Is The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh a well-designed adventure module?

[Thunderfoot]

YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!

This series and the Elemental Evil series were my favorite adventures to start with. Base of Operations, low-level goodness leading to further adventure, what's not to love? And one thing I think modern module writers could take take note of is the "openness" of these modules. Since everyone is bashing Ned I'll use him as the example.

Ned is written as a piece of bait for the PCs to take. It has been stated that some DMs changed Ned to be more appealing for the PCs to "bite into", that is a perfect example - Ned was not "written in stone" so a minor change opens up possibilities for different parties. So the group of "grizzled" roll-players that suspect a trap can be confronted with the child, and the neophyte gamers can get bitten in the butt by their lack of attention.
My take was to make Ned the least productive member of the smuggling group and when things seemed to go "REALLY" south(ie the party easily iced the first group of "pirates"), he confessed to his intentions, ratted out his employer and threw himself at the mercies of the law. It worked like a charm and the second group of "pirates" wandered up just in time to give him just what he deserved and give the inattentive party their come-upance. (they had gotten pretty cocky at this point, this dropped them about 6 pegs and they actually talked about retreating and regrouping at this point.)

Flexablility was "written" into the modules of yesteryear. Has anyone truly read Against the Giants? Not much there but crunch, all the fluff was to be filled in by the DM. Nowadays if there isn't a shaded SAY THIS box and the fourteen different IF THIS HAPPENS senarios listed, most DMs crash & burn. I know that I have been spoiled by this and have been re-reading the old mods in order to get in touch with my inner-DM. (My party will both hate me and thank me for it later)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Yes, one of my all time favorites, along with Bone Hill.

As for Ned the way I handled that was

Spoiler

simply having the party meet him several times before exploring the house. He bought them drinks, asked questions about the things that they had done, in other words he pumped them for information while seeming friendly. Then, after a few days of being treated like visiting celebrities by Ned he stops showing up in the tavern, after telling the bar tender 'sometimes I wish that I was the kind who went and had adventures...' knowing that the bartender would mention it to the PCs. It means a slight delay, but gives good old Ned a bit more credibility.

I have actually run this adventure with systems other than D&D as well, it converts easily. (It was one of two D&D adventures that I ran for 7th Sea - the other being P.N.Elrod's 'The Matchmakers' from Dungeon #6

The Auld Grump.

 

[DragonLancer]

I voted yes.

What can be learnt from this module? Its a perfect simple site based scenario with reasonable encounters and no huge over-arching plot. Its a simple investigate the haunted house scenario. What can be learnt? Keep to the basics.

 

[MerricB]

Part 1 of U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is an excellent adventure, IMO.
Part 2 of U1 isn't very good. U2 is poor and U3 are terrible.
Cheers!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Part 2 of U1 isn't very good.

Why do you say that?

U2 is poor and U3 are terrible.

If Quas. makes a thread for these I will be happy to debate you on these. I agree that U2 and U3 are flawed (perhaps fatally in the case of U3), but I would hardly call them "poor" and "terrible". Indeed, it is from the flaws in U2 and U3 that I learned a lot about adventure design.

 

[Mycanid]

I am afraid I have to go with the crowd that says these were stupendous adventures design wise as well.

U1 was the first (I think it came out before L2, yes?) that majorly emphasized plot over hack and slash, although there is plenty of material for hack and slash later on (particularly the raid on the ship). I thought that the balance, the detail and the ... err ... "level of presentation" for both foes and treasures were very, very well thought through and presented. This also includes, by the way, the "standard" of the pre-generated characters presented at the end of the module - particularly stats wise. I thought they were near perfect in balance. I had no probs with part two of the adventure myself and thought it WAS very well designed.

My main criticism with the U1 module was that they did not develop Saltmarsh as much as they should. There are other examples of modules contemporary or earlier than U1 which are at least somewhat developed. Anything more would have helped. Even a map. Granted, towns take a lot of time and space. T1, L1, L2, A3 all have villages developed to one degree or another, but they (with the exception of A3) are small places while Saltmarsh has apopulation of 2000 (not including the farmers in the sticks and the fishermen away at sea I'll warrant). I just detailed a small village of 200 people or so and it took up over 100 hand written pages! Still, something more could have been done.

Oh yes (an edit after posting the above). Regarding Ned. The mere fact that an NPC is present who betrays the party and "teaches" them to distrust any npc they meet is just not true. What about Oceanus? He's as trustworthy as they come (unless the party tries to help the Sahuagin in prison in U2 ... back that is plenty character consistent). Besides, early betrayals such as this can be easily, easily, EASILY used by the DM as future ground for rp'ing, especially as to how the pc's will value trustworthy and faithful npcs. In that sense it is a little like life. There are always bad people around who will try to take advantage of the newbies. But later on you start to see that not all people are like that and value them even more for not being like that.

This is not a "bad module design" trait, IMO. It rather can be a common cause for people nowadays to FURTHER mistrust people in the rp'ing (it rarely begins in the rp realm I think). But this could well launch off into another topic, so I'll end here.

 

[Quasqueton]

If Quas. makes a thread for these I will be happy to debate you on these. I agree that U2 and U3 are flawed (perhaps fatally in the case of U3), but I would hardly call them "poor" and "terrible". Indeed, it is from the flaws in U2 and U3 that I learned a lot about adventure design.

I do plan on having a thread for those modules, seperately.

Quasqueton

 

[grodog]

I recently played this module and found it to be relatively unbalanced. Sure, Ned's there and all, but we didn't get fooled by him in the least. Detect Evil has it's uses, after all. There's very little in the upper mansion of much interest, so we spent a lot of time exploring and what-not, without a ton of other activity (whether RP, combat [yes, there was some], etc.).

In addition, the final encounter in the sea grotto was horribly imbalanced (in favor of the pirates). We had a party of about 14 PCs and almost had a TPK; by all rights, we should have been dead---I think the DM was a bit soft on us.

So, while I think the module has a lot of potential (especially if used as a lead-in to the A series, in particluar instead of leading into U2), I voted no.

 

[Joshua Randall]

In addition, the final encounter in the sea grotto was horribly imbalanced (in favor of the pirates). We had a party of about 14 PCs and almost had a TPK

?!? How did that happen? If I recall there are about six smugglers and two gnolls -- meaning your party outnumbered them nearly two-to-one. It should've been a TPK for the smugglers!

 

[Quasqueton]

In the whole of the haunted house part of the adventure (all in the basement/caves), there are 8 smugglers (1st-level fighters), a chief (4th-level illusionist), and 2 gnolls. The smugglers are spread out over several areas (no more than 3 together in one place at a time).

the final encounter in the sea grotto was horribly imbalanced (in favor of the pirates)

In the sea grotto is only 1 smuggler, the chief, and the 2 gnolls.

Quasqueton