The New D&D Book Is Called "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" [UPDATED!]

It seems those who suggested that the upcoming 'nautical themed' book was based on the old Saltmarsh trilogy were correct. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is the new book, with a release date of May 21st, 2019. UPDATED WITH NEW INFORMATION ON ALT COVER & RELEASE DATES!

Explore the waves above and the fathoms below in these watery adventures for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

“D&D acolytes are everywhere...Tech workers from Silicon Valley to Brooklyn have long-running campaigns, and the showrunners and the novelist behind ‘Game of Thrones’ have all been Dungeon Masters.”—Neima Jahromi, The New Yorker

Ghosts of Saltmarsh brings classic adventures into fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. This adventure book combines some of the most popular classic adventures from the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons including the classic “U” series, plus some of the best nautical adventures from the history of Dungeon Magazine: Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, Salvage Operation, Isle of the Abbey, The Final Enemy, Tammeraut’s Fate, The Styes.

• Ghosts of Salt Marsh includes a variety of seafaring adventures, enough to take characters from level 1 to level 12.

• This supplement introduces the port town of Saltmarsh, the perfect starting point for a nautical campaign.

• Each adventure can be played individually, inserted into your ongoing game or combined into a single epic nautical campaign.

• Dungeon Masters will find rules for ships and sea travel, deck plans for various vessels, an appendix with rules for new and classic monsters, and much more.

• Dungeons & Dragons is the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Created in 1974, D&D transformed gaming culture by blending traditional fantasy with miniatures and wargaming.

It's already on Amazon.

[video=youtube;GajoKmh9-68]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GajoKmh9-68[/video]

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Updates!

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WotC has just announced the book. Full press release below, but a couple of key points:

• There's an alternate cover (below)
• Preferred stores and regular stores get it on the same date, instead of WPN stores getting it early

Sail the Seas in Dungeons & Dragons with Ghosts of Saltmarsh Adventure Releasing Everywhere May 21

Renton, WA – February 25, 2019 – Dungeons & Dragons is excited to announce a new adventure book called Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which takes classic sea-faring adventures and updates and expands upon them for use with D&D fifth edition. The book details the port town of Saltmarsh and the surrounding lands players can explore using their own ship and the vehicle mechanics included in the 256-page book. Unravel sinister secrets of the sea with Ghosts of Saltmarsh releasing in game stores, digitally and everywhere on May 21, 2019. An alternate art cover with a distinctive design and soft-touch finish is available exclusively in game stores on May 21.

“The Saltmarsh series consistently ranks as one of the most popular classic D&D adventures,” said Mike Mearls, franchise creative director of D&D. “With its ties to ocean-based adventuring, it was an obvious step to augment it with additional sea-based adventures and a robust set of rules for managing a nautical campaign.”

The book includes details on the port town of Saltmarsh, as well as plenty of adventure hooks for each chapter. Fans can play through the whole story in a seafaring campaign leading characters from level 1 through level 12, while Dungeon Masters can easily pull out sections to place in ongoing campaigns in any setting. The appendices cover mechanics for ship-to-ship combat, new magic items, monsters and more!

Ghosts of Saltmarsh will be available both in game stores and everywhere else on the same date – May 21st. Fans are encouraged to pick up the adventure in the way that’s most convenient for them, but there is an alternate art soft-touch cover that will only be available in game stores. The alternate cover image was created by N. C. Winters and features a snarling sahuagin.

For more information on Ghosts of Saltmarsh and all things D&D, please go to dungeonsanddragons.com and check out the breadth of live D&D programming and interviews available on twitch.tv/dnd. You can also listen to interviews involving Ghosts of Saltmarsh as well as D&D mechanics and lore on Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh combines some of the most popular classic adventures from the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons including the classic ‘U’ series, plus some of the best nautical adventures from the history of DungeonMagazine:

• The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
• Danger at Dunwater
• The Final Enemy
• Salvage Operation
• Isle of the Abbey
• Tammeraut’s Fate
• The Styes

All adventures have been faithfully adapted to the fifth edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons. Furthermore, this book includes details on the port town of Saltmarsh, as well as plenty of adventure hooks for each chapter. Play through the whole story in a seafaring campaign leading characters from level 1 through level 12, or Dungeon Masters can easily pull out sections to place in ongoing campaigns in any setting. The appendices also cover mechanics for ship-to-ship combat, new magic items, monsters, and more!
[h=3]WHERE CAN I BUY IT?[/h]Unravel sinister secrets of the sea with Ghosts of Saltmarsh releasing in game stores, digitally and everywhere on May 21, 2019. An alternate art cover with a distinctive design and soft-touch finish is available exclusively in game stores on May 21.

Price:[FONT=&amp] $49.95 [/FONT]
Release Date: [FONT=&amp]21 May, 2019 [/FONT]
Format:[FONT=&amp] Hardcover

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[Parmandur]

Thinking about it - this seems like the best way to do an "environmental" book. I loved reading the 3e Environmental books, but, at the end of the day, it was a lot of work to then turn around and take all the goodies in that book and apply it to whatever adventure I was running. Having a series of modules all based around using the nautical rules means I can get a LOT more use out of a book like this.

And, the fact that they are opening up Dungeon Magazine means that good grief, they have sooooo many modules to pull from. Creating more "themed" books would be an absolute snap. It's probably harder to figure out what not to include than anything else.

Sweet.

Yeah, it really blows open the possibilities for future books.

 

[oreofox]

The problem I have with all the adventures in the book is that they're deadweight if you don't want to run them or have run them already.

Honestly, that's really all of the 5e books. I only use the adventures for possible monsters. The adventures for the most part mean nothing to me. SCAG is about 70% useless if you don't use Forgotten Realms, with the only useful bits being the cantrips and the subclasses. Volo's is about 50% useless if you don't give a damn about the lore stuff in Chapter 1. Xanathar's has a bit of dead weight with the Appendix B, and possibly Chapter 2. Mordenkainen's is about 90% pointless if you only cared about monsters (all the way in Chapter 6) and had no use for the Blood War or the other stuff about the races. Ghosts of Saltmarsh will have lots of dead weight if you have no desire for the adventures and just want the nautical rules portion.

Not calling them "Player's Handbook 2" or "Monster Manual 2" is great. Shoving rather useless information in 50% of the book when I and numerous others just want a book of monsters, is not so great and is getting rather annoying after 4.5 years. Yes, I am sure there are numerous people out there who make use of the parts I consider "useless". And making every book a $50 256 page hardback full color book gets old as well. I miss the soft cover books of 3rd edition (prior to the revision, when they decided to go with 100% full color hardcovers). But I guess with such a snail's pace of a release schedule, they need to do so for the income.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I am seeing a LOT of crossover potential here...

View attachment 105037

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, that's really all of the 5e books. I only use the adventures for possible monsters. The adventures for the most part mean nothing to me. SCAG is about 70% useless if you don't use Forgotten Realms, with the only useful bits being the cantrips and the subclasses. Volo's is about 50% useless if you don't give a damn about the lore stuff in Chapter 1. Xanathar's has a bit of dead weight with the Appendix B, and possibly Chapter 2. Mordenkainen's is about 90% pointless if you only cared about monsters (all the way in Chapter 6) and had no use for the Blood War or the other stuff about the races. Ghosts of Saltmarsh will have lots of dead weight if you have no desire for the adventures and just want the nautical rules portion.

Not calling them "Player's Handbook 2" or "Monster Manual 2" is great. Shoving rather useless information in 50% of the book when I and numerous others just want a book of monsters, is not so great and is getting rather annoying after 4.5 years. Yes, I am sure there are numerous people out there who make use of the parts I consider "useless". And making every book a $50 256 page hardback full color book gets old as well. I miss the soft cover books of 3rd edition (prior to the revision, when they decided to go with 100% full color hardcovers). But I guess with such a snail's pace of a release schedule, they need to do so for the income.

So, to start with, we must admit that the strategy seems to be working like gangbusters for the game.

That being said, the 50% you find "rather useless" might be one of the main draw for someone else, and a third might find it all relevant. Another might have no use for any of it.

What WotC says they have found is that by doing their releases this way, they sell more books. Not just, "we need to pad this to make up numbers," but just selling more overall books than they used to, with less overhead. If people stop buying them, things will change. But as it is, this works better.

 

[guachi]

This fits my experience when I ran them.

U1 - nice adventure. PCs massacred the poor smugglers. Only one with an actual nautical element.

U2 - shaggy dog story. PCs worked out they should talk to the lizardmen; skipped 95% of the adventure.

U3 - terrible adventure; no sane PC of listed level is going in that place. We quickly gave up.

My basic experience as well. U1 is great but I don't think most groups will find U2 or U3 enjoyable.

U1 is a great two-session adventure (4 hour sessions) to start players off. My version of it has about 1500 xp in part one, enough to make a party level 2 (and hand wave if they aren't).

Run it three times in 5e.

The other adventures I gave a pass on after trying to run them.

I put Saltmarsh in Mystara, Karameikos to be specific. The Sinister Secret of Sulescu, set on the cost of Karameikos in the sleepy fishing village of Sulescu

 

[epithet]

...
Lastly, Mike Mearls wrote Salvage Operation. According to an old Twitter post of his, it was originally meant to be a Shadowrun adventure.

They’ll probably open Shadowrun as a setting on the DM’s Guild before they let people offer content for Greyhawk.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m pleased to see the town of Saltmarsh is going to be included in the book. I have fond memories of the version from 3.5e’s DMG 2.

It’s a shame they couldn’t squeeze in N4 - Treasure Hunt along with some rules for level 0 characters. That would’ve been cool.

Aren’t Isle of the Abbey and U1 - Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh both for levels 1-3, though? I wonder how they’re going to work that out. TftYP didn’t have any level range overlap.

Lastly, Mike Mearls wrote Salvage Operation. According to an old Twitter post of his, it was originally meant to be a Shadowrun adventure.

Based on what the book description states, this looks to be more a freewheeling location-based sandbox, with the various modules being more geographic than linear like an AP.

Better organized than TftTP, which while great, was just a grabbag of stuff.

 

[dwayne]

WRONG WRONG WRONG. According to my penciled in notes it is two hexes from the City State of the Invicinble Warlord. And part of great Finger Bay. Next to the Great Swamp. OF JASPER'S WORLD.
In other words I think you are griping to be griping. Now quit bothering us old people. Got to your corner and roll your favorite d20 until half the edges are worn off.

funny i gave links to the facts about the adventure being in greyhawk and here you say it is not. But like most facts don't matter to you people now days.

 

[Parmandur]

D&D Beyond just posted an interview with Kate Welch about this book, let the hype begin:

https://youtu.be/GajoKmh9-68

 

[Remathilis]

From the D&D Facebook page:

You know what your fantasy world needs right about now? An adventure told on the high seas, a story of a port town with sinister secrets, an archipelago full of undead mysteries, and a 256-page book from D&D to put all that at your fingertips. Ghosts of Saltmarsh adapts the U1-3 adventures from the 80s to a full campaign for use with fifth edition D&D including magic items, monsters, and rules on running your own ship battles and economy. Dungeon Masters can easily place Saltmarsh on any coast of any world you can imagine, including the Sword Coast, Eberron or even Greyhawk where these adventures were originally set. Ghosts of Saltmarsh releases everywhere on May 21. Grab the special alternate cover depicting a snarling sahuagin by N.C. Winters is available only in game stores on May 21.
#GhostofSaltmarsh #DungeonsandDragons #DnD
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/ghosts-saltmarsh

Emphasis mine.