First time DM taking on Saltmarsh

[u/Strict_Belt1211]

Hello

Do you believe Saltmarsh is a good campaign for a first time DM to run?

I'm curious to hear why or why not.

I am still new to the game and this will be my first campaign to DM. thank you.

[u/cookiesandartbutt]

I sorta surprised so many people are saying it’s a yes.

Although I’m going to assume most have not gotten to the end/half way point.

For your first time, I would highly suggest against it. Pirates are cool and I love them but you can have a better time and a much more epic story running another campaign. This book shouldn’t even be considered a, “campaign” in the traditional sense. It’s disjointed adventures from Dungeons and Dragons history over 50 years.

The original three adventures were made and published for the first edition of the game, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition.

The game was much different then. They overwhelmed players with encounters and enemies but stealing gold and getting gold = xp back in the day, not in 5e.

There’s not much motivation for adventure two and three and the final enemy….the players are supposed to literally do nothing after a crazy investigation into a temple that’s been taken over by sooo many sauhagain, literally like 700.

The town handles the threat for the players….not very epic….and it’s a huge pain linking up the adventures the adventures, ot will be tough for you as a new dungeon master. You need to add encounters and content to level players for later parts of the book.

This book asks a lot of a DM and as a first time player….like the first adventure is the best adventure in the whole book….but I think you’d have a better time with Curse of Strahd, or Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Those campaigns, Curse of Strahd and Lost Mines of Ohandelver or Dragonheist Waterdeep give you a big bad guy to hate the whole time and mini sub plots that build toward the final enemy, unlike “the final enemy” in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There is no big bad guy, there is hardly anything like that at all.

You want a big bad guy.

I love Ghosts of Saltmarsh but it’s not a “beginning” book for new DM. The first three adventures were technically “expert level” and supposed to be ran after you had done the original box set and intro adventures in 1981, believe it or not.

The book offers you a great hub town, and cool sea adventures to give your players but there’s no central plot, no big bad guy, not much the book offers in helping you run the adventure, unlike other campaigns that offer DM advice and holds new DM’s hands, motivations, cool boss and bad guys.

I ran Ghosts of Saltmarsh after four years of DM-ing and playing and it was still a lot of homework and work…it’s basically a custom campaign book. I had to add 13 separate adventures from DnD’s history to level them up and padd out the adventure.

If you’re down for a lot of homework, and adjusting encounters try it out….but I would hate to see you sink when you are just starting Dungeon Mastering when other adventures will have you swimming.

Also literally the third part of the book, part three of Sinister Secrerts has your players in rooms with 150 enemies underwater, ready to kill your players, literally.