A Look Inside Ghosts of Saltmarsh: Contents, Saltmarsh Map, & More

Stunningly awesome redo of three of the best old school modules ever produced

Hussar said:

I answered this upthread a bit, but, again, Storm King's Thunder, if played by the book where you only deal with one of the giant groups, results in much of the adventure being left behind. Dragon Heist is specifically built that you will only use about 1/3 of the book in any given campaign - you'd have to do a massive rewrite (see The Alexandrian for how) to use the whole book. And, as you say, Curse of Strahd isn't meant to be completely played through.

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I don't think it is too difficult to get all of Storm King's Thunder in one campaign: the book suggests it, even. Not *needing* to use every section is nice design, from my point of view. Also, every part of that book is pretty easy to rip out and use out of context, which is super handy.

Parmandur said:

I don't think it is too difficult to get all of Storm King's Thunder in one campaign: the book suggests it, even. Not *needing* to use every section is nice design, from my point of view. Also, every part of that book is pretty easy to rip out and use out of context, which is super handy.

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Oh, no, not disagreeing at all. I think that there is definitely room for different kinds of modules. Dragon Heist is as much a setting guide as it is module, for example, and, frankly, if they did that sort of thing for every setting, I'd love it. What a fantastic entry product to ground the group into a setting. It's great.

But, it does have the issue that you leave a fair chunk of the module on the cutting room floor. Which, if it's important that you use as much of a module as possible, if that's a criteria for someone, then, sure, it's not a terribly good product by that metric.

In any case, yeah, I more agree with you that being able to cut and paste from adventures is a good thing.

jrowland said:

I am interested in the factions bit. In the pre-planning stages we have a Triton Paladin of Conquest, a Lizardfolk Drunken Monk, a Water Genasi Druid, a Bronze Dragonborn Tempest Cleric, an Aasimar Divine Soul Sorcerer, and a tbd archer build.

Clearly will be opposed to Scarlet Brotherhood, but would the Traditionalists or Loyalists be cool with that menagerie of PCs?

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In addition to genasi, dragonborn and aasimar not being traditional Greyhawk races, a lizardfolk PC has the potential to wreck the plot.

And then there's those of us that love setting-neutral sandboxes....

Sword of Spirit said:

Interesting. That's kind of cool then, to see something fleshed out with a setting other than the Forgotten Realms (I'm not counting Curse of Strahd, since it wasn't fleshed out to Ravenloft, its identity is Ravenloft). Well, this will be a market test for them then. If it's popular we're more likely to get more expansion into other settings.

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I get that some people hate sandboxes. I and one of the groups I game with pretty much despise railroads, three-act-structure, and the lack of agency that carefully laid out encounters and pre-ordained plots and finales cause.

Maybe it's because I grew up when the original PHB and DMG were just released. You wanted setting, you created it. You wanted adventures, you took some fairly generic ones (B2, B1, N1, etc) and you dropped it into your game because few were so entirely specific as to require much filing off.

I'm disappointed they didn't go the way they said they were going to (setting neutral). That lack of setting neutrality and the absence of much in the way of sandboxing in most of the hardcover adventure paths for 5E have resulted in me not buying them. I was hoping this one was different.

And Greyhawk... that was excellent in the first folio set before everyone filled in every detail and revamped it in Greyhawk Wars, Living Greyhawk and all manner of follow up modules. That's the same sad death of fun that happened to the Forgotten Realms; The original boxed set was a great place to see hundreds of great stories and adventures, but then region module after module, adventure after adventure (some terrible like the one that had a high level wizard running a circus ride...) and then so much of the open, developable, discoverable potential of the original boxed set was buried and burnt.

You know, there are probably a lot of us that like sandboxing and would buy setting neutral product but WOTC just has not been putting that out for 5E. They are even weaving in more references to the Greyhawk setting... even though it isn't supported at the moment... <rolls eyes>

Then people wonder why OSR has so many variations and so many devotees. It isn't the rules that are great (5E has some great rules), but the spirit is more sandboxy and adaptable in many cases than anything WOTC is putting out.

My group befriended the sea elf, smashed the shahuagin, and took one of the brothers who worked in custom's and excise as an NPC member of the party after U3 (the other died in the fighting). This series of three adventures brought the party from about L2 to L5. It had some great tales attached. The older module was pretty setting agnostic. Hopefully the new one isn't too hard to knock the branding off of.....

There's a reason B2, U1-3, N1, and T1 were such huge successes historically. They gave good starting locales and they some viable and interesting threats and setting adaptability was pretty easy in most cases.

Most of what they've done in 5E (Tiamat, SKT, others) seems much less easy to make setting agnostic and adapt into existing campaigns.

Now, I'm going to go shoo a bunch of Tieflings off my lawn.... where did those come from? I remember when.... blah blah old grognard blah blah....

Does anyone with the print version know if it includes a poster map of saltmarsh?

Tom B1 said:

I get that some people hate sandboxes. I and one of the groups I game with pretty much despise railroads, three-act-structure, and the lack of agency that carefully laid out encounters and pre-ordained plots and finales cause.

Maybe it's because I grew up when the original PHB and DMG were just released. You wanted setting, you created it. You wanted adventures, you took some fairly generic ones (B2, B1, N1, etc) and you dropped it into your game because few were so entirely specific as to require much filing off.

I'm disappointed they didn't go the way they said they were going to (setting neutral). That lack of setting neutrality and the absence of much in the way of sandboxing in most of the hardcover adventure paths for 5E have resulted in me not buying them. I was hoping this one was different.

And Greyhawk... that was excellent in the first folio set before everyone filled in every detail and revamped it in Greyhawk Wars, Living Greyhawk and all manner of follow up modules. That's the same sad death of fun that happened to the Forgotten Realms; The original boxed set was a great place to see hundreds of great stories and adventures, but then region module after module, adventure after adventure (some terrible like the one that had a high level wizard running a circus ride...) and then so much of the open, developable, discoverable potential of the original boxed set was buried and burnt.

You know, there are probably a lot of us that like sandboxing and would buy setting neutral product but WOTC just has not been putting that out for 5E. They are even weaving in more references to the Greyhawk setting... even though it isn't supported at the moment... <rolls eyes>

Then people wonder why OSR has so many variations and so many devotees. It isn't the rules that are great (5E has some great rules), but the spirit is more sandboxy and adaptable in many cases than anything WOTC is putting out.

My group befriended the sea elf, smashed the shahuagin, and took one of the brothers who worked in custom's and excise as an NPC member of the party after U3 (the other died in the fighting). This series of three adventures brought the party from about L2 to L5. It had some great tales attached. The older module was pretty setting agnostic. Hopefully the new one isn't too hard to knock the branding off of.....

There's a reason B2, U1-3, N1, and T1 were such huge successes historically. They gave good starting locales and they some viable and interesting threats and setting adaptability was pretty easy in most cases.

Most of what they've done in 5E (Tiamat, SKT, others) seems much less easy to make setting agnostic and adapt into existing campaigns.

Now, I'm going to go shoo a bunch of Tieflings off my lawn.... where did those come from? I remember when.... blah blah old grognard blah blah....

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This is pretty setting agnostic.

vpuigdoller said:

Does anyone with the print version know if it includes a poster map of saltmarsh?

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Nope. Just the one page map

Remathilis said:

Nope. Just the one page map

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Ok, thanks!

I heard that this is actually a series of stand alone adventures and does not have a single campaign arc. Is that accurate? For example, if my party wanted to follow up with who the Redbrands (from LMop) were working with re: slaves (they had some captives they were going to sell), could I drop in an adventure(s) from Ghost of Saltmarsh?