I've been running Tomb of Annihilation for my gaming group and the adventuring party ended up in a hex near the east coast that was (as most hexes are in Tomb of Annihilation) pretty empty. In a desperate move to give the adventure some direction, I'd already made an early introduction of the quest to collect stone cubes required to open one of the dungeons later in the adventure. With an empty hex and not much direction from the module itself, I decided to drop in an adventure from my library of Kobold Press adventures. The player characters were headed toward the coast, so I grabbed Beyond the Ghostlight Reef. It was written for Pathfinder, but conveniently I was running Tomb of Annihilation for Pathfinder 2, so it's actually easier to convert than the 5e module I was embedding it into.
This is my spoiler-free review of Beyond the Ghostlight Reef. I won't reveal anything outside of what you'd would read off the back of the booklet.
A scholar named Balack Giolan has been watching a group of workers who travel out to the Ghostlight Reef. They're a secretive bunch, but he's watched them closely from afar and they're usually returning with rare treasures, including a rare squid ink that Balack Giolan, as a member of the elite Bibliotori, is particularly interested in. Because I'm using this in Tomb of Annihilation with a quest to find a bunch of stone cubes, the treasures also include stone cubes with pictograms of some of the 9 Gods of Omu on them.
Giolan wants to hire adventurers to go out beyond the Ghostlight Reef to a mysterious and forboding island, and discover what the workers are doing with the treasure they're taking from the Reef.
Obviously the way the adventure goes depends on the players, but the module is written to have 3 parts. There's an adventure at sea, there's an adventure on the island, and there's dealing with what the player characters find on the island.
The adventure at sea is really well done. There are some surprising challenges at sea that are easy and fun to roleplay. It's one of the better you're-in-a-boat-going-somewhere scenarios I've run. I moved it to the return voyage for pacing reasons specific to my campaign.
The island has a little intrigue on it, and some interesting enemies prowling about. My players had a lot of fun overcoming these fairly low-level threats, and in the context of the campaign it was a relief for my players to explore a jungle that wasn't currently overrun with zombies and dinosaurs.
What they find on the island is wholly sufficient, with some excellent opportunities for either roleplay or combat, depending on how the players want to handle things. The flavour of the island as a whole fit perfectly into Chult, but added much needed variety.
I don't think I could have asked for a better respite from the Tomb of Annihilation storyline while my players worked to level up. Kobold Press never disappoints, and this adventure is no exception. Having been designed to account for convention play, it's straight-forward and easy to understand at a glance. I love a module that gets to the point, but develops its setting enough to allow for Game Master expansion as needed. If you're need of a coastal and island adventure, give Beyond the Ghostlight Reef a try!
Header photo ©2012 Kobold Press.