Ghosts of saltmarsh

Good Morning! 

I recently purchased Princes of the apocalypse because I thought at some point I'd like to run it.   I believe that module came out in like 2014 or 2015.  And I'd often thought if I buy one 5e module that would be the one.  I know silly right?  I read thru the first like 10 pages, and just realized it's totally not my thing.  It just seems like a bunch of dungeon crawls with a sorta story, and once you finish killing off one cult it's onto the next one.   I didn't find it that inspiring.  Obviously this was at the start of fifth edition, and the system has evolved a lot in the last few years.  I find it quite funny that I'm now purchasing modules for a system that is being re-written.  It's very typical me.  It's also very typical me to think about something for a very long time before purchasing it.  

The good news is, if I feel like running Elemental evil, I have the reprint of the original.  

Alright, so I go down to the local hobby shop (if you are in Winnipeg, MB you gotta check it out) https://gameknight.ca/

I switcheroo princes for Saltmarsh.  I was originally going to grab Queen of the dragon hoard, as it's a good tie in with Lost Mines.  Unfortunately they did not have a copy.  Which was a blessing in disguise. 

I grabbed Saltmarsh, not having read much up on it.  

Holy was I pleasantly surprised.  It's actually set I Greyhawk! Not retconned into the Forgotten Realms.  Nice.  

side note:  This makes me excited, the wizards have basically put out almost all the world's in brief in the adventures to date.  Leaving just a few left Dark Sun, Al-Quadim (which technically could be FR) and Mystara!  They did paint a brief picture of Mystars in the PHB or DMG, and this gives me some hope that it would happen.  If you want to run 5e mystara here is an unofficial guide https://www.rpgmp3.com/files/pdf/Mystara_Players_Guide_5e.pdf

As is typical I know have super gamer A.D.D. and want to run Saltmarsh.  I made the old man mistake of having a nap yesterday afternoon, which made me not sleep well.  In turn I was up half the night thinking about building a gazateer for the players.  Which is exactly what I'm going to do when I complete this blog post. 

I will in all likely hood complete the Starter set adventure with a few of the essential adventures thrown in for good measure, and then we will move on to Saltmarsh and a new campaign.   

One thing I noticed on the Keoland map was the Tower of Zenupus, and that reminded me of this conversion. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/301308/The-Ruined-Tower-of-Zenopus 

Once you exhaust the possibilities of the saltmarsh book you can always throw in some homemade dungeons, Tales from the yawning portal, even TOEE if you feel up to it. 

As far as the gazateer is concerned, I'm going to lay out basically everything that the players will need in one pdf.  Races & Classes allowed, actual modifications to the classes (only up to level 12) using copy and paste from https://www.5esrd.com/ and Gods etc.  And of course the backgrounds from Saltmarsh.

Super nifty! 

Right that was an obvious ramble.