Shawn Merwin’s Return of the Lizard King is an adventure for levels 1-4 characters that provide an alternative opening for Tomb of Annihilation. It has no relationship to Tomb of the Lizard King, a 1E adventure by Mark Acres.

The adventure starts in an unusual place: a misfiring teleport spell takes the adventurers to the Feywild. There, they discover the realm under the effect of the Death Curse, with a mysterious fey lady, the Queen of Creeping Vines, causing trouble for the fey and the adventurers. It’s completely out of left-field and – until Shawn releases the sequel – doesn’t relate very much to the rest of the adventure. However, the encounters are evocative and there’s the possibility of giving a character a phobia of vines, which has provided us with much amusement in the vine-filled jungle of Chult.

After escaping the Feywild, the adventure moves into Chult. There, the adventurers must stop a lizardfolk tribe from imbuing its king with incredible magic. There’s a ritual to stop, and a temple to explore, along with various encounters in the jungle and a small town wracked with a magical fever.

Yes, the adventure packs a lot of incident into its relatively brief running time! My estimation is it takes four 4-hour sessions for standard groups.

Each of the four chapters presents a different environment: Feywild, Jungle, Town, and Dungeon. The combat encounters are tremendously difficult and may require ameliorating for your group. However, the level of difficulty helps the adventure feel significant. It’s a brilliant introduction to the threat of Tomb of Annihilation, and it can also be run as a standalone. I much prefer it to the standard opening of Tomb, and by its conclusion, the adventurers are of the correct level to explore Omu and don’t need to spend a lot of time lost in the jungle first.

My problems with the adventure? I feel it struggles to link its chapters together. Chapter 3 doesn’t flow well from Chapter 2 and feels like a needless diversion before Chapter 4.

Where the adventure succeeds is in being very inventive; there are a host of new monsters and magic items in addition to the encounter situations it describes. The adventure also evokes the jungle setting very well and provides a couple of different resolutions to the final encounter, allowing the adventurers to make an impact on what occurs, even if their impact may not be entirely favourable!

This is a superior adventure, and well worth investigating. Highly recommended!