithfulness to that school repaid with good play hooks.
• LIKE: There's a hook in the story that will absolutely stop players from simply squatting in a defensable room after every fight.  I HATE it when players do that and there's a wonderful device that lets you poke players in the back of the head and say, "Get your ass in gear."  It also forces the players to be more intelligent about the fights they pick since they can't just take a long rest and recover after every fight.
• NO LIKE: There are a LOT of unsalvagable ways to kill your players in this adventure.
• NO LIKE: A lot of situations in this adventure hinge on your players' ability to understand an ancient Greyhawk language.  If you're not playing in Greyhawk, you can't possibly know that language, which will get your characters killed very quickly.  As a DM, you'll need to work around that.
• LIKE: There are LOTS of wonderful opportunities to both talk and fight your way out of situations and there are rewards for doing each of these things.
• NO LIKE: The map in the book that you're supposed to follow is a hot mess.  Not only do you lose some of the image to the middle of the book itself, the image is hard to see and there's so much of it that everything is really small.  Invest in digital copies of the images.  You won't regret it.
• NO LIKE: Much of the first and second tiers of the tomb are narrow spaces that render a lot of skills and abilities moot.  Be sure your players know that before they go into the adventure if you're generating characters just for this.  We had a Tempest Cleric that couldn't use most of the stuff that was cool about her character.  She was displeased.
• LIKE: Lots of excellent loot!
• LIKE: The big fights are REALLY well thought out.  

All in all, very worth playing!