Ship-based adventures

[Eldan]

Help me out here. You probably know the basic story. Party is boarding a ship, taking a few days of sea travel. I want to have something exciting happen on the way, not just gloss over it with a few sentences of description. The problem is what.

Specifically, what can happen aboard a ship that isn't

a) You are attacked by pirates/slavers/hostile navy, fight ensues!

or

b) You are attacked by a giant serpent/squid/sea dragon/aboleth

or

c) There's a storm, everyone roll a Sailing check! Oh no, you're wrecked on a mysterious island!


Because those all seem like very tired clichés to me at this point. I'd like something at least a bit original. The problem with originality being, of course, that you need an original idea, which I don't have.

[Noldo]

How about a mystery on the sea? A fellow passenger claims that his/her pricey possession has been stolen from his/her cabin? One member of the crew is suddenly missing or similar? The limited space and suspects could make this feasible (or the whole claim may be hoax?), but beware of high level magic, which could resolve any mystery quickly.

[Eldan]

That would be one way to go. Though the ship will probably be rather small, one or two cabins, crew sleeping on or under deck, that kind of thing. There's been cult activity in the city they started out from, so that would be one thing. Cramped conditions work too.

High level magic isn't a problem with this group. Or at least not of the ^plot-busting variety, I think. The players have all specialized a lot, and not on versatile magic, either.

[Fri]

-You wake up and suddenly you find out you're not in a ship. You're in a city/beautiful garden/the past/the future, but you don't remember embarking the ship at all. What happened?

-Pirate/kraken attack, but treat it more as chase/puzzle rather than combat encounter. Think Mad Max chase scene, only at sea :p-

[Excession]

A crew member kills a sacred sea bird. The rest of the crew want them put to death, will the PCs try to stop the murder?

Another ship is found drifting, seemingly devoid of crew. Plague, piracy, eaten by a vampire?

The ship encounters a whale, which may or may not be white.

There's nothing like the classics. Steal from them!

[kraftcheese]

A crew member kills a sacred sea bird. The rest of the crew want them put to death, will the PCs try to stop the murder?

Another ship is found drifting, seemingly devoid of crew. Plague, piracy, eaten by a vampire?

The ship encounters a whale, which may or may not be white.

There's nothing like the classics.

On the topics of classics, there's always the old "sirens try to lure the ship onto rocks" chesnut.

I'm trying to think of stuff that happens in Sunless Sea as well, since it has a load of good stuff with sailors being freaked out by signs and portents/eating each other/mutiny.....it is more focussed on long voyages though.

How long is the voyage, where are you going and are you gonna be out of sight of land? The situation would help for reasonable things to encounter.

[MrZJunior]

A mutiny could be cool. Try to make both sides seem reasonable so that the party has a tough decision.

[Jay R]

A mutiny could be cool. Try to make both sides seem reasonable so that the party has a tough decision.

Or try to make both sides seem unreasonable so that the party has a tough, no-win decision.

[Cluedrew]

A mutiny could be cool. Try to make both sides seem reasonable so that the party has a tough decision.

Or try to make both sides seem unreasonable so that the party has a tough, no-win decision.

Or make one side so sympathetic and the other so villainous that they can't help but wonder if there is a catch to this.

Or they might just take the easy root.

[Kiero]

You come across another ship in trouble - it's been attacked by pirates/wrecked by a recent storm/undergoing a mutiny/on fire - which can be a neat way to introduce new NPCs/adventure hooks. Or indeed trouble.

[MrZJunior]

Or try to make both sides seem unreasonable so that the party has a tough, no-win decision.

Kill everyone and take the ship for themselves?

[red_kangaroo]

You encounter a floating restaurant! What people might be taking a break from sailing the seas here?

Spoiler: Restaurant Baratie

Show

OR

Your ship got stuck on shallows - but wait! It's not a shallow, it's an ancient sunken city and you crashed into one of its towers. Is it still inhabited?

If it is, how will you compensate the sea elves / merfolk / peaceful sahuagin (because why can't they be peaceful but angry this one time)?

If it's not, are there any valuables left?

And finally, what about your broken keel?

[hymer]

May I suggest you watch some old Star Trek episodes? There should be plenty of pinchable ideas there.

Hooks: Distress signals. Column of smoke or visible blaze. Blown off course and must take shelter at island for repairs. Strange sight/sound/map attracts those interested in exploring. Other passengers or crew quarrel or otherwise draw PCs in.

Challenges: Ghost ship must be evaded or brought to rest. A disabled ship may be carrying plague or other disease; do you try to help, and how? Another ship is encountered, and the people on your ship disagrees on whether they are villains or not; the people on the other ship may be likewise divided in their sentiments about you. A VIP passenger starts getting mental breakdowns and may be a danger to others; her/his associates try to cover it up. The captain begins behaving oddly, progressing to dangerously; when is a mutiny justified, and how to carry it out; and what is causing this behaviour? A small vessel from a foreign power hails your ship and the few aboard beg asylum; they claim they have information that can stop a war; are they agents or not, and can they be defended? The ship must be lightened to continue; what sorts of sacrifices must be made, and how will people react to that?

[Stan]

The ship stops moving for some reason. Maybe doldrums. Maybe a giant golem hand rises from the sea and grabs the ship. The characters need to stop the effect/use magic/make sacrifices to get going again.

[ComaVision]

If your group is good or lawful, you could have them come across a slaver vessel. Let the group decide the terms of the encounter.

[Eldan]

On the topics of classics, there's always the old "sirens try to lure the ship onto rocks" chesnut.

I'm trying to think of stuff that happens in Sunless Sea as well, since it has a load of good stuff with sailors being freaked out by signs and portents/eating each other/mutiny.....it is more focussed on long voyages though.

How long is the voyage, where are you going and are you gonna be out of sight of land? The situation would help for reasonable things to encounter.

Fantasy Greek galley sailing the fantasy Greek mediterranean for about three days, mostly out of sight of land.

I think I might go for the drifting empty ship. That's good for a bit of horror.

[Quertus]

If your group is good or lawful, you could have them come across a slaver vessel. Let the group decide the terms of the encounter.

Slavery is often legal; it's the individualistic chaotic types who have issue with slavers.

Those who don't oppose slavery may well be like, oooh, let's see what they've got for sale!

So I don't see alignment making this less of a valid encounter.

[ComaVision]

Slavery is often legal; it's the individualistic chaotic types who have issue with slavers.

Those who don't oppose slavery may well be like, oooh, let's see what they've got for sale!

So I don't see alignment making this less of a valid encounter.

Fair enough. I just meant that it wouldn't be much of an encounter if the party is prone to "meh, whatever" responses.

[Kiero]

Fantasy Greek galley sailing the fantasy Greek mediterranean for about three days, mostly out of sight of land.

I think I might go for the drifting empty ship. That's good for a bit of horror.

That's a long time away from land; most can't carry enough water for all their oarsmen for that length of time, there simply isn't the storage space for it. Plus not letting the rowers off their benches for so long is going to be unpopular.

I take it they have a good navigator who can guide them by the stars/magic/other means? You could always take them out for a time with food poisoning or the like to rachet up the tension of being out of fight of land. Or how about an impenetrable fog rising up, making it impossible to tell where they are headed, just before their supplies start to run low?

[UndeadArcanist]

If you want something simple but baffling, consider this: there were exactly 50 people on board: this is beyond doubt, as they have been counted every morning and evening for three days. But this morning, 51 people were counted. The party will probably freak out, thinking one of the crew is a changeling/vampire/doppelganger/something else, and take appropriate action. The explanation is in fact quite simple: a stowaway was hiding in one of the barrels, but slipped in among the crew when he ran out of water. A bit of investigation will reveal an open and obviously lived in barrel, with a scrap of his clothing to point them to the culprit.

[veti]

May I suggest you watch some old Star Trek episodes? There should be plenty of pinchable ideas there.

One word: Tribbles.

Another suggestion, if you want to go a darker route: Dracula. A crew member disappears in the night watches, no-one knows where but it's assumed he fell overboard. Couple of nights later, a second one goes. Then another. Growing paranoia and horror set in.

[Stan]

Growing paranoia and horror set in.

I'm tired and I read that as growling paranoia, but it still made sense to me.

[Aliquid]

They spot an island in the distance in the evening. Odd thing is that it isn't on any of the charts, and the crew who know these waters are certain it wasn't there before.

In the morning, it is gone.

[Kami2awa]

You find a message in a bottle.

Alternatively, you find a sealed box or barrel, or maybe a bag of holding, floating in the sea (do bags of holding float? Well, this one does). What could be inside?

The ship's linesman drops a weighted cord over the side each day to check the sea depth for navigation. One day, in what is usually shallow sea, it goes down. And down. And down.

A group of tritons (or other intelligent marine species) arrive and demand a worthy sacrifice to their sea god in exchange for passage. (It can be a human sacrifice, or something else. The tritons may not specify exactly what they want.)

[Efrate]

The ship from cult town is delivering a prisoner. This prisoner happens to be politically or socially important, but is kept guarded and in a locked cabin. This cabin happens to be the captains/first mate/passenger's, and they aren't happy about it.

The prisoner seems quite nice and willing to talk. The crew are under orders not to, but nothing stopping some strapping young adventurers. The prisoner when questioned is quite forthcoming and charismatic, but the crew is tight lipped about who/what it is. A sympathetic figure who is wrongly imprisoned (or gives that vibe without saying anything) might be a bit of a nagging worry for the PCs. Works great as a red herring when something else is happening, or as some sort of bound fiend who must stay in human form. Or both.

Maybe some of the crews personal effects go missing, or are planted on the PCs, and the prisoner has information about someone lurking about last night, true or not. Unseen servant if they are the bad guy (or someone is) can do a lot of little stuff that really can get to people. Spell mastery is a thing, and the material components (a bit of string and wood) are in abundance, and if the ships small that means it can likely get anywhere. Not every wizard needs a spell book for simple stuff...

[Eldan]

That's a long time away from land; most can't carry enough water for all their oarsmen for that length of time, there simply isn't the storage space for it. Plus not letting the rowers off their benches for so long is going to be unpopular.

I take it they have a good navigator who can guide them by the stars/magic/other means? You could always take them out for a time with food poisoning or the like to rachet up the tension of being out of fight of land. Or how about an impenetrable fog rising up, making it impossible to tell where they are headed, just before their supplies start to run low?

Ships do indeed stay mostly in sight of land. However, there is a sacred island right in the middle of the sea and they need to go there. They will have to rely on wind. Luckily, they have a priest on board who will regularly pray for fair weather and make a sacrifice before they get out of sight of land. The priest is also an astronomer.

That said, "the gods are angry", expressed through fogs, dying winds and low supply, will work pretty well in combination with a ghost ship.


Edit: normally, I'd be all over the charming prisoner, but they more or less already have one. The party is in fact escorting a sometimes-possessed fallen priest. (It's a bit complicated, but basically, he's possessed by a fire entity who can take over for a while whenever he gets too close to a big fire.)

[Mr Booze]

You should check out "the sea wyverns wake" from Dungeon Magazine #142!

[Eldan]

Based on archive.org, it doesn't appear to be in dungeon 142. I'll have to google around a bit. But thank you.

[Eldan]

Alright. I went with a combination of all of the above: Sargasso sea from Wyvern's Wake, ghost ship and puzzle-like monster encounter.

The crew wakes up in the night, to hear a lonely bell over the water. It's a drifting ship, no lights, no crew, no sails. On closer inspection, they find that they, and the other ship, are totally mired in a thick carpet of algae, strong enough that they can't even row properly.
The party inspects the other ship. There is a log. Paraphrased:

7 days ago: today, Kyron went overboard. No one knows why. An accident? Wrong-doing? Suicide? The crew isn't happy about it.
5 days ago: three more went today. The entire night's watch. Solid men, all of them, and not a sound. Ordered a doubling of the watch.
4 days ago: two more. We saw them. They jumped. Looked panicked while doing it.
3 days ago: we tried to hold Agares when he jumped. He knocked two men down and screamed, incoherently, then jumped, flailing.
2 days ago: we're down to half the crew, now. We've chained ourselves to the masts. If that doesn't help, I don't know what will.
Last day: no entry.

On inspection, the crew finds broken chains around the masts and oars. Below deck, when they enter with a lght, they hear a knocking sound, from one of the water barrels. Inside sits a cabin boy, entirely underwater, frantically motioning to them to not pull him out. He is covered in a thick mucus and his skin seems to be dissolving.

The one party member flying overhead spots two things: there is a sand bank next to their galley, where before, she is pretty sure, there was nothign. And there is a dark shape circling the galley, almost as long as the ship...

That's where we left off. We had surprisingly little time, since the party spent the first half of the evening debating which ship to take (the slightly more exciting pirates/mercenaries on their war galley, lead by a barbarian captain who keeps telling outlandish stories about the monsters he defeated (he strangled a hydra with his bare hands, then swam three days after his ship to get back on), or the more boring, but more reliable traders), negotiating their rewards with the high priest they saved from cultists, and debating whether nor not to take the very useful, but devil-possessed acolyte with them.

[Quertus]

A group of tritons (or other intelligent marine species) arrive and demand a worthy sacrifice to their sea god in exchange for passage. (It can be a human sacrifice, or something else. The tritons may not specify exactly what they want.)

A worthy sacrifice? I have already sacrificed 2 minutes of my time. That is more than your foreign god deserves.

Somehow, that's what I can see my players coming up with.