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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[S'mon]

I'm not sure how I feel about this. If all they do is update the stats, I'll be very disappointed.

I actually ran the U series recently, and found that while it had some fairly unique ideas for its time, it is now severely dated.

SPOILERS for decades old scenarios ahead...

U1 is OK, but a bit slow. Could do with some jazzing up.

U2 mostly consists of a dungeon that you're not actually supposed to run through. The innovative idea here is that the optimal strategy is to negotiate with the "monsters". Unfortunately, once the designers came up with that gem of an idea, they didn't know what to do with it. There isn't much guidance for making such negotiations interesting, and the bulk of the material presented is only useful if the players choose the sub-optimal strategy of murder-hoboing.

U3 has the innovation of a dungeon that's kind of "realistic" in that it's mostly populated with one kind of creature, in the kind of numbers they would need to actually be the threat the series needs them to be. But if the DM also plays their reactions to intrusions in a realistic way, no party of a few PCs will have much survivability. They really need a lot of allies to mount a full-scale military assault - so what the DM needs is some rules for mass combat (which we didn't get then, and don't seem to be getting in the new book either).

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.

 

[Mhyr]

Is the 21st the release date in general or only preferred stores? (As in „I hope the preferred stores get in sooner!“)

 

[Morrus]

Is the 21st the release date in general or only preferred stores? (As in „I hope the preferred stores get in sooner!“)

It's Amazon's date, which is usually the later date.

 

[akr71]

Two things.

1) My son has been pushing for a pirate adventure for the "next campaign." Hopefully this fits the bill - fingers crossed that the sea faring rules portion of the book is worth at least a fraction of the cover price.

2) I hope that this is a peak into an updated Greyhawk setting, even if it is just the Saltmarsh area, with a short notes on how to port it into other published settings. As was said above, that was one of the nice things about TftYP. Adventuring on the high seas should be relatively setting neutral.

 

[jasper]

This was set in Greyhawk The town of Saltmarsh was. I am wondering did they steal this from the original setting to put it in the genericx realms or is it in the setting that is was set in from the start.

They would have to changed jack. I will have pull the modules but all you need is a port. A swamp about 20 miles away. I never read the Dungeon mag.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Nice try, but we won't be made happy just by giving us exactly what we've been demanding!

Heh. This assumes that what they're giving is indeed exactly what people want.

The problem I have with YP and likely this is that they're just fairly minimal effort ports of forty year old old modules. The older modules are great in many ways, but they have a lot of flaws or design choices that were normal back then but aren't so great now. It's like putting out a greatest hits with direct transfers from masters done years ago. Or if you want another analogy, try playing a classic FPS like Doom on a modern system without a good emulator.

More broadly, I'm really not a fan of the "wide net" style trying to get me to buy each book where I won't use or even consider over half the content. It feels quite overtly manipulative. The last WotC book I bought was Mordenkainen's, which was just loaded with a lot of fluff I didn't care about and was thinner on the monsters I did. I'm fairly sure I haven't used anything from it, or, if so, minimally. A book that's got 30 pages of nautical rules which I quite likely would use a lot, but is otherwise loaded with a bunch of reprinted adventures I probably won't use isn't a good buy for me. To be clear, I've run Saltmarsh at least three times and have a still running campaign that started with it!

I'd be a lot happier if there was a cool wilderness and nautical oriented hardcover with some nifty monsters, PC builds, magic items, and some rule systems, making it a book I'd very likely bring with me, and then modern ports of these adventures available as PoD.

So... I'm probably exiting the market.

 

[jasper]

Its still a greyhawk set. Its STILL the strong pattern of taking stuff from greyhawk to FR.

IT is VERY MUCH a greyhawk module

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.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

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.

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. The nice thing about the old module format was it was super light and you could leave them at home if you didn't need their content. Hardcovers are heavy. My D&D stack is downright hard to carry now and I'm highly reluctant to add another to the pile.

I know... I know... according to WotC's marketing plan, I "should" be buying two copies of this and having it all electronic, but... nope.

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.

There are indeed some really excellent Dungeon Magazine adventures. I'd love for those to be more available.

 

[SkidAce]

I would dearly love to see the Mystara B and X modules fully converted to 5E. Nostalgia alone would propel money out of my wallet at record speeds...

Quoted for truth...

 

[John R Davis]

A full update of UK 1-7 would make be very happy
Somewhat excited by GOS