Ghosts of Saltmarsh

D&D's latest adventure book arrived at my door today. I've now read through two of its adventures, Tammeraut's Fate and The Styes.

Both are very exciting premises and adventures that I could see running in 1-3 sessions (possibly longer depending on how RP-heavy your group is - so for me they might expand into like 5.) To give a basic gist without giving everything away:

Tammeraut's Fate allows you to do a kind of base defense, where the party comes across the dungeon mostly empty and is then forced to defend it as far too many monsters for them to handle at a given time without something to slow them down attack.

The Styes is heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, with a decaying town or neighborhood of a larger city (your choice as DM!) playing host to a serial killer murder mystery, that, when investigated, leads into a far more troubling, alien, and apocalyptic threat.

These two are the last two adventures in the book - the former intended for players of level 7 to start with and the latter for level 11.

I'm going to read about the rules they've developed for sailing ships next, which appear to be quite substantial.

While I do love running my long campaign, I am finding some inspiration from these shorter adventures. While Tales From The Yawning Portal - Ghosts of Saltmarsh's clear antecedent - was focused on the very traditional dungeon crawls that define early D&D, I find that the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh mirror much closer my own type of adventure design - pushing a little more for big action set pieces for combat and allowing the parts between to be a little more roleplay-focused.

Basically, you'll spend less time retracing intricate dungeon maps here than in TFTYP.

With my roommates heading out of town for their honeymoon, I'm considering running one of these with my other friends, given that our other games will be on hold. And, you know, because I'm going to be alone in this apartment for three weeks with only cats, and while I love those cats, I'm going to need an excuse to bring in some humans.

We've got a bevy of D&D books coming out. Next month the official Acquisitions Incorporated book releases (I've got my copy ordered already) and before the year is out, we should have Descent Into Avernus (which... I mean, come on, Mad Max in Hell? How could I pass that up?)

I've also seen rumors (not sure if this is officially confirmed somewhere) that the hardcover version of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron will be out some time this year as well. I'm a little torn on buying that purely because I did pay money for the pdf.

But I'm finding the stuff I've read in this book pretty exciting, and definitely something I could adapt to my own setting.