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Need assistance in locating a Deck Plan


Spence

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I am planning a Halloween one shot using CoC circa 1890.  I am using Gaslight 6th, Hudson & Brand and Down Darker Trails for CoC source material. Though I sure would like to get an official 7th Ed Gaslight book and character sheet 😉. 

Anyway, I am looking for a deckplan for a period iron hulled steamer along the line of the MV Altair.  While there were many seagoing iron hulled merchant steamers built starting in the late 1880's, I cannot find any legible deck plans.  The vast majority of ones i have found were scanned in with low enough resolution you cannot read the writing.  The Altair plans I found are one of the rare exceptions, but it is a little larger than the norm at 435 feet in length and a 59 foot beam and is post WW2.  To be honest there is not too much difference in the internal arraignments of small steamers from 1880 all the way through the 1950's. 

The big issue is finding legible deck plans for merchant steamers.  Passenger liners galore, but nada for a merchanter.

Note: I am fully prepared to buy a good deck plan designed for use in RPG's if I can find one.  I have found a couple passenger liner ones that are pretty good on DriveThru and the one in Pulp Cthulhu is the perfect style.  But all the deck plans I have found for merchanters have been bad.  No research or even a peek at a ships layout.  I'm not looking for life like perfection, but I do expect at least 5 minutes of research.

Anyway, if you know of any good prospects please let me know.  I am going to try to make a gaming version using CC3, but I don't know if I will be able to be done before Halloween.  "I don't know" will probably be "I can't get done". 

Edited by Spence
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As you say, to the unprofessional eye there isn't a lot of difference in merchant steamers. I have a thought might... maybe?... help a bit.  Have you thought of looking up World War Two Liberty Ships? You know, the quickly built merchant ships that the US churned out by the hundreds to replace those lost to U-Boats?

A quick search turned up several images that might be suitable for you. You'll have to 'demilitarize' them somewhat... telling players that the AA guns aren't there... but they are the essential ship you're looking for... a coal or oil-fired boiler ship designed to haul lots of cargo.

Note: Include 'WWII' in your search or you'll end up with a Carnivale Cruise ship.

Wikilink on Liberty Ships below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship

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You might also check out Quentin Bauer's latest Raiders of R'lyeh supplement, From the Tideless Sea, currently with a day and half left on Kickstarter. A Lovecraftian/Hodgson-esque supplement dealing specifically with tramp steamers in the early 1900s. Preview doc has a very simplified side-view, but the complete book should have other plans. Might be worth checking out and/or contacting him for ideas.

 

 

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2 hours ago, svensson said:

As you say, to the unprofessional eye there isn't a lot of difference in merchant steamers. I have a thought might... maybe?... help a bit.  Have you thought of looking up World War Two Liberty Ships? You know, the quickly built merchant ships that the US churned out by the hundreds to replace those lost to U-Boats?

Not a bad idea.  I have a couple partial deck plans for one, but the Altair is a smaller and already has passenger staterooms in the design that go well with an adventure with investigators.  I appreciate the idea. 

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1 hour ago, kross said:

You might also check out Quentin Bauer's latest Raiders of R'lyeh supplement, From the Tideless Sea, currently with a day and half left on Kickstarter.

Gah..... you made me spend money...... 

Not what I was looking for, but still worth backing as a resource.

I always wondered why we have a zillion maps for inns, taverns, manors and so on because they are locations.  But as soon as we say "ship" we get nothing.  In an RPG a ship is just like an Inn, it is a location that the PCs wander around in. 

Oh well, I guess I am going to have to try to create my own.  At least we are heading toward winter and the nights are getting longer.

 

Edited by Spence
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2 hours ago, Spence said:

Not a bad idea.  I have a couple partial deck plans for one, but the Altair is a smaller and already has passenger staterooms in the design that go well with an adventure with investigators.  I appreciate the idea. 

A simple solution to the passenger deck is to simply add another deck to midship wheel tower.

Another solution is to use partial deck plans... isolate the bridge deck, the passenger deck, the engineering deck, and a cargo hold. That way you don't need a full and complete deck plan where all the stairwells match up and everything is perfect.

BTW, fellow Washingtonian here. I'm down in Tacoma /Lakewood. And the forest fire smoke could lay off a bit, eh?

Edited by svensson
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Propnomicon had a link to a site that hosted ship deckplans, but it seems to be gone; it might show up in the Wayback Machine. Anyway, the Propnomicon post can be found here: http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2016/09/classic-era-ship-deckplans.html and there are a few sample deckplans linked, including one for an 1825 cargo ship.

ROLAND VOLZ

Running: nothing | Playing: Battletech Hero, CoC 7th Edition, Blades in the Dark | Planning: D&D 5E Home Game, Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, HeroQuest 1E Sartarite Campaign

D&D is an elf from Tolkien, a barbarian from Howard, and a mage from Vance fighting monsters from Lovecraft in a room that looks like it might have been designed by Wells and Giger. - TiaNadiezja

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17 hours ago, svensson said:

A simple solution to the passenger deck is to simply add another deck to midship wheel tower.

Another solution is to use partial deck plans... isolate the bridge deck, the passenger deck, the engineering deck, and a cargo hold. That way you don't need a full and complete deck plan where all the stairwells match up and everything is perfect.

BTW, fellow Washingtonian here. I'm down in Tacoma /Lakewood. And the forest fire smoke could lay off a bit, eh?

My plan was to make a general plan at the detail level of the passenger ship in Pulp Cthulhu and then make sub maps of the various critical locations with greater detail.  They will (I hope) be large enough to read but far too small for miniatures.  I have had many scifi deck plans printed out ion 11x17 sheets and they work great at the table. I know many people are addicted to mini's, but for games that are not non-munchkin hack n' slashes such as CoC and STA, they are more of a deterrent.  I have found the game runs smoother and better if the players can see enough detail to make informed plans without being too bogged down in counting distance for everything.

 

I'm way up in Smokey Point (just north of Marysville).  Except for that first couple days we haven't seen much of anything from the fires up here.  Here is hoping that things get cleaned up without too much damage.  Someone was lighting fires in the I-5 medium between the Stanwood exit and Mount Vernon just before the fires broke out which suddenly stopped about the time the fire out past Gold Bar started.  We were speculating if they might be connected.  The only real conclusion we came to was the general stupidity out there. 

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7 hours ago, AlHazred said:

Propnomicon had a link to a site that hosted ship deckplans, but it seems to be gone; it might show up in the Wayback Machine. Anyway, the Propnomicon post can be found here: http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2016/09/classic-era-ship-deckplans.html and there are a few sample deckplans linked, including one for an 1825 cargo ship.

Thank you 🙂

Those are great for references. 

I don't think I will find exactly what I looking for the table.  But I definitely have enough samples and ideas to make one of my own.

Now for the difficult task of getting my mental picture onto paper...or onto the computer I guess.

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On 9/26/2022 at 8:58 PM, Spence said:

Anyway, I am looking for a deckplan for a period iron hulled steamer along the line of the MV Altair.  While there were many seagoing iron hulled merchant steamers built starting in the late 1880's, I cannot find any legible deck plans.

You can find some on the Norway Heritage site as in this example: Stavangerfjord - deck plans - ship images (norwayheritage.com)

If you do a Search Images on "plan" you'll pick up most of their available images.  The ships range from 1880 or so into 1920's.  http://www.norwayheritage.com/gallery/gallery.asp?action=search&text=plan

If the images aren't high enough resolution, you might be able to do further search on the ship names in Google to see if anyone else has scanned them.

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Also, as you have CC3 (I trust it's actually CC3+) to make your life easier, import a reasonable resolution jpeg, bmp or whatever on to its own sheet in whatever style you're using, scale it appropriately using non-visual scale and use that as a base to trace with the appropriate drawing/line tools. then you can more easily make as many decks etc as you need and can clarify the labelling. It's what I'd do.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry about taking so long to reply.  It has been a busy couple weeks at work.  I appreciate all the suggestions and links.  I have been able to find enough general arrangements to be able to start on a couple intelligent designs for RPG usable deck plans.  I really really like the style that Chaosium has been using recently for ship layouts. Adding to the various existing plans like the one svensson pointed out I'm the CoC box, I now have a plan. 

 

Now if I can get my minds eye onto a drawing.

 

Thanks all.

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