One of the big challenges in running RPGs in general I noticed is the tendency to elide away the challenges of traveling distance itself. This applies to the oft neglected sea campaigns, as well as wilderness and hex crawls, but even down to the simple starting distances of encounters. The core problem comes to rapidly creating content to provide exciting context with which to interact.

In example, take a generic tavern brawl -- when was the last time someone lovingly described the "opportunities" and layout, and your character's place within, before combat started? Far too often combat start essentially mise en scene and everyone's within kissing range (except for the ranged NPC squishies, of course, 'cuz reasons). There's often no organic descriptive development of moving through space over time because of the assumption that it's just the boring stuff in the way of "the action."

Setup, which is social and exploration's bread and butter, is skipped over for chucking dice for combat -- and then complaints about inequitable combat strength ensue, and thus begins the snowball into niche protection and scene time.

At that point things are just disjointed teleportations from one slice of "action" to another.

And I think the core reasoning for using this play shorthand is because many GMs are not as well read (or lived) in how to creatively complicate movement through the seemingly everyday.

It's hard to perpetually improvise slices of life encounters in the vast swaths of assumed unexciting travel. And often GMs no longer prepare content generators to aid them in this task. Thus you get "skipping," of the type more reminiscent of LPs on turntables than those action flick cut scenes many so desperately seem trying to emulate.

It's the uncertainty of travel that is exciting. And if anything shows more someone's lack of actually traveling, one's lack of worldliness, it's the assumption of uneventful travel, especially over long distances. Getting 'way over there' complete with all your luggage and sanity in one piece without incident is remarkable, even today.

Honestly, I think largely because ships were not a particularly pleasant to be for most of history.  They combine all the pleasure of being in an overcrowded prison with the added bonus of drowning.  

That's why for most of history, ships were crewed by slaves - either out and out slaves, or those forced into it by press gangs or shanghaiing.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;908954Master and Commander was a brilliant film, and an RPG emulating the Napoleonic era is simple enough if you just make the PCs the officers.

I suppose the deeper issue is that unless you're playing in a fantasy or alternate-history world, there will be no female PCs--something a good portion of the internet won't tolerate.

I used a Troupe system, where each player had 3 characters, Officer - Petty Officer, and Seaman - in my napoleonic naval game.

-clash

Quote from: JeremyR;909001Honestly, I think largely because ships were not a particularly pleasant to be for most of history.  They combine all the pleasure of being in an overcrowded prison with the added bonus of drowning.  

That's why for most of history, ships were crewed by slaves - either out and out slaves, or those forced into it by press gangs or shanghaiing.

Actually, that's not true. Only the British relied on a press-gang system - because they refused to pay their naval seamen properly, or give them any rights. As for slaves, they made terrible sailors. Only galleys used slaves, and they were criminals, condemned to death in the galleys, not slaves purchased for the purpose.

And lots of galleys throughout history were rowed by paid freemen.

Quote from: Bren;909006And lots of galleys throughout history were rowed by paid freemen.

Absolutely! The effective ones were, Bren!

-clash

Quote from: hedgehobbit;908964I've heard that Dave Arneson was more interested in Napoleonics than fantasy. Makes me wonder what would have happened if he created RPGs set in 1800s France instead of Blackmoor.

He was, and also an expert in the Age of Sail. It's what made him so good as Captain Harchar, in Prof. Barker's campaign.

He did, but it was in the late 1600's; I played a PC with Prince Rupert's fleet in the West Indies, privateering against the Commonwealth.

Quote from: Baulderstone;908931Through the early part of gaming history, there was the issue of having a whole crew to deal with. I remember playing in a ship-to-ship boarding action in Stormbringer back in the mid-80s. It took forever to deal with all the characters on both sides. It was enough to put us off on nautical adventuring for a long time.

Why were you micromanaging every single NPC?

Naval, assuming you're excluding pirates and focusing on Navies, tends to be highly regimented with a clear chain of command and specific roles/classes that everyone falls into.  Which to some players (maybe a lot more, but I know only of a selected group) feels stifling, even pirate games tend to limit the freedom an 'adventuring party' can do by assigning specific roles on board.

Not saying games emulating naval life can't be full of freedoms and adventure, but most media never really shows this.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;908954I suppose the deeper issue is that unless you're playing in a fantasy or alternate-history world, there will be no female PCs--something a good portion of the internet won't tolerate.

I'm considerably less interested in the opinions of the Internet than I am of my players, a third of whom have been female in my campaign from 1978 on forward (and I've never not had a woman sitting at my table).

Anyway, that being said, folks are missing an important point.  The reason that naval games aren't as popular as other systems isn't that there's something wrong with naval games or the sea as a milieu.  It's that they're limited.

Seriously, think about this.  How popular would D&D be today if the game was nothing but dungeons?  No skill but was applicable to dungeons.  No spell that was useless outside a dungeon.  No class pertaining to anything but dungeons.  No published adventure that didn't take place solely within a dungeon.

Not all that much, huh?

Any limited milieu game will be by definition uninteresting to people uninterested in the milieu, and really only resonate to players who want to play in that milieu and nothing but.  Even to gamers heavily into seafaring (and I've run pirate campaigns, and have always been heavily into nautical adventures), I expect they're far more likely to use their regular familiar systems to replicate the percentage of time adventures deal with the sea.

Quote from: Ravenswing;909041I'm considerably less interested in the opinions of the Internet than I am of my players, a third of whom have been female in my campaign from 1978 on forward (and I've never not had a woman sitting at my table).

Anyway, that being said, folks are missing an important point.  The reason that naval games aren't as popular as other systems isn't that there's something wrong with naval games or the sea as a milieu.  It's that they're limited.

Seriously, think about this.  How popular would D&D be today if the game was nothing but dungeons?  No skill but was applicable to dungeons.  No spell that was useless outside a dungeon.  No class pertaining to anything but dungeons.  No published adventure that didn't take place solely within a dungeon.

Not all that much, huh?

Any limited milieu game will be by definition uninteresting to people uninterested in the milieu, and really only resonate to players who want to play in that milieu and nothing but.  Even to gamers heavily into seafaring (and I've run pirate campaigns, and have always been heavily into nautical adventures), I expect they're far more likely to use their regular familiar systems to replicate the percentage of time adventures deal with the sea.

Huh! Really? All roleplaying games are limited. All roleplaying games contain infinity. Certainly I have run a fuck ton of naval roleplaying games, and they are infinitely variable. Sometimes they are bombarding Tripoli from hot air balloons with fused barrels of naptha. Another day they are founding a colony on a heretofore ignored island. Another day they are negotiating with the Miskito Princess. Another day they are stopping a slaver and liberating the slaves. Another day they are marching across the desert with their Bedouin allies, heading to take an oasis for the hetman. Of course there are limits! They serve to define the game! What is between those limits is always infinite!

First: They carry an additional mechanical load. Even if you have a game which features those mechanics, it remains an impediment.

Second: Naval ships tend to mean crews larger than the size of an RPG playing group. This creates a logistical hurdle.

Third: Most GMs are limited in the scenario structures they know how to use. The typical list consists of railroads, mysteries, and location crawls. Hexcrawls are also getting some renewed exposure. A ship-based campaign is antithetical to the railroad (the freedom of the wide open sea being inimical to the railroad; or the railroad robbing the naval campaign of its strongest theme). It's poorly suited to mysteries. And location crawls tend to reduce the ship to merely a means of transportation. The exploration mechanic inherent to the hexcrawl seems more appropriate, but I've generally found it isn't well-suited to naval games in practice. (Most sailors aren't Columbus, sailing hopefully out into the unknown and hoping they stumble on something.)

Small ships allow for a crew about the size of a typical party of PCs, say 2-6, give or take. That's common in Sci-Fi games like Traveller (Scout or Small Freighter are possible enlistment bonuses) and Star Wars (e.g. the Millennium Falcon or some other Tramp Freighter). Star Wars can also do a squadron or half squadron of independent fighter pilots.

Ocean going ships for earth both modern andhistorical as well as most fantasy tend to have larger crews which require a system and/or play style that can accommodate the larger crew sizes.

Troupe style play where each player has multiple characters worked well for us in Star Trek where mass crew action is seldom seen. In Star Trek each player had at least 3 characters: a bridge officer, a security person, and a medical,  science, or engineering crew person or officer. That allowed every player to have someone appropriate both on the ship (usually the bridge) and someone on the landing party / away team. Over time we each created additional and back up characters.

A second approach is to use a system that allows a more abstracted method of dealing with multiple NPCs. Fortunately many games e.g. much of D&D, Savage Worlds (or so I read), Star Wars D6, Honor+Intrigue all include methods of abstraction.

A third approach is to go old style and use the one figure = multiple sailors approach of old style miniatures battles. That would allow resolution of boarding actions using the exact same system for 1-to-1 combat treating each unit (or figure) as a single opponent with multiple lives instead of multiple hit points.

Yes, I don't understand the assumption that vessels be so large, and travel on trackless swaths of "uneventful" open ocean.

Quote from: Opaopajr;909055Yes, I don't understand the assumption that vessels be so large, and travel on trackless swaths of "uneventful" open ocean.

Any size ship can travel uneventful for days, weeks even. The ocean is vast. Furry Pirates and some other seagoing RPGs point this out. Alot of the action will be as you near ports and points of interest or any known shipping routes.