Tomb of Annihilation: Chris Perkins Talks Story, Death and Collaboration

Tomb of Annihilation: Chris Perkins Talks Story, Death and Collaboration i sat down with Chris Perkins to talk
about tomb of annihilation his latest
book for D&D amongst lots of very
enthusiastic DD fans we also talked
about story and about collaborating with
other Dungeon Master’s so I’ve announced
the new storyline for D&D for releasing
this summer which is tomb of
annihilation
it is a story of death and what
characters will do to avoid it and that
happy why am I so happy about that
because it’s it’s a very true D&D story
and I think that a lot of DMS and
players are going to have fun and even
though the theme seems dark I think a
lot of humor is going to come out of it
and a lot of games are going to have
great stories of how this character died
trying to accomplish this task or this
character died trying to save this other
character I think that I am practically
giddy just thinking about the
possibilities of where these stories can
go tomb of annihilation is set in a land
that we haven’t visited in a long time
it’s a land of dinosaurs and undead and
undead dinosaurs and other strange
peculiar and in some cases kind of
quirky monsters and a whole bunch of new
locations are discovered some big
secrets are revealed in the heart
bookshelf and I’m just so excited at the
possibility of people discovering what’s
there again part of it is to make this
story different from the other stories
that’s received it and so the jungle
setting is very different from the
setting that we had in storm Kings
Thunder and it’s very different from the
setting we had in curse estrade and from
the stories before that so it just feels
different which is nice
and child is undiscovered country it’s
the lost continent in a way and a lot of
people just don’t know what’s there and
before we started cracking this story we
weren’t sure what was there anymore so
it was a real opportunity for us to go
into a place and really flesh it out and
give it a character and an identity and
bring some little Easter eggs out of
Forgotten Realms and kind of sprinkle
them through there’s the the deep deep
jungles of Chelsea which are surrounded
by these fuming volcanoes and these
impassable mountains and sort of at the
edges of child that’s where civilization
has been pushed to so there’s this great
city called port nyam Zaru on the coast
and it’s the last great bastion for
civilization in this vast land and it’s
very diverse and there’s a lot of
strange things happening there including
dinosaur races through the streets and
gladiatorial stuff but major trade deals
there are these seven merchant princes
that control the city and have
monopolies on different kinds of trade
and you can deal with them and cut deals
with them and if you’re looking for a
guide to survive the perils of child you
can do far worse than to try to find one
here there are a number of guides who
are described in the adventure who will
try to lead you to where you want to go
or if you choose badly lead you astray
the unique challenge for me was to take
an adventure tomb of horrors that is one
of the oldest adventures and Dungeons
and Dragons and basically do a riff on
it
that felt contemporary that would
resonate with contemporary audiences and
wasn’t just duplicating the original
adventure that it offered a new twist
something new so that was the real
challenge for me was going back to the
roots of some bit of inspiration but
then taking it in
completely surprising and unusual
direction we knew very early on that a
Sarah act was going to come back with
fifth edition we put him on the cover of
the Dungeon Master’s guide because we
knew he was going to come back and so
now you’re I felt like I was making good
on a promise and delivering on that
promise was the scary part for me
villains are important a CEREC is a
weird bird he’s I is the oldest Lich in
the game probably the greatest lich of
them all and he’s this multiversal
planar traveler who’s got it out for
adventurers he’s actually in the
original tomb of Horrors he baits
adventures throughout that adventure he
he wants them to feel puny and weak and
small until they die and then he sucks
their souls and feeds on them there’s
nothing really redeeming about him other
villain like for instance trod Vaughn’s
era which is a vampire you kind of feel
some sympathy for him because he was
kind of pushed into his terrible
situation by some very bad life choices
and some unfortunate circumstances a
CEREC is just a meanie he’s just a bad
dude
and so with him I think that tomb of
annihilation in many respects is a
little less about him and a little bit
more about his creation just like in the
original tomb of horrors if you’re not
fighting it I mean the Serra rack the
Demi Lich is kind of at the end of the
tomb you can kind of fight him and he
kind of but you don’t talk to him he’s
not really a communicator
it’s the dungeon itself that’s out to
get you
that’s the antagonist of that module in
my opinion and so tomb of annihilation
is similar a CEREC is creating something
that something is your antagonist that
doesn’t mean a ser iraq won’t show up if
you start to get under his skin actually
doesn’t have skin if you start to rattle
around in his head he might show up but
really the
toom of annihilation is the thing that
he has created and I don’t want to say
exactly what that is although it’s
called tomb of annihilation so I’m sure
if you figure how do you give a dungeon
personality that’s the big question and
then we spent a lot of time thinking
about that and we brought in Pendleton
ward the adventure time creator to help
us crack that nut how do you how do you
turn a dungeon into antagonist well the
key is you’ve got to give it personality
in terms of its trappings in terms of
its traps in terms of its aesthetic in
terms of its layout the way the maps are
designed you know it’s a the tomb of
annihilation is a nonlinear dungeon
there’s not just one way through it and
you can get kind of lost in it which is
important for the character of the
dungeon but the other thing is a CEREC
being a worlds traveler he has collected
things over the years from his visits to
many planes in many worlds things that
he thought he could put into his tomb to
give it life to give a color to make it
more dangerous and so as you’re going
through this place you kind of get into
a ser axe head he you are seeing and
walking through spaces that he’s created
full of things that he’s collected over
time and it’s very diverse it’s like
going to a museum and in one room you’ve
got the Egyptian exhibit in the next
room you’ve got the Japanese feudal
exhibit in the next room you’ve got the
Mongolian exhibit the tomb kind of feels
like you’re seeing stuff that is
important to a CEREC and that stuff
might actually kill you the other thing
is without spoiling too much there are
entities in the tomb that a CEREC has
trapped there and these entities are
very very important to the story and
extremely important to the they’ll
become very important to the characters
exploring the dungeon I think that as as
this adventure gets played we’re going
to hear a lot of stories about what
happened to the party in the tomb of
annihilation
these entities who show up to maybe help
maybe hinder them so tomb of
annihilation isn’t just about a single
location though it’s a whole bunch of
locations that you can explore there’s a
lot of impetus the the drive to survive
is so keen you might have a benefactor
who is suffering under the effects of a
terrible death curse and the only hope
for them is to get to where you need to
go quickly as possible but child is full
of distractions and sometimes the most
direct route is not the best this is a
lesson there’s a lot similar between
typical annulation structurally to
cursive straud if you re if you’re
familiar with the cursive Strada
adventure you know that when you walk
into the domain of barodia you become
kind of trapped there and almost
instantly you know there’s a big castle
on that hill with a very very bad man
living inside it we can go there right
away but if we do that now we’re
probably going to die so what usually
happens in cursive straud is there are
these drivers to sort of go and kind of
explore corners of burrow via find
things that can help you and then go to
the castle very similar structure and
tomb of annihilation shulte
is this horrible terrifying place but
it’s also a playground for the
characters to explore and all of these
satellite locations where they can go
and there might be stuff there are
treasures that they can find lost clues
that have been secreted secretive away
for hundreds of years that could
actually help them and certainly gaining
a few levels in that time will also help
you you don’t want to rush too far
forward too soon or you’re not going to
survive very long
so with tomb of annihilation there is
this sense of you know when you first
arrive in port millions are or whatever
it’s like a big city and it’s open and
there’s lots of activity and excite
brightly-colored just kind of a stunning
place really and then once you settle on
a guide and you go into the jungle
things become darker and darker and more
claustrophobic and eventually as you get
closer to your destination everything
kind of narrows in and closes around you
until you’re in the dark place and then
you realize we can’t even escape at this
point I wanted to for this story
I was really looking at increasing the
sort of claustrophobia the deeper in you
get until finally you realize you are
trapped and it’s almost suffocating at
that point that sort of anxiety build up
over time creating a sense that yeah the
characters are gaining levels but
despite the fact that they’ve become
more powerful they are actually more
terrified that was a that was a huge
break when we decided in our story
meetings but that’s the sort of feel
that we wanted that you know level power
is great but it’s you’re still going to
be totally freaked out by the end of
this thing you’re going to be more
scared at tenth level than you were at
third because because it can be
oppressive and it does become very sort
of claustrophobic and dark there are
beats of humor throughout because you
have to break the tension otherwise the
characters become the characters the
players become so psychologically worn
down by the experience that they might
tune out or bail before this story ends
we had a similar situation with cursive
straud we had to inject little bits of
light into the darkness so this is
similar but we use a little bit more
humor and often that comes through in
the NPCs that you meet despite the fact
that there’s a you know lots of dungeon
exploration and wilderness exploration
in tomb annihilation there’s even more
role-playing there’s a ton of
role-playing in this adventure and you
meet a ton of people and characters and
many of them are very very quirky and
odd you know they’ve either lived on a
mountain their entire lives and don’t
know you know the social niceties or
they’re just strange creature
and have there have very strange needs
in this weird world that they live in
and so as you interact with these
creatures you know be they some little
voiceless nature spirit who’s following
you around or an awakened lizard you
know who was awakened by druidic magic
you’re never going to run out of people
to talk to and learn things from and I
think that was one of the one of the
great pleasures I take in doing any
story is NPC development it’s one of my
favorite things to do is to work with
the other writers and stuff to come up
with really cool interesting NPCs
because they carry a lot of the load in
terms of tone in terms of moments of
levity in terms of conveying information
and exposition and just bringing to life
you know this otherwise you know barren
lands were it’s like a blank slate
child and so we have we can drop in so
many characters here the the hard mode
for this seemed appropriate because we
were kind of riffing on Touma fours
which has this reputation for being a
killer dungeon you don’t play this
adventure if you’re deeply and you know
enfranchised in your character because
chances are your character is going to
be dead
so tomb of annihilation does set up a
situation where the DM can make it quite
difficult if the players if everybody
sort of buys off on that way to play it
you can also scale to move annihilation
back if you want to to make it a more
sort of easy less stressful thing I
think a lot of Dan’s might do that just
because they’re trying to integrate into
a campaign and they don’t want to turn
the whole tenor of the campaign on its
head so with fifth edition we decided
that with our stories where where it
seemed appropriate that we would try to
leverage the power of D&D to bring them
in these people in the other creative
industries who have a passion for games
who have a passion for D&D to bring them
in and
crack their heads open and feast on the
brains within that’s sort of my goal so
for instance in cursive straud we went
back to the original designers of
Ravenloft Tracey and Laura Hickman
because it had been 30 years they Tracey
had run the adventure every year for his
friends since and undoubtedly would have
tons of ideas for new and interesting
ways to take the story and they their
perspective made cursive strawed
infinitely better than it would have
been without their contributions with
Tomb of annihilation bringing Pendleton
ward in who seems like a might be a
strange choice for a murder scenario but
it made perfect sense to me because I
was looking for I knew we were dealing
with some potentially lethal adventure
subject matter and I wanted somebody I
needed some of these help who was had a
sense of humor new old-school D&D well
or sort of got the rules of old-school
D&D well but at the same time really
great at coming up with interesting
characters and anybody has ever seen
Adventure Time knows it’s full of these
interesting quirky characters so one of
the great things that happened when PEM
came out was we would sit in these
meeting rooms and he would he had a pad
with him and while we were talking about
story beats or characters he would be
drawing characters falling into traps
and all these crazy kooky trap
mechanisms and things and weird monster
ideas and at the end of our meetings he
would show us the pad and it’s like
these aren’t things that we had talked
about these are just things that were
popping into his head as these
conversations were happening and we’re
like what that what what what what is
that what you took the demon tation did
what and
so we kept those old illustrations and
use those to inspire us and we showed
them some of our concept artists to
inspire them as well that kind of stuff
you can’t get from anybody else any
other way you know we’ve worked with a
few people now on future stories one of
them is Charlie Sanders writer for Key &
Peele who is helping us with a future
story or it has helped us with a future
story his work is done now I’ve got to
take his ideas and bring them to life
just the RPG adventure the one of the
hardest things to do but most gratifying
if you can pull it off is provide just
enough information for the DM that they
can they can understand how to play the
NPC’s and they can understand how to
play the encounters but you’ve left
enough air that they can insert their
own personality or their own way of
doing things so there’s always this
thing okay we have to provide
information about an NPC how much
information is too much information
where it becomes more work for the DM
than they want so you kind of give them
just a idea and a hint of what that NPC
is about just enough information that
they can kind of hook into that NPC and
then you you hope or you you leave it to
the DM to help fill in those blanks I
think one of the greatest challenges of
adventure writing is pulling that off
you have to give enough information that
the DM can read the adventure and say
I’m ready to run this I can run this but
you don’t want to give them so much
information it’s like you’ve left me no
room to be creative and I think that I
think that we pulled it off once once
it’s left my hands and it’s now in their
hands it becomes theirs and if they’re
going to actually use it they’re going
to want to feel like they can make it
their own and one of the things that
makes me happiest in the world is when I
hear DM is running the adventures but
they’re not running them as written you
know they’ve said I’m going to take this
third of the adventure and incorporate
that I’m going to change this I’m going
to move this guy over here and I’m going
to take this villain out and put the my
villain in I love that stuff because I
feel like I’ve given them
fodder for you know six months to six
years worth of campaign that way they’re
not just going to put it up on a shelf
and forget about it
well so I stay engaged in the stories
mostly because around the Wizards office
where there’s always a high energy level
when it comes to creative discussions
and because I surround myself with
creative people there’s always new ideas
coming from everywhere and every new
idea or a new piece of concept art that
I see invigorates me makes me even more
excited to keep on forging ahead and
part of it is just personal challenge I
think that creatively I want to make
sure that the story I’m doing now is
more exciting and thrilling than the one
before it otherwise I feel like I’ve let
a bunch of people down there’s like
little continuity threads that are kind
of weaving through the addition both in
the rule books that we release and in
the stories that we tell there are
objects and characters that actually
appeared in earlier stories that come
back in this one hopefully in unexpected
ways case in point in storm Kings
Thunder there is a plot thread about an
artifact called the ring of winter that
is paid off in this story we kind of
left you hanging in storm king splendor
you won’t be hanging at the end of this
one fifth edition was a very different
approach when we took the story first
approach to fifth edition that stories
would basically guide our entertainment
offerings and our release schedule then
figuring out like not only the
individual stories but the uber story
the sort of umbrella story became much
more of our focus and we have never done
that before
in previous editions every adventure
kind of stood on its own and there was
not much unless level as part of an
adventure path not much connective
tissue between them we’re not doing this
is not an adventure path we’re talking
about this is really just stories that
have
little little ways to hook into each
other so that a DM has maximum
flexibility in terms of being able to
use pieces of the different stories to
create an entire campaign the other
thing that is different is we really are
trying to find bits from the indie
history and bring them forward in much
the same way that 5th edition is kind of
an amalgam of the best that all previous
editions have to offer our stories are
kind of picking up some of the best
things from the best adventures of the
past and finding ways to bring them back
into public consciousness to create a
common shared experience so that if
you’re in a room with a bunch of gamers
age range 16 to 46 or 16 to 56 that when
you say a ser Iraq it means something to
everybody in the room even if they just
started playing with fifth edition the
the best thing about the event with me
is just the the feeling of a bunch of
very passionate people coming together
and just having a good time and the
diversity of everybody here where they
come from their backgrounds it’s just
very encouraging to me and fulfilling to
be surrounded by all these people are
just happy being here playing games
having fun being with their friends
hanging out it’s very chill it’s very
relaxed it’s very Seattle environment
there’s no pressure
the other thing is that I’m saying this
is a opportunity to connect and maybe
work with some of these people more in
the future so for me it’s just great to
chat with them and see you know maybe
gauge their interest and also it’s one
of the things I loved in the days
leading up to the events was talking to
the DMS about what they were going to
run here they had all received some
information about the tomb of
annihilation adventure and what it was
about and they kind of all took
different
pieces of it and some of the themes and
did completely different things in their
sort of proposals or outlines for what
they wanted to run and so watching the
games and seeing them just pick this
little thread or that little thread and
kind of run with it is really cool
because that’s going to happen hundreds
of thousands more times as soon as the
adventure goes out
https://t.co/f2FrKF5pZo

— Todd Kenreck (@ToddKenreck) June 5, 2017