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Blood Tide


skenderax

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Wish you all nice day,

 

I just finish first read of great book about Pirates - Blood Tide. It is very nice setting, nice history overview, nice character creation and stunts system.

 

But I am a little confused from battle on the sea. Ships battle is ... hmmm more or less OK, but battle of crew is (after first reading) not so clear.

 

I think a little (or rather BIG :)) example will be great.

 

Can someone post example, how he (or she) understand battle of two ship crew?

 

Thanks.

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Yea the ship battle reminds me of playing battle tech in that various locations that get hit can have various effects to the over all performance and to the crew. My understanding of the how the crews can battle each other is when the ships get within 10 yards of each other the sections in range contest seamanship skill in opposed rolls (see the grappling section). The side that wins can send over crew to start melee fighting (boarding)...which has different time constraints than ship versus ship fighting. So usually a melee fight round is one minute and ship fight round is every 5 minutes.

 

hope this helps. Probably not the example you were looking for

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This part, ship vs. ship & grappling, of sea battle is clear. Hopefully :) .

 

But how do you manage crew vs. crew battle. In rules is written, that mens are divided in section with leader, which give bonuses to crew section skill.

 

And here is a confusing think. For ship battle You throw D100 for every cannon separately.

 

Do you fight man vs. man combat separately on boarded ship? Or you make some average section skill and then roll for attack and parry?

 

:?  I just have feeling that battle between crews of two ship is colossal and would take long time to resolve...

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Ok on second thought here is an example:

 

First check out the section on Rabble.

 

Ok going off what I had explained in the previous post. Red Ship gets within 10 yards of Blue Ship. The part of Red Ship that is closest to the Blue Ship is section A (midhull gun deck) and the closest to that section on the Blue ship is section B (Aft Hull). The are twelve rabble and one PC in Section A and 15 rabble on section B. The men on section A win the opposing roll for seamanship and begin boarding section B. Working with the spot rules. I would give the PC the first attack as he is boarding. Then I would do the rabble. The PC is normal in all aspects of fighting. Rabble on both sides can only take one wound before being taken out of commision. Generalize one weapon that each section is using to make it easier on yourself. Roll once for each section and if they hit then roll damage as normally and that is what is done to the rabble on the opposing section.

 

So it should look like this:

 

PC immediately jumps into the rabble in section B followed by section A

PC goes first and rolls a hit. He immediately takes out one rabble.

*simultaneous combat*

Section A rolls a miss and does nothing

Section B rolls a hit and does 5 points...I make it so the player running section A decides how that damage is distributed because one hit point of damage in this case will equal one wound to the section A rabble. The player controlling section A decides 4 rabble take a wound and are put out of commission and the PC takes 1 point of damage.

 

next round

 

PC swings a hit and kills another rabble

*simultabeous combat*

Section A rolls a hit and does 8 points. Section B lose 8 rabble.

Section B rolls a miss

 

.....this goes on and pretty much section B is wiped out and section A moves to another section of the ship to create havok. Rabble do not parry or dodge and pretty much only have one action.

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At first start with one wound for rabble it will make things quicker and easier to work with at first till you get use to the combat format. The information about the rabble is in the spot rules section and makes more sense...to me.

 

The whole ship to ship battle concept with the boarding fight really fun for me and what makes this suppliment stand out from others. It might seem crunchy at first but it simulates what I want in a pirate fight. BTW what I wrote above is my interpretation of what I read.

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BRP - Astounding Adventures is playing BRP in Pulp Era. Very nice rules from me point of view :-). And in this rules are seemingly-limitless armies which can major villain throw at the PCs. They call them MOOKs. Mook have only few skills and are used as cannon fodder for heros. The most interesting attribute is DEFENSE ROLL = HP + DEX + AP %. This is Mook chance to survive successful attack.

 

So I see another two ways to solve crew vs. crew combat.

 

1. Matimathical approach

 

Section A have 100 soldiers (Mooks), 35% average attack, 25% Defense Roll

The Pirates are in 100 number, 30% average attack, 20% Defense Roll

 

Pirates kill or disable 30% from 100 soldiers = 30 minus 25% of them make Defense roll. So after first attack is 22 out of combat.

Soldiers kills or wound 26 pirates (100 * 0.3 soldier Attack * [1 - 0.2 Pirate Defense]).

 

Can heroes change a tide of battle? Can Moral Check save a day?

 

:-D it is up to the Heroes.

 

2. Random Generators approach

 

If you have basic skills as attack, defense roll (or parry, dodge), you can use web dice generators as:

 

https://dicelog.com/dice

http://rolz.org/
 

to generate success of failure for any amount of rolls...

 

3. Mix

 

I like your idea of heroes taking damage to save a crew :-). It worth to use...

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No unfortunatey I have not read the Pirates and Dragons rpg. Only Blood Tide. BTW I forgot to mention the morale check in my example as well...that will save the day.  I figure go with what ever makes the play the most seamless. I should probably get more books ;)

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I have not finished the book yet, but I have to say that the pdf file is huge, usually I print the pdf's but I use the tablet for refference and the 165 Mb are so much for the poor gadget.

 

I would advice some optimization when creating the pdf files.

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I'm just getting thru my PDF copy of Blood Tide while I'm waiting for the hard copy to arrive.

Quite impressive I must say.

One thing that strikes me is that the Stunts could easily be ported almost directly into Astounding Adventures, and that would make AA a more complete Pulp game to my thinking.

A few name changes here and there, but overall these Stunts would work well in any pulp adventure setting, regardless of whether it's a Swashbuckling Pirates setting, or a Roaring 20s & Thrilling 30s adventure genre.

I am really enjoying this book from what I've read so far, it looks like a great addition to the Chaosium library

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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is the 1D60+4 Damage, on the weapons table,  for the matchlock and flintlock correct? I thought it was a typo and it should probably be 1D10+4, but then I noticed that it was the same in the NPC descriptions.

 

First off, thanks to everyone for the kind words about Blood Tide. I will try to answer rules questions as best I can, but bear in mind that I wrote this book a few years ago. Muskets should inflict 1d10+4 as their damage. Although I love odd shaped dice, I have never seen a d60 (but would buy one if one came on the market). I am always tempted to write games that require some of the odd dice form my collection, but who has a d7 or d24?

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First off, thanks to everyone for the kind words about Blood Tide. I will try to answer rules questions as best I can, but bear in mind that I wrote this book a few years ago. Muskets should inflict 1d10+4 as their damage. Although I love odd shaped dice, I have never seen a d60 (but would buy one if one came on the market). I am always tempted to write games that require some of the odd dice form my collection, but who has a d7 or d24

 

I have just started going through Blood Tides and it looks excellent. The musket damage jumped out because I have been tinkering with something about Barbary Corsairs in the early 17th Century.  There has been some variations in Musket damage, from the standard Cthulhu 1D10 + 4, in the Quick Start rules Richelieu scenario which has them as 3D6 + 2 and Aces High has them as 3D8.

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This sounds interesting. How do the stunts work mechanically? Are they similar to heroic abilities?

I'm just getting thru my PDF copy of Blood Tide while I'm waiting for the hard copy to arrive.

Quite impressive I must say.

One thing that strikes me is that the Stunts could easily be ported almost directly into Astounding Adventures, and that would make AA a more complete Pulp game to my thinking.

A few name changes here and there, but overall these Stunts would work well in any pulp adventure setting, regardless of whether it's a Swashbuckling Pirates setting, or a Roaring 20s & Thrilling 30s adventure genre.

I am really enjoying this book from what I've read so far, it looks like a great addition to the Chaosium library

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 There has been some variations in Musket damage, from the standard Cthulhu 1D10 + 4, in the Quick Start rules Richelieu scenario which has them as 3D6 + 2 and Aces High has them as 3D8.

I've been in the process of revising the damages in Aces High and now my Musket damages are much more aligned with the Cthulhu levels. It represents an increase in my knowledge concerning how firearms work. Originally (I think) I may have assigned damages based purely on calibre, I know better now...

Mr Jealousy has returned to reality!

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This sounds interesting. How do the stunts work mechanically? Are they similar to heroic abilities?

Yes they are similar in the fact that it is a Feat system, the first I have seen for BRP BGB rules ( although LEGEND and Renaissance has these).

They work simply by expending a set number of PP, typically 1-3 (although the more powerful ones go up to 5PP), which represents Conviction rather than expending magical Essence. The Stunt then changes a perimeter to a skill or the difficulty rating for a specific skill roll for that immediate round. Very simple concept, yet quite functional.

No skill requirements necessary, although these could be added if desired I suppose. Having said that, Stunts as described here, are not so much demonstrating technical skill mastery (which is represented in BRP with the Arete / Mastery rules as shown in the Advanced Sorcery book for MagicWorld). It's more just that your character has enough 'swagger' to pull off a trademark stunt, regardless of ability. Very pulpy.

 

I quite like it as I have been running Astounding Adventures using an additional homebrew Feat system  that I cooked up, which is very similar to the system for Stunts presented in Blood Tide. I like the fact that the Stunts use PP, it gives a use for PP for non-magic users in a mundane setting.

Not sure how it would port over to a fantasy setting like RQ where magic is readily available, I suspect a setting like Glorantha would complicate it due to the proliferation of Common/Folk Magic. Also in terms of game mechanics it would be null void in such a setting, as low magnitude spell casting fills that gap.

 

(As an aside, in my Gloranthan setting I still use the Heroic Abilities from LEGEND, although I only grant them as part of the rewards for Hero Questing, and the ability gained is in keeping with the nature of the quest experienced. This may be in addition to any other magic or knowledge gained from the quest, and indicates that the character is naturally becoming more like the deity whose role they portrayed within the quest).

However a low magic setting like Hyboria would be okay using these Stunts from Blood Tide for non-magic users, as long as the magic users had magic similar to Call of Cthulhu so it isn't doubling up. In such a setting, sorcerous magic takes preparation, costs a lot of PP, has long duration or powerful effects, and could possibly take its toll on a character's Sanity; whereas Stunts don't use much PP but only last for the round that the Stunt is being performed in, enhancing the skill that is used at that time.

 

You could also easily add these Stunts to the BRP Western setting monograph of Aces High as well. I wouldn't see them as too much overlap with Extraordinary Abilities, as Extraordinary Abilities are more like personality traits that are built into your character to provide additional skill points for specific skills during the character generation process. Stunts, on the other hand, are a way of providing a circumstantial modifier which is a trademark characteristic of the character. These modifiers only occur if the character invests conviction into what they are doing (hence the PP cost). 

Some of the Stunts in Blood Tide are so similar to what I have been using it is uncanny. I highly recommend getting Blood Tide if you want to have a definitive Stunt system to play BRP with a cinematic flavour, regardless of setting. In addition to this, the setting of Blood Tide itself is great for playing a Pirates Of The Caribbean style game, complete with Voodou spells as well. Not to mention era specific weapons lists and substantial ship rules.

All in all, this is a useful supplement for BRP, and looks like its alot of fun

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I agree that the main thing is to keep the PP cost low for Stunts, and have the effect occurring in the same instance or round. Otherwise it will start to cross over too much with magic. I have not had the time to have a more in-depth look at Blood Tide's Voodou magic yet, but I will check that out today if no distractions occur.

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I've been in the process of revising the damages in Aces High and now my Musket damages are much more aligned with the Cthulhu levels. It represents an increase in my knowledge concerning how firearms work. Originally (I think) I may have assigned damages based purely on calibre, I know better now...

 

You may find this interesting http://www.halfblogre.com/tag/firearms/a discussion about firearms (mainly black powder weapons),  for D&D 4e, but it list muzzle energies so you can compare it with other weapons.

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I agree that the main thing is to keep the PP cost low for Stunts, and have the effect occurring in the same instance or round. Otherwise it will start to cross over too much with magic. I have not had the time to have a more in-depth look at Blood Tide's Voodou magic yet, but I will check that out today if no distractions occur.

Have you had a chance to look over those Voodou rules yet?  I'm very curious.

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Hi, I'm in the middle of reading the book, but I'm at a loss in finding the effects of light, normal, full and reckless sail on the ship's speed.

 

I'm really liking the stunts, they give a strong swashbuckling vibe, not quite sold on the naval combat, that seems to rely too much on miniatures to work (I prefer the Magic World way) and a bit confused with the crew rules, not finding hints about their skills or the way to recruit sailors

 

The voudou rules are amusing and very apt to the setting and the mystical background seems fun, all in all I'm very pleased by the product - and hope that will be downloadable play aids in the nera future :-) -

 

Thank you for writing that and reading this

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