I'm running a group through Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the DRW content in an AL setting. At first I enjoyed this mod because it actively integrates characters from GoS and helps blend the two narratives, or should I say, tries to. Here is my list of issues start to finish PLENTIFUL SPOILERS:
- Completely unnecessary Survival check to determine where Myth Nantar is. If it's failed, do you just stop? If it's a pointless check that needs to be passed for the narrative, why include it? (pg4)
- You're informed that there is a recent Sahuagin occupation of Myth Nantar, that the Nantaran council reluctantly accepts, and then it doesn't go into that at all. Are there skirmishes along the outside edges of the city? Is there a standing Sahuagin army occupation? Do they have Sahuagin representatives in place on the council? This needs quite a bit more exposition and we get none. (pg5)
- There is a sidebar on the effects of deep sea swimming, exhaustion, etc. for creatures without a swim speed. Zehira stresses how important it is to cast waterbreathing every day. Once you get inside, the mythal allows waterbreathing and swim speed for everyone as well as a warm and comfortable climate, rendering all of the previous information obsolete.(pg5&6)
- You're given 2 ways in to the city. Method One. Infiltrate through a tower constructed by meshing two wrecked ships that is affixed to the side of a mostly submerged mountain. Descriptions of this are as follows(pg 4,5,6)
- A set of wrecked ships that at one point says that they have been there relatively recently, by Elven standards, but has coral growing on it, and has recently, by human standards, started to bloat and rot.
- At one point it says that the ships, a merchant vessel and a pirate ship, crashed bringing supplies to Myth Nantar and arcane and standard warfare was used.
- At another point it says that the Sahuagin brought them from a nearby coast. The only coast referenced in the module is the Whamite coast, 30 miles away.
- These multiple conflicting sets of information made it fairly difficult to get an actual narrative going on about how they got there, where they came from, and why the elves didn't assist a supply ship that sounds like it was attacked bringing supplies right outside their gate (if that's what happened), how long it's actually been there, or why they didn't remove them at some point when it seems like a long standing entrance into their walled city.
- The interplaying series of questions regarding the extent of sahuagin forces, length of time they've been there, and how they aren't a bigger aspect of day to day life if they have a mountainside tower constructed inside of Myth Nantar resulted in a long series of unanswerable questions by any of the parties involved.
- Multiple combat encounters. Multiple skill checks. You're breaking into a city that is not hostile to you and is currently under siege (to an unknown extent). Guards find you when you break in, escort you to center of town.
- You're given 2 ways in to the city. Method two. (pg 6)
- Go to the front door. It's 120 ft under the water. 20 ft from the gate, and the six guards surrounding the gate, there are 3 Sea Spawn that pop out of the darkness (CR1). Why 3 evil creatures are allowed to hang out in the darkness outside a defended gate nobody could understand. Guards find you and escort you to center of town.
- Why have an incredibly confusing breaking and entering scenario that has little to no motivation behind it vs a "knock on the front door" scenario?
- Inside Myth Nantar you find out there have been murders. Everyone wonders who did it. Players all look over their shoulders at the occupying force of Sahuagin, the mortal enemies of the Sea Elves. (pg7)
- You speak to Oceanus (I played this up as the group had a history with this character). He, being a member of the council now and of elevated status, sends you to talk to a conspiracy theorist tailor, who sends you to talk to a guard with little to no information, rather than Oceanus giving you access to something useful like crime scene information or... anything else. They each give you little bits of information, which give no real identifying information on who committed the murders, and actually left the players with more questions than answers. Essentially red herrings and had my players asking what the relevance was to the rest of the mod? (pg8)
- You have 2 opportunities for the group to run into the murderer they are looking for before the end of the mod, mostly by happenstance, both of which narratively require the murderer escaping to further the plot, as well as the baddie escaping at the end to presumably set up a follow up plot point in future mods.
- Hall of Living Memory described at one point as heavily guarded. Arrive, there is one guard and NPC escort doesn't notice.
- Players can spot lone guard is wielding a trident and most guards wield short swords. Zero description in mod of guards using short swords. Only weapon description on guards outside of stat blocks mentions Trident specifically.
- The final encounter, according to the flow of the module, happens with absolutely no activity from the players affecting the outcome of finding the murderer and it left my players wondering why the first 80% of the module even existed.
- The baddie is in the city for a specific purpose and every action it does runs contrary to that purpose throughout the mod. It tries to briefly explain this away in a sidebar, but even that part is inconsistent.
- Side quests.
- Part B is important to the acquisition of the item and is potentially incredibly short with a relatively low DC skill check as a barrier for them getting the item?
- Part A sets up information for following adventures and seems very important, yet is hard to fit in the narrative flow of the game as it happens after the "final encounter" of the mod.
The module has thorough descriptions of the city making it the most fleshed out aspect of the entire adventure. The background information is interesting and the layout and appearance of the mod is extemely well done. I feel like there was an intent to connect the multiple incoherent plot points and I'd love to rerun this if it was reworked to connect them in some more tangible way.
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