Little help for a sad Forever-a-DM bro?

[JohnDaBarr]

Soo last week me and my bros where chilling and we got to some unimportant DnD discussion when someone drops ''We didn't play DnD for like year and a half!'' line.

And I was like, ''yeah lets for old time sake give it a try'' and said that I would make a one-off session with random mid-tier characters that I myself will make.

Somehow I managed to make everything in one afternoon: LvL 5 Elf bard, Dwarf fighter, Human rogue and Gnome paladin, and they are stuck on a pirate island and need to get off because their ship got shipwrecked there. The characters I made pretty much randomly, and everyone got one on random, still all ended up quite nicely since everyone is, at least for now, satisfied with what they got.

And we got together and played. It was good and fun sooo they all want to continue the campaign and I'm also interested in continuing BUT.....

-They now have a ship and the campaign is in a pirate/naval setting and I really don't have a clue where can I find related books?
-Also where can I find rules for en-mass NPC combat, because they also have a crew and boardings should happen?
-And is there a skill for sailing like Profession or Knowledge sailor/captain/navigator?

Also useful advice and tips are appreciated

thx

[Gildedragon]

The book you're looking for is Stormwrack.
Fin it, give it a read, rejoice

[dascarletm]

Heroes of battle has rules for large NPC combat. You could also just give each crew a rating that adds to each captains "tactical check." Which could be modified by leadership score, knowledge (tactics), and/or whatever you find appropriate.

[JohnDaBarr]

thx on the reply ppl

[yougi]

The Pathfinder Adventure Path Skulls and Shackles could be interesting, as an inspiration point.

[Humble Master]

Stormwrack is good for naval settings.
Heroes of Battle as stuff for en-masse combat.
There is Profession(Sailing) but I don't know of any specific rules about it and navigation.

[Ignominia]

Two suggestions I have,
1)Check out the PHB2 for Affiliations, specifically the part that talks about Violence Checks, Espionage Checks, and Negotiation Checks (p166). Throw together a few simple affiliations for the group to interact with (one for your crew and others for adversaries) and then you have a simple way of running NPC encounters.

2)The Eberron pre-printed module "Whisper of the Vampires Blade" has an encounter where NPC's board and attack an airship. Might be worth looking that up for inspiration.

Hope this helps!

[Uncle Pine]

Stormwrack covers pretty much anything you want to know about sea themed-campaigns.
Don't know about Heroes of Battle, but DMG II and Cityscape both have rules for mobs: a mob is very similar to an angry crowd of creatures, but it's treated as a single entity. It's somewhat similar to a swarm. 48 Small or Medium creature can form a single mob, so you could probably create a "crew mob".

EDIT: Or more, depending on the number of member of your players' crew.