These screencaps were posted by GM Leigh (of Mage Productions) on Twitter after being showed on WotC's Twitch stream, presented by Kate Welch and Nathan Stewart. Note the old Saltmarsh trilogy references!
Oh, this is a very interesting piece of information. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the original U3 module included some kind of guidelines for underwater adventures but there were none for seafaring or navigating ships or other water vehicles. If you are correct and the big AP from summer is also water-themed, that one might include then the seafaring rules that were playtested.
More specifically, those rules were part of a larger batch of vehicle rules that include land and air vehicles. They decided, for reasons, that selecting ship rules out for early playtesting would make sense. And in the past week or so, Mearls said on Twitter they have started reworking them based on the positive feedback.
As to the contents of this book...there was a Tier II series of Sahuagin adventures in 2E. What if this book reprints those, with U2-3, and a Volo's Guide style section on Sahuagin...?
If you are correct and the big AP from summer is also water-themed, that one might include then the seafaring rules that were playtested.
the perspective of having two entire hardcover official wotc books focused on boats, oars and seasickness and zero for, let say, Eberron is totally nonsense for me.
I can't really believe the market needs hundreds of pages about those topics, especially hundreds of pages batched in two volumes in a row. but given the enthusiastically feedback which airs, for example, here, I m most probably wrong.
Oh I have never played those, do you mean GA1-2? The Murky Deep and Swamplight? That could be nice, are they related or stand alone? I think there was a GA 3 as well.
Edit to add; The only other i can think of is Evil Tide trilogy by Bruce Cordell, but haven't played that one either.
You are not necessarily wrong. It's all speculation, maybe focusing the two adventure books in water-themed APs is a bit of a stretch? Me personally. don't care much about the rules part, I care more about the themed adventures part. Rules, I can figure a way to do those, though an official ruling might be nice for some groups. Lately, though, WOTC has been very successful by not putting all eggs on the same basket. We will have to wait and see for either more previews or official product information release.
... by which I mean pillaging Greyhawk's stories and characters while continuing to forbid 3rd party Greyhawk products and 5e Greyhawk updates from being put up on the DMs Guild.
I support this. I loved the Saltmarsh series... my favorite aside from the Desert of Desolation series as far as oldschool adventures go.
I agree Saltmarsh was written in a way that can easily be placed elsewhere if you wanted to. They will probably give you some tips in how to set it in other Campaign Settings as they did in TftYP. I do hope that if Saltmarsh is indeed included that they also include the Saltmarsh maps.