Table-Tested Review of "Raiders of the Serpent Sea"
Raiders of the Serpent Sea is a third party campaign module for the 5th edition of the world's best-known roleplaying game, written by Brent Knowles and published by Arcanum Worlds. It was funded through Kickstarter. The campaign takes you to the world of Grimnir, which is heavily inspired by norse mythology, but adds its own twist. If you have at least a passing knowledge of norse mythology, you'll see familiar figures, but with different names. And while Ragnarök features heavily, the details of what this entails and the opposition the PCs will be fighting against, are original to the setting.
We have spent five months of in-game time and over two years of real-life time in Grimnir (in a total of 42 sessions of 4-8 hours each) - the PCs have sailed the serpent sea, weathered storms, ended blood feuds, and spent their nights drinking in many a hall full of boastful warriors. Not all PCs made it out alive. Raiders of the Serpent Sea isn’t just another viking-flavored campaign — it’s a saga, that takes the PCs up to level 16 where they decide the very fate of their world.
This is a review of my experiences with the campaign. I will keep it as spoiler-free as I can, although if you want to play in this campaign with a completely clean slate, you might still want to stay away from this review!
What I liked
Let’s start with the things I appreciated the most. Raiders of the Serpent Sea delivers a strong, well-paced plot that builds naturally from one major threat to the next — the threats of the world shift naturally over the course of the campaign which gives a sense of accomplishment, when major antagonists can be taken care of, long before the final fight. It’s a campaign that can be run mostly as written, and while you could definitely tweak some parts to taste, it works remarkably well straight from the book.
The NPCs are memorable and add a lot to the world. There is also quite a lot of them!
Even the so-called “random” events are carefully designed, each revealing more about the world rather than feeling like filler encounters. I enjoyed running every one of them.
On top of that, the Epic Backgrounds and some of the custom subclasses are super compelling concepts that deepen both the story and the player experience. I’ll get into the balancing of the classes later, but they add so much, I would recommend everyone to use them instead of the default subclasses and backgrounds.
Physical Products
At release, there were three book-ish resources total:
- The campaign book itself (496 pages, hardcover)
- The GM Reference (32 pages, saddle-stitched)
- The Player’s Guide (80 pages, softcover)
I kind of wished the GM Reference was included in the main book and all the stat blocks (around 100 pages!) were its own thing.
There was also:
- A GM screen, which was absolutely fine, although it wouldn’t have needed the pronounciation guide on it. All the other info is useful, though.
- Printed maps, which were sometimes not usable as battlemaps due to their smaller size, though they were pretty and could be used as reference.
- A card deck, which I didn’t find very useful. Most of the GM facing cards (monsters, NPCs, events) have so little information on them you need to look it up in the book anyways. The items cards might be useful to some though.
They also released some more digital only content, which I might review in the future.
Areas of Improvement
While the campaign is strong overall, its organisation can feel scattered. You really need to know the full plot and flip a lot between pages while prepping, to run it at its best.
Later chapters offer fewer and sometimes weaker maps and details. Chapter 11, in particular, feels underdeveloped. Some continuity errors slipped through. Additionally, I found myself wishing for more content tied to the Epic Backgrounds and a bit more fleshing out in certain areas to fully match the ambition of the world. But given the fact that the book is already so large that it starts to take itself apart when handled a lot, adding more information might just not have been viable. As with every campaign, you’ll want to add some details, to make it pop.
A challenge for me, was the balancing of the provided subclasses. 5e is already notorious for its balancing breaking apart around level 10, but we started to feel this as early as level 5, as PCs got a lot more powerful than is called for at this level. Creating appropriate challenges was hard sometimes, so some tweaking of the player-facing mechanics or adjustments on the GM’s side of the screen were neeeded more often.
At some point we took the nuclear option - also because of personal preference and curiousity - and switched to Pathfinder 2e as we hit level 6. (More on this in a future blog post!) But I've heard from many people already, who have run it successfully in 5e.
Conclusion
Overall i think it's a really strong campaign that I had a lot of fun with. Considering the size of the campaign, it's understandable that it's not polished to perfection in all places.
If I had an infinite amount of time in my life, I'd run it again in a heartbeat. Or do a continuation of the plot, with new PCs at level 1!
Shameless Self-Promotion
On a different note, I've written a viking themed one-page rpg myself, that was, among other influences, also inspired by this! You can check it out here!