GoSM Episode 2 - The Ruins of Warthalkeel

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 one hour for their underwater exploration, which is the in-game duration of a potion of waterbreathing. I thought this might be a fun way to ensure we got through the town in a single session and provide some impetus for self guided play. Want to return to the ruins? You'll need to find another way to breathe underwater, etc.

As a side note to all DMs: use real world timers in your game. The added pressure that comes from such a constraint can help your players focus on the events of the game and motivate them to act with intention. But don't overdo it. Too much pressure like this can strip the game of its fun, escapist elements. Make sure to be generous with the time limit set. In the example above, I would add back a minute or two here and there for various reasons, so all told they probaby had an hour and fifteen minutes, but each time I added back to the timer, it felt like a huge win to the players. Use timers as another tool in your DM's tool kit, but use it sparingly.

Anyway, back to the ruins. My players really bought into the exploration and trying to figure out what happened to the town, and what was the deal with the kraken. These elements and themes of an old one will heavily influence the rest of our campaign, especially Trev, the Great Old One Warlock.

I was worried about Yalaga Maladwyn, the undead drow priestess. As written she attacks anybody she catches stealing from the temple and I have never known a party to pass on looting a ruined temple. As a CR 8 creature I would fully expect her decimate a first level party. Fortunately, with the time limit they never found her.

They did find the trapped door in the Krakens Vault. The average damage of the spectral tentacle that forms and lashes out at anyone foolish enough to touch the door can take most first level characters below 0. I got low rolls luckily for the PC, but this highlights one of the pitfalls of this approach to adventure location design, much as I like it.

Specifically that is hard to cover a range of levels in a single location in a generic fashion without either having something be too powerful and deadly, or just a nuisance and no real threat. A 13th level PC trying to open this door during the Extended Life quest could easily shrug off the tentacles 2d6 psychic damage.

An approach that could work would be to scale traps and monsters based on the level range. Changing the number of damage dice rolled for traps for example or the stat blocks used for monsters and NPC's.

All-in-all it was a great session and I really enjoyed the ruined town as a place for the PC's to explore. Based on the ongoing story implications I definitely foresee a return visit, at a higher level, in the parties future.