SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

I think during the second session Diego asked how many days had passed since the party left Saltmarsh. He wanted to know if they were going to miss the Earth Goddess Festival.

At that point I knew within half a day roughly how much time had passed. However I thought I need start tracking this.

So I created (using the iThoughts app) a mind map to do so. Which then got exported as an image into GoodNotes for me to scribble notes onto.

Obviously all the Mintarn adventure hooks shown will not all be seeded at once. Only two have at the moment. With a further two at the next session. One of those points back to a previous hook (the lost Ironstar Dwarven mine) and a caper to steal a keelboat. Both of which come about from the introduction of the new players to the group.

But this allows me to track and calculate the passage of time, and see the path travelled through the campaign.

As previously spoken about I have a map for sea travel with hexes on ready to print. Plus I have turned the warehouse docks map from the Lazy Dungeon Masters Workbook (LDMW) into an ready to print A3 battle map.

For my needs if we look at the extract from the Mintarn city (otherwise known as Alhaster) map I am using , the dock area is made up of warehouses and jetties. Specifically each jetty is connected to a warehouse (see below).

So there was too much on the original map from the LDMW for my needs to use with the players. The other stuff would be too much of a distraction in my opinion.

So I took the area circled in blue, which is the warehouse and resized so that the A3 page only contains that.

The area circled in red I can recreate with my boat tiles, the little 3D jetty I have or use some of the tiles from the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated: City set for the jetty.

I did get as you probably guessed the third and final Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated set. Sadly there was not enough pieces to make an approximation of the warehouse map above. And budget does not allow for additional copies.

But still it’s a useful set to have. I like the sewer pieces. Which should prove useful if the party decide to follow that adventure hook at a later date.

On that sewer hook front, I’d love to create a map based on the underground tunnels for Wisbech. But at the moment I’m not having much success in tracking down the plans showing them. I’d also love the plans to Wisbech Castle (not really a castle, but a large Georgian house these days) and it’s prison/dungeons. I think basing locations on these would be a fun Easter egg for the players. I did approach the Wisbech Castle folks via social media but was greeted with a wall of silence so far. Possibly the Tory overlords running the Castle and it’s volunteers hold grudges against those that point out how nasty the Tory party is. So let’s call this a clash of political opinion.

As you can also see in the photo above I some of the generic tokens I created. I think they came out pretty good.

With a week to go before the fourth session I just need the new players character sheets. Which I should be getting tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime I might make better notes for Mintarn for myself. Otherwise I’m already I think.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

This next session is going to be an odd session prep wise for me, hopefully.

So far I’ve only had to prepare the adventure hook that the party have decided to nibble on for the next session. It’s a great way to work. Cuts down on the amount of effort for me. Instead of preparing multiple scenes/locations I just need to prepare the one.

Sadly in the next session I know that the party are going to the Ogre’s Hideout Tavern were they will meet the two new players. From three who knows.

To help me out so I don’t forget what secrets,clues and adventure hooks I have active and ready to seed I summarised them in a mind map below.

A couple of the above hooks came about organically from the last session.

In fact the players unknowingly came up with the Gladiator Arena one. They seemed fixated with the arena, I thought afterwards why not? So they will see a poster next session asking for combatants to take part in a “royal rumble” to celebrate the tribute going off to the Red Rage, with the winners getting some magical items, and gold. It will be a none lethal event, if they hit zero HP they are knocked out and removed from the arena.

The Investigate Guard Tower came out of the role play of the Mintarn Guards, and will see the party being hired to investigate why the guards and workmen sent out to bring the guard tower back into active use have not been heard from. I think the party will suspect Sahuagin, and be expecting them to attack. But I have an idea to use Ankhegs. However that may change to Orcs Attack!

The Traitor’s Graves and dragon lair came from the Dragon magazine detailing the parts of the town Alhaster I’m using for Mintarn. It just happened that within a day or two of reading the description of the Traitor’s Graves I looked at the maps in the Lazy DM Workbook (LDW), and there was a catacombs map that would be ideal for the abandoned dragons lair. I also think that puzzle I found would fit in nicely here.

Naturally the ship caper sprung up from the discussion with the new players and discussing backgrounds, why they were in Mintarn. This will use just the warehouse from the docks map in the LDW.

The Lost Ironstar Mine will use the Dwarven Excavation map from the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure from the Essentials box set. This as I have mentioned previously is where I’d like to try a skill challenge again. I know I wasn’t happy with the first one I ran in the first session. But maybe this will work better. Ever the optimist.

The Zhentarim hook was seeded in session 2 with Valdor. However he needs a boat to pursue it. Which gives him motive to help out on the boat caper. For this I’m going to use the Tower of Storms map from the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure.

The Red Rage Tribute Delivery will see the Sahuagin attack them whilst at sea, and will show the adventurers new info about them. Like their boats are made from wrecks, and that they ride sharks. I also need to find a dragons lair map.

I suspect that the party will go with the boat caper first. Which with the tavern introduction encounter with the new players should be our session. Remember our sessions are approximately two hours in length.

Mintarn is a rich town for adventure ideas. Even now as I type this post I’m thinking “I could have them go into the sewers of Mintarn” or “how do I get them to the Whale Bone islands?” It would certainly make a nice base for the party. For a short period any way. But the nature of this campaign sees them roaming the high seas from island to island.

I forget which YouTube/blog I was looking at, it was probably the Sly Flourish one, but still I came across a link to this great website called Hexagonal Graph Paper PDF Generator.

Which was just what I was looking for.

As the screen grab below shows it allows you to generate a custom sheet of hexagonal graph paper to your specific needs. Mine was 1/2 inch hexagons on a landscape A3 page. Which you download as a pdf.

There are some pregenerated pages as well for visitors to download if they match what they are looking for.

I took the pdf the site generated and took it into GoodNotes, and then saved the page as an image so I could use it in Pixelmator.

In Pixelmator I created a new image using the one just saved. That way I knew it was an A3 sized image. Then in another layer I brought in the map of the Sword Coast. Which I resized so that each hexagon on the map represented 25 miles. Using the map scale was handy for this.

Below is a screen shot of part of the finished product.

The final image is A3 size and is something I can print off and use with the players for when they hit the high seas.

If you remember back in the post where I briefly summarised different options for making travel interesting I mentioned the D&D adventure The Tomb of Annihilation and the method they used within the campaign. This map would be ideal for that method. But it might have to be tweaked to take into account the greater distances travelled by ships. For instance a Keelboat can travel 75 miles or three hexagons in a day.

Sadly for the players we will probably have to play test one or two of the ideas I have as solutions.

We now have a date for the fourth session. Which is the last Saturday of the month, which also happens to be the very last day of the month as well.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

This next session is going to be interesting, two new members join the group for the first time.

The hook has been seeded for the party to meet up with the new members. Where it goes from their who knows?

So planning wise I need to have more options planned than I would normally. Well I say normally, but considering how new I am to being a DM and this will be my fifth session (including the taster) as such, is there really a normal? I am still after all finding out who I am as a DM, learning a little bit more each session as I journey along that path.

But so far I have used the information from the previous session to guide which hooks encounter I prepare for next.

All I know is at the moment that the party are going to the tavern to meet the new characters. Will they help them with their caper? Which is to steal a boat from the docks that belongs to Angrath?

Luckily the Lazy DM Workbook (LDW) has a docks map I can use. I just need to populate it with pirates.

I have new hooks to seed during the session. One of which uses another map from the LDW. That will also use a puzzle. And I have found the perfect puzzle to use.

I’m trying to build up the tools I have at my disposal to make sure that things are not predictable, keep the players engaged and are hopefully fun.

Thanks to the players coming up with their own hook in the last session, I’m going to push that a bit more as well, and provide a poster to the players promoting a “royal rumble” type event where the winner gets some awesome magical prize. It will be a non-lethal event, no deaths, so if they get to zero hit points they are unconscious and removed from the arena.

The Dungeon Dudes have a great video on YouTube entitled “Five Low Level Magic Items for Creative Players in Dungeon and Dragons 5e“. I might present those five items to the players if they win in the gladiator arena, and get them to pick one.

But it really is useful watching videos like the Dungeon Dudes to get inspiration. Another one I found interesting and relevant to this campaign is their video “Five Deadly Low-Level Monsters in Dungeons and Dragons 5e“. An interesting list, and discussion for sure. I’d already got kobolds and the gelatinous cube in the index card box ready to call on at a moments notice. But the other three on the list I hadn’t considered. Well not entirely I had considered a swarm of rats at some point. But their suggestion of a swarm of rot grubs warranted further investigation. So off to Volo’s Guide it was. Wow what a nasty little creature. Something like that would need telegraphing big time before hand. I’d almost be clumsy about it having the party witness an npc being killed by them. Say have them in a tavern, in barges a group of farmers carrying a body. It’s still alive. They are calling for some-one to get a cleric. Have the cleric arrive too late, but describe what is happening to the body. Have other npc’s shout advice etc.

Luckily between starting this post and finishing it off I remembered that our druid can now change shape. So now I need to consider what beasts are scattered through out the campaign to feed that ability. At the moment they can chose an ox!

But this does present an interesting situation. Which will require me to discuss with the players before hand if they will be comfortable with the subject matter. That sounds all ominous, but not really. Just the considerate thing to do. Being in Mintarn and this being a Western European fantasy setting, one way to allow the druid to see a beast such as a bear is to have a performing one, or have them fighting other beasts in the gladiator arena. It presents a situation that the players will have to handle that has a moral element to it. And is definitely a subject matter that I’d like to as a DM to discuss with the players before hand.

On when the next session will be I started that discussion off on the Messenger group this morning. No one had made a move. And it needed starting. I also proposed a date in December also for the 5th session.

I’ve also mapped out when the players will level up based on each session being worth 2 points (remember we are using the adventure league way of levelling as described in the appendix of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything). It means our new players will level up the session after the others have. There will always be that little bit of drag.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

This was going to be all about Mintarn. It’s what I promised in the previous post.

But things change.

Since then a player has decided to leave the group. Not the one that had expressed doubts and misgivings about roleplaying in general and D&D. I have mixed feelings about this. With the dominant feeling being disappointment I think. Naturally he has been removed from the Facebook Messenger group we have for discussing and organising things to do with the campaign. However I want to leave things open incase they have a change of heart. So unlike the game I left where by reports I had afterwards they humiliated my character before killing him off. I’m going to send the character off on a personal quest. That way if they want to rejoin we can sit down and work out what happened while they were away, and add them back to the group.

I’ve also had a very productive session with Jeff about creating his character for the campaign. He’s going to be playing a ships captain (human ranger) who lost his ship when the crew mutinied against him. So he is now in Mintarn plotting to steal a boat from Angrath. And is currently trying to recruit a crew to help him with this caper.

I think this hook will tempt Jonathan’s character because he is looking for a boat to help him with the adventure hook I seeded with him last session. I also have a hook that will be used with Trixie the gnome that ties in with this.

If they are successful then this opens up the world/ocean considerably. Mind you they will only be getting a keelboat. It’s not massive, something they can operate, and I don’t think over powering (famous last words).

Depending on the choices Jeff’s son makes for his character I might be able to reintroduce the lost dwarf mine hook. Which would be cool.

But that stuff is session 4 planning and beyond! What about session 3?

Well session 3 is all about travelling from Queen’s Cove to Mintarn. The party will be escorting the towns contribution to the tribute that gets paid to the Red Rage of Mintarn.

The party have already accepted the job. Which is good. So at the start of the next session they will join the wagon and a couple of NPC’s to start the 3 to 4 day journey to Mintarn along the coastal road.

I’m going to have the town’s mayor give the party basic adventure’s kits as part payment. The party lost a all that sort of stuff in the shipwreck. So this is a good way to give that back to them I think.

While they are getting ready to set off I’m going to have them get a warning that Sahuagin attacks along the coastal road have been more frequent lately.

And yes at some point along that journey between the two towns the party will be attacked by Sahuagin.

I want this Sahuagin attack to be a hit and run, gorilla warfare type attack. So they will not be fighting to the death. So the plan here is to use a countdown (as detailed in the WOIN system). I’ll probably use 4d6 and a fast result of 4-6 to remove a die from the pool. At the start of each combat round I’ll roll the dice pool. According to the article I link to the average number of rolls is 4. My current leaning is towards 1 Sahuagin per player plus 1. But I can adjust that on the day.

Which reminds me I need to share some advice with the new players when they join. Such as “Anytime you are out numbered the odds are stacked against you.” Sage advice from Matthew Colville to his players.

Back to the encounter. Considering the campaign setting. Sahuagin make perfect sense to be the creatures used. The party were bound to run into them at some point. And they will naturally run into them again, no doubt on several occasions, above and below water. Attacking travellers on a coastal road makes perfect sense for them. They can surprise attack from the sea and escape to the sea and disappear just as quickly.

And slowly the party are getting introduced to the ecology and races of this aquatic island hopping campaign. And yes they will be meeting sea elves (sooner than later), and other races that live under water.

Whilst skimming through the Monster Manual I came across the Slaad (which apparently if I remember correctly a Matt Colville favourite). They look pretty cool. And I like the idea of using them at some point. The fact some of them can shape change is cool, and sparked the idea of having like a Marvel Secret Invasion storyline at some point. Have some of the shape changing Slaad replace key npc characters in an attempt to start or war or something. I even like the idea of one replacing a member of the party!

Another cool thing about the Slaad is how they use hosts to reproduce. When a blue or red Slaad attack they can infect (blue) or lay an egg (red) their target. I like the red Slaad ability because that opens up an alienesq like encounter. When the egg hatches in its host it bursts out of the host as a Slaad tadpole, looking for another host to feed off and eventually grow into a full blown Slaad. But the blue Slaad infection also opens up some interesting story options. Once infected the victim starts to transform into a Slaad. I see this being heavily influenced by the likes of The Fly or Species.

But they are ideas for the future.

Back to session 3. Once the Sahuagin attack has happened, it’s onwards to the capital Mintarn.

At Mintarn depending on the outcome of the attack, the party maybe invited to deliver the tribute to the Red Rage. But it’s the usual town session at this point. And it will end with the party at a dodgy inn/tavern full of the shadier inhabitants of Mintarn ready to meet the new characters in session 4.

I suppose I better end the post there. I’ve outlined the basic structure of the session and it’s encounters. Maybe next time I will talk about Mintarn as promised in the previous session prep post!

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

We have a date and time for our third session. It’s the last weekend of October. It might have been earlier in the month, but we had to take in to account a honeymoon for two of the group to happen.

Before this next session all but one of the group have to level up their characters. So I have offered to meet up with any that want to and help them level up their character.

At the weekend a friend asked if he and his son could join the group. I said I was happy for them too, but it had to be a group decision. So I put the question to the group in our Messenger chat area. All but one responded in the positive. The one that didn’t respond had seen the discussion and remained silent. They didn’t even confirm they could make the date set either. So I posted that I was assuming they didn’t object to new members joining.

I’m happy with how I handled this. I didn’t want to emulate the events that saw me leaving the previous group. New players to a group has to be a group decision.

It means our party of adventurers will be 7 strong. A tad on the large size. But as has been previously discussed on this blog, that may drop to 6.

Sadly the date for session 3 means the new players won’t join until session 4. Which means level wise they will be behind by a level and a half. So combat encounters will need a little more planning.

Session 3 would have been a great session plot wise to introduce new characters. With the party escorting the tribute from Queen’s Cove to Mintarn, having them join as part of that guard would have made sense plot wise.

But session 4 will be in Mintarn. So I’ll have to find a way to introduce them to the party before they go off on the adventure hook chosen in session 3.

It also means I need to meet up with the new players to go over character creation, talk back stories, and how we will introduce them to the others.

In the next planning post I’ll look at Mintarn.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the two settlements I have to populate for the second session. The first being the Northlander village and on Mintarn itself Queen’s Cove.

For this campaign I’ve decided not to use a pre-existing settlement from a published adventure. I had thought about Phandalin. I really like what WotC have designed there. But I want to save that and the others for another time/campaign.

These will be the first settlements I’ve created from scratch. Luckily there is a lot of great advice online and in the DMG.

The DMG gives us the following questions that we just might to think about when designing our own settlements.

“Consider the following questions as you create any settlement in your world:

• What purpose does it serve in your game?
• How big is it? Who lives there?
• What does it look, smell, and sound like?
• Who governs it? Who else holds power? Is it part of a larger state?
• What are its defenses?
• Where do characters go to find the goods and services they need?
• What temples and other organizations feature prominently?
• What fantastic elements distinguish it from an ordinary town?
• Why should the characters care about the settlement

The guidelines in this section are here to help you build the settlement you want for whatever purpose you have in mind. Disregard any advice here that runs counter to your vision for a settlement.”

The omnipotent Matt Colville in his Running the Game series has these couple of relevant videos.


Another YouTube video I like is by Dael Kingsmill.

In the rest of this post I’m going to use the questions from the DMG as prompts to help me create the Norse inspired Northlander village.

After some semi-light googling on Norse names/words I’ve come up with the village name Sealby. -by is the Norse for farmstead, village, settlement And considering that there is a seal colony on the far side of this island that the Northlanders living there would name the settlement along those lines. And considering how the Norse named the Faroe Islands (Sheep Island) I think that the Northlanders would have named this island along similarly and call it Seal Island or Sealay. With the -ay being Norse for island.

What purpose does it serve in your game?

This is a settlement that the party visit after getting through Angrath’s lair. It allows the party to “recover”/rest and get a lift via boat to Queen’s Cove on Mintarn. The boat journey is also a chance to give information to the party about The Red Rage of Mintarn.

How big is it? Who lives there?

The population of the village is 40+. This is a Northlanders settlement. It has a crew for the Knarr ship (see notes), plus light guard for settlement whilst ship is away.

What does it look, smell, and sound like?

Like the Vikings that inhabited The Faroes the island is treeless. So the homes are built out of rock and turf. Livestock has been bought to the settlement, basic cattle, chickens, sheep.

Who governs it? Who else holds power? Is it part of a larger state?

This is the “embassy” of the Northlanders with Mintarn and the Moonshae Islands. Plus Angrath the pirate. Whom the Northlanders have a truce/agreement with.

The settlement is governed by its jarl, who also acts as the ambassador for the Northlanders. The ambassador answers to a council of jarls that represent the various islands that make up the Northland kingdom.

What are its defenses?

Semi circular earth works, guard tower by the west gate. Gates at east and west of village.

Where do characters go to find the goods and services they need?

The islands’ economy is very dependent on livestock and harvesting the products of the sea, particularly fish, whales, seals and birds. So the characters will have no problem getting food, and goods that are by products of the hunting. They can get equipment repaired.

What temples and other organizations feature prominently?

Not applicable this time.

What fantastic elements distinguish it from an ordinary town?

Not applicable this time.

Why should the characters care about the settlement?

This settlement will get them to Mintarn and particularly Queen’s Cove.

I created the following map for Sealby based on the Foteviken Museum viking village map.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. To be fair I’ve not been thinking much about the next session. That may sound lazy, and that I’ve lost interest. But in reality that’s not true. It’s been more that I’ve not had that point in time of when the next session is to focus on, and drive the creative process. Which was true until just over a week ago.

Finally the players have managed to pick a time and date for our second session of the campaign. This part of playing D&D is proving to be extremely frustrating. I’m glad I offloaded the process onto the players. I was getting very annoyed with a couple of the group, and the lack of information about when they were free. It felt like, and still does when I read the attempts to choose a date, like they are playing a game of “we are thinking of a number between 1 and a billion, can you guess it?”

At the current rate our third session will be in the new year. Which isn’t acceptable really. I know that the rest of the group also feel the same. Ideally we need to get the sessions to fortnightly.

So how to handle this?

I think at the end of the second session there needs to be time given to a group discussion about this. It needs to be handled delicately, with no finger pointing and blame.

On the planning front of the content for session 2 some of that is a carry over from the first session.

The party still have to clear the third level of the pirates lair, which is a single combat encounter, and a simple trap. Then they exit through an abandoned tomb, which potentially has a combat encounter. But that is already planned.

I have started to create item cards to give to the players for items they got from the pirates treasury. I googled a card template off the internet along with images of the item to use.

Now I have a Viking fishing village to populate. Followed by the town Queen’s Cove on Mintarn.

I already have some adventure hooks created. These hooks set up session 3. So I won’t know until the end of the session which one to prepare. I just need to make sure in the meantime any ideas for those hooks get noted in my GoodNotes file.

But I know session 2 will feel completely different to session 1. The encounter focus is different. Where as session 1 was a small dungeon crawl through the pirates lair. Session 2 is more social encounter oriented. There is the group challenge for rowing a row boat across a section of water between 2 islands.

The party also hit a level up point during session 2. So I need to decide whether to leave the levelling up until the end and let the players do that between sessions, or do the levelling up mid session. And if it is mid session how to add that to the narrative of the session.

Anyway with a date set in “stone” for the 21st of this month, you will be once more getting more of these posts again.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

“Rumor has it that a small number of Ironstar dwarves have a secret cave hold on Mintarn.”

That is the adventure hook I took from Mintarn Page on the Forgotten Realms Wiki.

The seed for it starts in the imminent (this Saturday) session 1 when possibly the adventurers discover a scrap of paper with a mysterious emblem on it (see below) on the desk of whoever is running the pirate group they have stumbled upon.

In session 2 once on Mintarn if they enquire about the emblem they will hear the rumour this post started with.

The adventurers will also need to learn about who the Ironstar Dwarves are, and given a reason why they would want to find this secret cave.

The Ironstar Dwarves were renowned for having mastered instilling magic in items. Their Darksteel maces were said to shatter armour in a single blow.

“Armour and weapons made form darksteel were resistant to acid and had the unique property of absorbing all magical and mundane electrical energy, including lightning, without transferring a charge to its bearer. In fact, the energy that effected weapons in this manner could be directed towards the target of the wielder.” (source Forgotten Realms Wiki)

So the prospect of magical equipment, or a way to make magical equipment is hopefully enough of an enticement to have the adventurers take the bait from this hook.

The plan is to use a D&D Beyond Encounter Of The Week as inspiration to cover the wilderness travel the party will have to undertake to find and reach the secret cave. Naturally the random encounter stuff triggered will use the tables I talked about in the previous post.

We then once at the secret cave enter a classic dungeon crawl. I haven’t decided if the secret cave will still have Ironstar dwarves living there, or we have a mines of Moria like scenario where the dwarves were all killed by orcs and goblins controlled by an unknown darkness. Or more in keeping with the campaign maybe Sahuagin instead.

That’s my thinking for that hook. It’s probably my most advanced at the moment. In my next planning post I’ll share my thoughts on the adventure hook that ties into a couple of the characters backgrounds.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

With our session 1 of the In the Wake Of Pytheas campaign imminent. Apart from some final prep such as printing stuff out, and a minor hiccup getting my hands on the GF9 Of Ships and Sea DM Screen (Amazon delivery guy delivered it to wrong place). I’m ready as I can be.

In the meantime thoughts are now turning towards session 2 and session 3. Well to be more accurate they have been for a little while now.

The latest thing I’ve been mulling over is what creatures/monsters inhabit the islands. Particularly the 9 islands that make up the Mintarn archipelago.

The reason this is an “issue” is because the adventurers will be wandering over these islands. Naturally there will be random encounters as they explore whichever island they happen to be on. But what creatures will they stumble upon?

The Ghosts of Salt Marsh appendix A has a useful encounter table for Wild Island encounters. It’s a good starting point. And truth be told may be used as is. Along side my own creation. I’ll be lazy and use the encounter tables as is from the book for random encounters at sea.

Why would I want to use my own encounter table? If we look at the list of reasons in the DM’s Guide for using random encounters the relevant ones for me are to “reinforce campaign themes“, “establish atmosphere” and “add interest“.

I also want to create unique encounter tables for each of the archipelagos. Naturally they will have variance and some over lap. I think this will aid in establishing atmosphere, make the archipelagos feel unique and reinforce any theme for the archipelago.

So between the Ghosts of Saltmarsh tables I mentioned above, I’ll also use the appropriate random encounter table for the coastal, forest, hills and mountains encounter tables from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Plus the appropriate monsters by environment lists from the DM’s Guide. I’ve not compared the tables and lists to see what over lap exists. There is bound to be some. Probably a lot. But from those tables and lists I’ll come up with my custom encounter table for each island.

I’ve also based on sources like the Sword Coast source book divided the islands into areas and the cultural influences on them.

As you can see the Mintarn Archipelago is a melting pot, where the different cultural influences mingle.

Racially and ecologically the Moonshae Isles have already been populated and gone into with the source material that I have. Such as the official Sword Coast book and the Rising Shadows book from the Adventurers League.

Which means Mintarn hasn’t been populated. Assumptions can be made based on a variety of sources and throw away paragraphs. Such as humans are the dominant species and most prevalent. Especially when we are talking about the capital Mintarn. But based on the adventure hook about the Ironstar Dwarves I came across for the main island. We can also assume there have been and possibly still Dwarves on the island.

Naturally the capital Mintarn will have enclaves of various races. So adventurers will bump into elves, halflings etc. But when they come across remote communities the racial diversity will be a lot less diverse, almost single race.

Pirates will be made up from humans, elves, orcs, minotaurs and dwarves mainly. And we know that other races will from time to time be found amongst them. Like for example Vraska who is a medusa/gorgan.

I like how the world is fleshing out. Without even getting to the Moonshae Isles there are so many options and things to do. This is such a rich area of Faerûn to explore.