Ghosts of Saltmarsh - Episode 1

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 the lead up to the first session we got all the characters worked up. The party ended up being composed entirely of non-humans (a halfling, gnome, dwarf and two half-elves). This proves useful for group cohesion as they see themselves a little bit as outsiders in the mostly human town, but with few better options for them at the moment, they have decided to stay.

To begin our campaign, I wanted to ease the new players into roleplaying so I didn't start directly with Chapter 2, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Instead I laid the ground work for the level 1 adventure that takes place in the ruins of Warthalkeel, Mephits Mischief. The campaign started with the party in the empty common room of the Snapping Line, eating breakfast together. A commotion is heard on the street, spilling into the tavern's kitchen and then into the common room. Two mud mephits are wreaking havoc in Saltmarsh. The Line's proprietor, Hanna Rist, implores the party to stop those things. A quick and fun fight ensues in the common room with several PC's being stuck with mud. This fairly harmless encounter did a great job of letting them get their feet underneath them without any real threat to the characters (unlike Lost Mine of Phandelver's Black Arrows encounter).

As the fight concluded, Manistrad Copperlocks bursts into the common room, hot on the trail of the mephits demanding the return of the item the mephits stole from her. Right away you can see we are diverging from the hook provided in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Manistrad take a a few beats to cool down and explain that three mephits broke into her office and stole a very important scroll tube, and its contents, which she will not name. Learning that only two mephits were present in the fight, she offers the party 100 go to track it down, which got bumped up to 120 gp with some good roleplaying.

Manistrad informs the party that the mine has been dealing with these mephits for over a week, but this is the first time they have made it to Saltmarsh. She wants them to go the the mine and speak with the dwarf she put in charge of dealing with the mephit problem, one Horvak Blunderstein.

They accept and head for mine. On their way, they observe the dilapidated ruins of an old house on the cliffs overlooking the sea (foreshadowing).

At the mine they head to the tavern first and meet one of the character's brothers (the dwarven rouge Travok's brother works in the mine) there. He helps them find Horvak in the crowd of dwarves who are all deep in their cups. After some light questioning he decides they might be able to help him and tells the party he can show them where the mephits are coming from. 

They go for a short hike along the shoreline for a few hours and arrive at the ruins of Warthalkeel and Horvak informs them they are coming from somewhere in the submerged ruins. He gives each party member a potion of waterbreathing he procured from the mine's quartermaster and said he would wait on there shore for their return.

And that's where the session ended.

If you're familiar with the intro as written you know it's the priest of Procan, Wellgar Brinehanded, who sets the party on their way to Warthalkeel. The halfling barbarian, Garret Thorngage, hates clerics due to backstory reasons, so Wellgar didn't seem like a good choice for initial quest giver. Setting up Manistrad as the groups Patron provides an NPC they will hopefully be more sympathetic towards, which at least on first pass seems to be the case.

I'm really excited to see where this game goes. Look for Episode 2 coming soon.