[Spoilers for the Sinister Secret Of Saltmarsh]

Gather around for a retelling of what happened to a group of adventurers who went to uncover the sinister secret of saltmarsh.

The game was run with the original 1981 module and AD&D rules. It was run as a one-shot with only the first half of the adventure treated as the whole thing.

There were five players, myself included. The other four were all brand new to TTRPGs. The GM provided premade lvl1 character sheets which everyone could pick from. I chose, as is my habit, a human fighter. Around the table there was a human ranger, another human fighter, a human bard, and a dwarf fighter.

Our characters were strangers at the Saltmarsh inn, taking refuge from a pounding storm that was coming down onto the seaside town. My fighter paced impatiently, as an escaped arena slave he was anxious to make money in any way possible and buy a ride as far away from this place as possible. The inn was mostly full of drunken fishermen and I talked up to the out of place burly dwarf to see if they’d heard of any work. A bard caught glimpse of an obviously more wealthy old lady and tried his hand sweet talking her for coin or work. She complained that all the fishermen did lately was sit around drinking and telling tall tales. She wanted their minds back on work rather than par-ab-normal happenings. She wasn’t willing to pay, but said there was some old house that was the subject of ghostly tales. If the bard put an end to the speculation he was free to take whatever he found there.

The bard being a man of words rather than deeds talked around finding members of the party and convincing us it was all the only thing close to a paying job. After listening to a drunkard tell a tall tale about chasing an eight-point racked rabbit into the cursed house and hearing ghostly mutterings we settled down for the night in a shared room arranged by the woman.

In the morning we stopped briefly at the general store for what few supplied we could afford and went off into the house.

Exploring the first floor wasn’t terribly eventful. A few bugs to fight, and a few pieces of scattered loot. The dwarf found some fancy looking magic books that looked worth some money but none of us could read the contents. We found some suspicious floorboards that appeared to be a hidden door on the floor of one room but left it until we’d looked around more. The stairs up to the second story were a wreck, but we noticed in one room of the first floor there was obvious water damage and sagging of the ceiling.

The other human fighter heaved the dwarf right into the damaged spot on the ceiling busting a hole in it and sending the dwarf, only a little worse for the wear, into a room on the second floor. After tying a rope to a ten foot pole and passing it to the dwarf to secure to the house, the rest of us climbed into the second story.

There we heard the gagged noises of a man one room over from where we had ascended. Slipping out the window and onto an overhang connecting the two rooms my fighter spied a bound and gagged man inside. The whole room had sagging and dangerous looking floorboards. Deciding not to risk going into the room, our bard who had followed me out got the man’s attention from the overhang and I reached in with my spear tearing at the gag and pulling until it finally came loose. We interrogated the man who said he was a theft who’d taken shelter from the previous night’s storm here and while in the house had been hit on the back of the head by some unseen assailant. He said he knew no more. The bard very much wanted to kill the man right away as he was of no use, but everyone else talked him down and decided to leave the man where he was until we knew more.

We poked around a bit more upstairs and into the attic, but aside from fighting some giant mosquitos there wasn’t much of note so we made our way back down to the first floor and the hidden door. We pried it open and made our way into what was clearly an ancient basement. However the basement had been repurposed by equally obviously new additions like fresh cots and chests with recently used clothing. Poking around more we opened a sealed door on one side of the room and came face to face with six animated, magical and angry skeletons. We quickly closed and barred that door.

Looking around, the dwarf detected an irregularity in the stonework, and found yet another hidden door leading even lower into caves. In the caves we heard the faint noise of the ocean and could small the salt of the sea. We crept around finding the caves leading to a small deadend section of cave stacked with crates and barrels, with the path leading there branching off to a cove.

The other human fighter and ranger crept over to the cove while the dwarf, bard, and I slunk into the collection of cargo. We saw two men opening one crate to inspect various hand weapons, and one of the barrels smelled of strong alcohol. As we moved further in, a well dressed man flanked by two passive gnolls gave some orders to the men.

On his own initiative, the bard called out to the well dressed man. The man was startled and as he turned, my fighter quickly made himself scarce in the darkness of the crates. The dwarf as well tried to hide from the man’s gaze but was too slow, and was beckoned by the man to stand near the bard.

The bard and man had a confused conversation asking each other who they were and what they were doing. The man was Sanbalet, a smuggler who had cloaked his operation under the guise of a haunted house to keep the locals away. As he asked the bard what he was doing and what he wanted, I crept through the darkness taking advantage of Sanbalet’s distracted conversation and managed to get right behind him.

Then, I emerged just over his shoulder, and told him he had a good looking operation and asked if he was hiring. Sanbalet said maybe but only if he could get the bard to make sense. I told him that was understandable and stepped back into the dark.

Finally the bard and Sanbalet came to an agreement. Sanbalet would hire us and would also pay if the bard returned to town and told everyone the ghost had been dealt with. He wanted to keep the dwarf as a token of goodwill, and in practical terms a hostage, until the bard returned but the plan seemed set.

Meanwhile, the fighter and ranger had snuck onto the small boat and found it was still half full of valuable cargo as well as a chest bristling with coin. The two of them decided that they’d found their payday. From aboard they cut the line securing the boat and began rowing it away. When the smugglers noticed the boat escaping a huge commotion erupted. Sanbalet was furious, now thinking the whole negotiation had just been a trick. The bard was out of ideas and just started booking it back upstairs, being chased by all the smugglers.

Seeing the disaster unfolding, I leap out of the darkness with a dagger to take Sanbalet hostage and hopefully keep his gnolls off of me but he slipped out of my grasp. With no other way out, I started running to the cove. The dwarf followed me down the passage. The gnolls were in hot pursuit and jumped onto the dwarf, ripping them to shreds. I keep running towards the sea while Sanbalet fired color spray at me. I ditched my armor and my loot to be able to swim in the choppy water and made it out before the gnolls were done with what was left of the dwarf. I escaped and eventually wound up sputtering on a coastline somewhere.

The smugglers chased down the bard, who tried completely ineffectively to talk them down. He was dragged back before Sanbalet to negotiate but had no leverage, instead ending up on the receiving end of the dwarf’s sword in Sanbalet’s hand.

And thus ends the tale of a oneshot adventure in Saltmarsh.

[Yes I know about all the hidden stuff the party missed, sssssh.]