Quote from: RPGPundit;1089855Oceans on other planets/moons are exciting in the real world because they hold out that tiny sliver of hope that you might find life, even if just microbial.

In gaming, they should probably contain some kind of eldritch evil.

Why not both? There is alot of adventure potential in undersea campaigns.

And while not undersea. One Star Frontiers module is predominantly one long river ride with lots of hazards.

There was a underwater-themed German RPG called Lodland. No idea if it was any good. From what I read, the setting detail was nice.

Quote from: grodog;1089972Yes indeed, but only 1st edition (which had a cumbersome system).  "Deep Shit" was one of the best convention scenarios I've ever played for any game.  

Jeff Barber just announced that a new 3rd edition will be KS'd this fall, and he'll be demo'ing it (and his recent game Upwind too) at GenCon this year.  Details @ https://www.biohazardgamespublishing.com/news/2019/5/19/blue-planet-at-gencon-2019 if you're curious.

With some further description of the v3 system in the new BP forums @ http://biohazardgamesrpgs.freeforums.net/thread/9/bpv3-system

Allan.

Quote from: SHARK;1088870Well, in my campaign world I have an extensive, richly-detailed ocean-based environment. An ancient race of shark-humanoids rules over a vast and powerful aquatic empire.

You should publish your setting. The Shark Empire is scary dangerous.

Quote from: grodog;1089972Jeff Barber just announced that a new 3rd edition will be KS'd this fall, and he'll be demo'ing it (and his recent game Upwind too) at GenCon this year.  Details @ https://www.biohazardgamespublishing.com/news/2019/5/19/blue-planet-at-gencon-2019 if you're curious.

Very cool! Thank you!

Quote from: ffilz;1090003Gaming-wise, Traveller has some stuff:

Adventure 2 - Research Station Gamma
Adventure 9 - Nomads of the World Ocean

I'm not familiar with Adventure 9! How is the adventure? What tech level?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1093129I'm not familiar with Adventure 9! How is the adventure? What tech level?

I haven't played or run it, but I did a super quick read through a couple years ago when I was cataloging all my Traveller adventures for resources:

Adventure 09 – Nomads of the World Ocean

World with Detail or Map: A88A986-E with map and encounter tables
Ship: No
Rules or Equipment: Hunterfoil
General Comments: Interesting world.

An interesting water world scenario. It would easily fit into the frontier at the edge of an empire, with a large imperial corporation abusing colonial powers and enraging the natives. A quick read shows some GM force events, but they could either be overlooked, or other ways of getting the players hooked up with the natives could be used. The ties to The Third Imperium setting are trivial to remove from this adventure.

Frank

I picked up the Pirates of Drinax campaign for Mongoose Traveller recently. I don't know any details, but while skimming through it the other day, I spotted one adventure with a surface vessel and another one where a submersible seemed to play an important role.

A couple of underwater SF tales:

"The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss," by David Brin in the collection Old Venus. Low-tech submarine existence by Earth colonists under a Venusian ocean.

"Surface Tension," by James Blish--though in this case the genetically-altered humans don't just live underwater, they are also very small.

Quote from: kythri;1088859The Eric Flint/Ryk E. Spoor "Boundary" series has some decent sci-fi/undersea stuff - a fossilized new species is discovered on Earth, which leads them first to Mars, then the frozen seas of Europa (moon of Jupiter).

The series is 5 books, presently.  For the most part, I enjoyed the series, but the later two novels (Castaway Planet and Castaway Odyssey) got kinda twee/wanky, which I'm going to assume is when Flint turned over more of the reins to Spoor, who's a rather leftist wank himself.  Fortunately, I can't say that I noticed any political horseshit in the text (they are published by Baen, so that probably serves to reel in the nonsense).

There's a time-jump between book 3 and book 4 that effectively starts a new series, so you could ignore book 4/5 and still have a pretty good story.

Book 1:  Boundary (Eric Flint/Ryk Spoor)
Book 2:  Threshold
Book 3:  Portal
Book 4:  Castaway Planet
Book 5:  Castaway Odyssey

There's a 6th book, Castaway Resolution, that's apparently finished, but according to Eric Flint's blog post from January, isn't currently scheduled for publication.

Ryk E. Spoor was also known as Seawasp on Usenet back in the day, and was a regular in the roleplaying newsgroups.

You can still get copies of

The Undersea Environment (Traveller Underwater supplement)

and

The Drenslaar Quest a underwater adventure for Traveller.

https://www.diffworlds.com/gamelords_traveller.htm

Quote from: RandyB;1088806The finale adventure for Cyberpunk 2020, Firestorm: Stormfront, starts with an oceanic/undersea scenario.

Fiddly point: Firestorm: Shockwave was the last book, but Stormfront had a great bit on undersea stuff.  There was also the Ianus Games (who became Dream Pod 9) adventure for CP2020 called "Sub-Attica" which took place in an undersea Arasaka prison and had a lot of good information on undersea aspects for the setting.

There's a video game series, Fallen London/Sunless Sea, about how Victorian London dropped beneath the Earth's surface into a deep chasm abutting an enormous underground ocean, full of huge and dangerous creatures. The second game, Sunless Sea, takes the form of a top-down exploration/survival game where you pilot your ship to find resources to sell while avoiding the various subterranean monsters. The first was more of an rpg and has a lot more mystical/supernatural elements to it.

Fallen London / Sunless Sea sounds like it would be an awesome RPG setting!

How does London survive?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1095694Fallen London / Sunless Sea sounds like it would be an awesome RPG setting!

How does London survive?

Not exactly sure. I've never played either game. I've just read about them. Since there are obviously life forms in the chasm, there would be at least fish and probably crops like mushrooms that could be grown. Fallen London is largely under the control of supernatural beings which manage and manipulate various industries, so there is probably something to that, too. The wiki also says that there are hints that London is not completed out of contact with the upper world. London was also not the first city to be dropped below, so there are other civilizations underground.