Man, I love this adventure. I think I ran the first chapter three times at the game store and had more fun each time. I used the adventure to start our Tomb of Annihilation campaign and I thought it was a great lead in to the campaign. The creepies in the village were so evocative one player drew some really great pictures of them. All in all one of my favorite 5e adventures.

I like planar adventures very much, though it could be much funnier were it not for a Death Curse. However, I wish that Survival Cleric somehow be legal in AL.

I wouldn't risk playing ToA without this domain.

I highly recommend this adventure!

I loved running this adventure it does a great job kicking off Tomb of Annihilation!

I ran this campaign over the past 6 sessions with my players. First and foremost, I love the Feywyld setting, and I hope that more is done with in the future in AL in general, since it is such a huge part of the universe, and the feywyld/fae are hadly touched in AL legal material. Secondly, my players fell in love with the characters, which i felt were very fleshed out, and easy to "put on". My players also really enjoyed the new creatures and beasties of the Dread valley, We did not use the supplemental race/class information, as my group are relatively new players and I did not want to bog them down with any more choices then they already had.

As a DM the only really problem i had was the lack of scalability in the adventure, I feel if you had adopted the AL standard of Average AL variants of the encounters I would have been able to adapt the combat to my game easier, with new players joining, or and old players leaving the game mid adventure.

That aside, I personally really enjoyed the adventure, and look forward to meeting the Lizard Queen.

I enjoyed this suppliment. It tries out a lot of new things, which is good.

This is a large supplement. I honestly didn't look at the new feats, spells, backgrounds, class features, races, items, or monsters; but I didn't buy it for those reasons. My judgement on this product is specifically about the story.

I disliked Part 1 of Chapter 2 (essentially the hook for the entire adventure). Mixing in the setting of the Feywild, rather than kicking the adventure off with something very Chultan, felt odd but is a reasonable way to get the PCs from any location eventually to Chult.

I do think that the author did a good job of reminding the DM that the death curse plotline from Tomb of Annihilation is looming in the background. There are many instances where the DM is reminded of this. However, this supplement offers itself as a lead into Tomb of Annihilation, but disrespects the urgency by which some of the sideplots in Tomb of Annihilation plan to resolve. I do not think this is a problem, as I disliked that sense of urgency anyways. Certainly, the DM can fudge a timeline enough to accomodate for players spending time in this adventure.

The worst part of this storyline is part 3. It boils away to just another setting to potentially provide some information to the players (most likely the location of part 4), but seems more for the purpose of getting them from one level to the next. I do not think that was the author's intent, but the outcome of part 3 has no bearing on the plot of part 4, thereby diminishing the actions of the players. Even a slight adjustment to difficulty would have been sufficient for the players and/or dm to feel like there was some bearing between parts. The DM is quite capable of altering this to have the players' actions feel impactful, but the author, particularly in their acknowledgement of this possibility (see pg. 25 The Ritual) should have been more considerate.

Beyond that, I think the encounters are good. The story is fun, but not very unique. I like the possibility of multiple endings, but my players circumvented this. It does leave a rather large gap between the adventure ending in the Valley of Dread and getting the PCs somewhere else (likely Port Nyanzaru), but I don't think that is necessarily the job of the adventure.

Review and rating based on running the adventure, not on player options also included in this product.

This was a super fun adventure with strong NPCs. I liked the various species of lizardfolk and found it simple to give each tribe a distinct feel. I did introduce the leaders of the tribe earlier in the adventure rather than call them forth suddenly at the end of Part II. Having done so, my players really enjoyed talking to each chief and helping to choose the direction for the unified lizardfolk.

As a DM, I really liked the suggestion of rewarding the long-suffering ranger in my party's survival skills with mechanics like the besowing the effects of a short rest and gaining surprise during the jungle treks. The player got to shine and the party got real benefits from his chance to really do his thing. Nice!!

The chapters of the adventure are woven together very well. There are enough story seeds in Part II to motivate the party to pursue Parts III and IV.

The "new player DM" at our store started this adventure at his table and it has been a huge success. It is the most popular Tier 1 Chult experience for his group this season. You can't go wrong with a Shawn Merwin adventure. Highly recommended.

If you want a more structured way to bring your players into the Tomb of Annihilation published adventure, this is a unique and well-designed adventure to do just that.

Please note that I've read the adventure but haven't had the opportunity to run it (I had already started two ToA campaigns before I found this), but the adventure is interesting enough that it makes me want to run another party through it when I get the chance. Shawn always has great ideas, and this adventure is particularly well executed.

I purchased this for Adventurer's League play. Review contains spoilers.

Overall, the adventure is a nice replacement for the "let's wander around the jungle" of chapter 2 from Tomb of Annihilation and I enjoyed it more than the typical AL module. Players should reach level 4-5 by the end if they play the whole thing, and there are avenues to still send them into the wilds of the jungle after if you'd like.

The difficulty of encounters feels high. When my party entered the small town, two fights in they were completely wiped out, and that was after toning things back a little bit.

The module would also be greatly improved with some page numbering and editing. For example, in one area a creature is described as being dog-like, and cat-like in another. One NPC has their pronouns changed a few times as well.

Some might call it railroad, but I would call it refreshingly easy to run. nice not to have to pour over an entire book for a change. excellent and imaginative!

An Adventurer's League product where nearly nothing in it is Adventurer's League legal. Not even the item drops. I feel this is not the author's fault, but I did not get 1.5x modules (based on price) of content for my AL tables.

I bought this because I saw the adventure was becoming AL legal, but I am rating it poorly because the product description was misleading.

There are only two archetypes in the book, and only 2 races. In the future, I strongly suggest that the writers state the archetypes (and their class) and races - knowing what I was getting for the price would merit a higher rating.

I am on the fence about this rendition of the Lizardfolk as it is undoubtedly less powerful than the Volo Lizardfolk by noticable degrees, but includes subraces - all of which feature weird wording in their abilities that gives more than the standard that 5e has established.

The backgrounds were disappointing. I won't spoil them out of respect to the writers, but they have only 4/D4 for Personality (Standard = 8) and Ideal/Bond/Flaw (Standard = 6). The features were meh, and the second background doesn't really add anything that couldn't be achieved through a background feature from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide or the PHB.

I have not reviewed the adventure, as I bought this for player options, but I can't say bundling the races/subclasses/backgrounds behind a paywall for the adventure was a wise decision. As a PWYW, like almost everything on DMS Guild, the player options might have merited 3 or 4 stars.

Overall, I feel the 2 stars is fairly earned. It isn't a horrible item, but the misleading description, paywalled (and sparse!) character options, and questionable balance choices mean I can't give it a third star.

Return of the Lizard King is a 55 page, 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons PDF for character levels 1-4 and designed to be a thematically sound and solidly written adventure, set in Chult, leading into the meat (grinder) beginnings of Tomb of Annihilation. My first glance at the adventure revealed some great original artwork, including monsters, NPCs and maps, and a pleasant background to the pages looking akin to old parchment. I have been informed there will be a printer friendly version of the adventure dropping in the near future, which won’t look as nice, but, won’t devour your inky resources.

While this adventure includes new monsters, new magic items, new races, a new Druid Circle, a new cleric Domain, new backgrounds and new spells, I am going to focus my review on chapters 4-6 which are the player specific content. Full disclosure, I really want to play this adventure and I am not interested in spoiling it by reading it.

Chapter 4: New Playable Races Shawn Merwin and his design team at Encoded Designs did a fantastic job fleshing out the Lizardfolk of Chult by adding 4 (!) distinct subraces which would allow an adventuring group to comprise a party entirely of Lizardfolk and play almost any class they would want, without suboptimal ability modifiers. Adding to the Lizardfolk are the Wilden, a race of Fey-touched tree creatures and their 3 subraces. These 7 playable races, at a glance, feel distinct and offer enticing racial abilities. This section is a solid, well executed offering.

Chapter 5: New Class Features I am most excited about this section’s new Druid Circle, Circle of Reaping. This Circle uses a new mechanic for Druid, in which spell slots are used to power various Aspects of Death. There are some great mythologies that, I assume, were drawn upon for the Circle of Reaping. You can feel the influences of Shamanistic Masks from around the world, the Native American legends of The Pale Horse and the European legends of the Grim Reaper. I know what class I am playing next! This section also contains a new divine domain; Survival Domain. This domain is geared to provide the feeling of the shaman protector of a tribe, a spiritual leader who pushes the tribe to fiercely defend its home and overcome the odds to stay alive and fight another day.

Chapter 6: Backgrounds Feats and Spells An inconsequential nitpick, this chapter, though titled Backgrounds Feats and Spells, actually begins with new Feats.

There are 4 new feats designed to augment the Circle of Reaping class and 2 new Survivor feats that could help any PC stave off death in the jungle of Chult.

There are 4 new spells, all for cleric, druid or ranger, which makes perfect thematic sense. I think they have the flavor and feeling evocative of Voodoo Shaman performing rites in the jungle. Of note, I love that the new spell Consult Healing Spirit requires a potion of healing as a material component.

Finally, to flesh out your new Komodo Lizardfolk, Circle of Reaping Druid, there are 2 new backgrounds; Touched by the Fey and Member of the Tribe.

Without reading or playing the adventure, or fighting the new monsters and taking the new magic items, I can say the original player content alone is worth the cost of this adventure. Additionally, there looks to be enough material here for those of you who write home campaigns to flesh out a deadly jungle. Well done!

Return of the Lizard King is an excellent Dungeons & Dragons low level adventure for a custom swamp-jungle campaign, or as introduction for the Tomb of Annihilation. Want backgrounds, items, and feats? it's got them all. With easy to read layout and great artwork, this adventure can easily slot into Amedio on Greyhawk, Chult on Forgotten Realms or Xen'Drik on Ebberon. How about spells, races and monsters? it's got them too! Well worth adding to your adventure collection for a bargain price.