I had not DMed for years in any real way. I missed it. Being the master of a story that the players bring to life is so rewarding for me. While it cuts into my writing time a bit I love creating fantastic worlds for the players to adventure in and engaging conflicts for them to resolve.

In November I took up the Ghosts of Salt Marsh adventure for my group. For any who don’t know, it’s an adventure for dungeons and dragons which is made up of a collection of adventures from earlier editions. It has a bit of a pirate vibe to it and I leaned all the way into that. So did the party!

The group has honestly been creating ever more interesting characters and even working on whole party themes. My favorite to date was a group of unemployed circus performers who went by the name “The Perilous Performers” and had an entire dramatic introduction that we executed for new NPCs we met. It was a blast.

This time the group decided they would all make goblins, except my son who made a gnome. I placed them under the (forced) employ of a small time smuggler and soon enough they found themselves free of his employ and instead working for a councilman with a secret identity. With that the adventure had begun!

The goblin each had a color assigned to them by their former master that was vaguely representative of their class. The enraged barbarian is red goblin. The sorcerer is blue goblin. The monk is pink goblin. Of course, the gnome which they regard as their brother as well, either by choice or ignorance, is white goblin. Not your typical party, to be sure.

The adventures they’ve undertaken so far have been super fun. They don’t fight is quite the same way a more traditional party might and they certainly don’t role play in the same way as a typical party does. They have aspirations of pirating their own ship and I look forward to that dream being fulfilled.

Until then, I look forward to every Monday seeing the “Green Tide” sail the seas.