5 Common Nautical Campaign Mistakes in Dungeons & Dragons 

MARITIME & MADNESS | Ship and naval combat ruleset and the Seas of Tasslebrook Adventure Arc Get Maritime & Madness on the DM Lair Store here: the-dm-lair.myshopify.com/products/maritime-madness-lair-magazine-24-december-2022-issue

Actually, fire on a ship at sea is a massive danger and very difficult to extinguish. That's the reason all sailors in the US Navy are certified firefighters (or at least, they used to be, not sure anymore). Even though you're surrounded by water, there's often no way to get that water to the fire and it just turns into a graveyard of burn victims. Grisly stuff.

0:10 Random Encounter after Random Encounter after Random Encounter after... 4:40 Solution 7:18 Running Crappy Naval Combat (rules should be concise, easy to pick up...) 12:12 Not capitalizing on the Nautical Backdrop 12:50 Examples of situations while sailing 16:22 Fumbling Underwater Combat 18:40 Tracking depth/height 22:17 Having an empty World

Additional thing I did in my nautical campaign was treat the ship as a combo tavern/ home base. Just having a short role play section where food or Grog is handed out, or plans are discussed really brings the ship to life.

new DM here! and I decided I wanted to run a high seas campaign for my first game ever and its been a blast but I really had to develop my setting first. I made a "bermuda triangle" type area of the sea thats distorted by wild magic and its a place where the plains converge and all kinds of strange places and monsters and treasures can be found there. But I made sure that there was a large "hub city" where players can get a change of scenery away from the strange islands and situations out to sea and its amazing to me how much my players appreciate dry land after many sessions at sea so I make sure theres always something to do that develops the city and its characters. My irish satyr bar keeper is a sight for sore sea salted eyes for my group every time they return "home"

I'm literally starting to make a nautical campaign this week so this was a crazy coincidence.

I'm running a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign right now, and I'm excited to report that it's going really well! I can definitely vouch for Luke's advice here! I've made some of these mistakes, and the game got much better once they were corrected.

I’m working on a nautical campaign which is also my first every time DMing. I don’t know if it’s a bad idea but I’m really excited. The king is hosting this great boat race and he’s rooting for my party. Wish them luck 😂

Lots of good advice. I would add to this that leaning into the cliches on this one is a good thing. Most people coming to a nautical campaign have various pirate movies in mind first and foremost with Sinbad and Jason the Argonauts being somewhere in there with a smattering of Hornblower, Mutiny on the Bounter, and Master and Commander. Regardless, mine every last ocean=going story you can. Nautical campaigns are perfect places for spooky coastal mansion, Lovecraftian horror, pirate shenanigans, curses, superstitions and everything in between. I run a campaign I call Vagabond Seas and have peppered it with strange races, interesting NPCs and organizations. A lot can be achieved by setting up interesting places and characters just like any other campaign. We had new and interesting games of chance, we had nautical-themes minor magic items like the Dead Man's Maw or Sea Charms. Also having your setting dotted with old ruins and local sea peoples is a good way to establish this as different from your normal land campaign. One of my players, of islander descent himself, wanted to make a character from a group of sea-dwelling, Polynesian-themed orcs. He used the half-orc stats and suddenly I had a whole new culture in my game. I also included the monkey goblins from one of the MtG crossovers as an exotic race and gave them the underlying story arc that nobody knew where they came from, not even them and they just sort of showed up in the area.

If the group isn't getting horses, that means some combination of: 1) You've made gold too scarce, they can't afford them. 2) There's no time limit for the group, no 'running clock'. They can take however long they wish. 3) You've vastly underestimated the travel distances between where they're at and where they need to be.

This is my favorite dnd RU-vid channel. One of the few that doesn't swear so I can share the videos with my little sisters. These videos have helped my dming immensely.

This episode and DM magazine has come at the absolute perfect time!!! I’m currently writing a fantasy steampunk campaign with floating worlds that the players can sail to, I’m going for a Treasure Planet feel with the flying ships. Can’t wait to go get the magazine!

I am always looking for more Nautical adventure content. My world is an island world with vast oceans and complex underwater civilizations. This is absolutely perfect for me. Great advice!

Really awesome content! Some great ideas and really a great inspiration for naval campaign creation!

I have two lists in my nautical campaign: Events and places. Places are permanent locations with NPCs, loot, quests, rest, trade, etc. Events are more fungible on the map but may include, large changes in weather, encounters with either creatures or factions, lost floating items, or even a place that can only be found by chance because it moves (floating fishing town, giant island sea turtle, magical islands that only appear under specific conditions, ghost ships, etc.) With lots of content and places to stick plot hooks, hopefully my players don’t feel too restricted or bored. I also mixed in some obvious long term side quests if they choose to follow them (treasure maps, dragon balls, partial plans for a new type of ship that needs to be jig-sawed together, etc.)

Ships make great mobile headquarters. I remember the Pirates of Dark Water cartoon, and always wanted to try and capture that in a D&D campaign.

You can buy small, colored mosaic tiles made of plastic from craft stores that perfectly fit in a battle grid. Each one counts as 5 ft off the ground and you can even glue some together so you're not knocking over squares. Every time someone tries to move a mini. We've used these for years and they've been super effective.

Hey DM Lair, thanks for this video, im currently making my own homebrew campaign and this is perfect for my prep 😁❤️😊

This comes in at the perfect time, I am about to run a nautical campaign in a couple weeks.Thanks GM Lair!

My campaign world is a giant ocean with islands, no continents. The fun thing about an island is that it can be a completely isolated location. Just like real-world islands are often home to unique creatures found nowhere else (see Madagascar or Australia, for example), an island in game can have odd monsters without it necessarily having to affect the rest of the world. I've put some things I wasn't sure whether I wanted in my world on one island somewhere just to try using them.

This is so timely! I've been working on my own system, except instead of for a nautical adventure, it's in space. I'll create random encounter tables but take Luke's words of advice to heart and also have planned events to ensure things stay interesting.

Great ideas, thank you

Depending on your surroundings even darkvision can be less than helpful in the midnight zone. Imagine there being no terrain cause you’re diving down, grayscale doesn’t do much to help if there’s nothing to see. Still dark and terrifying, especially if they’re the first ones to see the giant set of jaws coming right for the group

thx for the vid, gave me some great ideas for some nice encounters :P

Thanks for the tips I’m running a Pirate Campaign soon so these are good tips. I was planning on doing most of these, but they are very useful advice. I never thought of having a fire on the ship.

I’m making my first Pirate campaign now and this made me realize that as prepared as I thought I was I have sooo much more I can bring now!

Just found this channel thanks to this video. It's definitely worth watching if you're building a nautical campaign or a campaign that has ocean elements to it. I'm going to be using a lot of your stuff😅 Thanks for this!

Thanks for the tips!

Also got a say you videos have been monumental in my progression as a DM from complete fumbling bumble jack to a fairly competent Wonder joe. THANK YOU!

Loved this

Hey, glad to be here. I had a game that failed that was nautical themed, which fell flat 😂 nice to get some tips, thank you!

Haha was literally talking last night about running a nautical campaign sometime soon! Good timing thank you! -Dan

This, and the new Maritime issue of Lair magazine, are a timely help. I'm prepping to run Saltmarsh in January, and need adventures to fill the gaps in the campaign. The encounter's in Lair are great, and I'll probably use bits from the three adventures in it too.

I’ve been trolling around youtube for videos on Naval Campaigns, as I’m going to be including both naval and underwater content in my upcoming game. Thanks so much for the great advice!

I thought that Bludgeoning and Slashing all having disadvantage underwater *WAS* the rule... there's just a list of Piercing weapons and a note "These attack as normal" ? 😆

A random piece of trivia, the hunchback of Notre Dame was written as a means of getting the building declared an historic monument. So, the cathedral was actually a main character in the story. The weird things to know when DMing. 😉

I have had a few of these issues with my ship based game in 5e. I am planning an airship based game some time next year and I hope to avoid some of my previous mistakes.

love it. recommendation for depth for battles. for those that use minis - there are many products the basically together that create elevated platforms. it gives a nice visual and creates visual perspective. they are usually clear plastic so it does not interfere visually with battle maps

Love the video. Seafaring campaigns are one of my favorite settings, now i think i want to send my story adrift for a couple sessions to take advantage of new plot ideas. Just a note about Hunchback of Notre Dame though... the book was written with the intent to celebrate the architecture design and beauty of the cathedral, because it was in disrepair and the best way to get funding is to attach a story that rich benefactors might like. Kind of worked too.

loved this vid i am a DM And am planing a Nautical campaign and this gave my so maney good ides

It is a very rare yet very satisfying thing when I have somehow by complete happenstance not fallen victim of any of the things on a list like this. Thank you, as I now know to actively avoid those scenarios as well.

Im doing my first ever campaign as DM, and i decided on an ocean world with tons of tropical islands. I have five players joining and the finale battle planned out. Here to avoid classic mistakes, so thanks for this video.

As someone running Spelljammer 5e this is all highly relevant and very useful, thank you

Nice ideas for a nautical campaign, love the ocean in games. I also would love a detailed explanation of your point of interest travel system.

Running saltmarsh rn, Ty for the help

A video on your points of interest system would be nice 👍

Came here after watching the trailer for the last voyage of the Demeter! So many ideas and I wanna make sure I run it really well!!

God bless you for your missionary work! That’s awesome!

So I think that this advice could also be used with the new Spelljammer stuff as it is just a nautical adventure in “space”. Also as for the 3D maneuvering I had an idea to have a separate grid off to the side that indicates the height of each creature, but I haven’t had the chance to use it so I’m not sure how effect of easy it would be to implement.

Man this one is gonna be on my rewatchers list

For keeping track of three d movement in water you could use poker chips of a type of color just stack them Red for above 0 height Blue for below 0 height Each is the equivalent of five feet

I found this perfectly when I was looking for some tips on running a pirate campaign it is a mix of Greek and fantasy style similar to simbad in greek style but I wanted to have unique interactions than just "Oh siren attack" or "oh bad guy ship" Because of this I got ideas of using Charybdis a monster which is made to pull ships in to shred them to bits and as well having a mutiny that ends with the ship catching on fire

I had a nautical portion of the adventure I am running last Summer. The players got an old boat from a Duke, and were searching for an island with a dungeon on it. I made a grid with 64 charts, and different events on each chart. They were given an unlabeled chart to make notes on. That was great for a while in game, but doing a whole campaign of that would not have been fun. For the naval combat, the Monk jumped from their boat to the enemy's to attack. It was a really cool battle.

Actually made all the newbie DM mistakes in 1st campaign built my own world ran a nautical campaign with making some of these mistakes in early sessions. Now a year in much better. I learned quickly you want land and sea so I expanded the size of islands they would travel to instead of being small 2-3 mile islands some are 40-50 miles with 2-3 towns so the party now spends a couple sessions on an island then goes back to sea. That simple adjustment made it much more enjoyable all around. Great video wish I had it 18 months ago lol

We demand a video on your Point of Interest System!

That’s funny, I just ran a session last weekend and they fought a kraken. The kraken was after them because they disturbed him using an earthquake spell on an island

We have electrical damage like lightning do aoe damage with submerged and for height on the flying or swimming we use the pizza tables because they stack nice and fit on the maps well each table we use as 10’ elevation

2:34 legit I'm in a campaign that after our original plan of just hike though a mountain range instead of going around was foiled by the fact that a ancient white dragon exist, we stopped by a town a bought horses and a carriage for the travel by road around the mountains. It was something I brought up to do especially since I doubt a wizard would actually like walking by foot for 3 weeks to the destination given the party was level 3

The biggest mistake I've ever experienced during a nautical campaign was the DM being very, very, very proud of his weather and sailing simulation system. We sat there for about two hours doing absolutely nothing while he rolled dice and told us what the weather was that day and if we were on course.

My current campaigns play in ancient Greece so we are travelling both land and sea. My lvl 5 group just discovered a frozen island in the middle of summer and in the middle of the mediteranen. It´s a fun adventure that after working on it and playing with a different group now even ties in with the major story. But it can also just be a fun adventure to plug into any sea. Everything is frozen, the reason is a bheur hag that is holding the island hostage. You can add a lot of fun things into this premise :)

A "Random Points of Interest" video would be amazing. I despise and usually avoid caravans and such like the one in "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" because I'm unsure how to make them interesting.

Random encounters just strung together, dude that’s my daily life.

With the whole fire spells underwater thing I love to flavor it as boiling water or steam. A fireball is a big orb of boiling water that scorches everything it touches

My little brother and SIX of his friends want me to DM a nautical pirate game. Ive never DM'd for a party above 4 or 5. So I'm plenty nervous because I'm very out of my depth with not only it being a table of teenage boys, but also the player count, and campaign type. This video helped a ton!

The rules for naval combat in the 3.5 dnd book storm wrack is fairly straightforward and easy to convert

The elevation dice idea is so good.

That Star Trek game you described sounds like “Star Fleet Battles”.

As a brand new potential DM a points of Interest video would be great

Would love to see your point of interest system!

Oh man! I’ve played in one of the games you described at the beginning. Oh look, another random sea monster! How fulfilling. So many of your tips would have remade the “campaign” if the DM had taken your advice.

We usually have horses and a wagon or cart. Which the wagon and cart with fire suppression have been destroyed in random encounters. They have been stolen and even some horses too.

I love running nautical games, the 3D combat is so fun to run. I am currently running a 3rd Pirate campaign that I have run over the last decade, I always end up with a waiting list for players because my table fills very quickly when I run these games.

Our group use horses all of the time, and we keep on getting them killed. It was a milestone for us when we had no deaths of the equestrian sort after traveling to an area. One time we had a character Yoshie sacrifice his horse.

A minor gripe... It's not Boat-SWAIN. It's Bo'sun. As a Boatswain's Mate in the Navy for 20 years it kinda, sorta grates my nerves. But, I also understand because you might not have had any experience with that.

I'm running a campaign with a lot of boat travel, but its not the primary story element. The group managed to stumble into a quest line that they WOULD NOT give up on despite being balanced for later in the game. through sheer perseverance and a few very lucky rolls talking to some dangerous wizards, they managed to get a ship that was enchanted to sail itself. So unless they have something to do with the passengers they might be carrying, I usually just have them roll daily travel checks on a roll table I made myself to see if anything interesting happens or if they got sped up or slowed down by the weather.

Alternatives to combat during travel would be great!

I don't have horses in my campaigns. Instead, I use riding birds (Axebeak stat block, but less aggressive). In one of my old D&D groups, we were playing 3.5. I was in the process of trying a new mechanic, where the characters would teleport back and forth from 2 different realities; one being D&D and the other being MURPG (Marvel Universe Role-Playing Game). Except the MURPG wasn't the marvel universe. I had books of NPCs, that I was going to use.

The Star Trek game you were thinking of is Star Fleet Battles.

I feel like a lot of the advice for nautical campaigns is also relevant to spelljamming style campaigns. If you don't have a way to give each player something to do in a ship battle, it's probably best to abstract it and get to the boarding action. I'm starting a voidjammer campaign (spelljammer with a few changes), and I'm looking forward to when my players encounter a derelict stuffed with hungry Dark-Sunesque halflings (I call them hannibals). So much for swabbing the decks, lads! To arms!

My party are on their 3rd set of horses they keep losing them or getting them killed. One the scraficed to a chimera to distract it so they can sneak up on it

I'm currently playing in a nautical dnd campaign that has been really fun so far. I will say that after losing our ship for the second time to unfortunate circumstances we're all pretty much ready to turn in our sea legs for a life on land. First time it happened we were just super excited we survived. If we get out of this one we'll likely be reevaluating our occupation though.

Since I finally got a chance to finish watching I realized I had one other tiny little gripe. And that was when you said that it would be boring to be sailing in the middle of the ocean with nothing to do and there should be *things* to go do. There are times when I wished we could have had an adventure to do while floating in the middle of the ocean because it IS boring. BUT! The good thing is that this is D&D! And I don't have to run an adventure that's completely boring.

So far in every game I’ve been in. The adventuring party has had a cart and some means to pull it.

Currently running a campaign where the 'world' map is an archipelago. The ocean travel bits are often just that, travel to the next POI in an effort to move forward the over arching plot. And planning travel is important as the rest of world does NOT remain static waiting for the PCs to show up. Each day, my players make a navigation check which may speed or slow their travel progress. And a single encounter roll, options include: monster battle (if spotted ahead of time a skill challenge to avoid available), weather event (good or bad), a chance at obtaining a consumable resource, other travelers, or something just plain Weird.

I pick horses all the time, usually along side a cart too so i can carry stuff around. Feels more immersive

A fireball may not have as much of a fiery effect, but water does not compress very well. The shockwave from the explosion might be nasty.

I had my first game with a new group and we went from a cyberpunk secret government agency to buying a ship for 150 gold, and my table is so excited about a pirate adventure that I think I'll just make a nautical campaign. This video was really helpful on what to avoid, thanks

Your sword coast campaign was a shining example of what to do with nautical adventures

Cam you do one on airships now, im having to cknvert a lot of ship stuff to airships for a campaign

i completely built an entire world and premise for my players to explore and story that changes the surrounds and town. it was set in saltmarsh and i made it a sand box but my party opted for random encounter after random encounter swords for hire route lol

With your houserule for just using damage type to determine underwater effectiveness, are you applying that only to melee piercing weapons? Or all piercing weapons (including bows)?

An idea for tracking height/depth of characters in combat: Take a cheap dowel and glue it vertically to a sturdy base. Cut out squares/rectangles from cereal boxes or the like. Glue those pieces of cardboard (inside surface facing you) to the side of clothespins. Cover those pieces of cardboard with masking tape (or any other with a slick surface) to make a wet-erase surface. You can now write with a wet-erase marker the names of PCs and creatures on those modified clothespins, including their height/depth. Clip them onto the dowel so that the labeled side faces everyone, making sure that those that are higher in altitude are higher on the dowel. This should give at a glance a visual means of comparing creature locations relative to each other. Maybe even clip all PCs and friendly npcs to one side, and enemies on the other to help keep track of friend and foe. For extra utility, paint one vertical side of the dowel with a few colored bands. That side can face players when you need to represent what floor/area of the ship every creature is on. Have the highest band represent the rigging/sails, the one below being the deck, the next being below deck, and the last being overboard. A bonus for this is that it should be cheap to make if you go to a dollar store for materials, or use some otherwise useless miscellane that is just sitting around being unused.

Velvet Fist? The brothel from Buck Godot? Cool

well one can also use some of the Pathfinder mods for D&D

I have been working on an idea for a nautical campaign. I love the idea of having a base of operation in campaigns but those usually tie characters to one are. In a nautical campaign the base can go with you. The ideas I have involve an area like Greece in a Mediterranean Sea like area where there are islands and other nations that can be interacted with. Some of the nations would be at war with each other and the players would have the options to help one or more nations, stay out of the war, get other nations involved in the war hunt for treasure that's guarded by monsters. The story would be based heavily on the player character's backgrounds. Random encounters have never even been considered for the campaign. A mutated had never occurred to me. That would be hilarious. Underwater breathing item: Suppository of water breathing? (Futurama) What about a cursed island that when you sail away from it the next day you arrive back there and no one on the island remembers you were there until you resolve the curse.

My players use horses and the skeleton horse from the Dragon Barrow too...find steed helps

I'm running a pirate campaign and the rules in Salt Marshes suck! We started with the players being passengers and ship to ship combat happened in the background until someone wanted to take command of a cannon then I just let them shoot a few times but didn't change my plan. The characters got in the action when the pirates boarded our ship. Then they wanted to buy their own ship so I had to come up with ship prices and crew wages. But no they wanted to custom build their own ship and spend more money on making it faster. So I had to come up with basically slots where they could trade off things like speed for durability, or number of cannons for cargo space, etc. Then they wanted to do the crew stuff themselves so I had to come up with tasks and challenges like climb and seamanship checks to raise or lower a sail in two rounds so the ship can turn 90 degrees to get guns on the enemy before they shot a volley at our unprotected stern. Now I basically have an entire source book on nautical rules. At least I had fun learning a tone of stuff about the age of sail.

To be fair, that first pit trap (a campaign made of a string of random encounters), sounds exactly like my first years' worth of D&D where I played through Tomb of Annihilation. Sure, there was some sort of overall plot thread in the back of it all, but mostly it was just random encounters as we stumbled through Chult. I wouldn't say it was horrible (not entirely), but it is definitely worth noting that this can happen in land based campaigns as much as nautical ones.

Startrek game was probably Star Fleet battles.

So I have a board game called Black Seas that I’m planning to implement for naval combat in my naval campaign. It’s fairly simple yet accurate and should translate fairly easily.