When creating an original island adventure in DnD 5e or other tabletop RPGs, consider the following:
Island adventures in Dungeons and Dragons 5e create opportunities for sailing, lost worlds, underwater excursions and pirate campaigns. Obviously, this type of campaign will be full of aquatic monsters, hidden temples, lush jungles and booby traps. Do the locals practice an unknown magic connected to the sea? Or has a pirate city formed amid an island chain?
Before we dive into homebrewing an island adventure, you can check out my original homebrew pirate adventure here or below!
No matter the set up and overarching story, island campaigns have several mechanics to consider. We want to vary gameplay with monster encounters, social encounters and exploration. Therefore, mechanics like the ship crew of Ghosts of Saltmarsh and underwater combat can add to the adventure and make it unique.
Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a great place to start for campaigns that utilize a traditional ship crew and structure. In this release from Wizards of the Coast, we receive game mechanics for ship combat, crew management and even mutiny. This book goes in deep, so if this is your thing, I would recommend it.
Ships have AC, Dexterity and HP, and come in several sizes. Large galleys, sailing ships and warships can carry many crew members, including the party.
In combat, the ship itself rolls for initiative, alongside the party. The ship adds its Dexterity score (not good) as well as the day’s Quality Score.
Starting out, my ship will receive +4 to my Quality Score, ranging from -10 to +10. I’ll need to secure victories, lost treasure, shore leave, good vibes or the ship’s quality score is affected negatively. Once this hits 0 or lower, the Captain must make an Intimidation or Persuasion score to the crew and add the quality score.
If the roll is greater than 9, nothing bad happens.
A roll of 1-9 subtracts an additional -1 from quality score.
However, a score less than 9 causes mutiny.
While on board, players will fill out certain rolls for the ship as laid out in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Therefore, playing this style will set me and my friends into rolls ranging from Captain to Cook. These rolls are:
Ships have a number of actions that depend on the type of ship and amount of crew on board. Therefore, if a ship loses crew members to combat or mutiny, the ship loses combat actions. Naturally, this makes the ship more prone to sinking or capture. Also, some actions depend on ship upgrades—such as upgrading from oars to sails—or are related to certain ships.
These actions include maneuvers and weapons such as:
Playing island adventures in DnD 5e means learning the rules of water. If there’s one thing prevalent in the story of island hopping, it’s the ocean. Whether an encounter drags one of the players beneath the surface or the whole quest requires water breathing, we need to think about what we can do with these mechanics to spice up the campaign.
First, let’s go over what we can do in a combat scenario—a player is dragged underwater by a lurking creature.
Underwater, a player that doesn’t have a swimming speed, either natural or magical, has disadvantage on attack rolls. However, a knife, javelin, shortsword, spear or trident attack as normal. Ranged attack automatically miss when they go beyond their initial range. Even within their range, they gain disadvantage unless fired from a crossbow or thrown like a javelin or net.
Naturally, everyone has resistance to fire damage.
Then, we should look at the rules for grappling, which is a possible combat tactic for a helping friend.
Grapples can be attempted as an attack. Therefore, if I have a character with an Extra Attack feature, one of those attacks can be a grapple. The grappling character makes a Strength check against an enemy’s Strength or Dexterity check. A grappled opponent’s speed is reduced to 0 while grappled. However, they can attempt a Strength or Dexterity check on their turn to escape.
Creatures 1 size larger than the grappler automatically escape the grapple on their turn.
A player with the Grappler feat gains special abilities while grappling, including:
There are many ways to give a character water breathing—through spell casting, magic items or an amphibious nature. So, when the party realizes that everyone can breathe underwater, new adventure options appear. Now, the party can explore underwater caverns, sunken vessels, lost cities or the wilds of an exotic reef.
Consider these prompts for underwater adventures or excursions:
An inherent theme in island adventures is isolation. Whether the island itself is a lost, mythological wonder or just too far offshore for most people to care about, islands are lonely and vulnerable. Natural disasters like storms, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions are common with this setting. Therefore, any number of survival situations can occur.
Even when civilizations do arise on islands, they are often varied and may not be friendly to outsiders.
Consider natural obstacles that may occur on wild islands. Sure, the wildlife may reign supreme on the uninhabited landmass, giving plenty of opportunity for monster encounters. But pitfalls can make the game more interesting, so the players aren’t fighting one battle after another.
Common island ecologies that come to mind are temperate, rocky landscapes or tropical and volcanic. Consider these pitfalls during excursions into the island wilds:
Islands often must deal with the sea—it gives and takes away. Hurricanes and tsunamis can devastate island communities, who build a lifestyle in reverence of this threat. Similar to the volcano, an impending mega storm or tsunami can increase the tension of the adventure.
However, storms can come into play in different ways.
Islands can produce unique collections of monster encounters, depending on the ecology. While some creatures will stalk on the coast, other mysterious creatures lurk in the deep jungles. Plus, the oceans between islands are sure to be swimming with tentacled horrors and gigantic leviathans.
Ocean monsters will change depending on the depth of the water. Out in the deep blue, all bets are off—this is where the big monsters lurk. However, coastal waters and sandbars may not support big creatures.
Beach monsters include crab-like creatures and smaller monsters who avoid the larger predators of the deep island. However, it can also hold creatures who invade from the sea.
The deep jungle can carry prehistoric creatures and unknown horrors who haven’t seen an outsider in eons. We can mix in ideas from The Lost World and King Kong with typical rainforest creatures.
Of course, not all islands belong completely to the wild. Civilizations and cultures appear on islands in unique ways. Often, especially with archipelagos and island chains, diverse cultures work in unison with each other across different islands.
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Plus, we can consider other types of social interaction even when the island is uninhabited. Explorers, pirates and even spirits of a lost civilization can make for interesting social encounters along the way.
Consider the following island social encounter prompts:
Islands often carry the remnants of ancient civilizations, even if the land is now abandoned. The sea may entice the inhabitants to explore further, leaving great structures behind for the jungles to overtake. In fact, this is fantastic place to build an Indiana Jones style tomb crawler, complete with booby traps and snakes.
Consider these island dungeon crawls as an adventure prompt:
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Thank you for this guide, I am sure this will come in handy as my campaign starts out on a tropical island 25 years after a cataclysmic event. The PCs are about to head into the deep jungle towards an ancient inactive volcano and I found this just in time!
Look forward to reading more of your work.
Regards,
Ian. H.R