When a lot of exploration was historically done by ship, why are ships not a centerpiece for most adventure games?

I guess this would be true for Viking style games but what about Sinbad, Jason and Odysseus?
Are these not good adventures to model games after?

Star Trek and Firefly are good examples for the Sci-Fi genre.

Or is it me? Are there a ton of them and I have just not noticed?

One reason is because it´s harder for the referee - the pc´s can go almost anywhere with a ship (althogh the ref can always control the wind i guess).
I love ships (I´m also a sucker for piratemovies) and have lots of supplements and articles  for different systems, which i often read but never uses,.
I use ships - and other vehicles - a lot in my adventures, but they are ususally abandoned, sold, crashed, sank, burned or eaten, so it would be hard to base adventures around them.

I've considered a Travelleresque campaign using Tolkien's elvish ships.  Remember that Middle Earth is curved, and human ships sailing off to the west follow the curve of the planet.  Elvish ships go straight:  Depending on tide, wind, and water currents, an Elf ship could leave Harlindon and wind up at Waterdeep, City State of the Invincible Overlord, or anyplace else the GM says is reachable.  The kicker is, it depends on when you leave.  If you don't catch the Waterdeep Tide, you'll have to circle around to other, less desirable ports until you can locate an alternate route.

To answer the OP, it's not the default because most GMs are landlubbers who need a good hard pressganging.

Myself, I love GMing games where the PCs are on a ship of some description, as I enjoy giving the players that sort of agency. I've also found that players get more invested in games where the ship is a central component, as it becomes something of a character in and of itself. Why, I'm working on a game just now that lets the players have/build a fleet of spaceships, with the flagship being just as important as any major NPC.

Quote from: zx81;1118062One reason is because it´s harder for the referee - the pc´s can go almost anywhere with a ship (althogh the ref can always control the wind i guess).

Just because you can go anywhere doesn't mean it makes sense to. Seems to me it wouldn't make a difference as long as the players were able to get enough details to give them "Somewhere to go".
Should make a "Point Crawl" type game easier as you can just get on with it and arrive at the next "Point".

I think that the reason ships aren't more central to the game is that they require more specialized rules for ship combat and navigation, and leave the characters stranded on a vessel on long voyages that can take days or weeks to reach the next landmass without ANYTHING for characters to do but watch the waves and get sea sick. With land based adventures you have more frequent and easier to handle random encounters, with relatively shorter trips back to town to pawn off loot then get back to exploring and killing stuff. Continental based adventures are also common in history and fiction, with plenty to do and explore, places to visit, etc.

Though, it is true that sea based adventures are far more common in history and fiction than they tend to be in most games, particularly in cultures based around the Mediterranean (or fantasy cultures inspired by them), so there should be more effective ways to work them into the game.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118067I think that the reason ships aren't more central to the game is that they require more specialized rules for ship combat and navigation...

This.

Which is exacerbated by the fact that a ship typically requires a crew while most tables are focused on a small band of PCs -- not a few PCs and a bunch of NPC crew. In addition, a ship implies a captain and a lot of players don't want to play or really just can't handle a setting where someone else gives their PC orders.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118067I think that the reason ships aren't more central to the game is that they require more specialized rules for ship combat and navigation, and leave the characters stranded on a vessel on long voyages that can take days or weeks to reach the next landmass without ANYTHING for characters to do but watch the waves and get sea sick.  

I would think that depends on how big the ship is and how far away from land you go.  Even so, there is no reason "long voyages that can take days or weeks" take that length of time in actual play.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118067With land based adventures you have more frequent and easier to handle random encounters, with relatively shorter trips back to town to pawn off loot then get back to exploring and killing stuff.

Ships that hug the coast can be adventuring on land every time they want and still make quick trips to a port.

Quote from: Greentongue;1118074Ships that hug the coast can be adventuring on land every time they want and still make quick trips to a port.

Even with coast-hugging ships* I'd expect wind and tide to matter to the point of needing some rules for handling ship movement and for being blown off course.

The word used was ship, not small boat so even if nearly all the action occurs on land, having a ship's crew with 30+ NPCs will require some sort of rules to quickly resolve small scale (squad or platoon size) mass combat.


* Coast-hugging basically describes the voyages in the Odyssey, the Argonautica, and a lot of the water voyages of Sinbad.

I did a campaign with a dwarven steamship that moved from port to port, sort of like the Enterprise moving from planet to planet. My goal was to have a bunch of one-shot adventures for the group but eventually they connected together as the crew had to find special gemstones which would power the ship and some of its components. (One gemstone gave it levitation, another powered a "lightning cannon.") I found that this was a neat way to move the group from one-shot to one-shot.

Mostly because my players didn't want to deal with ship combat...Nor could I find good ship combat rules.

Ships are awesome. They are about exploration, and a homebase all in one! A Combat homebase with cannons and a crew!

The Savage Worlds 50 Fathoms setting provides an excellent opportunity to have a campaign centered on the party traveling by ship. It has a good plot point campaign, and provides plenty of adventure seeds for practically every location. In part the setting could do that because it's about a couple thousand miles across, the relatively small size allowing making it possible to provide the information it does for each of the islands. One might do something similar if they based their campaign on the Mediterranean, and then sink most of the rest of the world leaving around 50 islands where the major ports are at.

Coast hugging gives a lot of opportunities for shore excursions as well as urban encounters.

Savage Worlds 50 Fathoms does show that it can be done.

Furry Pirates pretty much lives on this idea. The PCs are crew, or own their own ship and putter about the Age of Sail Authentic world.

Why are ships not more common? Why arent caravan homes more common? For that matter why arent mounts more common even?

Vulnerabiliy is a huge reason.

 A mobile base is... well... Mobile. It can be stolen. It can be wrecked. Or in the case of mounts, killed.

Ships are also high maintenance. You have to take care of them or bad things may happen. You also have to likely pay and feed crew or they may flip out and take your ship. They may flip out and take your ship anyhow!

Ships are also horrendously vulnerable to severe weather.

And lastly. In a fantasy setting everything AND the water wants to eat the ship, or the people on it, or BOTH! Especially if its Faerun!

My DCC setting is a huge ocean dotted with islands. The coastlines are marked on the edges of the maps, but the players are much more interested in island hopping. But weather and supplies and "here be dragons" rumors are always factors, so they plot their course accordingly. Same in my sci-fi game, where they might theoretically be able to head off in any direction, but fuel management and jump distance is definitely a thing. So I don't buy into the idea that boat=too much player agency, but a GM does need to be on their toes. That said, too much pedantry and you're basically punishing your table for buying into your campaign conceit, so I soft-pedal a lot of stuff until and unless I'm using it for dramatic effect.