Gauntlet of the Sea Serpents

Another one-shot D&D adventure for you! This one features pirates!

Pirate captain Sevaris (“Sev”) Grandia (they/them) is out of money and will lose their ship and crew if they can’t complete a risky mission: crossing the Sea of Serpents to reach a small island where rumors say a great treasure has been hidden. Normally, this crossing is a death sentence, but Sev has a stolen recipe for an alchemical potion that is supposed to let them pass. Will it work?

This adventure ended up being a pretty intense escalation of tension. There’s a social encounter to start, but after that it’s non-stop action which I haven’t done before in my one-shots.

I also made use of the concept of Clocks for the first time, as seen in many other tabletop RPGs, notably Blades in the Dark. Don’t worry if you don’t know the term; it’s just a counter for something (kind of like how hit points are a counter for how much damage it takes to defeat an enemy). Daggerheart calls these “countdowns”.

I wrote this adventure inspired by the wonderfully hilarious book Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland. That story is way better than this (and has more entertaining characters) so I recommend you go read it if you like horny pirates. The adventure presented here is much less horny and more death-defying but still has its silly moments. It’s also inspired by the video game The Curse of Monkey Island (particularly my first scene), which I also highly recommend. Bonus points if you quote the pirate song to your players as they try to convince the crew to get to work!

Photo by Nadjib Bouarar on Unsplash