Dungeons & Dragons: Ghosts of Saltmarsh Review

Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

Pros:

• Production values we've come to expect for this edition (including art). The art style and quantity remains high in this book.
• 7 adventures/dungeons going from levels 1 to 11.
• A good spread of adventures with different elements. Though most involve some sort of dungeon or map, they go over a wide range of environments and situations. From seemingly abandoned ships found floating in the water, to a murder mystery, to trying to haul wreckage from the bottom of the ocean, there’s probably something that’ll catch your interest.

Could Go Either Way:

• It’s largely re-interpretations of existing adventures. They even have pictures of the original modules at the start. That means if you already have them, or have your own conversion to D&D 5^th edition,
• The adventures tend to have combat/delving components with some role-play portions. Some are heavier on the role-play than others. This means that if you tests gravitate away from that style, it may not work for you.
• As maps are largely taken from earlier adventures or done in that style, you might be disappointed if you prefer the more detailed style of the newer adventures.

Cons:

• The adventures are all framed around one location, though can be transferred to different settings. Beyond that, however, about half of them aren’t connected. Want a connected big campaign? Look elsewhere. The three that are connected though make for a good mini-campaign if boats, and lizardfolk are your thing.
• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

The covers. I particularly like the one on the left.

Introduction

The number of modules that have been published for D&D is vast. Many different settings, locations, and subject matters have been made the subject of a dungeon delve. Like Tales from the Yawning Portal, this book takes a bunch of old adventures and brings them up-to-date for the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons. This time the adventures are set around Saltmarsh, and around the presence of water. Much of what I said about that book holds true for this one too.

By far my favourite picture from the book. I'd frame it and put it on my wall.

The Adventure

New Monsters

There are about 27 pages of monsters and NPCs at the end of the book. Some, like the bard, have already been features in other books. However, there is distinct increase from some other released adventures. Keep it coming for the next one.

What You Need to Play

You'll need the core books (you could skip the Player’s Handbook, but your players might like you less). They are still making no effort to reference the SRD or the basic rules. Those 2 lines sound familiar? Seems that’s the current normal. You probably already have the core books at this point, but it would’ve been nice if they had allowed it to be played with the SRD and core rules like some of the earlier adventures.

Another example of the art you can expect. Enjoy your cruise.

The Adventures Themselves

It’s not just one adventure again. We’ve got 7. That seems to be a magic number in this edition, since that’s the same as Tales from the Yawning Portal. Generally, I feel that it’s better balanced than Tales from the Yawning Portal, with a wider assortment of gimmicks and situations.

Being that they are D&D adventures, it’s hard to escape dungeon delving. It was the bread and butter of adventures for a long time. However, the nice thing about this one is that the way the delving is framed has a good deal of variety. Houses, ships, isles, cities/towns and traditional dungeons are all here.

The adventures are also better related than the previous best of collection, however not as closely related as you may like. The first three adventures form a mini-campaign of sorts. They directly tie together and the results of one lead to the other. It is one of those classic multi-module adventures, so that’s to be expected. The rest of it is still centred around the theme of sailing and generally around the location of Saltmarsh, but doesn’t tie in as neatly. It’s not a campaign. It’s a collection of related adventures going from level 1 to level 11.

Now, that is also the strength of these kinds of books. Your players got a new ship and are going travelling on the ocean? Oh, you want to make a cool side quest? Bam, they find a seemingly abandoned ship floating on the water. Of course some work needs to be done in order to make the adventure still work in context, but it’s less work than making it from scratch. And even if you do mostly do it from scratch, it added elements that made it better and inspired you to do it in the first place.

What is really nice about this book is that we have rules for ships. There are stats for multiple kinds of ships along with maps for them. There are explanations of crews, rules for mutinies, travel pace, repairs, stealth, and ship related hazards/complications. It’s the kind of thing I’d liked to have seen in a separate document or Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. It’s not exactly in the adventure themselves, but it really helps to tie it all together and helps you improvise events before arriving at the adventure themselves. Sailing to one of the adventures could involve possible mutinies, or coming across hazards on their way there. I’m really happy to see these kinds of tools being provided for Dungeon Masters. I wish the maps provided were usable as battle maps right out of the box. Blow them up, have them in high quality and provide them on your website or Dragon+. That would have been great. Otherwise you’ll probably just end up using another map you found on drivethrurpg.com that is ready to go, or spend your precious time adapting it. Blowing it up will reduce the quality so you’ll probably need to redraw it, or use 3D printable tiles to replicate the decks.

A good 22 pages or so of the book is dedicated to fleshing out and describing Saltmarsh. This includes some important figures, the general political climate, the history of the location, as well as a very nice map. This also includes ways to tie the backgrounds from the Player’s Handbook to Saltmarsh. Sure, we could do that ourselves but having other people’s ideas for this sort of thing can be extremely helpful. At the end we also have pages taken for the ship rules, magic items (all 2 pages of them), and monsters. This leaves us with roughly 150 pages for the 7 adventures, which is a fairly decent page length. This is especially true when we see that the book has less republished than some other previously published books.

I like that time is taken to detail ship wrecks. I admittedly “borrowed” that part since my players decided to take a session to go on a ship wreck hunting expedition while waiting for something else. It’s not a large part of the book, but it’s a nice touch that I appreciate.

Don’t read beyond if you don’t want spoilers, however light.

I don’t often go into plot details, but this time I’ll give a sentence or two in no specific order. The three linked adventures involve exploring a supposedly haunted house, which leads to illegal weapon shipments and their cause. We explore a ghost ship. That’s ghost as in abandoned, not a literal ghost. We try to catch a killer. We go through what’s best described as D&D meets Lovecraft. And fight to clear an island to help people build a light house.

The adventures that are adapted are as follows, ranging from the 1980s to the 2000s:

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

Danger at Dunwater

Salvage Operation

Isle of the Abbey

The Final Enemy

Tammeraut’s Fate

The Styes

Spoilers are over. Enjoy your freedom!

Many maps are done in this style.

The Art and Book Build Quality

The build and art quality continues to be consistent. Art is plentiful and in the same style as we’ve come to expect, and I’d still like more artwork done in a realistic style. Still, it looks good. The map of Saltmarsh is particularly nice. I had no defects on my book either, but if you’re getting the book in person I would recommend taking a flip through to ensure there are no issues. The big issues I’ve run into before is binding issues, and stuck pages.

Price

It's the same list price we've gotten used to at 49.95 USD. If you are Canadian 63.95 CAD again. As always, you can find it for cheaper if you look around or if you wait.

What I felt was Missing

No PDF. You all knew I’d say it.

Anyway, moving along I would have liked to see more attention given to the ship and ships. This is our big reveal for ship based stuff in this edition. Why not expand on it into it’s own mini supplement and put it into Dragon+ magazine? Boarding rules, massive ship combat rules, a vast assortment of different ship sizes with battle map images of the decks and interiors. You know, jump right into the whole ship thing. They get close to it with the images for the different kinds of ships, but they are still not big enough to use for battle maps.

A more typical example of the art you can expect inside.

Free Stuff

Unfortunately there’s nothing to see here. I think the ship and sailing rules would be a good thing to add the core rules. It almost feels like something that should be in a Dungeon Master’s Guide 2.

Summary

It’s a nice collection of water and ship related adventure updated for Dungeons & Dragons 5^th edition. However, there is a nice variety of adventures with their own special touches. Want to investigate a recently discovered ship, and then escape while a giant octopus? Want a murder mystery? Want to explore a supposedly haunted house? All that and more awaits. They’ve all been released before, so if you already have them you may find it hard to justify. If you didn’t like Tales from the Yawning Portal, it’s similar to that but water themed.