War Across the Tides: Ghosts of Saltmarsh meets Sandbox D&D
The investigation of your friend's death in Saltmarsh brings you into dangerous waters and the hidden power play of this town.
$15.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Thursday - 4:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
Campaign Length / 25–30 Sessions
0 / 6 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
"You arrive in Saltmarsh with work arranged for you by a good friend of yours. You find her house, vacant and locked, and asking around only raises the townsfolk's existing suspicion of outsiders. You finally receive the news you never wanted, as her body ends up washing up on the shores near Saltmarsh's port. As the newcomers who knew her, and having arrived in town right before she disappeared, the captain of the guard would like to question you." ⚓ Enter the town of Saltmarsh and it's region, and get to know its stout and superstitious folk. 🔱 Voyage across the Middle sea, where monsters and treasure awaits your trespassing. 🛡️ Discover the factions and underlying power struggle that steers the future of Saltmarsh. 👻 Explore strange and ancient ruins, and investigate the mysterious death of your friend. ⚔️ Board and fight in naval battles and dungeon crawls across custom made grid maps. This campaign is a connection of all Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventures, taking you from level 1 all the way to level 11, all in the backdrop of my custom setting. I have prepared further plot hooks to take players that are interested even further, all the way to level 15.
Game style
Combat Heavy
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Rules as Written (RaW)
Sandbox / Open World
Roleplay Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(5)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
3 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Inclusive, Sets the Mood
Average response time: 1 hour
Response rate: 100%
About me
Hi! My name is Marc and I am a Game Master with ~8 years of experience with TTRPGs. I am an addict of stories and have used this to run or play across different systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Pathfinder 2e, Vampire the Masquerade and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. I like to take inspiration from books for characters and themes, from movies for epic scenes and from music to help grow my imagination. I am a sandbox GM at heart and rules-lawyer in my mind, meaning I allow players to explore and flesh out their characters in the worlds I describe. I don’t punish mistakes that players might make, but I do keep table limits, so players don’t go overboard or hog time, or abuse the rules of the game. I do allow a little bending of the rules, as long as the rest of the players still have fun. I do not enforce themes, but my games tend to adhere to these and I always cooperate with my players to sync on themes and expectations. That starts with character creation and I always try to subscribe to my player’s ideas of their characters. If themes don’t align, I would help with suggestions of adjustment and if I can see player conflict from the beginning, I try to address professionally and help build a better game group. My sessions feature a mix of immersive descriptions and short “here’s where you didn’t check” reminders. Meaning I always let players initiate transitions. I like to describe scenes, play out NPCs and their voices and, sometimes, get lost in the immersion. But I’ve learned to push my players ahead or give them hooks to continue on the story. Combat will be fun and lenient, or high-stakes and high-energy. My strong areas are atmosphere, exciting moments in combat, and creepy or funny moments during play. I’ve made players feel creeped out, scared, excited, curious, happy, laugh-out loud and I always try to entertain their ideas. I've run both published adventures and homebrewed one shots or campaigns for friends or strangers, beginners or veterans and role players or tacticians. See you at my table!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
I have prepared an Adventure Guide for players, which also features the location map I have drawn for this campaign: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qc0LSl5N5MFuHumtARIw7SJ7Rqimz775H9GeBnGnC6k/edit?usp=sharing Reiterating what the adventure document already mentions: We will use the 2024 ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons 5e. Characters should be level 1, and use the standard array for attributes. I also allow subclasses and species from additional supplements, like Xanathar's Guide, Tasha's or even homebrew content. Please check with the Dungeon Master (me). I am lenient with character options, I mostly want to make sure we establish rules and mechanics beforehand to have the most fun afterwards! The first session will be a session 0, which will be free, and we'll get to know each other as players, create the characters and get a hang of how the campaign will play like.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
You will need a microphone, a browser, and a discord account. We will use a discord server for our voice channel, and Foundry for play. Characters made by players should be prepared during session 0. Players joining later should prepare their characters before session start. The DM has to at least check their character before integrating them in the ongoing campaign. Players should also get a grasp of the basic play of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. It could also help to watch a tutorial on how to use Foundry as a player.
What Marc brings to the table
• Lots of ambient music from playlists I've curated in my years of playing TTRPGs. • There will be a lot of social encounters, described immersively. NPCs will have a personality and interact with the players. • Combat encounters will be balanced, high-energy and some will require tactical thinking. • Encounter Maps hand-made by me via Dungeon Alchemist or imported from a dedicated collection • Access to my discord and the campaign main doc, where session events will be logged for easier tracking • Almost a decade of GMing experience
Homebrew rules
Group Skill Checks. Whenever a group skill check is issued, at least half of the group must succeed on the skill check for the whole group to succeed. If the number of participants in a group is odd, the number of successes required for a group to succeed is rounded up (5 members in the group => at least 3 successes required). Passive Perceptiveness. Whenever a character has to make an active Perception or Insight check, they can succeed on the skill check if their passive perception overcomes the DC of said skill check. Criticals. Critical hits double the dice damage. A player that lands a critical hit will roll double the dice and add his normal damage modifier (if any). Death Saves. Death Saves must be rolled in secret, and only the Dungeon Master and the player that rolls can see the result. Potions. You can drink a potion as a bonus action or action. When drinking healing potions as an action, you are healed for the full amount the potion can give.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Marc creates a safe table
Each player will get to complete the Monte Cook RPG Consent form, and we will discuss content warnings during Session 0. Breaks are available and any player can issue a break when they wish. Additionally, if a scene gets too uncomfortable for a player, they can step away for a moment. After each session, we will openly discuss about what went really well and what could've went better, as well as aftercare for any uncomfortable event that took place during the session.
Content warnings
Safety tools used