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Frunk

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Everything posted by Frunk

  1. Hi Jean, Glad this thread may be of use to some folks. Yeah I am just about to hit my first naval combat and spotted the same issue. The weather table hides some detail but there are some critical rules missing there. I am guessing there is a table missing that allows you to translate the 4 sail categories into the speed grid and has some additional rules on difficulty and danger to damaging the ship, as that is all suggested in the text. At no point does there seem to be a filled in speed grid to work backwards from Perhaps if the author is reading this he can provide some help. Otherwise I guess we will have to improvise, It is what RPG's are all about So here is what I will try for my first encounter, Keep it simple & see if it works: Canvas Spread Speed Bonus Notes Light -1 +10% to all Pilot Rolls Moderate (default) 0 Normal Sailing Full +1 -10% to all Pilot Rolls Reckless +2 -20% to all Pilot Rolls & Double any Rigging Damage suffered (per day/fumble)
  2. Corrected Currency Chart (with Raw Weights) The Currencies charts on p66-67 looks like it got messed up in typesetting and is all over the shop. So did a little research Since most early currency was based on weights and purity of gold & silver, it makes sense to include them here to allow you to know the exchanges (They are all approximated to make things easier). Also missed off the smaller copper coins… who is interested in them. Also for some of the currencies there were larger gold currencies for trade – usually up to 2oz. gold. But I am avoiding them as they are generally just referred to as multiples of the lower value gold coins (indeed a Dubloon is a Double- Escudos and how it got its name). It looks like the influx of gold and silver from South America at this time destabilised everything. French coinage seems to vary by decade – and an Écu was both a gold and silver coin about this period and fluctuated between 3-6 livres - it was not until 1726 they finally firmed stuff up (close enough to Blood Tide to be used: 1716). Indeed this is the time every nation pretty well aligned their coins to allow international trade. It looks like the Spanish got their act sorted pretty quickly and set the standards. The English currency remained pretty stable as well, but the French and Dutch are more problematic. So in a Blood Tide game I would stick to those 2 currencies and raw weights rather than complicate things with French and Dutch coinage. SPANISH 1 Doubloon (1 Doubloon = 0.25oz. Gold) = 2 Escudos (1 Escudo = 0.125oz. Gold) = 4 Pieces of Eight / Spanish Dollar (1 Piece of Eight = 1 oz. Silver) = 32 Reales (1 Real = 1/32nd oz. Silver) BRITISH A Guinea (British Gold Standard coin was meant to be £1 when minted, but the price of gold made this £1, 1 shilling by 1700’s and how it remained forever! But let’s assume 1 Guinea = £1 = 20 shillings for now – just makes things easier!) 1 Guinea (1 Guinea = 0.25oz. Gold) = 2 Half-Guineas (1 Half-Guinea = 0.125oz. Gold) = 4 Crowns (1 crown = 1 oz. Silver) = 20 Shillings (1 Shilling = 1/20th oz. Silver) FRENCH (1726) 1 Louis (1 Louis d'or = 0.25oz. Gold) [Actually “Louis d'or”] = 2 Half-Louis (2 Half-Loius = 0.125oz. Gold) = 4 Écu (1 Écu = 1 oz. Silver) = 24 livres (1 livre = 1/6th oz. silver) [Actually “Livre Tournois”] DUTCH Ducats were the gold standard trade coins that were minted to imitate other gold standard coins at the time. Florins were also common. So I would just deal in weights and equivalents for Dutch coinage. 1 Guilder (slightly less than 0.5 oz. silver) = 20 Stuivers Approximate Values & Currency Conversion (close enough for gaming!) 1 oz Gold = 16 oz Silver 1 Dubloon = 1 Guinea (£1-ish) = 1 Louis 1 Half-Guinea = 1 Escudo = 1 Half-Louis 1 Piece of Eight = 1 Crown (not 1 Guinea as p66) = 1 Écu This little bit of research also sorts out my issue above with Ship prices. Indeed the book was right - £1 = 4 Pieces of Eight - so all prices need to be multiplied like in the spreadsheet.
  3. Well Blood Tide... My group hankered after a pirate game, are comfortable with Cthulhu (as a system, not a cuddling buddy!) and it was a toss up between this and the Renaissance one. I wanted a game that suited my GMing style and Blood Tide seemed to fit. Most games in our group are very "grounded in reality" which is all fine, but I prefer to play games where the players can REALLY change the world significantly. Games offer a chance for a little escapism and it is good to throw the "big questions" at players in the context of a game. i.e. If you had the power to change things, would you? And would you be able to live with the consequences? Blood Tide has a roughly sketched background with several protagonists (real & imagined) each seeking their own version of world domination through religion, slavery, mindless slaughter, magic, colonialism, money, etc. It sets up enough to fire off the imagination, but little else, so if you are a GM that likes to "riff" it is a great start. I prefer to GM when I am not sure what is going to happen next and you have to think on your toes and make up stuff on the spot... then in between sessions form these riffs onto something more melodic and set up the next series of possible events. Some players like the fact they can pretty well "do anything"... but others would indeed ike to just go into the next dungeon room and collect treasure... but that style of GMing is not my thing. I quickly become bored if I know what is going to happen, 37years of RPG's changes how you run things! The BRP system lets me forget about the mechanics a bit and allows freeform invention of reasonably coherent simulations of events as they pan out, which suits me. So when you ask "what are you running"... I think it is a blend of background, mechanics employed, game style (cinematic, etc) and GM style that can answer the question properly. Do you agree?
  4. Ship Crew GM/Player Aid Managing a crew on a ship could become a tiresome and burdensome paperwork exercise. Especially if you want to add a bit of character to the crew and have everyone named, with a nationality and equipped with different skills which can be hired and fired. I created a spreadsheet that allows you to quickly create random crew which you can drip feed to the party as they go. Each has a random set of stats (just Physical/Mental), an optional special skill and 1-3 wounds. All the players have to do is give them a Location on the ship and a Section to work in. The spreadsheet then works out the effectiveness of each section and gives you all the numbers & rolls you need when you have some event on the ship or want to start ship combat. To set it up and give you a fresh set of random crew read the "HowToUse" Tab, otherwise you can just use mine on the "Rabble" tab. I have attached a "dumb version" of the spreadsheet so you can see it working. It will do 90% of the job. However if you want it to pull together the specialisms involved in each section then you need to use a Macro enabled version which I have popped on a Google Drive here. Have fun. ShipsCrew.xlsx
  5. Ship Boarding Rules Has been a subject of a thread here, so have pulled together their findings here to have rules clarifications in 1 place. The key is to pull together the Ship Combat rules on p86-88 & the Rabble rules on p109-110. So from these discussions I have pulled together the following Quick Reference based on this and my own assumptions. BOARDING: Start - SHIP COMBAT TIME (5min): Boarding starts when 2 section gets within 10 yds Contested Seamanship Roll Winner boards the other ship & takes initiative - allow 1 free Hit for boarding side Each Round - COMBAT TIME (1min): 1st: PCs/NPC in DEX order Choice: Attack Crew or PC/NPC Crew - each HIT takes out 1 crewman PC/NPC - resolve normally 2nd: Crew (Rabble) simultaneous Section rolls to hit (average Combat + Section Leader [10% of PC highest combat]) Section rolls damage (assume same weapon) Each DAMAGE POINT takes out 1 crewman Morale Check (Section passes 25%, 50%, 75% casualties & others - see p88) Fail (Rabble stuck for 1 round) Fumble (Flee or cower) Options: Re-assign Crew (Command Roll by Section Leader/Captain) - SHIP TIME - i.e. takes 5 round with everyone moving in last combat round
  6. Game Affecting Typos p70 & p72 has a lot of weapons doing 1D60 damage!!!! The author has clarified that these should be 1D10 on another post here p87 under Crew Recovery the text in mangled. Not sure what it is meant to be but I have assumed that it is meant to read "Of the total crew lost, 2D10+5 percent are fatalities" Will add more as they are clarified or I discover them.
  7. Ship, Crew & Cannon Costs Yeah - the stuff in BRP has all the rules for an abstracted currency system, but I find pirate games suit REAL NUMBERS as you need to know how big that treasure you just dug up is! The entire fiction is around "Pieces of Eight"... not "Wealth Levels" Crew costs are irrelevant - all crew just shared booty, with the "officers" getting a larger share - some a little, some more... a reason for mutiny! Some good examples of how each pirate allocated shares are at the bottom of the page here. Shop costs are more tricky... The fact that the character generation rules suggest you get 1000 PoE towards a ship & crew suggests the author is in the same mind set to use actual numbers. The only problem is that there are no costs under the equipment or ship section for this. Sure you know how much a cannon ball costs, but not the thing to fire it. So I did some historical digging and there is actually not a lot out there, but I gathered enough to make some sweeping generalisations and provide a system with enough internal consistency to work with. In 1765 and 105 gun first-rate Ship of the line (HMS Victory) costs £63,176. According to "The Republic of Pirates" by Colin Woodard, in the early 18th C. a fully fitted, 350 ton, 36 gun frigate would cost £8,200. That book is a great read BTW! These costs include cannons. In the early half of the 1700's a bronze 24lb cannon would cost £156, it's iron counterpart £75. Merchant shipping seems a good deal cheaper however - and they can be retrofit with cannons. A small sloop in the early 18th C. would cost around £40. And a Schooner in 1609 is around £100 - around £150 in Blood Tide times I would imagine once you faff with the inflation calculators So drawing all this into a spreadsheet and making some VERY broad assumptions I can up with some relatively simple formula: Hull cost = (Length in feet*Tonnage) / Hull Cost Factor The Hull Cost Factor = 10.5 for Naval warships and 20 for Merchant ships. Kind of makes sense. Naval ships would always be using the latest design in the best shipyards and have lots of ornamentation, thicker hulls and more crew quarters. Then just add on the cannons. A bronze cannon is £156 for 24lb, so 156/24 = £6.5 per pound of "cannonage". Just add all the poundage together and multiply by the cost. So using these figures the HMS Victory costs (£49,412 hull + £14,963 cannons) £64375 and the Frigate cost (£6,810 hull + £1,560 cannons) £8370 - close to actual. So close enough for the game. Then I hit another problem in Colin Woodard's book he has a £1 = 4 PoE conversion rate, Whereas Blood Tide mas a £1=1PoE conversion (on a slightly broken conversion table on p66). I tried to get to the bottom of this - and it looks like Blood Tide is wrong... it should be 1 CROWN = 1PoE, not £1. A column in the spreadsheet multiplies the £ figure by 4 to get PoE... eeek... those 1st Rate Ships of the Line are VERY expensive! I have popped all this in an Excel spreadsheet which I have attached which works out he cost of all ships in the Blood Tide book. It kinda works. ShipCosts.xlsx
  8. This is NOT a post critical of the supplement. In most respects, I love it... a great world to plunder, the stunts system is genius and Voudou is a great magic system ripe for some rich roleplaying rather than the usual flash-bang effects. But as I run it for my group I am finding numerous issues, typos and stuff just plain missing from the rules. i.e. at a "rules on paper" level it is far from perfect! Some endemic "typo like" issues are in there which I can ignore: The author indicated that it was a mash up of 2 background - one magical, one historical and it shows periodically. Sections of rules that need to be together are spread between chapters. The layout is "challenging" at times, but a proper read and judicious use of post-it tabs and some PDF printing helps gets around that Also there are a lot of "See page XX" references and references to "Bokors and Broadsides" (the old name for Blood Tide!). Now I know it is teh oild name for the system I know the game is referring to itself and not some weird supplement I can't find. So since this is the official "Chaosium" community and the author is on here I thought we could collectivity help to fix it in a hope of building a bit of an errata or help the author with a second edition with some more annoying problems resolved. If anyone has any house rules, links, scenarios or useful tools relevant to Blood Tide - feel free to add them below. I will post a couple below to get started...
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