I finally have a copy of Ghosts of Saltmarsh; strictly speaking, I have three – Special, Standard, and D&D Beyond versions. Hooray! (And yes, I paid for each of them). I’m starting a campaign of the book on Saturday, so I’m now perusing it, trying see how everything fits together.
Although I’ve run The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh before, the original adventure didn’t describe the town of Saltmarsh in much detail. Instead, it gave you guidelines on what to include: a town council, a merchant, a town map, a place for the PCs to rest between adventures, and the town’s places of worship. The exact details of these were up to you.
The new adventure goes into far more detail about the town. Three factions joust for supremacy in Saltmarsh, all of which draw heavily on Greyhawk lore (something the original adventure didn’t do). Ghosts also describes the local wilderness and includes random encounter tables for use while travelling. Local areas of interest are briefly described, and some link into previous D&D products – one reference is to a location described in the 1978 Basic set!
The book also suggests ways to integrate the Player’s Handbook backgrounds into the town; it also includes four new ones: Fisher, Marine, Shipwright and Smuggler.
All-in-all, the benefits of having a small town are very apparent: Saltmarsh is easy for the prospective DM to understand, and the descriptions are very evocative. I get a much better feel for the town than I did for Waterdeep in Dragon Heist. There’s also a host of adventure hooks; Saltmarsh is very easy to use as a starting town for a campaign, even if you never use any of the included adventures.
The first step here in planning the start of the campaign is drawing out the relevant information for the players, so they have an idea of the campaign’s scope and how their characters fit into the setting as they begin. Here’s a key passage describing this:
Saltmarsh’s roughly five thousand residents are predominantly human, with the dwarven mining contingent of about two hundred workers the largest non-human faction in town. Elves and halflings draw no special notice, since the Silverstand hosts a wood elf enclave and a few halfling villages are tucked in the hills around town. The residents react to other visitors, especially tieflings and dragonborn, with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
Chapter 1: Saltmarsh, “Saltmarsh Overview”
That gives a good overview of the local population of the town. If you’ve got characters that come from the area – which fits the way I see the campaign starting – then you want to conform to that. If there are tieflings and dragonborn amongst the player characters, then it’s time to come up with some explanations as to why they’re there. If everyone is foreign, you should ask why they came to Saltmarsh? The factions of the town and the conflicts arising in the adventures give you clues as to how you might approach it.
The backgrounds of the characters, used with their race and class combinations, give the best handle on creating stories about how each character came to the town. The first adventure – The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh – also has the characters investigating a haunted mansion. Why would the characters want to do that? The adventure suggests a few hooks, but also ask the players why their character would be interested. I’m also looking to tie each character to at least one non-player character in the town. If someone is a long-standing friend of the mayor, another was raised by the local priest, and yet another does errands for a local merchant of importance, then you have bonds that help the players understand why they’re helping the town.
Not every motivation should be about being paid!
Ghosts of Saltmarsh includes ten rumors that can be heard on the docks. I’m going to look at the information about the local areas and expand the rumor table with additional rumors. Each character starts with one rumor rolled at random. That gives them a little unique knowledge to talk about. I should also create a cheat sheet of information they know about the area. Not enough to overwhelm, but enough so that, if they talk to another character, they have a basis for the conversation. In particular, an understanding of the local factions for characters from the area is important.
I’m a bit sad that I’m not running the adventure in the World of Greyhawk, which has been the setting of my home campaigns for the past 22 years. However, I’ll be running this adventure as part of the D&D Adventurers League at my local store. Saltmarsh is moving to the nation of Turmish in the Forgotten Realms, on the south coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars. I’m quite excited about that; I’m just hoping additional information about the area comes out before I start! One faction looks like it becomes the Red Wizards of Thay, with implications for the Dreams of the Red Wizards storyline.
More soon, I hope!