Im a new DM with only one 13 sessions campaign on my belt. Im planning to run a new homebrew campaign with seafaring theme and i need help from you guys who have run such campaign. for context, my campaign would set in a sinking world. the sea level is rapidly rising, there are only a handful of big islands left and soon there will be no more. Players are supposed to look for the prophesied dry land so most of the adventures will be on ships hopping from island to island to search for clues of the promised land.
For the general rules of adventure at sea, ship management and battle, what rulebook should i use? i have ghost of saltmarsh but it seems to be very limited. i also have A Complete Guide to Nautical Campaign by How To Be A Great GM, but i see some inconsistencies in the rules and stat blocks. can you recommend one over the other or is there anything better?
I want to have a species of monster as the main monster of the game. Kind of like the white walkers in GOT or the zombies in The Last Of Us that have multiple tiers from weak to really strong. What monster statblock should i use? i dont want to change too much, i will only change it’s name and description.
How do you guys handle the economy aspect of the game? running a ship seems like a very expensive thing so how do you distribute the gold to the players? how do you balance it with the other cost that are usually far less expensive? my worry is if i give my players loots and rewards that’s big enough to spend/save for a ship, they will have too much money to spend on weapons/provisions and make the game lose balance.
How do you handle travel time? i imagine it will take weeks if not months just to go to one destination. how should i handle it? what to put in during travel? how many random encounter? how will it impact story timeline?
in this type of campaign where distance is very huge and time can move very fast when players are traveling at sea, how do you handle the villains? if a players are taking one month traveling, a lot can happen to the villains. They might have taken over an island, or change their strategy, etc. In movies you can easily cut away to the other characters and show what they are doing, but i guess that’s not how you run ttrpg, or is it?
lastly, is there anything i need to pay attention to in building/running such campaign? what is your experience, the points to anticipate, rules/guidelines to prepare,etc.
hope you guys can help with these coz i cant wait to start this campaign.
1. I'd recommend adapting the War Machine rules from Descent into Avernus. Otherwise there are the 3rd party books you've already got. D&D isn't designed for vehicular combat so I doubt there is any completely consistent rule set out there.
2. I'd advise against this unless you plan this to be a very short campaign (< 10 sessions) because fighting the same enemies over and over is super boring, and it favours certain classes/characters over others.
3. I don't bother. I give them relatively little gold rewards and instead give them the magic items I want them to have as loot or give them a quest where they can find / earn the stuff they need. e.g. rather than have them buy a ship, give them a quest to investigate a haunted ship and when they complete the quest and remove the haunting they get to keep the ship. Or have pirates attack and allow the party to steal their ship.
4. I either montage it and allow the players to treat it as downtime, or I have them come across a short side quest they can choose to investigate or not. Random encounters are boring and usually don't make sense.
5. Most likely the players will have no idea what the villain is doing so don't plan the story around that. If you want the players to get to see what the villain is doing give them a Scrying Orb so you an give them those movie-cut aways when they Scry on the enemy. Other ways to communicate the villain's actions are rumours in taverns / settlements or having them come across refugees / survivors of the villain's villainry.
6. Mainly make sure all the players have something to do when on the ship or when travelling.
on point no. 2, i dont plan to only use this monster. the players will face other sea monsters, dragons, the navy of the evil empire, etc. i just want this campaign to have this sea mutant/zombie as the mysterious creature that appears when the sea level rising.
on point no. 3, cleansing a haunted ship is a great idea. thanks. but they will still need a lot of money to pay for the crew, provisions for the journey, and for upgrades
The typical low level sea creatures are Merrow and Sahaugin, but they don't really have different "levels" just grunts vs mages. You could maybe adapt the Yuan-ti they come in lots of different versions. Otherwise, there are the Slaad?
Well, the monster one is easy. Orcs and Hobgoblins have the most variety in a single, coherent monster type, so you can primarily use those for a while without your combats getting too repetitive. If you want something a less organized and more vicious, you can use Gnolls; If you want something more magically competent you can use Drow; if you want technology users, you can use Duergar. Feel free to mod any of these creatures with traits like swim speed and amphibiousness as appropriate, it won't really affect their CR.
Bear in mind that while these archetypes are all designed to work well with other members of their own archetype, you can also mix and match. Gnolls work great as shock troops with Hobgoblin officers and Drow mage artillery. Having your dumb throwaway enemies gradually get smarter and more organized over the course of the campaign is a great way to ratchet up tension.
Hi everyone,
Im a new DM with only one 13 sessions campaign on my belt. Im planning to run a new homebrew campaign with seafaring theme and i need help from you guys who have run such campaign. for context, my campaign would set in a sinking world. the sea level is rapidly rising, there are only a handful of big islands left and soon there will be no more. Players are supposed to look for the prophesied dry land so most of the adventures will be on ships hopping from island to island to search for clues of the promised land.
hope you guys can help with these coz i cant wait to start this campaign.
Thanks
1. I'd recommend adapting the War Machine rules from Descent into Avernus. Otherwise there are the 3rd party books you've already got. D&D isn't designed for vehicular combat so I doubt there is any completely consistent rule set out there.
2. I'd advise against this unless you plan this to be a very short campaign (< 10 sessions) because fighting the same enemies over and over is super boring, and it favours certain classes/characters over others.
3. I don't bother. I give them relatively little gold rewards and instead give them the magic items I want them to have as loot or give them a quest where they can find / earn the stuff they need. e.g. rather than have them buy a ship, give them a quest to investigate a haunted ship and when they complete the quest and remove the haunting they get to keep the ship. Or have pirates attack and allow the party to steal their ship.
4. I either montage it and allow the players to treat it as downtime, or I have them come across a short side quest they can choose to investigate or not. Random encounters are boring and usually don't make sense.
5. Most likely the players will have no idea what the villain is doing so don't plan the story around that. If you want the players to get to see what the villain is doing give them a Scrying Orb so you an give them those movie-cut aways when they Scry on the enemy. Other ways to communicate the villain's actions are rumours in taverns / settlements or having them come across refugees / survivors of the villain's villainry.
6. Mainly make sure all the players have something to do when on the ship or when travelling.
on point no. 2, i dont plan to only use this monster. the players will face other sea monsters, dragons, the navy of the evil empire, etc. i just want this campaign to have this sea mutant/zombie as the mysterious creature that appears when the sea level rising.
on point no. 3, cleansing a haunted ship is a great idea. thanks. but they will still need a lot of money to pay for the crew, provisions for the journey, and for upgrades
The typical low level sea creatures are Merrow and Sahaugin, but they don't really have different "levels" just grunts vs mages. You could maybe adapt the Yuan-ti they come in lots of different versions. Otherwise, there are the Slaad?
Well, the monster one is easy. Orcs and Hobgoblins have the most variety in a single, coherent monster type, so you can primarily use those for a while without your combats getting too repetitive. If you want something a less organized and more vicious, you can use Gnolls; If you want something more magically competent you can use Drow; if you want technology users, you can use Duergar. Feel free to mod any of these creatures with traits like swim speed and amphibiousness as appropriate, it won't really affect their CR.
Bear in mind that while these archetypes are all designed to work well with other members of their own archetype, you can also mix and match. Gnolls work great as shock troops with Hobgoblin officers and Drow mage artillery. Having your dumb throwaway enemies gradually get smarter and more organized over the course of the campaign is a great way to ratchet up tension.