Nautical Campaign (3.5)

[Noedig]

So I was called upon to start up a game for my group, and one of the players expressed interest in a nautical campaign. It sounded cool so I've decided to do it. Are there any particular pitfalls or problems I should be aware of in a nautical setting?

[nedz]

How much do you know about ships and the sea ?
Just as importantly: are any of your players experts on this subject ?
If their knowledge exceeds yours then you could break verisimilitude very easily.

I have run such a campaign and one of the problems is that sea journeys are quite dull. Also are your PCs going to own their own vessel, or just hitch rides. I found that the latter worked quite well since it avoids a number of issues:
The Pilot problem (one of the PCs is very good at piloting the vessel, but not much use for anything else), The Navigation problem (Do the party get to where they want to be, or do they end up shipwrecked on a desert island), The player knowledge gap (See above)

[00dlez]

[QUOTE=nedz;13731940]I have run such a campaign and one of the problems is that sea journeys are quite dull. \QUOTE]

I agree. When you think about it, there are only a scant few things that one can encounter on board a ship. Sea monsters, while varied, get old as a random encounter. Environmental hazards, like storms, likewise can vary but are generally all the same.

Depending on the size of the ship, level of the PCs, and the reason they are on board (party was hired, players own the ship, simple passengers), build some more intrigue based adventures or use the ship as a mini urban environment.

A few quick examples:
- Have the players prevent a muntiy (or instigate one of their own!)
- There's a cheating racket in the sailor's dice games
- Someone's food got poisoned, but who is the murderer and why?

[Noedig]

Well one of my plans is for them to be crew on a vessel like the Golden Hind under the command of a person like Sir Francis Drake. Privateering, taking ships, raiding enemy towns and all that jazz because country A and country B are at war, and that's what you do. Hopefully that covers the dullness problem.
As to party roles, I won't necessarily deny anyone who wishes to eventually pilot a vessel, or navigate, but it is my intention to have those roles filled by npcs.

To my knowledge, none of my players are particularly well versed in nautical matters. I know only a little bit, mainly from books that feature sailing and nautical combat.

[Kol Korran]

I've just started a nautical/ pirates campaign, and while we go mainly for the atmosphere portrayed by various movies and such, I've made some effort for a bit of realism. You'll have to decide with your players how much reality you want (most pirates for instance died of disease or by military ships or the sea. and most were uneducated scoundreling criminals, quite unlike what is portrayed by "pirates of the Caribbean")

The Stormwrack book is a starting point, though I personally found it needs quite a bit of tweaking. But a starting point non the less.
A good source book on fairly realtic pirates is aptly names "Pirates!" by d20.
I heard that Pathfinder also came with fairly nifty rules (haven't checked them yet) is their adventure path "Skulls & Shackles".

You'll need to decide exactly what kind of nautical campaign this is going to be, as it can take on many forms.

A few issues I've come up with, not all yet resolved:
- Sea travel: what do you do for maps? wind? currents? weather? proper navigation? getting lost? setting a route? how much do you incorporate them in game? how much is random and how much is predecided?

- Ships: what types of ships are there? how is a ship constructed? what it can do? what is it's limitations? a fairly big problem- can you map a ship? (better get some pre made, because drawing it over and over on the battle mat is problematic.

- How do you arrange ship to ship (or ships) battle? what options do the character have? to damage a ship, to board it, to kill it's crew, to sink it, to outrun it?

- Crew: what roles are there on the ship? what do they entail? where do you see PCs in it? what role will NPCs play? are the crew individuals (works better for smaller crew), or just "sailor number 3"? when boarding a ship- do you conduct a mass battle between crews? or find another solution?

- Cultures of your nautical domain. Goals and purposes, and how do these clash over the sea.

- Underwater adventures: mainly the different conditions, but also the 3d environment. And what would you do with pressure?

- Marine equipment. Talking about ship's equipment as well as personal. a staple of many marine campaigns is the cannon, which means gunpowder, which means guns. how much would you allow?

- If your players are the violent thieving bastards most players are, then they well might be pirating. you need to decide on commerce good, on much does it weigh, can it be transported between ships, and how much it's worth.

[nedz]

Make some ship floor-plans and slide them around on the battle-map.
Its quite easy, and fun. You obviously have a computer, and it probably has Paint or something. Just print them out and glue them onto some card.

Multiple decks can complicate things a little, but its not insurmountable.

[Noedig]

Yeah, I've been pulling heavily from Stormwrack and it's been really useful. Great information so far. The MS Paint ship idea is great, and I will likely be doing that. I've got a handy trade map of the Forgotten Realms, and it would seem likely that trade routes follow favorable currents, though I could be wrong.

[Winterking]

I've been running a nautical game for about a year and a half now (and previously ran it for a year back in 2006-7).

One of the biggest problems I've found is that, aboard ship, you maybe have 1 encounter per day--and more often, it's one encounter per week+ of game time. So your party never has to worry about balancing resources, saving some of their big spells/abilities for later enemies, or even healing--if they survive the single fight, there'll often be enough of a break in between to heal up naturally. The biggest problems come from the casters, of course, who have no reason why they shouldn't fire off all of their biggest, most powerful magic right away.

I've been using Stormwrack, and it's generally a pretty good resource. However, the ships it includes are mostly medieval/renaissance vessels, or their analogues. That's fine, but when most people think of a nautical or pirate campaign, they're thinking of the golden age of sail--frigates and sloops, Jack Sparrow, Jack Aubrey, Jack Hawkins. So you may want to tweak the Stormwrack options, especially if you know a bit about Age of Sail tactics/tech.

Naval combat: Wizards, especially once they reach 3rd level and higher spells, can engage an enemy at upwards of 600 feet; the PC evoker (10th level) in my campaign has a rod of enlarge, so his fireballs can begin flying at ~1600 feet. Even at shorter ranges, however, you end up with round after round of naval combat where the healers, melee specialists, and skill monkeys have very little to do. I recommend ample use of ambushes, fog, or teleporting enemies to keep things from turning into a long-range wizard's duel and boring the other players.

Sailors: NPC sailors die easily. Be prepared for lots of collateral damage from any area effect magic.

You'll want to decide how to handle things like food and water, shipboard supplies, and, if the PCs end up in charge, crew payments. In my game, those are all handwaved away; it's assumed that any treasure/payment the PCs receive for their PC activity is actually large enough to cover those details as well, and the PCs are only told the remaining sum. I have major shipboard repairs cost actual money, however.

[Noedig]

@Winterking: Are there rules for Age of Sail vessels? I'm not well versed enough in that era to do anything of note.

[00dlez]

One of the biggest problems I've found is that, aboard ship, you maybe have 1 encounter per day--and more often, it's one encounter per week+ of game time. So your party never has to worry about balancing resources, saving some of their big spells/abilities for later enemies, or even healing--if they survive the single fight, there'll often be enough of a break in between to heal up naturally. The biggest problems come from the casters, of course, who have no reason why they shouldn't fire off all of their biggest, most powerful magic right away.


This is actually a really good point and somewhat along the lines of my thinking, but better and more directly stated.

[Philistine]

You may also want to think about what levels and types of magic the prey vessels (assuming a pirate campaign) have access to. Can they control, or at least influence, the weather to give themselves favorable conditions? Can they communicate with the friendly naval vessel just over the horizon to call for help if attacked (if you're worried about the party novaing every fight, occasionally having an even stronger opponent show up a few minutes after they defeat the first one might help discourage that)? If the PCs attack from long range with spells like Fireball, can their victims reply effectively?

[Winterking]

@Winterking: Are there rules for Age of Sail vessels? I'm not well versed enough in that era to do anything of note.

There might be some, but I don't know where they'd be. If neither you nor your pcs are huge pirate-history-buffs, Stormwrack will probably do fine. Naval military history is one of my areas of particular interest, so it bugs me to run piratical adventures on carracks or cogs. Mostly the aspects that irritate me are questions of size/floorplan, crew size, and speed/maneuverability.

But that might just be me. I think you can probably get an awful lot of mileage from descriptions, to be honest. My objection to Stormwrack's vessels really started when I found a real-world ship to serve as a template for the party's ship, and then tried to map other real-world vessels (or historical-fiction vessels) onto D&D.

That said, having a real historical model--and in fact, an actual working replica (http://www.historicalseaport.org/lady-washington)--as a model has been very helpful in describing the look and feel and operation of the party's ship. (And when that ship's tour brought it to my city and I got to take an evening sail on it...awesome times). Even if you don't pick an existing replica, you should browse some books on sailing ships--you can probably find quite a few with beautiful color plates or line drawings of different styles, for descriptive inspiration if nothing else.

The ships I find most useful from Stormwrack are the Pinnace, the Caravel, the Dromond, and the Greatship. The caravel is closest, in mechanics, to a classic pirate ship. The Dromond is a better-quality war galley, and the Greatship can probably stand in for a man o' war.

___________________________

On a verisimilitude-related note: you could get a fair amount of DM-ing flexibility out of longitude, if you're so inclined. By that I mean that, until the mid 1700s, even the best charts and the best navigation equipment available weren't enough to keep you on course. Navigation depends on knowing where you are, and sextants/etc did a fine job identifying a ship's latitude. But longitude couldn't be determined via tools or charts--you needed an accurate clock, so you could compare local 'noon' with the original time at your meridian/point of origin/point of reference. I.e., if it's noon here when your meridian clock says 5 pm, then you're 5 hours due west of your meridian line/time zone.

What this can mean is that even a flawless Knowledge:Geography roll, over long distances of open water, can leave the ship arriving far from their original destination. Unless you have a stable clock, that is. If you have scientific/magically/creatively inclined players, you could even introduce this as a subplot quest, with something similar to the longitude prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize), for anyone who can figure out a simple, reliable way to find longitude.