Interesting things to do aboard a ship

[ElenionAncalima]

My 4th level players are soon going to be taking a voyage (about a week long). Now, theoretically I could just time skip this, but ideally I would like to give them a little chance at roleplaying during those days.

I know the standard ship events are either:
a) Attacked by pirates
b) Attacked by sea monsters.

Now, while pirates aren't totally off the table, it would be nice for the players to have some more interesting roleplaying opportunities. What are some interesting events that could happen while on a ship?

So far my rough ideas include:
-Some of the sailors having a Fable I-esque fist fighters club that players can choose to compete in.
-Stowaways (Trying to head to the same tournament that the players are going to)
-A possible disease breakout (I have a player who has a bit of a Florence Nightingale personality and also tends to get over shadowed by the other characters...so it would be nice to give her a chance to shine).

[Brookshw]

You missed the ghost ship

Other things:
Gambling
Find an abandoned ship
Find castaway's or people marooned.
Ship is damaged in a storm, need to repair.
Negotiate safe passage through saghain (i know I misspelled that horribly) controlled waters.
Strange meteorological sightings
Some one on board disappears or is murdered.

[GungHo]

Fire is a pretty big event on a ship.

[Alejandro]

Have the crew suddenly perform "Greatest Captain of the Queen's Navy"?

[DCraw]

1) Hold an impromptu kickboxing tournament. This would work like the fist-fighting club, but you have more freedom to add in flavorful descriptions of the combatants holding onto ropes etc while trying to kick each other. Remember that the PCs are likely to be unfamiliar with fighting on a moving ship, so consider making them make balance checks in rough weather (and thus be be flatfooted if they don't have 5 ranks).

2) Have the ship be becalmed. Being stuck at sea with dwindling supplies and no wind to sail by was a common hazard of the age of sail. Just play up the growing frustration of the crew and let the claustrophobia set in.

3) If you do have an encounter with pirates, consider turning it into a stern chase. Rather than just have the pirates hit the ship with a few broadsides (of arrows, presumably) and then board the PCs ship, have the captain turn to flee the pirates. The two ships then remain at several range increments until the PCs decide to do something about it (if they can). In the mean time, play up the tension among the crew. In many ways this is similar to being becalmed.

Note that suggestions 2 and 3 will probably take longer than a week.

[hamlet]

Get sea sick.

Run out of provisions (or have the existing ones get spoiled).

Spring a leak.

[Necrus Philius]

Underwater dungeon. Have a kraken pull it under, or have them get sucked into a whirlpool. You can then (enter plot device here) where they end up at the dungeon with (insert Macguffin here) inside that they must retrieve or puzzle they must complete to move on.

[hellmonkeyd2]

If it were me, I'd look to the Greek myths, the works of HP Lovecraft, and stories from more recent people who were lost at sea. It is hard to pull off the kind of isolation that months at sea induces in people. The ocean in the early days of man was a place of monsters and legends, of Islands made of gold and silver, and secrets that the gods themselves have dragged away for fear of them being unveiled. Lost civilizations, Men so far from the laws and edicts of the governments that spawned them that they have become gods of their little islands. Secret undersea temples, lost sailors found at sea that refuse to explain where they came from.

I would say Sky is the limit, but giant birds and astral phenomena are also a thing.

Another place to look for good shipboard adventure would be the Star Trek series.

[The Fury]

There's always the "propwash" joke. Unlesss it's a sailing ship, in which case it wouldn't work.

[TheStranger]

Seconding most of the suggestions in this thread, but especially the Greek myths. How important is it for the PCs to actually get where they're going on time? If you can delay or risk delaying their arrival, you open up a lot more options - shipwreck (or its lesser cousin, blown off course), becalmed, side quests, etc. If you can't delay things, then you're limited somewhat.

But just to throw out a few more options:
- The ship comes across the lone survivor of a shipwreck (either adrift or on an islet). The crew may or may not want to actually rescue him (perhaps they think it's a trap of some sort). Once he's aboard, he has a story to tell...

- The ship needs to pass through a narrow strait where storm giants are battling water elementals.

Rather than think of this as a semi-random encounter during the journey, I'd look for something (like the shipwreck survivor) that you could use as a plot hook to either draw your players back to investigate it or to give them a sense that strange and mysterious things happen in this world.

[Thrawn4]

- Crew looking down on the "useless weight" they have to drag along (the PCs)
- someone is stealing from freight, maybe PCs are suspected
- rumours of a mutiny (unfounded or not)
- superstitious sailors acting weird

[Xefas]

Eh, you don't necessarily need a separate event to get some roleplaying done - being cooped up in tight quarters for a long period of time together in an unfamiliar setting is exactly the kind of situation that gets people to bond with (or murder) one another IRL.

Spoiler

Show

Fighter: I can't believe there weren't enough hammocks to go around so we had to share one! This is so embarrassing.

Dwarf: It's fine, I don't mind. *wink*

Fighter: >///< Uh, D- Dwarf-senpai, I've always been so jealous of your beard. I've never been able to grow one so full and charming. Is it... is it as rough as it looks?

Dwarf: Why don't you take a closer look and find out?

(They begin furiously making out.)

Although I really like the tournament stowaways idea. Especially if you can put a moral conundrum in there. Perhaps they believe one of the stowaways to be far more powerful than they, and capable of defeating them at the tournament. However, he's horrendously seasick and unable to fight properly on the ship.

Do they arrest him (or throw him overboard, or whatever the law about stowaways is), since he's weak enough to be overpowered now? And if they do, are they doing it because it's the law, or because they're scared of losing in a fair fight at the tournament?

Especially if the stowaway is some ~Good alignment, and planning on using the tournament prize money to aid convalescent orphans or something.

[A Tad Insane]

Something something R'lyeh something.
Sirens
water zombies, pirate of the Caribbean or world war z flavor, take your pick
Strange weather, bounce points if male humaniods are falling from the sky
That one scp edge of the world deal

[The Oni]

Find a better method of transportation

[ElenionAncalima]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

How important is it for the PCs to actually get where they're going on time? If you can delay or risk delaying their arrival, you open up a lot more options - shipwreck (or its lesser cousin, blown off course), becalmed, side quests, etc. If you can't delay things, then you're limited somewhat.

That is a little up in the air. Its very important that they get to the tournament on time, overwise I'm going to have to do a lot of campaign rework. They have a little over three weeks until the the tournament starts. However, they seem to have interpreted that as - We have tons of time to do other stuff...so I can't rely on them not leaving things last minute...despite having dropped hints that there are limited ship arrangements and they shouldn't risk leaving too late. Overall, I am not looking the ship to be a whole adventure of its own...so much as I want the journey to be somewhat fun and memorable. I am probably looking for a few oddball things that would roughly fill a session. Of course by all means, use this thread to discuss cool ship adventures. I probably won't implement them...but they are fun to discuss.

I really like the tournament stowaways idea. Especially if you can put a moral conundrum in there.

Yeah, thats one I am leaning heavily towards. I am thinking of having it be three siblings, all fairly young, who were too poor to afford the boat fare. I like it because my players can be sort of predictable at times, but I am not sure how they will react to this one. One of them gets quite legalistic when it comes to crimes...but she is also a bleeding heart if you throw her a sob story. The rogue probably won't care about them stealing/sneaking aboard (he would probably have done the same if he didn't have the money) and probably wouldn't get involved if it doesn't effect him...however, he could see it as eliminating competitors. I think I am going to be pretty ambiguous as to their skill level, so the players really have to weigh the risk of having to compete against them.

[Mobves]

You could make the cook or one of the other crew members a secret saboteur from (insert group of enemies here). As time went bad things would happen, and the players would have to figure out who is causing the disturbances.

Bonus points if you have a cook who is possessed by a Lovecraftian horror, and who is trying to sink the ship and find new 'family members' in the crew and players.

[(Un)Inspired]

I think you should have one of the ships crew snap a wet towel on one of the pcs buttocks as they walk by and just kinda see what adventures grow out of that.

[Spacebatsy]

How about some interesting cargo?
Like:
Dangerous beasts
Prisoners
Potions that should not mix
The plague
The inquisition
A circus
Count Dracula
Cursed objects
Ideologies
Blessed objects
The Emperor of Somethingstonias Most Beloved Maltese
And so on and so forth…

[Mutazoia]

hmm....this?

or this?

[delenn]

There could be a conflict within the crew, something the PCs can investigate and settle either through force or cunning. The cook is sleeping with the first mate's husband, the captain's steward is smuggling something not on the inventory, the 'innocent' stowaway that everyone sympathizes with is actually a [something bad]. It would keep the ship moving, while giving them some good RP and combat opportunities.

[golentan]

Fishing competition. Followed by (in the rush to use up perishable foodstuffs before they go off and you're forced to the biscuits) a cooking competition. Adventure hooks involving the cargo or other characters as has been mentioned.

Depending on technology level: Toilet broke. Help fix it. Indeed technical malfunctions in general are good for a laugh, especially if fixing one causes another. In a fantasy campaign, substitute some sort of magic that may be on the ship for machinery.

[Mastikator]

The most mad and unlikely thing happens: They get to their destination without any hiccups.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Karaoke night. The first mate is absolutely convinced they're a natural singing talent, and the performance is so bad it causes the sailors to acquire incompetence bonuses to working the rigging, navigating and even swabbing the deck. The sailors might not actually realize they're suffering a penalty (and don't mind the singing), so it's up to the party to figure out what is going on and work out a solution. No wonder the transportation was so inexpensive!

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, have the ship enter the doldrums unwittingly. Dead in the water with slack sails, the party is going nowhere fast. Then the captain reveals that a magical curse (darn second-hand salesmen) on the ship specifies that if the vessel spends too long without sail power in the middle of the ocean, the whole ship and everyone on it will be banished to a plane of endless ocean. (The Plane of Nowhere) Someone in the party with knowledge (geography) can help to guide the ship into a less bad region of ocean, perhaps the spellcasters could help by researching a spell to provide magical wind to fill the sails.

Speaking of curses, have the ship run across the ghost barge! The ghost barge is a demiplane that is haunted by the spirits of those who have died at sea with regrets. It travels shrouded in mist and appears to be a derelict ship from the outside, but once you're aboard, it is hard to get off. On the deck a salty old sailor (unclear if he's a ghost) clenches an antique pipe in his teeth and explains the general rules to anyone interested. Each area is a manifestation of the spirits trapped there (like a small, creepy fishing village at night, doors to buildings lead back to other rooms of the ghost barge). The best way to get off the barge is by easing the pain of the spirits trapped there.

Have the ship encounter an atoll. When they pass nearby a young dragon emerges and insists the ship pays a toll to pass. Or, alternatively have the ship's occupants perform a favor of some kind. The favor is to do something about the graffiti those stupid merfolk keep leaving on the side of the nice, shiny atoll when the dragon is away from home!

The ship's cook is atrociously awful at their job, despite their claims to being an extraordinary chef with a famous reputation across the land (which explains why they were kicked off the land, and onto a boat instead). If left unchecked, his cooking can and will make a majority of the crew sick, and eventually lead to one sailor doing every job on the ship! At first, the condition seems to be a disease, but the healer character you mentioned will realize that this isn't a disease. Maybe have her sneak in after the chef prepares the meals in order to poison (or rather de-poison with specific mixtures of herbs, spices, etc) the food so that it can be tolerated by normal stomachs.

[(Un)Inspired]

An outbreak of super scurvy occurs in the captains gums and the only way he can be cured is for the party to be shrunk down and travel into his body to combat the disease like The Fantastic Voyage.

[BWR]

You don't have to run just sea monsters, you can run four or more sessions with nothing but sea monsters!
*scarred for life*

Problems with the locals.
- Not just sea monster attacks but runnning into tribes of undersea dwellers who have started demanding toll for allowing the land beings passage on their waters. The captain doesn't want to pay and expects the PCs to protect his ship. Diplomacy time!
- The Great McGuffin has been stolen by airbreathers and all ship traffic is being stopped and thoroughly searched. The locals are none to gentle or patient and things could easily devolve into combat, perhaps causing a war between the undersea civilizations and whatever home port the ship has.
- Stowaways from the deep. Young, adventurous beings with a rare magic item that allow them to survive on land have been discovered hiding under deck. Throwingthem overboard would seem to be the easiest and most human solution except they claim the ship is in the waters of an enemy race/nation. Turn back or take care of the little bleeders? Bonus points if one of the stowaways is a prince.

Good neighbors?
- Sea monster or pirate attacks on other vessels you happen to see - risk your own ship helping them or leave them?
- Alternatively, you meet ships that have been thoroughly robbed or damaged by pirates. They don't have enough food/materials to eat/repair and will die without help. and your ship doesn't have enough to ensure the survival of everyone.

[Brother Oni]

Have a tomb/coffin/sarcophagus being carried in the cargo be carrying an undead critter, which revives mid voyage and starts murdering crew quietly and the party have to re-enact Aliens to hunt it down while searching the nooks and crannies of the ship.

[LokiRagnarok]

Alternatively have the rats which are inevitably on a ship become sentient/supersized/carrying a magical disease

[hemming]

Go whaling

Discover a message in a bottle

Someone stole the captains peg leg while he was asleep!

Discover an old treasure map

Islands full of harpys nearby

A mermaid needs help

[TheStranger]

Alternatively have the rats which are inevitably on a ship become sentient/supersized/carrying a magical disease

A group of wererats sneaks aboard the ship in rat form, then attempts to hijack it once they're away from port in order to start a life of piracy. Bonus points if you can refer to them as pi(e)-rats with a straight face.

[veti]

Get married.

Research spells.

Land for provisions and negotiate with barbarian tribe.

Clear up loose ends while they can't run away.