In Ghosts of Saltmarsh, explore the waves above and the fathoms below in this watery adventure.
Nestled on the coast of the Azure Sea is Saltmarsh, a sleepy fishing village that sits on the precipice of destruction. Smugglers guide their ships to hidden coves, willing to slit the throat of anyone foolhardy enough to cross their path. Cruel sahuagin gather beneath the waves, plotting to sweep away coastal cities. Drowned sailors stir to unnatural life, animated by dark magic and sent forth in search of revenge. The cult of a forbidden god extends its reach outward from a decaying port, hungry for fresh victims and willing recruits. While Saltmarsh slumbers, the evils that seek to plunder it grow stronger. Heroes must arise to keep the waves safe!
This adventure advances characters from Level 1 to 12
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This adventure uses the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition ruleset. New players, or experienced players coming back to D&D, can download a free copy of the Basic Rules to get started, or purchase the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook.
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Our group is one that likes to get to know its environment and co-create the story and setting. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a great setting for doing so because there’s a rich backdrop of setting, lore, and mystery to explore. I’d also recommend this particular adventure if you’ve always wanted to be a pirate doing pirate stuff, and you’ve always wanted to breathe underwater and defy all the rules of physics.
Allison as a DM is more than willing to let our group go where it may, and heaven knows where that might be in any given week. When we take a particular session off the rails, she’s right there with us, but also steps up to pull the group back on track when it really needs to happen. This flexibility and willingness to improvise is an excellent quality that not all DMs have. Much appreciated!
This is one of the classic campaigns of D&D. It not only has brutal fights it has complex role play interactions. It was the first online campaign I ever played and I honestly didn’t know what I might be getting myself into. From the first Allison made the experience easy and available to me as a player and always had time for any questions I had about games and mechanics. It was in this campaign that I learned how to properly manage resources when DMing myself and how to maximize the experience for the players because Allison makes that a consistent objective for our game. I even met some really great people who I love playing with. The thing that really stands out for me is how the DM can manage all of our diverse playstyles into a cohesive playing experience. As a first campaign it raised the bar very high for any I may experience for the future. I just wish we could have become shark people.
I love a good Swords and Sails story and Allison helped us tell a good one. There were challenging fights in interesting locales and the opportunity to roleplay with a strange cast of characters. A good bit of exploration was thrown in too as we tried to figure out what was happening around Saltmarsh. Allison was a wonderful DM and perfectly adapted to the chaos we brought with each session
Rolling Tides was one of my longest campaigns, I started out at level 5 and was there until the end.
Ghost of Saltmarsh is a series of classic D&D adventures happening in and around Saltmarsh.
I think it was a good campaign and Allison did a great job as DM.
Rolling tides was one of my first campaigns played and I had a lot of fun playing it with my reluctant warlock Halfling.
The campaign merges together a number of somewhat stand alone episodes within a wider campaign and in doing so gives the players a nice spread of different modes of play.
There were sea voyages, dungeon crawls, diplomacy missions, mysteries, sea battles and more, as well as some time for character interactions.
Allison did a great job in weaving these strands together into a compelling and fun adventure.
I had a blast (an eldritch blast).