D&D 5E Tales from the Yawning Portal vs. Ghosts of Saltmarsh

[Prakriti]

I wasn't interested in Ghosts of Saltmarsh when it first came out, because ships and maritime stuff just aren't my thing. But after reading through half the book, I'm beginning to re-assess... A lot of these adventures seem damned fun. Take Salvage Operation, for example. It's not as famous as the classics in Tales from the Yawning Portal, but it sure seems a lot funner and better-designed than the supposed classics. Same with Isle of the Abbey.

In its favor, Tales from the Yawning Portal has Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury, both of which are good dungeon-crawls and compact enough to drop into just about any campaign. But does anyone really want to run Against the Giants or The Doomvault? Both seem like gigantic slogs to me.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Parmandur]

I like both books, but GoS has more value added, and even extends the sandbox connective tissue to include the material from TftYP.

 

[Nebulous]

I would go with Yawning Portal personally, but they each have some good adventures in it. I ran Isle of the Abbey recently and personally thought - aside from the intro scene - it is a pretty bad adventure. The dungeon crawl part is pretty awful. I ran the original Saltmarsh as a 5e mod years ago and really liked it. I've only run Tomb of Horror in 3e from Return to Tomb of Horror, and my group wants me to run Forge of Fury on Roll20, but other than those I'm not familiar with any of the other scenarios.

I guess they both have pros and cons, so it would depend on personal preference.

 

[Salthorae]

I like the maritime stuff and sandbox but still connected nature of GoS.

TftYP adventures are classic, but they are in no way linked. At all. I've run my table through most of them but had to build my own story around them to get them tied together.

 

[GlassJaw]

Yes
It depends.
Both.

It's a tough call. They are difficult to compare to one another. Neither are fully connected campaigns, but Saltmarsh is slightly more so. I like both (for different reasons) but I also have serious issues with both. I'd say both of the books are 50% awesome and 50% crap.

Saltmarsh is an awesome home base for a coastal sandbox campaign. I have issues with some of the adventures and I don't like they U2 and U3 are essentially reprints (they are really flawed as "adventures").

TotYP has some great classic adventures. Dead in Thay was a total miss for me though, and the biggest black spot on the book. It's a massive dungeon crawl with extremely small maps.

So far I've gotten more use out of Saltmarsh because if you are thinking about running a coastal/pirate/maritime campaign, it's awesome.

 

[jayoungr]

TftYP adventures are classic, but they are in no way linked. At all.

Some people see that as a feature, not a bug. (Which is going to affect a lot of people's assessment of the books, too--do they want stand-alone adventures or linked ones?)

 

[Salthorae]

Some people see that as a feature, not a bug. (Which is going to affect a lot of people's assessment of the books, too--do they want stand-alone adventures or linked ones?)

I... didn't say it was a bug? Of course, some people want that. I was just giving my feedback.

 

[DND_Reborn]

In our main campaign our DM is running Against the Giants and we love it. I haven't looked at GoSM so I can only vote for Tales.

 

[JeffB]

Many of the early adventures don't translate all that well to modern version of the games, or campaign style gameplay. Nearly all the Tournament scenarios were "raids" designed to test player skill in a convention timed play slot of a couple hours- all of which is at odds with typical "modern gaming".

S1-4
A1-4
G1-3
D1-3
C1 & C2

All designed for tournament play- the "fun houses" like S2 and C2 adapt the best to a home game/long term campaign.

I think the Doomvault was also designed for convention/tournament play where teams of adventurers try to tackle it.

Anecdotal-I can't speak for every group, but back when these new things called dungeon modules really started hitting the shelves, none of my group, or anyone we knew (that I recall) weaved these into our normal campaign play (and I use that term loosely). We rolled up new characters, or used the pre-gens specifically to play the module, and that was that. There was so much new coming out all the time, we rarely attempted them twice. There wasn't a lot of continuity- we just played. If nobody had a new module/adventure/whatever, someone was running a homebrew adventure and none were long drawn out epic plots covering 8-10 levels or whatever.

Saltmarsh was designed for at home gameplay, and I'm sure the additional Dungeon mag scenarios in "Ghosts" were too, which helps translate much better to modern home games.

 

[Prakriti]

Saltmarsh is an awesome home base for a coastal sandbox campaign. I have issues with some of the adventures and I don't like they U2 and U3 are essentially reprints (they are really flawed as "adventures").

I agree, they're both flawed, but I think U2's actually quite good if you run it as part of a larger campaign. You just have to accept the possibility that your players might finish it in 15 minutes and be ready to move on to the next adventure if that's the case. What would suck is doing tons of prep work for U2, finishing in 15 minutes, then sending everyone home because you haven't prepped the next adventure yet.

U3 is a lot trickier. I still haven't decided how to crack that nut yet. I'm thinking of turning it into a simple assassination mission. Get in, slay the High Priestess, and get out. Because the recon thing doesn't really work for me. For one thing, the adventure doesn't seem to tell you how to measure the party's success when it comes to the 4 mission goals (p. 112). Do they need to locate every trap, for example? Just one? Two? It would be nice if each goal had a corresponding section describing where and how to fulfill it.