Sailing the Seas: Ship Encounters

[Totally Guy]

At the climax of the story arc we had previously had I asked my players what they do next expecting them to go after a minor villain that escaped earlier and tie things up with a whole load of foreshadowing I'd laid down a couple of sessions previously. They told me that with the story arc concluded they would all get on a boat and leave. They wanted to travel south.

So over that week I made a beautiful ship for them to sail on. And I wrote a session of exploration to settle them into their seafaring roles.

1)There was a battle at the docks when a merchant's crew had commandeered the boat.
2)There was a struggle with a sea monster.
3)We called "Land ho," as the ship found an island.
4)And the players played politics to quell a mutiny.

If they don't take my next island storyline plot hook they have the option to leave again. What then?

5)Pirates attack.

And that's it. I've exhausted all the ship encounters I can think of.

Then after that they'll end up finding another island with the exact same plot as the current one.

I need more ship encounters. And ways of linking these encounters to a plot; eg, the pirates have a treasure map of the island.

[Bayar]

Get an airship full of pirates named "Forgotten Freedom". And start rolling sanity checks

[Malacode]

I like the idea of a shipwreck, expecially at higher levels where there's no risk of drowning. Set up something about a warship with mucho magical goodies having run into some rocks off the coast of a tiny island. For best results, make sure the island no notable features and that it's completely devoid of worth. They sail out, a storm brews up and their ship is destroyed. They have to reach the wrecked warship, fix it up and get to their next location. Party gets a new ship, some nice new shinies, and you get to avoid combat encounters for a while

[Satyr]

Sea Travels are mostly boring when they go smoothly.

But what you can add: Provisions gone bad. That is nothing extraordinary, but pretty much standard, but will help to lower the morals of the sailors.

The same thing may work with the breakout of some kind of disease. Infective diseases are fun on the very limited space of a ship.

A storm. Use the force of nature to make the PC's fear and awe their environment again. In the wrong passages, a storm can last for das, even weeks and bring the ship out of course and use ill winds to let them get nowhere. With a lot of bad luck, a ship can the chew toy of fate for two months and longer, turning the whole boat's trip into a long, painful exhaution.

Meeting another ship (a harmless merchantman) that was severely damaged in the same storm and needs help to repair the rudder. Said ship transports a cargo of highly valuable spices and precious metal, enough to make every sailor on board rich enough to live well to the end of his or her days. And the party's crew is greedy.

[bosssmiley]

@Glug: Stormwrack mate.

• The Bermuda Triangle
• The Marie Celeste
• The Philadelphia Experiment
• Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu
• Chris Columbus + Captain Cook
• Mutiny on the Bounty
• Master and Commander
• Horatio Hornblower
• The Confusion (book 2 of The Baroque Cycle)
• Wreck of the Jarvee
• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Land that Time Forgot
• King Kong
• Tai-Pan
• Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
• Captain Blood
• The Sea Hawks
• Spelljamming
• The Princess Ark

Damn! but bobbing about on boats is boring.

[hamishspence]

20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Jaws, Meg, Moby Di.ck, and so on.

[Prometheus]

Yeah, so a storm, disease, another attack, or another discovery. I like the idea of encountering an enormous bed of algae with some things stuck in it. They pick up some items if they Search and fish around, but there is some strings attached that they don't know about. Either the algae is harmful (mold/ooze/poison/disease) or that it has inhabitants who use the opportunity to sneak on or attack.

[The_Scourge]

A group of mine at university used a tall-ship as its main mode of transport. The absolute best plot on that boat was pretty much a murder mystery. Captain was found slaughtered in a spectacularly bloody fashion while we were stuck in the middle of the ocean without wind for a few weeks (Our DM wanted us to have an excuse to actually rp talking to the crew and exploring the ship instead of "Two weeks later we reach the island") After finding the captain everyone was suspicious of each other, whispering behind each others backs, occasionally coming to blows. Eventually, through a great deal of sleuthing, clue gathering, and some fantastic rp we discovered the first mate was a werewolf with a particularly nasty strain of lycanthropy and he'd run out of wolfsbane when we got stranded.
It was fantastic, the fight on deck was one of my most memorable rpg moments. It was more than just kill-smash, cause we kinda liked the first mate. We ended up locking him up in the hold where he committed suicide with a silver fork pilfered from the captain (the missing cutlery was one of the vital clues)
so:
-Interesting NPCs
-Good rp opportunities
-Intrigue
-Thrilling combat
-A relatable, sympathetic antagonist
-More at stake than treasure and XP
All aboard a glorified dinghy. Boats are far from boring settings

[AslanCross]

1. The ship the PCs board is the ghost ship that's been haunting the coast.
2. Eberron's Explorer's Handbook has an interesting idea: One of the ghost ships, the Crimson Ship, shows up randomly and helps adventures get to any destination they want on one condition: the captain (an Ultroloth who is inexplicably Neutral) offers them passage to anywhere, any plane, but they have to fight exactly one battle for him. Since he offers healing before and after the battle, the encounter can be more difficult than usual. After the battle, the Captain moves a piece on a board game and returns to entertaining the PCs.

The Captain is the only person on board, and while the cabins for the PCs are well-stocked, the ship appears decrepit from the outside.