Here is U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (1981), the start of a classic three part series of modules for first edition Dungeons & Dragons, nominally set in Greyhawk.

The “U” stands for Underwater and despite the classic status, I generally hold to the maxim that the water world level of any game kind of sucks. This may or may not be because of my intense fear of drowning/sea monsters. I also don’t have a kindly disposition to the Ann Radcliffe/Scooby-Doo storytelling technique of “the supernatural exposed,” which U1 leans on quite heavily. More than anything, U1 is essentially a D&D reworking of Russel Thorndike’s novel Doctor Syn: A Tale of Romney Marsh (or the films Night Creatures and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh).

The series was developed by TSR UK and written by David Browne and Don Turnbull (the driving force behind the Fiend Folio). U1 is divided into two parts. The first, “The Haunted House”involves a mansion at the edge of town that is “haunted” by a ring of smugglers. The second part, “The Sea Ghost,” deals with the sea-going portion of the smuggling operation. (It occurs to me that Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys novels always seemed to be about smugglers, so that is probably another key inspiration here).

In 1981, I can see this as a breath of fresh air among all the standard D&D dungeon crawls. I came to this one much later and it mostly makes me shrug, though overall it is a solid (perhaps one of the best) adventures for starting characters.

Weirdly, the module doesn’t ever detail the town of Saltmarsh. That eventually got done in one of the 3E books (DMG2?) but I am actually keen to see how Wizards approaches this (and the rest of the series) in Ghosts of Saltmarsh later this month.