One thing D&D, or your favorite retro clone™, doesn't do well is nautical encounters - shifting scale from abstract ship-to-ship combat, to personal boarding actions, that kind of stuff. What recommendations do you have on other games or rules that handle high seas action well, that could be ported into D&D or a retro clone?
I see two problems - handling ship-to-ship combat, chases, boarding maneuvers, etc; it is a different flavor of mass combat than land-based battles, but presents a similar problem nonetheless to low level guys being part of a larger group, and needing to resolve the larger conflict while giving players some actions too. I shift between wanting to build or find a resolution system, or handle it like any old school problem - a blend of rulings and dice.
The second issue involves player roles - playing the part of low level adventurer/marines on a ship doesn't encourage player agency or planning, unless the DM lets them act as the captain. On the other hand, if you just treat the ship (in the early game, at least) as a floating tavern/home base/ place to get retainers, then regular D&D style play kicks in any time there are things to explore on islands or coasts.
The payoff is this; the career path of famous/infamous buccaneers and pirates follows the murder hobo career path of adventurers pretty well. Folks here and there have the kicked the tires on running a "saltbox" but I haven't seen anything prescriptive.
Great question.
I think you can solve the 'player role' issue by having the players own their own ship from the beginning, a la Traveller: they just have to own a small one (e.g. a small sloop, crewable by, say, 4-6 adventurers and a similar number of hirelings). They can work their way up to something bigger.
The mass combat question is more difficult. It strikes me that the old Games Workshop game "Man O'War" could be portable. Then again...now that I think about it, wasn't there a 3rd edition D&D supplement containing rules for ship combat and the like? I forget the name of it, but I'm sure somebody will remember.
There is a buccaneer, De Graaf, whose career went from being a sailor, to capturing a small bark, then a ship, then a bigger ship, and so on, until he commanded a 28-gun privateering vessel. He went on to capture a 30-gun ship, then a 40-gun ship, joining ever big raids and making alliances with other buccaneers, both French and Dutch. His doesn't seem to be an isolated story, either.
Have you ever played the old Sid Meier game, "Pirates!"? If not, give it a try; it's pretty much that story, and a fun saltbox too (you have free reign to roam around the Caribbean raiding settlements, attacking merchantmen, evading navy ships, finding treasure maps, etc.).
Over on my blog, a poster mentioned the following books:
- Pirates of the Fallen Stars (AD&D 2e)
- Gamelord's Thieves Guild 6 (VI)
- Flashing Blades: High Seas
It could also be a good time to launch a Talmudic study of the great works, and do an edition-by-edition comparison of OD&D to BX to 1E to BECMI to 2E and see if I'm missing something. I wouldn't be surprised if the DMG has some overlooked nautical rules, or if BECMI's "Sea Machine" might not work.
Quote from: noisms;591449Have you ever played the old Sid Meier game, "Pirates!"? If not, give it a try; it's pretty much that story, and a fun saltbox too (you have free reign to roam around the Caribbean raiding settlements, attacking merchantmen, evading navy ships, finding treasure maps, etc.).
There's an iPad version! It's only a few dollars, I'll check it out.
Second on the Pirates! game being worth the money, by a lot. Not sure about the iPad version, per se, but in general very, very yes.
As for the general question, have you looked into Paizo's Skull and Shackles (pirate) adventure path? The players guide pdf is free (http://paizo.com/products/btpy8rwc?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-Skull-Shackles-Players-Guide) ($0 anyway), and has such rules. I haven't used them so can't speak to the quality, but it's a source...
Well, it's not SEA bucaneering, but...
Stars Without Number is a really nifty sci-fi game (with a freely downloadable version, so there's no good excuse not to check it out) whose mechanics could be decently summarised as "old-school D&D gameplay meets Classic Traveller feel." It has rules for spaceship combat, which in a way follow man-to-man rules: ships have HP, AC and Armor (damage reduction), weapons have a damage code, gunners roll for attacks.
Something similiar could be written up for Age of Sail era naval battles. (And, of course, Chainmail combat partially comes from a naval wargame, so there's that.) D&D combat, even on a person-to-person level, is extremely abstracted: you never get to make a meaningful decision about whether you parry to the right or sidestep to the left, or whether you stab low or swing high. You can use such terminology for flavour, but the actual rules are all condensed into a single attack roll vs. AC. The way I see it, it would make perfect sense for ship combat to operate on the same level of abstraction, so "crossing the T" and the like would be relegated to descriptive text.
Now, sure, you might still wish to give the players something more to do than roll gunnery attacks and swing a blade in boarding action. In this case, you might want to check out Skyward Steel, a spaceship-oriented expansion to SWN (alas, this one's not free), which adds an extra layer of complexity to (the otherwise really not at all complicated) ship combat: PCs can assume various officer's positions such as Captain, Gunnery Chief, Boatswain, etc., and every round they can expend Crew Points (an abstract representation of the crew's skill, training and suicidal daring) to give various commands that provide the ship with temporary bonuses or special actions, such as:
Quote from: Skyward SteelEngine Burn: The gunners turn their fire on the engines of the enemy ship. If any shot hits, the target ship's Speed
decreases by 1 for the duration of the fight. This decrease can take a ship's speed below 0.
Just replace 'Engines' with 'Sails' and add something about Chain shot, and it's good to go.
I'll check out Skyward Steel, I've liked everything I've gotten from Sine Nomine and it sounds like it might address troupe play in an interesting manner (it was on my long term wish list anyway).
I've never felt much need for naval rules.
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I accidentally found you another source you might look into - D20 Modern (Past) has a treatment on ships, cannons, etc as well.
Adventures on the High Seas supplement for Palladium Fantasy has like 100 different ships. There isn't any gunpowder in that game, so naval battles rely mostly on boarding actions with arrows and ballista for ranged weapons. It's easily portable to other games (I like LotFP's rules for ship hit points, personally).
It gives a good idea (I think, anyway) of how naval battles would go down in a fantasy environment - a dragon swoops down on your caravel? you're fucked. Massive sea serpent attacks from below? you're fucked. Sirens lure you to shoals? you're fucked.
That's actually the problem for me with fantasy naval adventures; pretty much anything you encounter is going to destroy your ship. There is nowhere to hide and running away is rarely an option. You're 2D and your opponents (unless they are on a ship themselves) are 3D.
So far, I've picked up a copy of Flashing Blades' High Seas, which has fast and easy rules for chases, ship hit points, maneuvering for combat, and boarding actions. It wouldn't surprise me if High Seas was an inspirational source for the LOTFP naval stats, although LOTFP doesn't have cannons (yet).
The Pathfinder pirate adventurer path is a freebie, so I'll read that one next.
One of the things that strikes me about nautical action is the prevalence of specialized skills - navigation, seamanship, gunnery, being a captain; they're experiences outside the assumed competencies of typical adventurers.
@everloss: this would be a pseudo-historical, low magic setting, so giant sea monsters would be rare or legendary. I don't disagree about the ship-crunching though - take a look at how the kraken mopped the surface in that Pirates of the Caribbean movie!
For a good view of using dragons against ships and such, read Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series.
Set around 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons as well as ships.
Crewed dragons...
A very good, very fun series.
The D&D RC had pretty comprehensive naval combat rules, even though I don't recall reading a lot on environmental perils.
ACKS has short but solid notes on sea travel (pp. 95-96) and naval combat (pp. 112-113).
It doesn't help that most naval battle rules I've seen in D&D versions are overly-complex sub-systems I have no time for.
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