How to Choose Your Next DnD adventure: Ghosts of Saltmarsh

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Summary

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure compilation published by Wizards of the Coast in May 2019. Designed for characters of levels 1-12, the adventure takes players on a thrilling journey through a series of nautical and coastal adventures. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is an anthology that brings together seven classic adventures from previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, updated for the 5th Edition ruleset.

The story begins in the quaint coastal town of Saltmarsh, where players are drawn into a web of intrigue, piracy, and danger. As they embark on various quests, they'll explore haunted houses, treacherous shores, and mysterious islands while navigating the challenges of seafaring life. Along the way, they'll face formidable foes such as sahuagin, sea hags, and krakens. The overarching narrative weaves the individual adventures together, allowing players to uncover a sinister plot that threatens not only Saltmarsh but the entire world. Players must work together to unravel this mystery and protect the realm from a rising tide of darkness.

My Experience

I've read Ghosts of Saltmarsh a number of times, and am working to adapt parts of it to a campaign set on the Sea of Fallen Stars. I am using some parts, and discarding others. 

Why You Should Run It

• Saltmarsh is a great home base for a campaign. Big enough to be interesting, but small enough to be able to keep all of it in your head. There's also a lot of  pre-existing content a DM can reuse like the original U1 Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh and the 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide II.
• A number of the sub-adventurers are quite good, and can fit in many campaigns. Salvage Operation, Tammeraut's Fate, and The Styes are particular stand outs. 
• Its the only fifth edition adventure natively set in Greyhawk, so if you want something to run in that world, this is the best option. 

Why You Should Skip It

• There is very little connective tissue between the adventures - as DM, you will need to add all that yourself or purchase something from the DM's Guild.
• The Final Enemy is an assault on a sahuagin stronghold that could be a challenge to run. Its a dynamic environment with lots of moving pieces, and partially underwater. An experienced DM would need to prepare a lot to be able to effectively run this adventure - I think an inexperienced DM would struggle. 
• The party can easily end up with their own ship at the end of the first adventure. That could be a good or bad thing depending on the campaign you want to run. That said, its pretty easy to leave that part out if you want. 

What You Should Repurpose From It

You can steal any adventure from this book and it will be "good enough". I noted some of my favorites in "Why You Should Run It". The Styes would be at the top of my list, and would work well in any campaign featuring aberrations, the Far Realm, or gothic horror. 

How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Out of the Abyss

 I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Out of the Abyss

Summary

Out of the Abyss is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure published by Wizards of the Coast in September 2015. Designed for characters of levels 1-15, the adventure takes players on a journey through the treacherous Underdark. The story begins with the player characters captured by drow slavers, who must then escape and find their way through the Underdark. As they navigate the perils of this dark realm, they'll encounter a variety of iconic creatures from the D&D universe, such as mind flayers and beholders. The overarching plot revolves around the rise of demonic forces, led by the Demon Lords, who have been unleashed upon the Underdark, and it is up to the players to stop their chaotic rampage and save the world from utter destruction.

My Experience

Out of the Abyss was my first fifth edition adventure as a player. I played Zaecharr Xolarrin, an amoral drow necromancer. After playing it, I read the adventure. 

Why You Should Run It

• If you like demon lords and/or the Underdark, this is the adventure for you. 
• There are a lot of interesting locations and locales. The Underdark setting makes it feel different than a lot of DnD campaigns. 
• It hits many of the "must see" Underdark sites: Menzobarranzon, Gracklstugh, Blingdenstone, and the less known but still very cool Neverlight Grove. 
• Some great set pieces involving evading or fighting demon lords. 

Why You Should Skip It

• As written it saddles the party with too many NPCs to manage that feel cumbersome. As a DM, you are better off only focusing on a few NPCs. The myconid Stool was a favorite of our group. 
• You fight a lot of demon lords, and by and large they are pushovers for experienced and relatively optimized groups. My wizard dropped over half the demon lords we faced in the campaign with upcast magic missiles.  
• The opening involves the characters being captured by drow slavers. Some groups will not like that framing. Its a good open to the adventure, but you need to make sure your group is comfortable with including slavery in their game, or change the opening. 
• There is an interesting halfway point where its very possible for a party to opt out of the second part of the campaign, after their initial escape from the Underdark. Think hard about this adventure if you have a contrarian who is more interested in following their interests than the story laid in front of them.  

What You Should Repurpose From It

Neverlight Grove and the Fetid Wedding were favorites for our group, but I am not sure how easy it is to reuse them. If you are running some flavor of an Underdark campaign, there is plenty of useful stuff here, but for the average overland Forgotten Realms campaign, this adventure is less flexible from a reusability standpoint. 

How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Summary

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure published by Wizards of the Coast in November 2018. Designed for characters of levels 5-20, the adventure takes players on a dangerous journey into the depths of the megadungeon known as Undermountain. Undermountain is the domain of the powerful and eccentric wizard Halaster Blackcloak, also known as the Mad Mage. Players will explore a sprawling dungeon filled with deadly traps, monstrous inhabitants, and hidden treasures while uncovering the secrets of the Mad Mage himself. This adventure is set in and around the city of Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, and it can be run as a follow-up to the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure, as a standalone campaign, or as one off adventures in your campaign.

My Experience

I ran a conversion/combination of 2e Ruins of Undermountain and 4e Halls of Undermountain as the beginning of my second fifth edition campaign covering levels 1-5. Shortly there after, Dungeon of the Mad Mage was announced. By that time I was running levels 5-10 in Storm King's Thunder, and then I alternated between the SKT and Undermountain from levels 10-20. 

Why You Should Run It

• Its a fun dungeon crawl! Not every level is great, but many are. If you want a quality dungeon crawl, I think this is the best one published in 5e, clearly beating out Tales From the Yawning Portal and Princes of the Apocalypse. 
• Even if you don't want to run the full dungeon crawl, you can easily dip in and out of levels that interest you or intersect with your campaign. 
• Some highlights:
• Triobrand's Graveyard (level 13): A fun gnome artificer to deal with, plus some randomly nasty consructs. 
• Obstacle Course (level 15): A great chance for silly play by play by Halaster while the characters try to advance.
• Crystal Labyrinth (level 16): Fight some gith to make it to an asteroid floating in space around Abeir-Toril called Stardock. Great way to tie into a Planescape or Spelljammer campaign. 
• Caverns of Ooze (level 19): The characters can get a spelljammer! And deal with a Illithid captain! Plus the genies are fun if you are willing to turn their songs into a musical number.
• Mad Wizard's Lair: A satisfying level 20 capstone if you have foreshadowed Halaster, with really cool and interesting treasure. 

Why You Should Skip It

• Each level is very disconnected. As a DM you will have to do a lot of work to make a coherent story beyond "Halaster is a mad ass hole".  For a lot of DMs and parties this is a major negative. 
• A good resource for connecting the adventure is the Dungeon of the Mad Mage Companion resources on DM's Guild. I used them to make the adventures more interconnected. But if you don't want to put in this effort, this adventure won't be for you.  
• If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't bother. There are better adventures out there for you.

What You Should Repurpose From It

You can dip in and out of any level in Undermountain. In that way it is a lot like Candlekeep Mysteries and Tales from the Radiant Citadel, except I feel like it is even more portable. Just take a McGuffin, drop it in a level of Undermountain, and create a way in and out. I posted my favorite levels above, but there are quick summaries in the adventure to find what works for you. 

If you would like a summary of the adventure level by level, I have made a notion.so database with adventure summaries. You can find the view for this adventure here. 

How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Storm King's Thunder

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Summary

Storm King's Thunder is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure for characters of levels 1 to 11. It was published by Wizards of the Coast on September 6, 2016. In this epic adventure, players are tasked with uncovering the mystery behind the disappearance of the storm giant king, Hekaton, and the subsequent upheaval among the giants. As giants wreak havoc across the Sword Coast, the heroes must travel vast distances, confront formidable foes, and ultimately restore order to the giant ordning. The adventure is inspired by G-1-2-3 Against the Giants, one of the earliest Dungeons and Dragons Adventures that was written by Gary Gygax. 

My Experience

I started a campaign in early 2018, and my group had asked me to run Storm King's Thunder. Having read it, I thought the entry level adventure designed to get to level 5 was particularly weak, so I opted to run a trek through Undermountain using converted materials from 2e an 4e Undermountain adventures. It was fairly easy to add a hook to get the characters to Goldenfields to start the campaign. We spent a lot of the campaign wandering the North and using information from Chapter 3: The Savage Frontier. I only used the Den of the Hill Giants and the Forge of the Fire Giants because I really didn't think the other giant steadings were all that great. I finished out the adventure by sending the characters through the later 5e Undermountain levels that were published while we were playing the campaign. I delayed the fight with Iymrith until later levers, and removed the storm giant help the adventure provides. 

Why You Should Run It

• The savage frontier is a great tour of the North. You can use it in conjunction with the caravan section of Hoard of the Dragon Queen to make a great exploration adventure across the North.
• Giants are great foes mechanically in 5e because they have a lot of hit points and do a lot of damage. That leads to harder and more exciting encounters. 
• The ordning being upset is a good through line to a campaign that I think players can follow along with. Its understandable, but also has some deep lore to dive into if it works for your campaign. 
• Its really easy to skip the parts of it you don't like. Huge chunks of the adventure can be ignored if you so desire. 
• I really like Goldenfields as a location to kick off the campaign. 

Why You Should Skip It

• There's a lot of material I am not interested in running in the adventure. It gives a sandbox to pick and choose from, but it felt like the choices were obvious, because the quality was uneven. I thought the 1-5 adventure was a boring lead in to the real adventure. Anything involving the Uthgardt burial mounds was actively bad. I had no interest in running the stone, frost and storm giant adventures. 
• If you just want to pick up and adventure and run it from start to finish, Storm King's Thunder is just too uneven. There are a lot of better single book adventures where you have to do less work. 

What You Should Repurpose From It

Chapter 3: The Savage North is a great tool for DMs. If your party is traveling the north, it gives you just enough detail to make many locations interesting. It also really flushes out Goldenfields as an adventure hub. I think any individual giant locale is reusable to a campaign where you need it. Storm King's Thunder greatest strength is that it does provide a bunch of really good building blocks that can be incorporated into other adventures. 

Adventure Breakdown

I'm going to start posting breakdowns of each adventure to help DMs understand the components of adventures, and hopefully give an idea of what parts of each adventure might be useful in your own campaign. I rate each chapter portability as Low, Medium, or High. Portability is a combination of how easy it would be to incorporate into a different campaign, in addition to if its something worth running. For example, Chapter 1: A Great Upheaval, is actually fairly easy to adapt to another adventure, but I don't think its a very good 1-5 adventure, so I rated its portability as low. 

Chapter	Adventure Type	Summary	Primary Monster	Levels	Portability
Chapter 1: A Great Upheaval	Site Based Adventure	Characters defend Nightstone from goblin attacks and investigatean attack by cloud giants.	Goblins	1-4	Low
Chapter 2: Rumblings	Role Playing	Characters gather rumors, clues and quests from various NPCs in one of Bryn Shandar, Goldenfields, or Triboar, and fend off a giant attack.	Giants	5	Medium
Chapter 3: The Savage Frontier	Exploration	Characters explore the North, following leads and undertaking various quests.	Various	Any	High
Chapter 4: The Chosen Path	Site Based Adventure	Characters travel to the Eye of the All-Father to hear a prophecy, and are interrupted by a dragon attack.	Various	7	Low
Chapter 5: Den of the Hill Giants	Dungeon Crawl	Characters infiltrate a hill giant lair and confront their leader.	Hill Giants	8	Medium
Chapter 6: Canyon of the Stone Giants	Dungeon Crawl	Characters explore a stone giant lair and thwart the giants' destructive plans.	Stone Giants	8	Medium
Chapter 7: Berg of the Frost Giants	Dungeon Crawl	Characters invade a frost giant stronghold in an iceberg.	Frost Giants	8	Medium
Chapter 8: Forge of the Fire Giants	Dungeon Crawl	Characters confront a fire giant chieftan in his forge.	Fire Giants	8	Medium
Chapter 9: Castle of the Cloud Giants	Role Playing	Characters visit acloud giant castle to convince the Countess to let them use her conch of teleportation.	Cloud Giants	8	Medium
Chapter 10: Hold of the Storm Giants	Role Playing	Characters travel to the Storm Giant's undersea lair to uncover a secret threat.	Frost Giants	9	Low
Chapter 11: Caught in the Tentacles	Site Based Adventure	Characters track down cultists of a Kraken to save the Storm Giant King.	Kraken	8	Low
Chapter 12: Doom of the Desert	Site Based Adventure	Characters confront the dragon Imyrith in her lair.	Dragon	8	Low