Seafaring

[Atgxtg]

The Seafaring rules in Strombringer (White Wolf),  and Elric! (Sailing on the Seas of Fate) came from RQ3, and was used again in Magic World. Does anybody know if they were used in anything else?

I'm trying to gather all the ship stats and add expand upon things with new types of ships, the ability to vary dimensions and tonnage a bit, and adding in cannon (and probably modifying things so that one broadside won't automatically sink most ships), so I'm trying to gather what resources there are. 

[soltakss]

Something similar was used for Vikings of Legend and Pirates of Legend. If not exactly the same, they are very similar.

[g33k]

May be worth looking at Mythras & TDM's Ships& Shieldwalls supplement, as well.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Something similar was used for Vikings of Legend and Pirates of Legend. If not exactly the same, they are very similar.

Oooh. Thanks. I found a copy of Pirates of Legend on Drivethru, and the stats are very similar, but on a different scale. Mongoose addressed the whole broadside sinking a ship thing that I mentioned before. I should be able to figure out a decent conversion rate though. And there are a few other things in the book pirate armor, cannon types and ship qualities) that are worth porting over. Thanks.

 

Oh, got Vikings of Legend, off of Drivethru too (instant RPG gratification!) and the Seaworthiness and Structure stats are identical to the Stormbringer Knorr, and the Longship stats similar enough to be variations on a theme. So the Viking ships will port over easily, and will probably give me the scaling rules!

 

Some ideas I have for this (feedback always welcome):

• Being able to vary the ship size and altering other stats. Something like +10 feet in length gives X more structure points, Y more crew and Z more cargo.
• Want to add adjustments for era (since this is supposed to be usable outside the Young Kingdoms). I ran across something in the library that condenses the differences between Medieval, Elizabethan and Napoleonic era ships down to +x% bigger and could help to make this more adaptable to other settings/words
• A broadside or volley rule for cannons similar to how automatic fire works. You get a bonus of +5% per gun and if you hit you roll a die to see how many guns hit (i.e. if you fire a broadside of 8 guns 1D8 hit). 
• Upping the Hull Quality for more advanced ships (like the Brig). The Brig in Stormbringer, Elric and Magic World was not supposed to be the same ship as a 18th century Brig, that's mentioned in White Wolf, but got lost in Magic World. A higher HQ will help a look when soaking cannon damage.
• Possibly adding a marginal success level (like in CoC7). On a marginal success the weapon only does minimum damage. I got this idea from Flashing Blades, and it would help offset the relative lack of armor and magic  for most seagoing characters in the Young Kingdoms, and can even justify Elric's traveling around unarmored in most of his adventures. I would help with cannon damage to ships, too.
• Want to add Caravel (this might be the Purple Towns' Brig) Carrack, Caravels and the Tarkesh Roundship that is mentioned in Strormbringer, but never made it to the ship rules. 
• Want to add in different cannon sizes.
• Want to add a handling stat.
• Not ship or sea related, but I am thinking of brining back the nationality stat modifiers from old Stormbringer, but reducing them down to what we see in more "recent" (i.e. RQ3) BRP products. 1D4 would be +2, 1D6+3, 1D8+4 and so on.  

 

 

Edited June 23, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

28 minutes ago, g33k said:

May be worth looking at Mythras & TDM's Ships& Shieldwalls supplement, as well.

Maybe. Do you know if it uses the same or similar ship rules as Strombringer/Elric/RuneQuest 3/MagicWorld?

 

Nevermind. Turns out I already bought S&S on Drivethru (quite awhile ago, LOL!) While S&S certainly has the Young Kingdoms thing going on, the ship stats are different. But...the stuff on elementals is exactly what I was looking for, right down to the Flying ships!

 

Edited June 23, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

Looking over Priates of Legend, it seems the ships have about twice the Structure Points of t Strombringer/Magic World ships, but also about half or less of the Hull (and armor).  

The sticking point is cannon. Legend has a 9pdr doing 4D6 damage, which seems awfully low in BRP terms.  The cannon in the BGB only does 4D8+4 which isn't too far off from Legend's 18 pdr (4D8), but again this strikes me as too low for BRP. Characters could soak that sort of hit. Rogue Mistress for Stormbringer has a 6pdr doing 10D6 (and ignoring armor to boot), which seems to be to fit better with BRP, and with the higher Hull Quality (armor) values from the Seafaring rules vs. core BRP (A brig having 24-25 HQ vs. 10 armor). 

How does this look for cannon damage:

1pdr (8D6+2)

3pdr (9D6)

6pdr (10D6)

9pdr (10D6+1)

12pdr (10D6+2)

18pdr (11D6)

24pdr (11D6+1)

32pdr (12D6+1)

45pdr (13D6)

60pdr (13D6+2)

Edited June 23, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

Update:

I think I can reconcile the different Structure ratings for the ships in Pirate of Legend. Something I read at the library pointed out that ships increased in size by about a third in each century from the 15th to the 17th. So if the Young Kingdom "Brig" is a early pre-Brig then it would be smaller and have fewer structure points than one from the Age of Sail. 

 

[Atgxtg]

I've revised my cannon damage:

Instead of doing the damage for one gun, I did up by weight of shot.

1 pound of shot  does 8D6 damage. Each doubling adds +1D6, and if you want a 50% increase is worth +1

Weight of Shot	Damage	BGB
1	8D6	2D8+2
1.5	8D6+1
2	9D6	3D8+3
3	9D6+1
4	10D6	4D8+4
6	10D6+1
8	11D6	5D8+5
12	11D6+1
16	12D6	6D8+6
24	12D6+1
32	13D6	7D8+7
48	13D6+1
64	14D6	8D8+8
96	14D6+1
128	15D6	9D8+9
192	15D6+1
256	16D6	10D8+10
384	16D6+1
512	17D6	11D8+11
768	17D6+1
1024	18D6	12D8+12
1536	18D6+1
2048	19D6	13D8+13
3072	19D6+1
4096	20D6	14D8+14
6144	20D6+1
8192	21D6	15D8+15
12288	21D6+1
16384	22D6	16D8+16
24576	22D6+1
32768	23D6	17D8+17
49152	23D6+1
65536	24D6	18D8+18
98304	24D6+1
131072	25D6	19D8+19

 

What's nice about this method is that:

•  Ships won't disintegrate at the first broadside.
• It's compatible with the existing cannon stats from Strombringer (a  3" cannon ball, roughly a 4-pdr still does 10D6)
• It's compatible with BRPG's BGB. Just art off at 2D8+2  This will be lower than Stormbinger, but ships in BRP have less armor.
• It also works out to +1D6 (or +1D8+1 for BGB) per doubling the number of guns, which is easy to do in your head.
• It lets you mix in guns of multiple sizes (useful when dealing with historical ships).
• It gives a damage for any size cannon. So if your ship is armed with Minions (5-pdrs), or Sakers (6-pdrs) or if you have 8-pdr or 10-pdr Demi-culverins instead of the 9-pdrs. you'll still all set to go. 
• It lets you handling a lot of guns with only one damage roll.
• If anyone wants to change things all the have to do is shift the base damage die up or down to suit their needs.  
• It also seems to work for siege engines, if you apply a 3 row reduction. For instance a Trebuchet that fires a 55 pound rock does 12D6 damage. This makes sense too, since the rock would be traveling slower and is  about half as dense as lead, so it would hit harder and spread the out the impact over a larger area

 

 

Examples:

A 20 gun sloop with a broadside of nine 9-pounders would have broadside eight of 81 pounds for 14D6 damage (or 8D8+8 in BGB).

HMS Victory a 104 gun First Rate Ship of the Line has a broadside of one 68-pdr, fifteen 32-pdrs, fourteen 24-pdrs, and twenty two 12-pdrs, for a total broadside weight of 1148 pounds for 18D6 damage (or 12D8+12 in BGB), and beats rolling for 52 guns separately..

A typical 16th Century Spanish Galleon (I'll spare you the mix of guns), has a broadside weight of 338 pounds for 16D6 damage (10D8+10 in BGB) 

 

Edited July 15, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

I've been thinking of altering and simplifying the ship stats a little, and wondering if it looks reasonable to others:

• I am thinking of is using some old real world tax method for determining a ships cargo capacity (Length x Breath x Draft/100, in tuns).  
• Setting Hull Quality by Era (Ancient, Medieval, Elizabethan, etc. this is the number of dice) and Length (the fixed add)
• Setting a ship's Structure points equal to it's cargo capacity, with a modifier based on hull quality.
• Allowing a trade of cargo for crew and vice versa at the rate of 1 tun per 10 crew.
• Allowing a trade of cargo for passengers and versa at the rate of 1 tun per passenger (better accommodations)
• Factoring in for cannon with at the rate of 1 tun per 10 pounds of weight of shot (so a Sloop that has a 81 pound broadside uses of 8 tons of cargo per side).
• Apply a modifier to speed based on a ship's length and how full the hold is.
• Setting a ship's Seaworthiness rating to it's Hull Rating, modified by the Beam to Length ratio (wider is more stable).
• Add in a Handling stat that applies to Seaworthiness

My goal is to make it so you could designer any sort of sailing ship from Ancient Era through to 19th century or so and get stats comparable to what we have now, plus be able to expand it as needed. Mostly this means I can add a bunch of new ship types, such as sloops, frigates, and fluyts and give stats for small, medium and large versions (50 ton sloop, 100 ton sloop, 150 ton sloop). It also means that someone could modify one stat on a ship and be able to figure out how it would affect that ship.

For instance if someone wanted a someone longer version of a ship then it would be somewhat faster, more maneuverable, hold more cargo, have more Structure points, but have a slightly lower Seaworthiness. 

Is that of interest to anyone else?