The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh - your experiences?

[Sholari]

I got to play Ned Shakeshifter as an NPC. The other players though i was joining the campaign.

Oh, man, I got them good about the time that the green slime hit them, as well as some skeletons. I was also deliberately making sure that I was 'missing' my find trap rolls.

Dude, you rock.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Another of my favorite 1st ed. scenarios. I have even converted it to run with a couple of different games besides AD&D. I like adventures with mystery,

The Auld Grump

 

[frankthedm]

Dissappointed? I would be glad to find out i was not haunted back in the 1e days of permenant aging and level drain from the undead!

on Flooding
I would like to see the map on U3.

Rather than just unflooding the complex, place trapped pockets of air in appropriate locations. These might be useful to PCs if they use them strategicly. Also makes a fine trap if the sahaugin find a way to poison the air of a pocket or two. Might even worsen the DC for the poison a fair amount or make the dose double strength.

Your final stroke brings your head into the trapped pocket of air. You draw in a deap breath of the air you lungs burn for. To your dismay the air here only worsens the burning. You try to force as much of the toxic gas from your lungs as you begin to swim away, do you swim back the way you came as you try and keep the burning blackness in you mind from taking over or do you pray to your gods that the next pocket is close ahead. Things look grim…

 

[Kalendraf]

I played in it during the 1e days. We solved U1 without much hardship, seeing thru the fake hauntings and then taking out the bad guys without much difficulty. We moved on to U2 and solved it diplomatically in like 10 minutes. The DM was a bit pissed that we'd figured that out, I think. We moved directly to U3, but of course our diplomatic solution had left us fairly inexperienced and the tougher combats in U3 shredded us. After suffering heavy losses, what was left of our group left.

I obtained the adventures from my previous DM, and ran them for a different group in the late 90's using 2nd edition rules. They handled U1 w/o much problem, and they too managed to reach a diplomatic solution to U2 after just 1 minor skirmish outdoors. I ran a small adventure in between U2 and U3 to boost them up and then provided them with dozens of lizardmen and human guards as extras for assaulting U3. We used tokens on a smaller sized grid and managed to achieve the objectives in U3 w/o suffering any party losses. But most of the lizardmen and other guards bit the dust. They managed to conquer a few of the bigger foes like the priests and one of the giant sharks. The shark actually swallowed one of the characters, but the party cut them free before they died.

I wound up using U1-U3 as a prelude to the Evil Tide/Night of the Shark/Sea of Blood series. The underwater gear found in U3 was of great aid here. IIRC, the party completed the first one, but the campaign ended due to other reasons before they finished all 3.

 

[jasper]

Salt marsh is the only series IMC which has been totally locked. Locked being module will never be replayed but maps maybe reused or new pcs can visit old pcs who are now located in Salt marsh.

The players and I had ball running it. I located it just outside the City state of the invincible overlord. Between adventures the group visited the city state. Had a PC free slaves, get married, and buy the manor.

And while he was in the city state met back up with an npc from the ship. Got the npc to join the party after the players played a game of who can we get tossed in jail. As the group got released from jail a typhoon came up. While most of players wanted to stay indoors, Bola bob pc remembered he was married. Literally slapping himself. And dashed back to the manor to the waiting sight of his dear wife unloading a crossbow bolt at him and how dare leave a poor defenseless woman alone. She had bought a dog (cool Joe and yes it was base on the other dog) and cat.

With the side adventures and npc help the final module was hard but I don’t think they lost anyone permanently. Three of pcs have become npcs imc. Of the three npcs one is still kicking around my campaign and the other two died recently in a low level adventure. (criticals yuck).

 

[Style]

Only run these a couple of times but they were fine stuff - a nice change from the dungeoneering of other 1e products. Once we had gotten past the usual oddities that plague my games ("So, I can actually buy 200 chickens with the money I have left over? Will they come with me on adventures?") the adventure settled into cool mystery/horror territory.

The giant weasel did for one PC in the entryway (2d6 bite damage - ouch!) and the rot grubs came close to getting another in the cellar. Still, the PCs were very pleased at their magical armour so counted it worthwhile. Ned the Evil NPC duped both groups - the first let him get away and the second did very, very bad things to him before killing him.

Oceanus joined the group as an NPC and later as a PC and the various townsfolk became regular faces as well. A local beer (Saltmarsh Muddy) ended up being a permanent fixture in the game. Many years later war came to the Saltmarsh coast and the village was deserted. The (by then) high level PCs went to great trouble to get the brewery equipent, the brewer and his secret recipe to safety before the Hordes of Evil NPCdom descended upon the region.

I agree with the assessments of U2 - all too easy to bypass the "adventure" part and reduce the module to 20 minutes of chatting and then a crocodile and a dragon. Hmmmm. It was fun to play and great for the players to realise that they had found a "shortcut" but I'd have preferred more bang for my buck. Or less buck.

U3 was a real thinking man's adventure. No way a frontal assault will work - this is totally an underwater commando raid. With sharks. And a giant octopus. Really enjoyed the imprisoned NPCs and the maddening claustrophobia of it. One group managed to finish it too, but declined to join in the lizard man assault upon the lair. Probably wise. The chickens would only have gotten themselves killed.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I never played or DMd U2 or U3.

Ned was always a problem for me. Played stupid he's a norma-to-easy encounter. Played smart he can take out a party member or two and still get away. He can be especially devestating if he frags the party wizard or cleric. I never could figure out how to strike a good balance between those two extreems.

 

[Squire James]

I remember assigning the party 12 lizardmen and about 6 men-at-arms going with the party to help secure the fortress in U3. I wrote a little program on my powerful computer system (16k of memory!) that randomly determined, given the number of attackers, how many attacked each lizard man, man-at-arms, and actual PC. There was a room with over 100 sahuagin that I (correctly) guessed would need such a program, since I had never heard of playing with minis back then. It took hours, but it was an epic fight and fun was had by all!

No PC's died, but all the humans and all but 2 of the lizardmen "took one for the team". Since it was the computer program that decided the targets, it wasn't like the PC's were using these guys as shields or anything.

 

[painandgreed]

Loved U1, but never played any of the others. Most of the groups I DMed never trusted Ned enough to free him let alone allow him any weapons. When they did, he was largely ineffective and sometimes he joined the party (breifly) because they had obviously won already.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Loved U1, but never played any of the others. Most of the groups I DMed never trusted Ned enough to free him let alone allow him any weapons. When they did, he was largely ineffective and sometimes he joined the party (breifly) because they had obviously won already.

My memory of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is taking a pass when painandgreed wanted to run it.