The RPG Study

Rather than giving a play-by-play style recap or our second session, I would like to just give my impressions of the content from Ghosts of Saltmarsh (GoSM) that was used for this particular session, namely the Ruins of Warthalkeel. In Appendix A of GoSM, there is a series of three adventure locations set under the sea. Each location has a standard layout and inhabitants, but also contains four Adventures that be grafted on top of this location which interact with the default elements of the adventure locale. Each of these adventures is for a different party level and I must say, I love this approach, though it's not perfect. Of the three, only one of the adventure locations has a first level adventure and it also happens to be my favorite of the three locales: Warthalkeel. The setup I used was a bit modified from the hook provided in the book . The actual ruins themselves were great. My players had a good time exploring the wreckage of this doomed town. I set an actual timer of on...

In a delightful twist of fate, I have been asked by a group of players I didn't even know were an organized group to be their DM. I happily accepted, especially as the time constraints of the group fit quite nicely into my personal schedule. And of course, another game means another opportunity to try and play some of the voluminous D&D content I have acquired since I began DMing. I have wanted to play Ghosts of Saltmarsh for years now. I loved the concept of a campaign assembled from disparate adventures, it's typically how I build mine rather than following one long adventure path style campaign, but could never find a good way to integrate it into an ongoing game. The players in this new campaign are generally new to D&D, or returning to it after some time away. As such, the desire for a classic fantasy RPG was high. I decided an adventure in the grim world of Greyhawk would be just the thing. We have been using Discord to coordinate and organize our campaign and in ...