10 Unique D&D Campaign Ideas for A Seafaring Adventure
Let us be your guide for DnD campaign themes at sea!
When most people think of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, they usually picture the action happening on land: in castles, caves, cities, forts, mountains, roads, and, of course, dungeons. But some adventures are not content to stay landlocked - they call for the pull of the saltwater, to sail on a ship, fight aquatic monsters, and explore the depths of the ocean. If you’re an old or new Dungeon Master looking for unique D&D campaign ideas, why not look to the water? We’re professional DMs over here (I know, it is the coolest job), so we have a few ideas for themes, plot hooks, and settings to inspire exciting and memorable D&D sessions that your players will love.
Run Creative D&D Adventures at Sea with Epic Ship Battles
Creative DnD adventures on a ship would definitely include epic sea battles
Combat in D&D is usually on some kind of battleground with individual combatants fighting hand-to-hand. But assuming your party can’t walk on water, they’ll be getting around on a ship, which gives combat a totally unique style. A ship can ram another ship in the water and fire siege weapons while its crew slings spells, arrows, and the occasional grenade across the way. When characters can board another ship, they can really do some damage, not only to the other crew, but the ship itself. Once I had a goblin monk shimmy along the edge of a ship all the way to its ballista - which she promptly took over and fired straight at the mast, leaving the enemy crew with no way out. Give your players the chance to fight aboard ships for a creative D&D adventure!
Buried Treasure is the Best Adventure Hook for a D&D Campaign
Treasure is a key motivator for many Dungeons & Dragons adventurers
Treasure, loot, equipment - whatever you want to call it, money, cool items, and valuable goods are a staple reward to motivate a party to go on a quest. But when the quest itself is to find the treasure, it can get all kinds of interesting. There could be different legends, curses, or clues around the treasure itself (not to mention other parties who would like to get their hands on it)! It could be hiding away: in a magically-concealed cave, in the lair of a sea serpent, or aboard another ship. In a campaign inspired by the Salvage Operation adventure in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, my players found one half of a treasure map and allied with the pirate captain who had the other. So far they’ve followed the clues and tracked down the hoard aboard a ship, which is damaged terribly and nearly ready to sink. Little do they know that it’s about to be attacked by a Kraken; they’ll have to choose whether to risk it for the treasure or to flee for their lives!
Get Aqua-Political for a Creative D&D Adventure
Your party might find themselves in strange situatinos like a lizardfolk war room.
Political intrigue can be a great hook for any D&D campaign; treaties, backstabbing, alliances, deception - all of it is a social puzzle for your players to solve, and it’s especially fun for Dungeon Masters and players interested in worldbuilding. But certain factions and plotlines have been done over and over again - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played a game whereelves are at war with orcs. Adding in the people from Dungeons & Dragons’ aquatic lore adds a whole new element. If you’re not sure where to start, you can familiarize yourself with the many sea creatures in D&D. As an adventure hook for your D&D campaign, you could introduce the aquatic elves; they are devoted enemies of the sahuagin, sharklike humanoids who worship the god Sekolah. Perhaps the two groups are recruiting spies to feed them information, doing battle near volatile rifts, or contesting the terrain of the merfolk, who are caught in the crossfire.
A Mysterious Island is a Great D&D Campaign Idea for New DMs
What adventures might your players find on this island?
One of the most exciting parts of Dungeons & Dragons is also one of the scariest parts for new Dungeon Masters. That’s the fact that, in this kind of game, anything could happen! For players, this means freedom to use their imagination, come up with creative solutions, and explore around to find their own adventure. For DMs, this can mean scrambling to come up with something as your players poke at parts of the world you didn’t think they’d explore. But an island is self-contained; this limits, the scope, which makes your job easier, but is also adds an element of mystery and excitement (Who’s been living on the island? Why? How did the party get there? What happens if their ship gets taken over before they can leave?). One Dungeons & Dragons story idea could be an island that’s the base of operations of a terrible creature, like a sea hag, who’s commanding a network of underlings to attack nearby coastal cities.
Run a Nautical D&D Campaign with Great Aquatic Monsters
Nautical D&D campaigns might just run into a hydra or other fearsome sea monster
The landlocked menagerie goes out the window as soon as your players set sail. Gone are gnolls, owlbears, and ogres; instead, your players might fight a harpy, a hydra, or a storm giant! When crafting an encounter at sea (or using one that’s been built for you), you should think about strategy, flavor, and motivation. Strategy makes fights interesting. Harpies' songs can lure adventurers towards them. This is scary enough, given their fearsome claws, but it can be clever, too, if you position your harpies on the other side of stormy waters, deadly quicksand, or other hazardous environments. Flavor is all about description. When describing a hydra in a fight, you can lay on a whole monologue dramatically describing one head being chopped off and two fearsome ones growing back. Motivation gives a reason why the monster is fighting - which isn’t always just “because it’s evil.” Storm giants are solitary beings; maybe your party simply interrupted their time with a good (waterproof) book!
Create an Interesting Port City for your D&D Sea Campaign
Old Angler’s Den served as a great adventure hook for my D&D campaigns
While sailing the seven seas is a daring and adventurous time indeed, most boats can't stay adrift forever. Eventually, they must come to port to restock food, water, and other necessities. This gives your players a chance to explore strange and exciting new port cities and the many colorful characters who occupy them. I've used the city of Old Angler's Den, from Aryel's Final Curse, for two different campaigns to great effect! In one campaign, it was a city in the Feywild, where agents of the tyrannical Fey king Finnbheara were trying to shut down pirates and honest merchants alike, and the party teamed up with a pirate captain to try and fight back. In another, (following a little more closely to the original) the party tracked down the lair of a siren with the power of dreams who was taking over the city.
Run a Creative D&D Adventure by Adding Bluerot
Fighting an unknown disease is a unique D&D campaign theme
While running Tammeraut's Fate, another adventure in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I came across an interesting and mysterious element that fascinated my players: the bluerot. This is a strange disease spread though open wounds. It causes barnacles to grow on one's body, giving them water breathing and reducing their Hit Points and Charisma, essentially turning people into water zombies. Rather than simply giving my party a monster they could hit, giving them a challenge that they had to figure out let them flex their creativity. Eventually, they figured out that Bluerot could be beaten back with radiant damage, and they cured the poor inhabitants of the island that had been overtaken by the disease without even drawing a sword. This could be a great adventure hook for your D&D campaign!
How to Run A D&D Sea Campaign Underwater
Your D&D adventure might never even touch land!
When swimming around the oceans, things work very differently than on land. Not only are the terrain, the people, and the monsters different, but so is physics itself! Instead of running around on a surface, combatants can swim in all three dimensions, unperturbed by falling or climbing.
No matter how good a fighter your players might be on land, if they can’t swim, their melee attacks will have disadvantage underwater if they can’t get their hands on an appropriate weapon. Even ranged attacks change; with the extra drag from the water, longbows and similar weapons have disadvantage to hit, so be sure to arm your NPCs with nets, spears, and crossbows! By leaning into the unique challenge of underwater physics, you can craft a creative D&D adventure for your players.
Reward Your Players with Cool Ships on Your Nautical D&D Adventure
Sea and sailing make for great D&D campaign themes
As your players progress in Dungeons & Dragons, they’ll level up their characters, gaining higher stats and cool abilities. But if they are sailing on the water, they’ll level up their ship, too! Like players, ships have stats like armor class, hit points, and speed. Many vessels are equipped with weapons that have their own set of stats! When your players conquer more and more difficult challenges, you can reward them with things like magical sails that increase their speed, a reinforced hull to increase their armor class, or new weapons to bring on board for naval battles. Once they’ve got enough gold, they may even be able to upgrade to a whole new ship!
Start a D&D Campaign on the High Seas!
If you're looking to run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, these ideas for D&D campaigns at sea are a great place to start! But you'll need more than a few ideas to be a good DM. If you'd like to learn how to put together an adventure of your very own (and learn some other neat skills along the way), check out our Dragon Leaders course. If you'd rather play out an adventure like this yourself and let someone else be the DM, we can help with that, too! Here at Young Dragonslayers, we run custom-made Dungeons & Dragons campaigns for tweens and teens based on your interests, fandoms, and play styles (one of my sea campaigns came about because I had a party of One Piece fans). If you're reading this soon after it goes up, our spring games start on April 7th, so go join the waitlist!
