Swashbuckling "High Seas" Campaign Set In A Vast Desert

[moonfly7]

So I've hit gold with my newest campaign idea and need a place to spread out my concepts, get some advice, and generally just put stuff down on paper.
The game will be set in the vast Desert of Montilauk, where Sandships glide through the sands on runners or flat bottoms, or over the sand via magic maintained by the Ships Artificers. There will be multiple settlements around the few areas of fresh water that are available, and an imperial presence vaguely like the British empire complete with a Sand Navy that deals with the many pirates on the trade routes.
There are some things I'm really excited about for this, including but not limited too:

Ship to Ship combat via only magical and mundane heavy weapons, no gunpowder
Psionics being an established field and considered separate from magic, as well as the interesting dynamics I'm going to put between Psionists and traditional Casters.
The mage's college Floating above the sands where it milks it's water from the very vapors of the clouds
Survival rules being used in full force with careful track being kept of water and rations, as well as temperature rules
The fact that Triton exist in the desert and have an entire civilization based inside a massive underground salt water reservoir that extends deeper than even they have been able to swim, with salt water canals that form their peoples "roads" that stretch across the dessert.
The entire Desert has a high salt content as there used to be an ocean here.
Sand Mages, not sure how to do them but I want them.

I'm not 100% on plot or how to start my party off just yet but I'm thinking that they *might* be meeting in an underground prison made of sandstone and need to fight their way out and steal a ship to escape.

[BRC]

hip to Ship combat via only magical and mundane heavy weapons, no gunpowder

You'll have to decide how common wizards are then, if every ship has fireballs is a very different story than ballista and raiding parties.


Survival rules being used in full force with careful track being kept of water and rations, as well as temperature rules

Standard D&D 5e makes desert survival pretty trivial, with "Create Water" as a first level spell. If you want to make "Not dying of thirst in the desert" a challenge for PC's, I'd either ban that spell, or give it some expensive material component (Such that a cleric or druid could stock up on this component as basically a compact, portable water source for desert survival).
Similarly, ban or otherwise restrict Create Food, and Goodberry, the bane of all survival campaigns (Although finding berries in the desert might take care of that one for you)


The big things to think about with Sand vs Ocean

1) On the Ocean, a hole in your boat means you sink. On the Desert, a hole in your hull isn't great, but it doesn't doom you. A ship that's lost the ability to move could be stranded and left for dead, but unlike a sinking ship, the crew of a stranded sandship has plenty of time to do repairs, limited only by supplies. Ship battles are therefore going to involve either blasting the other ship to pieces such that it CANNOT be repaired, or taking it with a boarding action.

2) The high-seas trope of Storms isn't going to be as big a deal. Sandstorms are nasty, but a sandstorm can't swamp or capcize a sandship the way a hurricane at sea can. Definetly have sandstorms be a thing, but it won't be a one-to-one for high seas storms.

[Zaltman]

Suggest you check out the 1e desert of desolation series. Lots of good things to steal and port into your own campaign. The pieces work great without the Meta plot. They even have ships on skates that sail on a sea of glass (baked sand).

[moonfly7]

You'll have to decide how common wizards are then, if every ship has fireballs is a very different story than ballista and raiding parties.


Standard D&D 5e makes desert survival pretty trivial, with "Create Water" as a first level spell. If you want to make "Not dying of thirst in the desert" a challenge for PC's, I'd either ban that spell, or give it some expensive material component (Such that a cleric or druid could stock up on this component as basically a compact, portable water source for desert survival).
Similarly, ban or otherwise restrict Create Food, and Goodberry, the bane of all survival campaigns (Although finding berries in the desert might take care of that one for you)


The big things to think about with Sand vs Ocean

1) On the Ocean, a hole in your boat means you sink. On the Desert, a hole in your hull isn't great, but it doesn't doom you. A ship that's lost the ability to move could be stranded and left for dead, but unlike a sinking ship, the crew of a stranded sandship has plenty of time to do repairs, limited only by supplies. Ship battles are therefore going to involve either blasting the other ship to pieces such that it CANNOT be repaired, or taking it with a boarding action.

2) The high-seas trope of Storms isn't going to be as big a deal. Sandstorms are nasty, but a sandstorm can't swamp or capcize a sandship the way a hurricane at sea can. Definetly have sandstorms be a thing, but it won't be a one-to-one for high seas storms.
Already prepared for 1, especially because Pirates now have a better chance of taking a ship "alive" even if they punch great whacking holes in the side. As for 2 I am going to respectfully disagree on just how dangerous a sandstorm can be. Sandstorms can absolutely capsize a ship, in fact they can do 1 better, they can burry the whole thing while it's trying to move through it and leave the crew to suffocate to death trying to get out Ala Mage Errant style(It's a book series where they do some significant sand sailing in book 2, in which sandstorms are shown to be just as bad, if not worse, than a regular storm). In a regular storm it's still possible to stay on deck, see, and breath, in a sand storm you are going straight through what looks like a physical wall of sand, breathing is difficult, visibility is going to be worse than anything rain can do to you, and you're definitely going to be taking damage from sands going at hundreds of miles an hour. Sand ships might be durable but even they can be severely damaged by storms like this. Especially when you throw in a liberal dose of lightning into the Frey to really mess with them. Plus, this is a magic world, so if needed it isn't going to be hard to just make the sandstorms fiercer because of elemental magics.

Suggest you check out the 1e desert of desolation series. Lots of good things to steal and port into your own campaign. The pieces work great without the Meta plot. They even have ships on skates that sail on a sea of glass (baked sand).

Definitely need to look at that.

[BRC]

Already prepared for 1, especially because Pirates now have a better chance of taking a ship "alive" even if they punch great whacking holes in the side. As for 2 I am going to respectfully disagree on just how dangerous a sandstorm can be. Sandstorms can absolutely capsize a ship, in fact they can do 1 better, they can burry the whole thing while it's trying to move through it and leave the crew to suffocate to death trying to get out Ala Mage Errant style(It's a book series where they do some significant sand sailing in book 2, in which sandstorms are shown to be just as bad, if not worse, than a regular storm). In a regular storm it's still possible to stay on deck, see, and breath, in a sand storm you are going straight through what looks like a physical wall of sand, breathing is difficult, visibility is going to be worse than anything rain can do to you, and you're definitely going to be taking damage from sands going at hundreds of miles an hour. Sand ships might be durable but even they can be severely damaged by storms like this. Especially when you throw in a liberal dose of lightning into the Frey to really mess with them. Plus, this is a magic world, so if needed it isn't going to be hard to just make the sandstorms fiercer because of elemental magics.


Definitely need to look at that.

I was acting under the assumption that, in a sandstorm, you'd be losing all sails, dropping anchor, sealing all hatches, and waiting it out belowdecks, with merely the Sky trying to kill you, instead of the Sky and the Waves working together to toss you around.

But the threat of doing that and then getting buried alive is an interesting twist, even without elemental magics.

Plus, Sand Tornadoes and stuff could toss a ship about no problem, and with zero visability, you have no idea one is coming. So "Batten down the hatches and wait it out" might be preferable to standing on the deck, but is still extremely risky.

Edit: This brings up an interesting plot hook: Buried ships.

A sunken ship is generally sunken until somebody goes diving for it. However, a lost sandship that was buried could be uncovered and rediscovered. If the ship was known to be carrying something valuable, that's a decent plot hook.


Similarly, "Buried Treasure", rather than pirates or thieves burying treasure, it's the location of lost ships buried in the dunes.

For a fantasy twist, you could say that valuable cargo or certain ships get attuned to a magic compass which points in their direction, so if the ship gets lost or buried, the cargo can be recovered. Sometimes, the magic compass also goes missing, perhaps stolen by somebody who wants the cargo for themselves, or the follow-up expedition to find the lost ship gets attacked by pirates who, not knowing what was on the original vessel, don't realize the Compass's value.

"We found the Compass for a lost ship" is a plot hook equivalent to a Treasure Map.

Question: How much do you want the desert analogous to an ocean vs a desert. People travel via sandship, but are there also people going on foot/with camel caravans the old fashioned way?

have you considered Dire Camels.

[Heavenblade]

General advixe om the setting description -don't get stuck on the "lots of sand" motif. This used to be an ocean - and high amounts of salt means colorful rock formations as well.

In the last year or so Iv'e been studying in the middle of a desert, and...it's breathtaking - yyou hav mountains and canyons and rocks and a thousand colors and every star, every dusk and dawn, every time the moon rises on the bare earth, it's AMAZING. It's a place that you can Imagine having secret citadels underneath huge rocks, battles under endless stars, ship sailing inside massive rock formations.

One of the main appeals of an "advanture on the high seas", is the scenery. The insane things you see, the view, etc. A desert that is the cliche'd "lots of sand" will get boring pretty fast.

Also, since ships are on thr ground, stuff like terrain will be a BIG issue, mapping the land becomes much more important than mapping the sky, for example.

[Emongnome777]

Surprised nobody has brought up the similarities to Dark Sun. Add metal scarcity, remove deities, and have arcane magic defile the world, and there you go. This isn't an insult, I love Dark Sun and what you want to do sounds great. If you want more inspiration, get this (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17169/Dark-Sun-Boxed-Set-2e?src=hottest_filtered&filters=0_0_0_0_45353_0_0_0).

[moonfly7]

I was acting under the assumption that, in a sandstorm, you'd be losing all sails, dropping anchor, sealing all hatches, and waiting it out belowdecks, with merely the Sky trying to kill you, instead of the Sky and the Waves working together to toss you around.

But the threat of doing that and then getting buried alive is an interesting twist, even without elemental magics.

Plus, Sand Tornadoes and stuff could toss a ship about no problem, and with zero visability, you have no idea one is coming. So "Batten down the hatches and wait it out" might be preferable to standing on the deck, but is still extremely risky.

Edit: This brings up an interesting plot hook: Buried ships.

A sunken ship is generally sunken until somebody goes diving for it. However, a lost sandship that was buried could be uncovered and rediscovered. If the ship was known to be carrying something valuable, that's a decent plot hook.


Similarly, "Buried Treasure", rather than pirates or thieves burying treasure, it's the location of lost ships buried in the dunes.

For a fantasy twist, you could say that valuable cargo or certain ships get attuned to a magic compass which points in their direction, so if the ship gets lost or buried, the cargo can be recovered. Sometimes, the magic compass also goes missing, perhaps stolen by somebody who wants the cargo for themselves, or the follow-up expedition to find the lost ship gets attacked by pirates who, not knowing what was on the original vessel, don't realize the Compass's value.

"We found the Compass for a lost ship" is a plot hook equivalent to a Treasure Map.

Question: How much do you want the desert analogous to an ocean vs a desert. People travel via sandship, but are there also people going on foot/with camel caravans the old fashioned way?

have you considered Dire Camels.
So for the desert travel, yes and no. It's technically doable obviously, but with several hundred miles between each settlement, raiders and predators everywhere, and no safety during the day or night plus brutal temperatures and unpredictable storms, people mostly use the ship. Also I'm stealing the compass idea.

General advixe om the setting description -don't get stuck on the "lots of sand" motif. This used to be an ocean - and high amounts of salt means colorful rock formations as well.

In the last year or so Iv'e been studying in the middle of a desert, and...it's breathtaking - yyou hav mountains and canyons and rocks and a thousand colors and every star, every dusk and dawn, every time the moon rises on the bare earth, it's AMAZING. It's a place that you can Imagine having secret citadels underneath huge rocks, battles under endless stars, ship sailing inside massive rock formations.

One of the main appeals of an "advanture on the high seas", is the scenery. The insane things you see, the view, etc. A desert that is the cliche'd "lots of sand" will get boring pretty fast.

Also, since ships are on thr ground, stuff like terrain will be a BIG issue, mapping the land becomes much more important than mapping the sky, for example.
Oh I'm 2 steps ahead of you, I've got a dead corral reef as the Warren's of psychic kobolds linked to a dragon queen hive mind, an area of black sand made from obsidian with craggy spires strutting out and making it like the equivalent of a reef to a normal boat, and rocky deposits of salts and geodes.

Surprised nobody has brought up the similarities to Dark Sun. Add metal scarcity, remove deities, and have arcane magic defile the world, and there you go. This isn't an insult, I love Dark Sun and what you want to do sounds great. If you want more inspiration, get this (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17169/Dark-Sun-Boxed-Set-2e?src=hottest_filtered&filters=0_0_0_0_45353_0_0_0).

Thanks. I'll take a look.

[Zaile]

Great ides so far. I'll second Dark Sun. You can probably find some good setting videos from the many DMs on you tube.

It's a bit out there, but check out the first part of Xenogreas for PS1. Play it or watch playthroughs. The first couple arcs of the story revolve around a huge desert, excavations of ancient advanced technology from ruins (Atlantis style for D&D), and multiple factions fighting over the ruins and artifacts, including a pirate faction. The game is sci-fi with mechs and spaceships, but change mechs to riding monsters (purple wurms) and spaceships to magic sand ships and you have a lot of material to draw from.

Good luck!

[Emongnome777]

.....riding monsters (purple wurms).....

The spice must flow!

[Laserlight]

General advixe om the setting description -don't get stuck on the "lots of sand" motif. This used to be an ocean - and high amounts of salt means colorful rock formations as well.

In the last year or so I've been studying in the middle of a desert, and...it's breathtaking - you have mountains and canyons and rocks and a thousand colors and every star, every dusk and dawn, every time the moon rises on the bare earth, it's AMAZING. It's a place that you can Imagine having secret citadels underneath huge rocks, battles under endless stars, ship sailing inside massive rock formations.

Imagine the Mediterranean Basin after the Messinian Salinity Crisis and before the Zanclean Flood. You've got a dry sea bottom, possibly with scattered salt lakes, and immense gorges where the Rhone, Nile, etc, fall from the former sea level into the basin, and peaks/mountain plateaus which are Majorca, Sicily, Malta an so forth.

[micahaphone]

What if the sand seas messed with magnetism, regular compasses don't work. Thered be a massive obelisk either out in the sea or in a capital city/big port that functions as a magical waypoint, all directions are measured radially from it. Or better yet, two obelisks, you measure your position relative to them. Great plot hooks to defend them or to raise a third (for far greater accuracy). Have to find a location with the right ley lines or what have you. Strange hidden oasises or long forgotten ancient temples built along those same lines.

My apologies if this doesn't help or make sense this is all a burst of creativity as I'm drifting off to sleep

[moonfly7]

What if the sand seas messed with magnetism, regular compasses don't work. Thered be a massive obelisk either out in the sea or in a capital city/big port that functions as a magical waypoint, all directions are measured radially from it. Or better yet, two obelisks, you measure your position relative to them. Great plot hooks to defend them or to raise a third (for far greater accuracy). Have to find a location with the right ley lines or what have you. Strange hidden oasises or long forgotten ancient temples built along those same lines.

My apologies if this doesn't help or make sense this is all a burst of creativity as I'm drifting off to sleep

Oh no this is great, ok, so what if it's the sandstorms? My idea was that a lot of the sand is red, or at least some of it is. What if that's because of a high iron content? Every time a storm picks up it would be a massive amount of metal that screws with compasses, which are highly unreliable anyways since there are big pockets of ore hidden in the dunes.
So, to help navigate, the bigger, wealthier cities have "lighthouses" only since there's no fog and they don't need to shine light on rocks, these aren't normal light houses, they're magical way points linked to compasses. All you have to do is attune a magic (common, easy to get) compass to your the way point you want to travel to and it'll guide you there.
Not all cities have one, and of course there's plenty of ways to disrupt them even if they do. Many a wealthy pirate has created a false beacon to lure in unsuspecting traders who have lost their ships to a beacon set empty in the sands.

[micahaphone]

Oh no this is great, ok, so what if it's the sandstorms? My idea was that a lot of the sand is red, or at least some of it is. What if that's because of a high iron content? Every time a storm picks up it would be a massive amount of metal that screws with compasses, which are highly unreliable anyways since there are big pockets of ore hidden in the dunes.
So, to help navigate, the bigger, wealthier cities have "lighthouses" only since there's no fog and they don't need to shine light on rocks, these aren't normal light houses, they're magical way points linked to compasses. All you have to do is attune a magic (common, easy to get) compass to your the way point you want to travel to and it'll guide you there.
Not all cities have one, and of course there's plenty of ways to disrupt them even if they do. Many a wealthy pirate has created a false beacon to lure in unsuspecting traders who have lost their ships to a beacon set empty in the sands.

That's great! My initial thought was the obelisk/lighthouse shines a different arcane light in 4 directions, and there's something like a sextant with detect magic properties when you look through it, so it's not filling the air with visible light and it pierces through sandstorms. A sextant-like design would allow you to better measure your distance from the object and the angle of difference between two of them. But all of this is easily built into a magic compass.


Pirates could have an illegal signal box that they raise up on tall temporary towers just before a sandstorm, they do their raiding and take it back down and get out of there before any police/military can notice the false tower or track it down. Cities could pay major bounties for handing over illegal beacons. When players get one they can decide if they want the cash or if they have another use for it. Could sell it to an organized crime group for different or greater rewards or connections.

[da newt]

What is your fresh water source? If the sands are all salty and the major aquifer is salty, it would be neigh impossible for fresh water springs / oasis to exist (baring magic). Perhaps evaporators are a staple of survival.

Deserts are rarely flat enough for ship sized vehicles to traverse unless they can float well above the land's surface, or carefully follow paths through the terrain (like roads).

What is your ship's method of propulsion? Sails require a deep keel to function, and don't work well enough to propel a vehicle uphill.

You mention 'predators everywhere' - in order for predators to survive there must be abundant prey (and water) to sustain them (it takes many antelope to sustain a few lion, and a whole bunch of grass to maintain many antelope).

As for finding your way - research celestial navigation.

Sounds very interesting.

[moonfly7]

That's great! My initial thought was the obelisk/lighthouse shines a different arcane light in 4 directions, and there's something like a sextant with detect magic properties when you look through it, so it's not filling the air with visible light and it pierces through sandstorms. A sextant-like design would allow you to better measure your distance from the object and the angle of difference between two of them. But all of this is easily built into a magic compass.


Pirates could have an illegal signal box that they raise up on tall temporary towers just before a sandstorm, they do their raiding and take it back down and get out of there before any police/military can notice the false tower or track it down. Cities could pay major bounties for handing over illegal beacons. When players get one they can decide if they want the cash or if they have another use for it. Could sell it to an organized crime group for different or greater rewards or connections.
Oh, your just full of brilliant ideas! So like what of every city sold a different spy glass that let you see there light, but illegal beacons shine a light that's picked up by any lens and blocks out other signals? Oooooh, I'm going to have so much fun with this!

What is your fresh water source? If the sands are all salty and the major aquifer is salty, it would be neigh impossible for fresh water springs / oasis to exist (baring magic). Perhaps evaporators are a staple of survival.

Deserts are rarely flat enough for ship sized vehicles to traverse unless they can float well above the land's surface, or carefully follow paths through the terrain (like roads).

What is your ship's method of propulsion? Sails require a deep keel to function, and don't work well enough to propel a vehicle uphill.

You mention 'predators everywhere' - in order for predators to survive there must be abundant prey (and water) to sustain them (it takes many antelope to sustain a few lion, and a whole bunch of grass to maintain many antelope).

As for finding your way - research celestial navigation.

Sounds very interesting.

So, in order:
At least 1 city(the mage academies) pulls water from the clouds and it's a major distributor. It's also one of the few cities that utilizes the Salt Water Canals that flow underneath the desert for transport. They're too low in most places for a boat, but specially made constructs drag shipments of water along them to pre-carved tunnels that open up near other cities. So some water comes from there. Some ships and cities have hyper expensive devices that connect to the plane of water and pull fresh water directly from there, others have aosis's that were protected by strong mature magic, or pull from deep, deep wells that are far enough down to not be effected by the Salt.

Once again I'm taking heavy inspiration from the Mage Errant sand ships. The ones with runners have to sail around dunes for the most part, although this dessert is a good deal flatter than most in some parts(think those salt flats where raising records are broken) it also does have areas with classic dunes. Flat bottomed boats with smooth lacquered bottoms slide over a lot of the smaller dunes, but they have to go around the bigger ones. There are ships with levitation charms or other clever designs built by artificers, but the simplest solution is just to have 1-3 casters with mold earth sitting in the bow of the ship to literally just push a hole in the middle of Sand dunes.

As for predators there are some that survive off of life forms in the canals but those are deep underground. For the most part my answer is this: there's food enough in the desert for creatures that no how to find it, not good food, but food. Plus people travel constantly and groups like kobolds and bandits hide in it enough to give some kind of food source. That's the other problem, even if there isn't a lot of predators what does exist is often hungry more than willing to eat humanoids and their nasty wooden shells.