Ghosts of Saltmarsh (Dungeons Dragons, 5th Edition) by Wizards of the Coast

Ghosts of Saltmarsh (Dungeons Dragons, 5th Edition) Reviews

• 
  Michael

  If you read my review of Tales From the Yawning Portal, then you know of my fondness for adventure compilations. Translating an adventure from one edition of the game to another is not an easy feat, so I'm eternally grateful when someone else does the hard work. A big problem with Yawning Portal is that it only existed to compile a clump of adventures between two covers. Rather than picking modules with a unifying theme from within, the Wizards team instead adapted modules with a unifying theme from without: some of the most (in)famous adventures in the game's history, all of which are long out-of-print in their physical incarnations. Excellent for grognards like me, or for curiosity seekers wondering what all the fuss with Tomb of Horrors was about, but not so hot for new Dungeon Masters looking for a campaign suited for new players.
  
  Ghosts of Saltmarsh, by contrast, corrects much of what Wizards didn't get right with the previous translation anthology. So let's dig deeper and see what Saltmarsh holds for your party of scurvy landlubbers, shall we? Also, here there be minor spoilers. Anyone complaining will be keelhauled, then used as bait to troll for sharks.
  
  Hoist Up the Sails!
  Ghosts of Saltmarsh, as previously mentioned, compiles seven separate adventures into one campaign all themed around nautical exploration, meant to take a group of 1st level PCs all the way to level 15 or thereabouts. Anyone who gets sea-sick or hates the smell of brine will be downright miserable. Here's a quick run-down of the stories you'll find within:
  
  - "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh", written by Don Turnbull and David J. Brown, was originally published by TSR's UK division back in 1981 as U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Much like Gary Gygax's B2: The Keep on the Borderlands, the adventure is centered on a remote frontier settlement which gives the PCs both a base of operations and plenty of opportunities to get into trouble. While the oceans are no place for low-level characters, this story has them investigating a haunted house on the edge of town. Once they've learned what's really going on, and are a bit better prepared to face it, they will move on to...
  
  - "Danger At Dunwater". Part two of the "Saltmarsh" campaign written by Brown and Turnbull, this module was published as U2: Danger At Dunwater in 1982, and follows up on the events of the previous adventure. Now that the PCs have some experience under their belts, it's time to find out who was behind all the smuggling and kidnapping they rooted out in Sinister Secret. This leads them to a lair of lizardfolk, who are considerably better armed than expected, giving players the chance to engage in diplomacy instead of insisting on solving all their problems with broadswords and Eldritch Blasts. Assuming the party isn't composed entirely of murder-hobos, and they survive the trip through the marshlands, they may encounter a burly half-orc with an interesting job proposition, which leads into...
  
  - "Salvage Operation", a 2005 adventure for 3rd Edition written by Mike Mearls and published in issue 123 of Dungeon magazine. The PCs are hired by a noble to investigate a derelict vessel in search of a considerable sum of money which their benefactor is all too willing to share with them should they recover it. Unfortunately, as anyone who has ever played Space Hulk knows, derelict ships rarely get that way by accident, and out in the middle of the ocean, there's no one to hear you scream. Whether they actually retrieve the promised fortune or not, the waterlogged party can make their way back to dry land and rest up until danger once again comes calling in...
  
  - "Isle of the Abbey", a 1992 adventure for 2nd Edition written by Randy Maxwell and published in issue 34 of Dungeon. A local mariners guild is interested in building a lighthouse to aid passage for ships through treacherous waters, and they've found the perfect island upon which to erect it. Fortunately, the island is uninhabited: after being sacked by pirates, who burned the abbey and everything else on the remote outcropping, the pirates were themselves attacked and scattered by soldiers from the guild. All the PCs have to do is make sure the island is cleared of any remaining threats so the guild can build their lighthouse. Easy peasy lemon-squeezy, right? Suuuuuure, buddy, whatever you say.... In any case, once they've given the place the once-over, they'll be ready for a return trip to Saltmarsh to spend their coin and encounter...
  
  - "The Final Enemy", the conclusion to the original Saltmarsh trilogy by Turnbull and Brown, published in 1983 as U3: The Final Enemy. Now that they've dealt with the smugglers and figured out what's up with the lizardfolk, the denizens of Saltmarsh want the party to lead an intelligence-gathering mission into the heart of enemy territory. If the PCs can keep a lid on their noisiest and most violent tendencies and report back their findings, they'll win the honor of being first in line when the true assault begins. After the dust settles and Saltmarsh has been saved(?), a journey to greener pastures awaits in...
  
  - "Tammeraut's Fate", written by Greg Vaughn for 3rd Edition, and published in Dungeon #106 in 2004. Piracy is one of those high-risk occupations, so when the vessel Tammeraut sank with all hands aboard lost, nobody shed a tear. Five years went by peacefully, until the sudden attack on nearby Firewatch Island. The PCs are commissioned to investigate why the hermitage was over-run and determine if there's any further danger posed to the surrounding area, only to ultimately find themselves in the middle of a final stand where they are besieged on all sides. Should they manage to repel the attackers, they'll be only too happy to leave Firewatch and head for safer waters, which they absolutely will not find in...
  
  - "The Styes", written by Richard Pett for 3rd Edition, and published in Dungeon #121 in 2005. This four-part adventure serves as the campaign's capstone, bringing the PCs to a down-trodden harbor city which has fallen on hard times and is now mostly crumbling ruins filled with inhabitants too poor to leave, or too thoroughly evil to overlook the opportunities presented by the slums. Initially looking to catch a ghostly murderer, the characters come to realize there's more to The Styes than meets the eyes. For as unsafe as the streets of the former city are, the dangers there pale in comparison to those lurking in the murky waters just off-shore.
  
  With seven different adventures all themed around watery encounters, Ghosts of Saltmarsh does a far better job at building itself as a campaign world than Tales From the Yawning Portal did. The original Saltmarsh trilogy was lauded in its day for being such a different take on the "kick-in-the-door" dungeon crawl so common at the time, and the Wizards design team went to great lengths to build the town up as a base of operations suitable for low- to mid-level characters in this book. The writers assert that DMs could use both products to inter-weave a massive campaign of both sea- and land-based adventures, and given Yawning Portal offers up no such towns or cities for the PCs to call home, using Saltmarsh as the campaign's beachhead is a fine idea.
  
  All of the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh were originally set in Greyhawk, but the book includes ideas for each adventure's placement in Eberron, the Forgotten Realms, or Mystara, as well as generic information about the surrounding areas so you can tailor them into your own campaign. You'll also need to modify some of the text to reflect different pantheons as necessary, since nobody outside of Greyhawk would know or care about, for example, deities like Iuz or Tharizdun.
  
  Otherwise, about all you'll need to get started in Saltmarsh is photocopies of the maps, and your core rulebooks. Everything else you need, including sea vessel statistics, new adventure hooks and one-shot maps + ideas, sea travel, ship-to-ship combat, water hazards, magical items, and new monsters and NPCs is contained in the seventy pages which comprise the book's three appendices. Even if you aren't planning to run the Saltmarsh storyline, the rules for travel by boat and various ship templates open up a world of possibilities to broaden your players' horizons.
  
  I really can't say enough good things about Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The adventure choices are all solid, I didn't notice any glaring errors generated by the update to 5E the way I did with Yawning Portal, and there are as many opportunities for role-playing and problem solving as there are to lob spells and swing blades. Even if you don't use it as a full-fledged water-themed campaign, many of the adventures make for nice side-treks if you need to bolster a party's levels before they take on a more difficult task, or if you need a solid one-shot for a night when the group can't all meet up. Saltmarsh itself makes for a great base of operations for low- and mid-level PCs looking to make names for themselves before setting out for larger cities like Waterdeep.
  
  About the only thing I don't care for with this book is the same complaint I have with many other 5E hardcovers: the designers' choice to banish the statistics for monsters, NPCs, and magical items to an appendix in the back of the book, instead of right within the text where they're needed. Furthermore, they're arranged in alphabetical order instead of broken down by chapter, which makes it even more annoying to locate the information you as the DM need to know for running a particular adventure. Why 5E went with this decision I'll never know, but it flies in the face of common sense and continues to irritate me.
  
  Aside from that minor grievance though? Ghosts of Saltmarsh is an awesome total package which should serve to make your players think twice before going anywhere near a the sea. Four-and-a-half waterlogged halflings out of five!
• 
  Sara

  I'm using the book to run my first ever campaign for my book club (first time players)! I've found it easy to use and I love the various settings. I want my characters to explore beyond the pre written adventures but I was nervous about creating adventurous scenarios for them off the cuff. This book has so many helpful tables, story hooks, ideas for weaving a larger story.. it makes it easy! Plus the environments themselves are so intriguing and inspiring! Really enjoying this book and the campaign.
• 
  Shadowdenizen

  Another excellent campaign book from WotC.
  They've really been knocking it out of the park with these! (SOrry it took so long to sit and actually write a review for this!!)
  
  This is a very sandboxy supplement, with much useful supplemental information to help a nautical-based campaign.
  
  The first 3 adventures included are updates of the classic "U" Trilogy modules from 1E. (Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh/ Danger at Dunwater/ The Final Enemy".) They form a continuing adventure set in and around the city of Saltmarsh. (Orginaly in Oerth, Saltmarsh has since been trasferred to the Sword Coast of Faerun for 5E consistency.)
  
  The remaining adventures are also nautical/sea-based, but require a bit more work to integrate fully into a Saltmarsh-themed campaign. (For the campaign I'm running, I'm using "Sinister Secret" to lead into the more narratiely driven "Call from the Deep" campagin, as I have a soft-spot for all things Far-Realm related.)
  
  This module is not the MOST welcoming to new DM's, but it's far friendlier than some of the other campaigns in the 5E line.
• 
  Jasmine

  The updated central adventures were fun (already ran a modified version of one and I'm definitely going to offer the others as options to my players), but I think my favourite parts were actually the new-to-this-edition parts— the character creation options at the front and the maps and possible adventures at the back.
  
  The character options in particular have just got such a sense of buoyant joy and relishing the possibilities that mechanics can give you, story-wise— and the map adventure threads go in such wildly different tonal ways— I'm just delighted and applauding over here. If this is Kate Welch's handiwork, 5e is in good hands. (If it isn't, whatever you have in the coffee at WotC, keep buying from that supplier.)
• 
  Jon Allanson

  I really like this adventure. I have fond memories of the original, and this update is really well done. The additional adventures also updated and included round out the town and it's environs and make for excellent campaign fodder. And, the discussions of and rules for adventures at sea are wonderful for adventures set beyond the confines of this book.
• 
  b

  I’m not sure what makes this offering feel like such a useful addition to the toolbox, or makes some of the adventures so much more endearing than lots of the other offers (I’m thinking of the generally underwhelming ‘tales from the yawning portal’), but I really enjoyed this. I think this is one of the better official WotC offerings for D&D out there.
• 
  Nathan Albright

  When I read a book like this one, my goal is to see some worthwhile scenarios that one can play and some insight as to the world that D&D is set in, and this book certainly does that.  For a variety of reasons, I have been big on playing lizardman characters recently and it's a trend I think I am going to continue doing, not least because lizardmen are pretty awesome characters whose love of food and social distance from other races tends to match my own frequent moments of social awkwardness.  At any rate, this book is one that has some compelling and interesting aspects and that allows players to enjoy a scenario that involves a small town, a community of obscure lizardmen, and efforts at preventing massive evil, suitable for a variety of levels no less.  The attention to place and scope makes this a good book and the scenario is one that I could definitely see myself enjoying as either a player or a GM.  Altogether that makes this book an easy one to appreciate as well as to recommend for others to enjoy as well.  And the scenario is familiar enough that even one of my coworkers had heard of it before.
  
  This book is a bit more than 200 pages and is divided into 8 chapters and other supplementary material.  The book begins with a brief introduction.  After that the author discusses Saltmarsh, a small town with politics and factions, downtime activities, an interesting region to explore, as well as adventures and backgrounds for players (1).  After that the author discusses an initial mission that discusses the sinister secret of Saltmarsh as well as some adventure hooks (2) and then a continuing danger at Dunwater, which provides advice on how to play lizardfolk (3), something I deeply enjoy.  This leads to a discussion of a salvage operation (4) that provides some challenging gameplay and then a discussion of an isle of the abbey (5) that involves some dark doings that are worth exploring for mid-level characters.  After that the author provides a compelling scenario where an advanced party fights a final enemy (6), after which the author discusses the fate of Tammeraut (7), an even more advanced scenario that has some ways to extend the scenario, and then moves on to another adventure involving dark forces in the area (8).  Finally, the book ends with an appendix that discusses ships and the sea as well as some notes on magic items that can be given as prizes and some monsters and npcs for the various adventures.
  
  Is this scenario worthwhile to read about?  Well, if you want to add some intrigue to your playing and your characters are okay at learning how to build complex alliances with a small coastal town as well as with a lizardmen community, this scenario is definitely one that can be appreciated easily.  Not only does it provide some compelling action but it can also be a good ticket to allow characters the chance to build up reputation and even gather some property and hooks to future adventures.  The book does a good job at connecting this particular series of quests with various possible worlds, allowing it to be more than just a one-off mission but also something that can be used to connect the larger gameplay of characters and get them to engage in undersea adventures with the possibility of new friends (and enemies) as well as the acquiring of ships, which could be of interest to some.  Whether one is more interested in the trade angles or the darkness of the seas or the complex diplomacy involved, there are a lot of ways that this scenario can be a fun and useful one and that is to be celebrated.
• 
  John Stinebaugh

  An excellent resource for nautical adventures in 5e, with a collection of adventures that allow you to use them. While three of the adventures and a few of the random encounters weave together, this is not a campaign like some other supplements and you will have to make adjustments to connect all of the adventures.
• 
  Julian Meynell

  I've read five of the 5th edition adventure books and this is easily my favorite. The book is a nautical themed one. It contains seven previously published adventures as well as a detailed town (really a large village) and several nautically themed appendices. The adventures are mostly independent of one another although three do form a story arc, these can be separated from one another.
  
  The only criticism that one can make of it is that it isn't really like most 5th edition adventure books in having a strong single story. That's a criticism that is not really fair to it because the whole thing can be held together in a variety of ways one of which is briefly described in the book. I think you could play the entire thing as a very satisfactory single campaign.
  
  Nonetheless, the primary focus of the book is to provide a tool kit of options for the DM and an alternative to 5th edition style railroads. In that, it admirably succeeds. The book can be combined with Tales from the Yawning Portal to provide a mix and match campaign. The adventures in the book are consistently good (something I can't say for Yawning Portal) and I would run any of them. They also provide a lovely variety of adventures which require different approaches and provide different feels. The Styes is a particular favorite providing something more Lovecraftian than anything I thought was possible in conventional D&D.
  
  The other material is good to excellent. The initial chapter details the town of Salt Marsh which is a large, prosperous fishing village. It would be useful to anyone who does not know how to make a Dungeons and Dragons settlement. I do and now need something more eccentric to hold my interest , but this would be very useful for the new or lazy DM. The appendices flesh out the nautical rules of 5th edition which are really too sketchy for a nautical themed campaign. The most useful is a variety of ships including deck plans, handling rules and combat rules, including ship to ship combat. There is also information on maritime hazards and several aquatic locations. There are also a very large amount of new monsters all of which are used in connection with the books material but would be useful elsewhere.
  
  My problems with the book are quibbles really. There are a few aquatic monsters that 5th edition could use, such as whales, sea serpents and jellyfish swarms that would have been logical to use here. I found a single page of new magic items underwhelming but none of these criticisms are serious.
  
  I bought this book, to help me develop ideas for a Viking themed campaign. I hoped that it would help me with the maritime aspects of that. What I found was all I needed plus four adventures that could be reskinned for that campaign. It's a testament to the quality of the book that I could come with such specific needs and that the book is sufficiently flexible that it could accommodate them.
  
  It's a worthwhile effort that provides resources for virtually any DM style and I wish that all the adventure books were like this one instead of the usual 5th edition approach.
• 
  Jeremy Blum

  Ghosts of Saltmarsh contains eight adventures united by their seaside themes. Three of them are updated versions of the classic U1-U3 Saltmarsh modules, which were among the first British D&D products produced from 1981 to ‘83. These tales revolve around the players befriending local villagers and helping a lizardfolk tribe fight off invading sauhaugin, and they’re good, mostly as an example of early D&D material that required players to treat so-called “monstrous races” with diplomacy rather than violence. The other adventures are from old issues of Dungeon magazine, and run the gamut from a decent lighthouse dungeon crawl (Isle of the Abbey, from Dungeon #34) to a nifty survival horror-style ship romp (Salvage Operation, from Dungeon #123). Additionally, Ghosts of Saltmarsh contains rules for ship battles, which are good enough considering that D&D isn’t a naval combat simulator, and the book also devotes its first chapter to describing a great new version of the town of Saltmarsh to serve as a central hub.
  
  I think Ghosts of Saltmarsh’s anthology format is my preferred style of D&D hardcover book at this point. Just give me a main town that I can detail and populate with my own NPCs, a bunch of adventures taking place around the vicinity that I can hack as necessary for my players, and I’m good. This format is also reflective of D&D’s early roots, where campaigns weren’t 250-page books with save-the-world plots, but short modules focused on building clout in a certain region and establishing a base.
  
  At any rate, I ran Ghosts of Saltmarsh for about a year and a half for my girlfriend and her best friend, and we had a grand time. I far preferred this to other more convoluted D&D hardcovers that I've recently run or played through (see my reviews for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Tomb of Annihilation) and I plan to pretty much depend on anthology books for 5e from here on out. Get this if you like pirates, the sea, early D&D history or storylines that don't flop over themselves with unnecessary twists.
• 
  Brian Rogers

  This was... Interesting. I've not done much with 5E and I have to say the layout and design of the adventure book is nice. The appendix of new monsters and otherwise review to the 5E MM makes for a very clean and easy reading layout. The advice to the DM on how to handle developments and frame sequences are also well put together and makes it clear how much 5E has succeeded in its framing as being the new-player-friendly version of the game.
  
  That said, I think the book needed work on how to tie the individual adventures together. The the town of Saltmarsh and the three classic modules work fine; the conspiracy stuff in the new Saltmarsh section also hangs together very well. And then the three adventures taken from old Dungeon magazine entries are all left with just edition tweaks. It's deeply frustrating. I understand the desire to let the original creators work shine on its own, but one extra page on each adventure on edits inside the adventure proper to link it more tightly to Saltmarsh (rather than 1 paragraph on each at the beginning of the book) would have gone a long way to giving this a cohesive feel.
  
  Cohesion is really the missing word here. They adventures are generally thematically linked, but the non-Saltmarsh additions suffer from not being cohesive with the Saltmarsh stuff, and then suffer internally with the classic problems Dungeon magazine adventures - monsters that have weakly justified ties to the module, unnecessary levels of plot complication - that don't link back to Saltmarsh at all. Yes, you can fix it, but with more work than I'd like to do for a slickly produced hardcover that I would now have to festoon with notes.
  
  
• 
  Dylan

  Ghosts of Saltmarsh by Wizards of the Coast is an immersive non-setting-specific campaign that allows DMs to take their players to the coastal cities of a fantasy world and engage in naval-related combat and travel. While this does sound intriguing on the surface, there are a few issues with what this book attempts to sell itself as. While the campaign information and world-building certainly lends itself to being a great setting for either an entire campaign or a piece of a bigger world, the mechanics are incredibly clunky. There is next to no exploration of naval mechanics, combat, or travel, instead just making it a throwaway as part of the coastal setting. For someone who was looking to make naval travel and island hopping an exciting part of their own homebrew world, the promise of these mechanics being tested and used in an official WoTC let me down when it ended up being such a minuscule part of this book's new additions.
  
  TL;DR: Intriguing setting and campaign prompt, but falls very short of the promise of boat mechanics, and water travel for more island-based adventures.
• 
  Andreas Sekeris

  I didn't read the book from end to end. I did use it to run an adventure with my 9 year old son. I loved the characters, and environments and the maps were cool. It was my first time DMing and I think I overdid it on rolling dice for everything as he wanted to stop after a few weeks as he said he couldn't bear to hear the sound of dice anymore. That's on me, not the book. He really enjoyed the variety in the haunted house, and going into the lizard lair. I needed to make it less about trying not to start a war, and more about a dungeon-crawl. It would've been simple to vary if I thought ahead.
  
  The book has beautiful illustrations, loved reading the adventures in it. The sea-faring rules and ship variations sounded cool too. Great for low level adventures.
• 
  Andrea O'Brien

  Of all the D&D books that I have read so far I find the stories in this one the darkest. I suspect that that revelation is directly related to the campaign setting that Saltmarsh is in but it's not a setting I am familiar with. Though considering this book centered on some truly grotesque undead it may not be one that I rush too.
  
  However, the quests and water based settings in this expansion book were really interesting. It offers a little bit of everything to DMs and characters: some battles, some puzzles, some intrigue. It sent so many ideas swirling through my brain that I ended up with a few new note filled pages on my idea book.
• 
  Daniel

  super excited to try running this one sometime soonish. I absolutely love the format and setting. A lot of flexibility to swap in any of the 7 adventures as 1-shots, and a lot classic oldschool adventures adapted to 5e with more flexibility for roleplaying and overarching story. I wish more books used this format and it convinced me to check out yawning portal, which uses a similar structure and the two look like they go together really well.
• 
  Pádraic

  A setting guide, seafaring rules, and a bunch of (reprinted) adventures all in one. Ghosts of Saltmarsh opens with an introduction to the setting, with its factions and locations and NPCs, coupla maps, ways to modify the PHB backgrounds to the location, and other such things. Your fairly standard setting guide stuff, and contains the usual gems such as: "Unlike the other factions in Saltmarsh, there is no good side to the Scarlet Brotherhood. As unrepentant megalomaniacs, they are villains through and through." It's wonderful that the people who run the largest TTRPG in the world have no bloody clue how morality works. The appendices function as similar setting boosters, giving you details on how to run ships, terrible things that can happen at sea, and so on. The 'underwater locations' section even has bonus location maps and adventure hooks, which is lovely. Onwards to the adventures:
  
  The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh: A basic adventure with a nice touch or two, a very thematically appropriate introduction to the setting, what with its haunted house and smugglers, backstabbing, dastardly schemes, lizardfolk, and the potential to scupper a ship or set it on fire. As with a setting like Icewind Dale for Rime of the Frostmaiden, I think you oughta establish the characters' relationship to the town in your prep time, then get them moving on the first quest as soon as possible, maybe even having them on the way up to the haunted house as you start.
  
  Danger at Dunwater: Now this is more up my alley. A diplomatic mission to visit some lizardfolk, to find out whether they do indeed pose a serious threat to Saltmarsh. The adventure provides the location, the various people in it and their motives, some possible reactions to possible actions, and that's it. It is then entirely up to the players as to how things progress. This is the ideal structure for an adventure, I think, in that it's less than an adventure per se and more just a dynamic situation in which to move around and make decisions.
  
  Salvage Operation: A short investigation of a seemingly abandoned ship, which becomes a bit of a dungeon crawl, and then a frantic escape. It's brief enough that you easily fit it into a session, and it'd be no problem to swap out any NPCs for Saltwater locals the players are already familiar with. With the simple mechanics provided for how to run the climax, this is a standout little piece of adventure writing. On further thought, I reckon this might be a good opener: it's short, highly thematic, exciting, and I'm sure there's some way to tie it into the overarching plot.
  
  Isle of the Abbey: Another short one, involving retaking an island from priests and maybe pirates. It opens with a great sort of puzzle-battle, then a great social encounter, then sours it a bit by delving into a dungeon that's far too densely filled with traps and combats. Fortunately, it's eminently skippable, and indeed your players might not discover it at all. If only all dungeons were such. Once again, easily transmutable into something that's relevant to the wider campaign goals, whatever those are.
  
  The Final Enemy: Functions as a sort of conclusion to the first two adventures, with an infiltration of a sunken fortress to gather information, rewarding sneaky characters and cautious decisions. It's not messing around with this either: as written, the fortress contains genuinely hundreds of enemies. Participating in the final assault on the fortress (not present in the original adventure) is also possible, though that would feel rather repetitive, I think, given the length of time you'd have already spent in there. This isn't really my jam, but if you made it clear that an open assault would be suicide, there are certainly opportunities for great tension and small scuffles with high stakes.
  
  Tammeraut's Fate: Weirdly similar in initial set-up to Isle of the Abbey, but this time with hermits and undead drowned pirates. After the initial explorations, it quickly becomes a survive-the-night sort of adventure, shoring up defences against the cursed undead, and then a final descent into a pit under the sea to destroy the source of the corruption. The siege prep and the siege itself being the strongest part, I'm torn between wanting to extend the focus on that, but knowing that the sense of urgency is essential to its success. The trappings aren't much here, but the core is very solid.
  
  The Styes: A wonderful Lovecraftian-but-fortunately-not-actual-Lovecraft adventure. It's got slimy cults, tentacled beings from beyond the deep, and a delightfully seedy location. A fantastic capstone to the book, that is for some reason not set in Saltmarsh. This is the main plot for a campaign in this setting, I think. Combine the cult of Tharizdun with the Scarlet Brotherhood, merge the Styes and Saltmarsh, and chop this adventure up piecemeal so that the players can return to its investigations between the other adventures, descending into the pit as the finale.
  
  But these modifications are minor, mere matters of aesthetics. This is a very impressive collection really, cohesive in thematics but varied in style and tone. I'd happily play this as-is, or run it with very few changes, which, compared to the other modules I've read thus far, is very high praise indeed.
• 
  Rob Moore

  This book doesn't get as much praise as a lot of the others, but I really liked it. I am considering a swashbuckling campaign and it's really fun to see some classic adventures updated for 5e. Also fun for it to be based around one location. Some of these adventures have really stuck in my mind. Very excited to run some of these if I can get the opportunity to.
• 
  Drew Davis

  Seafaring and adventure ahoy! The actual sea-based parts of the adventure require homebrew on the part of the DM but even so this is an excellent book for setting, enemies, and adventures. There are plenty of guides for linking the adventures into a campaign but each one can be run independently as well.
• 
  Chris

  Good mix of adventures. As an anthology, of course they have different places in anyone’s given campaign/game night. There are a couple I plan to use right away in one of my campaigns, potentially giving my players a choice between these and one or two from Yawning Portal.
  
  
• 
  Andy Horton

  My first ever D&D game in the early 80s, and the first I later DMed, was U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. So I couldn't help myself - had to buy this, which expands the setting, reworks the U series and other modules for 5e, and gives lots of rules for seafaring adventures.
• 
  Michael Poley

  Solid RPG adventuring, somehow I managed have run every campaign in this one for a team of adventurers.
  
  As a new DM, this was a great learning experience and a fun way to explore thematically similar but very different campaigns across the entire history of D&D.
• 
  Kevin Ellis

  Excellent for DMs who love roleplaying and giving depth to an environment and community, but hate creating dungeons. In other words, perfect for me! I ran with players levels 1-16, included many many side quests and villains beyond the material in this book.
• 
  Beorn

  Great resource with many details about the town of Saltmarsh and surrounding area. I started a new part off in U1, which is included in this volume, and used the background and hooks to add some home brew side quests.
• 
  Iain

  A solid collection of modules and rules for at Sea adventures. I'd be happy to GM this. Only drawback is the significant gaps in the progression of levels, but would play for the classic Saltmarsh series of modules alone.
• 
  Kevin

  My favorite WotC adventure for 5E to date.
• 
  Anabel

  I'm running this campaign with some friends, and it's a great mix of spooky ghost investigations and nautical shenanigans! A wonderful framework to dive into Dungeons & Dragons.
• 
  Rod

  Several modules, lore, stats for many things... Ghosts of Saltmarsh has it all!