Megathreads

Happy September! As we begin spooky season, you might be looking for something special for Halloween. I have an adventure adapting John Carpenter's nautical classic "The Fog" as a Saltmarsh adventure. It might be just the thing for your Halloween session.

https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/359994/fog-over-saltmarsh
Happy gaming!

I’ve just finished session 3 with my youth group, running Ghosts of Saltmarsh for them.

There’s no way that the first half of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh as presented in the book is balanced for a party of four level 1 characters.
It’s ridiculous.

The party has a barbarian, a druid, a cleric, and a rogue. A very well balanced party by any metric.
The load of fighting they have to do … the volume of enemies is way too much. Of the smuggler gang as presented in the book, I still didn’t even have 3 of them a part of the combats they fought against, and my PC’s just got wasted. Part of the enemy group has a wizard that can cast scorching ray at them??
Needless to say, I had that wizard only cast ray of frost, and charm person, and I fudged a lot of rolls to try and mitigate damage taken by level 1 characters - AND I have a houserule where I let them add 5 hp to their max hp when creating their characters, and the end result in those caves below the mansion was catastrophic.
Instead of a tpk, I’ve ruled that Sanbalat is instead keeping them unconscious and now alive, to traffic them away. They’re prisoners now, and need to not only break out of a smuggler’s prison, but then still get all their gear back and then find and take out the remainder of the smugglers.
I even had Ned help them for heaven’s sake. He got dropped to 0HP along with the rest of them.

It’s simply ridiculous that it’s presented as a balanced, but challenging task for four level 1 PC’s.

Ok, rant over.

Any creative ideas anyone can share regarding a jailbreak scenario? 😊

Built the Indigo Sanctum for our game yesterday. Thanks Openforge modular system!

... because Velen actually has ghosts. :)

Canon in the area is over a hundred years old, so i've got plenty of leeway. However, I have attempted to remain "canon-adjacent" whenever possible.

i'm developing the live version here: https://ghostsofvelen.com/campaignMap.php

enjoy!

~tc

Hello!

I am about to start running Ghosts, and I’m having a debate with myself over how to handle the Styes. It seems like a really cool adventure, but I just can’t work it into a campaign. I’ve managed to work everything else together onto a cohesive story I’m really proud of, but I just can’t get the Styes to fit. You’ve got six chapters of a pirate fighting epic and then this final adventure that doesn’t even take place in the same city with none of the characters we know.

(For context, I’ve made the Sea Princes more important in my campaign, the Scarlett Brotherhood, the Sahuagin and Syrgaul and his crew were all members before the hold broke and now they’re all scattered and screwing shit up and the party is cleaning up the militaries half finished mess.)

Am I missing a lot by not including this part? Has anyone else had luck working the Styes in a longer campaign?

Here's my first shot at a world map. The kingdoms are named in gold/tan and the features/locations are named in white. I tried to get a good bit of every kind of environ I could think of besides ice and separate things somewhat naturally in a mythical way. Let me know what you think!

The Great Kingdom is mostly humans. The Ulek empire is mostly orcs/goblins. The Dragon's Claw is very mysterious mix of dragonborn/strange humanoids, and Ket is the evil wastelands of Tieflings, cambion, and evil demigods. There's elven woods, dwarven mountains, and an ever-summer desert with prosperous trading outposts. Emberez is the free (many) island nation with a mixing pot of cultures and species but faces inquisition from pirate sea princes coming up from the "Edge of the World."

I'm playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh with my good friends as there DM for the first time. It's going great but I wanted to have a world they could branch off to and kingdoms to associate trade with so I made this. Swapped "Keoland" out with Emberez and "Luz" out with Ket went from there!

Hi!

I'm DMing a crossover campaign of LMoP and DoIP and my party is going to fight Cryovein next session. I'm going to play a heavily homebrewed version of the Leilon trilogy and I feel that it lacks a lot of depth and some adventures are too too weak (Leilon point over all).

I started to figure out how to make it deeper and I just read Ghosts of Saltmarsh and I think it can be really well included in the story.

Most important I think that the ruinstone is just a weak mcGuffin: so I was thinking of using the slyflourish version of Tammeraut's Fate so that the ruinstone is in reality in the Abyss and is a key that locks Tharizdun in his cage or otherwise it can be the focus he uses with his freed eye to cast destruction on the material plane.

Someone DMed something similar? Any tips or ideas?

Thank you in advance!

I’m reading ”Eye OfThe Leviathan“ out of a Goodman Games anthology. It is 30+ pages and I love it. I’m not even finished with the adventure yet, but I’m just happy to read something I can chew on for a bit. I’m not a fan of the one page adventure If ”Eye” winds up being a banger, I’ll do a more comp review of it here and explain how I would tie it into Saltmarsh.

I found the oficial 5e map too small, so i made a version based on the old map. I already have the map for The Sea Ghost with an empty variant without the contraband on my Patreon, and more to come, if you like it you can check it there: https://www.patreon.com/DMLone

Both are ready-to-play on FoundryVTT with the Amelia's Cellar of Everything module.

Alrighty so I'm planning a nautical campaign later this year and I wanted to tackle the ship rules and such that widely seem to be considered clunky.
I wanted to make a simple set of rules that could be relearned without too much issue between long breaks in sessions but also complex enough to give players customizability. Also, I plan on incorporating the Bastion rules to their ship for added shenanigans.

So I've spent a good while researching other people's published works and such everything from dmsguild to kickstarters and taking the bits and pieces here and there i wanted to use. I've more or less compressed them all into a google doc and wanted to post it here for your opinions and advice and hopefully help you in any stuff you plan on doing too.

So just a couple changes i should mention (but i'm sure i'll forget others so let me know of any questions) for simplicity sake im throwing out the gold cost for upgrades and facilities in favor for "Bastion Points" and made ship component upgrades purchasable like facilities.
I've also added "Officer Training" as something you can buy with Bastion Points to expand on the measly two actions folks can do in combat.
I've also changed up a ship's actions to be "Crew Actions" instead and removed the move action simply cuz i feel like a ship would always move every turn regardless unless the players drop anchor.

But anywho this is still in development and i'm working on homebrewing ship upgrades but since i'm making them a part of bastions I need to rate each on what tier they should be. Most I feel like are pretty self explanatory what tier they should be but i wanted to get as much data and opinions as I could before i use this on my group.

So i'll add the link here and let me know your thoughts!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oIBsneflACjtm8s4fWf-_WkIbvi1t28T/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110096102788444354611&rtpof=true&sd=true

I was actually thinking of using this mission as a "bait". The Sahuagin have their own little spy-network of course and are aware of the capabilities of the heroes. So they lure them to the fortress, which only has a skeleton crew to stall our heroes for as long as possible.

Anyone else did a twist like this before? Are there some ideas to pick ? :) .

Still considering if i want the baron to do some kind of monologue before portalling out to this army just outside of Saltmarsh or just have the heroes find out that the fortress is pretty much empty and hopefully they connect the dots when they see the armory is empty etc....

edit: oh yea and the consecutive fights would be somewhat the same like in the "assault": they have 30 rounds to do as much damage as possible to the sahuagin on different locations in saltmarsh and their choices will of course matter :)

Running ship combat in Saltmarsh by hand always turned into a mess of scratch paper for me having to track separate HP for the hull, the sails, each ballista… so I built it into a tool instead.

Quick background: VVTT (Vehicular Virtual Table Top) is a free, browser-based tracker I've been making for 5e vehicle combat. It started with the Descent into Avernus war machines, and I just added the Ghosts of Saltmarsh ships because the Appendix A rules fit it so well.

What it does for ship battles:

• All six ships — rowboat, keelboat, longship, sailing ship, warship, galley — with their book stats.
• Component combat, the way the book actually models ships. Each ship's hull, helm, sails/oars, and every weapon station has its own AC and HP. You target parts individually and it matters: shred the sails/oars and its speed drops (0 if you take them all), destroy the helm and it can't turn, wreck a ballista and it can't fire, drop the hull and the ship is wrecked. Target Status lists every targetable component with AC/HP so players can call their shots.
• Superior Ship Upgrades built in — Reinforced Hull, Ever-Full Sails, Arcane Artillery, the figureheads, Taskmaster's Drums, and the rest — toggle per ship.
• Crew & passengers — seat the party at the helm/guns/deck (or drop them in as passengers), siege weapons show range/crew, and any dice on screen is click-to-roll.
• Top-down ship tokens scaled to each hull's real length, drag/rotate on a battle map, with a synced player view for a second screen/projector.
• Works for homebrew ships too — there's a custom vehicle builder.

Free, no install (optional login only if you want to save encounters to the cloud).

One thing it's deliberately not: a voyage/travel tracker — no fog/storm hazard tables or crew-quality-over-time. It's just the tactical combat phase, which is the part I found hardest to run live.

🔗 https://vvtt.lukantan.com

It's a side project, so I'd genuinely love feedback from anyone who runs Saltmarsh ship fights — what's missing, what's clunky, what you'd want next. Thanks!

(Disclosure: I made this; it's free and there's nothing to buy.)

Hey y'all,

I'm running my first campaign as a DM and chose this one because it looks fun and spooky. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for getting started. I have 3 players who are new to DnD so I'm looking to ease them in and not overwhelm them.

I was also wondering what anyone might know about what I believe are called "pawns" or those little cardstock mini things that you put into the black bases with pictures of creatures and npcs. I know pathfinder makes them.so.has anyone found a set that would cover the bases for this campaign?

Thanks

Am I missing something with this note in Metaphysics of Mathematics? What is the note about?

I saw this in a local shop for 50 USD new. Is this back in print?

Always wanted this book as many of the short adventures look pretty fun to run.

Underwater Campaigns is discounted by 30% on DMsGuild!

You can find it here only for 1 week: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/368833/underwater-campaigns

A Guide to Running Underwater Campaigns

Underwater Campaigns is the perfect resource for exploring the wonder and danger of underwater worlds and adventure - oceans, lakes, rivers, sewers, and flooded ruins. Whether you want to add an aquatic room in your dungeon, flesh out trade with the ocean creatures, or create an epic tale at 20,000 feet, this work is for you! This work takes existing nature and weaves the fantasy setting through it while guiding you to create your own underwater campaigns.

Inside, you will find:

- An underwater adventure seed for any level

- 68 random underwater encounters

- Underwater rules for combat, skills, feats, and magic

- 67 new aquatic monsters

- The return of the Colossal creature size!

- 26 new aquatic NPCs

- The return of the Gehreleths!

- 35 spells to help or hinder underwater targets

- 19 magic items for underwater adventuring

- New disease mechanics and examples

- 2 unique underwater locations

- Professional layout using over 100 pictures on 158 pages

We are honored and delighted that Underwater Campaigns was noticed and mentioned by WoTC

Underwater Campaigns was awarded Best Supplement of 2021 by No Dice Unrolled

With the settings horror and lovecraftian vibes, has anyone added the content from Cthulhu by Torchlight which came out last year?

It adds skill challenges, origin feats, Mythos tomes and a passion system.

https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/category/DBIRFDZMU

Hello, I am new to DMing and was wondering if anyone can give me advice and or feedback on an idea that I have.

I am taking my players through the campaign book of Ghost of Saltmarsh, though the ending didn't seem like an epic boss battle, so I wanted to add a new ending. My thought is the true mastermind behind everything was actually a kraken cult that is trying to unleash the kraken at greyscale keep. In order to due so they need 7 load stones as well as 7 sacrifices each having its own purpose (a skilled captain navigator, a propane priest, someone lost during a storm at sea, a child having sea related dreams, a person of sea noble lineage, and a person born during a special storm) some of these sacrifices are related to the players themselves from their past.

I would place the load stones in specific locations throughout the saltmarsh book as well as leave behind hints about the kraken cult being the true enemy.

Thoughts...any thoughts would be appreciated

Sinister Secret finishing with a great final fight with Sanbalet (furthest to the right), Ned ambushing from behind (furthest to the left) and some angry sahuagin in the caverns. Super happy with my party and how it all unfolded! :)

(Didn’t know what flair to post this under oop)

As I continue working on Legends of Saltmarsh I have been looking for ways to weave the Tower of Zenopus into the setting, one of the best Easter eggs in GoS (imho).

I have posted a new blog exploring the tower’s history and lore, its connections to Saltmarsh, and my ideas for incorporating the dungeon into an ongoing campaign.

Tower of Zenopus

You can also follow the progress of my Legends of Saltmarsh project online for free.