Naval campaigns, Stormwrack, and 4e

[Townopolis]

Every now and then I get a hankering to play in or DM a naval campaign. When this happens, I feel I should buy Stormwrack, after all, it's what the book is made for, and I feel like a naval campaign might wear a bit thin pretty quickly without a good source of ideas. However, with 4e looming, the utility of a crunch book is put into jeopardy. So, my questions:

1: Is a naval campaign viable in terms of longevity and fun?
2: How generally useful is Stormwrack in such a campaign?
3: How much of the book is crunch, how much is an idea mine?
4: How much of its usefullness would Stormwrack keep if I were using a different system (4e)?

Thanks.

[Talya]

1: Is a naval campaign viable in terms of longevity and fun?

Yes. It has everything a land-based game has and more...you don't do most of your fighting on the ship itself. There are always islands and seaports and the like. One advantage is if you get tired of one setting, prod them into sailing to an entirely new area. Instant world-flavor change.

2: How generally useful is Stormwrack in such a campaign?

Very much so.

3: How much of the book is crunch, how much is an idea mine?

I'd say 50-50. The fluff and idea sections are useful and big, but much of it is necessary crunch as well.

4: How much of its usefullness would Stormwrack keep if I were using a different system (4e)?

Obviously, prestige classes and aquatic and seafaring races will have limited utility as crunch, as will the additional feats. Items will require some modification as well.

The ships and sailing mechanics, however, will work wholesale in the other system, I'm sure. Things that cannot be directly used will be easily adapted as well.

[Collin152]

Actually, i'd give Stormwrack a Crunch- Idea ratio of 70% : 30%

[bugsysservant]

For long running naval campaigns (which are fun and perfectly viable if done well), Stormwrack is a virtual necessity. It has a lot of crunch, but much of that is physics-y sailing rules which don't depend all that much on the system. Also, as stated, items can be easily adapted, and to a somewhat lesser extent, so can PrCs. So yeah, go for it.

This will work especially well if you preemptively implement the 4ed "silver sea" astral plane idea (with smaller islands for the major planes, naturally). That way, when your players reach high enough level, they can just sail through a portal into the astral sea and take up planar adventures. By reducing the size of the floating planes, you open up even more options: how cool is it to adventure on the Infernal Archipelago, or land for supplies at Port Celestia? Hell, you can even have all the sea be silver and just make the Extra-Planar ones be farther than the means of low level characters. Or maybe a world with seven distinct seas, each with their own own distinct cosmic ideologies, accessible only through portals or long journeys: an adapted cosmology for a seafaring campaign...

Hmm, I should run a seafaring campaign. Anyway, I digress. Stormwrack is a great book for naval adventures and campaigns and I highly recommend it.

[Icewalker]

Hmmm, I have much to say here.

I am currently working on my sea-based campaign world. Lots of oceans, lots of travel, etc etc.

I looked through Stormwrack, decided I loathe its ship-to-ship combat system, and have begun to make my own. A lot of the little things in the system just bother me...a lot.

However, as the first thing I looked at in Stormwrack was the ship combat system, I can't comment on anything else in the book, and it is probably quite excellent. I should check that out again, and maybe get it.


I believe that a naval campaign world would be extremely fun, which is why I am making one. There are some quite fun sea adventures to be had on other planes as well...Abyssal Sea anyone? Homebrew the creature from Cloverfield? ((GitP needs an evil grin smiley. is close.))


One thing which I think is a rather important note for a sea-faring world or campaign: leave large land masses in existence, just have there be less/smaller ones. If an island is big enough, almost any standard land-based adventure can be run in the sea-based campaign world, which may be very useful at times.