Quote from: Greentongue;1118061Or is it me? Are there a ton of them and I have just not noticed?

Naval warfare is not popular.

Quote from: finarvyn;1118084I 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.

In one campaign, to avoid a lot of wilderness mapping, I gave the players a flying ship (just to travel about in among significant places, and not intending it to be relevant to combat). They spent most of the campaign (which fizzled for other reasons) in paranoid speculation about exactly how I was planning on destroying it. But all I wanted was to deliver them to relevant adventuring sites.

A small downside of a ship based campaign is what to do about players who miss a session, if there's really no opportunity for them to be off the ship. Shipmates of Odysseus couldn't just catch up at the next port. I would expect them to be sick below deck and not participating in the session, but there's still sometimes pressure to involve them in the current events.

For me, it's because I just don't find nautical fantasy adventures appealing. I'm also losing any good feelings towards ship-based sci-fi.

Have you downloaded Mazes & Minotaurs yet? Best naval rules in any RPG! And its free.

M&M is Greek Fantasy D&D via Ray Harryhausen, so the default play is Jason & the Argonauts. My drop-in campaign was the PCs had their ship and men-at-arms and sailed throughout the Archipelago having adventures.

Greetings!

I have a group of players that embraced a campaign that centered for quite some time on board the Dominus. The Dominus is an ancient naval warship that is over 300-feet long. The ship has numerous masts, each with the finest gossamer-silk sails, multiple decks, a powerful, fortified forecastle, as well as an animated, and sentient, Dragon-Headed prow. Below the waterline, the great ship has four immense, animated whale-flippers, and an immense, fluked tail, like that of a great Sperm Whale. The group's leader served as the captain of the ship, and was ceremoniously linked to the Dominus through the Command Throne. The group manned the great warship and sailed on adventures throughout the Dragon Sea, fighting against groups of fierce pirates, and infiltrating several pirate strongholds from the sea. From there, the group explored several mysterious islands, and encountered fortresses of Lamia's, Sirens, hostile giants, and citadels full of evil Minotaurs. The group spent several years exploring the jungles and wilderness of the lands of Mandewah and Khambalay, fighting against evil gnoll armies, fleets of savage human marauders, gigantic dinosaurs, and dark citadels ruled by vampire queens. The group then set sail for the far northern lands on a diplomatic mission to aid a far off elven kingdom. The group became involved in a series of naval campaigns between rival Viking kingdoms, as well as aiding an ancient kingdom of noble giants against evil giants, orcs, and beastmen. To the south, great island kingdoms of evil humans and kingdoms ruled by terrifying Fomorians presented a challenge, and an opportunity to aid family members of the group's Druidic priestess. So, the Dominus was loaded up with hordes of Viking allies, and they sailed southwards in great campaign of raiding and conquest against the Fomorians and the kingdoms of the Caandru tribes. The group eventually returned to their main base in the south, in the Dragon Sea, where they put the Dominus in a secret, sea-side cave, before embarking on further adventures deeper within the lands to the east.

Ship-based campaigns can be a lot of fun. The DM has to have some good maps laid out though, and at east a good section of notes detailing a good number of cultures, peoples, religions, environments, as well as local towns, ports, food, monsters, and characters for the players to deal with. Ship-based campaigns can include large elements the DM may not be fully prepared for, from dynamic social environments, to demanding climate and weather, amphibious races, as well as sea monsters and mythical creatures the DM has not put a lot of thought into before, now becoming much more prominent. I think it is also important, critically so--to have lots of shoreline raiding, and fighting on land, on other ships--beyond always fighting on their own, primary ship. So, lots of changing scenery and tactics going on. There is always room for lots of different enemies and rivals, different threats and hatreds, from wizards and pirates, to barbarian raiders, civilized kingdoms, dragons, giants, and sea monsters. Such ocean-based campaigns have a lot of "moving parts" and can be very demanding for a DM. I highly recommend them though!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I could see playing a type of Thunder in Paradise game for some wacky hijinks

As I've mentioned I ran a several years long Star Trek campaign. It started with the PCs as a specialized away team (because the Vulcan captain felt it would not be logical to send senior staff into dangerous situations) and it took awhile for them to break from the general RPG mentality of "we're on our own" and "authorities won't help any more than they are forced to."

Once they made that leap though it was glorious. The away got into habit of making regular reports to the Captain via comms (and in turn, the Captain being able to give the team relevant updates), requesting specialists (which allowed me to engage in one my favorite GM activities; playing minor characters with distinct personalities) or equipment as needed (the moment when the party needed a specific, but not typically carried, piece of tech and one of the players for the first time made the leap from "what can we improvise" to "I contact the ship and ask for one to be beamed down" and it was immediately was a watershed moment that finally let the party engage with the problems they were sent in to solve the way I'd intended.

It was a big deal when they first got to take control of running the ship (due to them not having been captured by the Pirates who'd siezed it by duplicity) and then again when they got assigned to the task of being the OpForce in a training exercise (the Captain was the neutral overseer of the exercise) and a chance to "think outside the box" as their mission was to harrass convoys being escorted by green crews (personnel shortages post-Dominion War were seeing people as low ranked as LTs being given command of smaller ships and crews rushed through an accelerated training program) with performance based on how many cargo vessels made it to their destination.

Their enjoyment of the more tactical side was one reason I swapped the rules over to a tweaked d6 Star Wars as it had enough tasks for capital ship-to-ship combat that everyone could feel involved as they eventually got their own command (the CO rolled command checks to give bonuses to the rest, the pilot handled maneuver checks, the security officer handled weapon attacks, the science officer ran the shield/resistance checks, the engineer managed power and damage control/repair check).

All told, there's a lot of pluses to running a campaign from a ship. First, nothing says the PCs have to be the ones in charge of the ship so the GM can plan where the PCs will be instead of them going anywhere they want to (and in the case of Star Trek above, even when they got their own ship, they still had orders from above they had to fulfill that sent them to specific places at specific times).

Second, depending on the size of the vessel it's like bringing a town of recurring NPCs with you. Sometimes people have had a cruddy week and don't feel like going land/planet-side so you can just do some RP with the rest of the crew and what they do with their downtime. Those people can also be reasonably skilled in areas the PCs aren't, but might find useful (the most interesting was turning the ship's supply officer; the guy who made sure all the "paperwork" of accounting for and restocking the ship's stores was done; into a forensic accountant in trying to figure out what was going on with a colony's supplies apparently being siphoned off for other uses).

Plus, if you can find a set of battle rules that keep the players involved, ship-to-ship battles can be a nice change of pace from the usual person-to-person conflicts in a lot of games.

Well, let's see. I have actually run two campaigns which featured a ship as the home base (technically each was owned by a specific player in each case), they were very fun. It provides for some really interesting opportunities different from a traditional campaign. Ships have featured prominently in several of my other games as well; in one, it became a running joke that the party couldn't own a ship for more than a day without smashing it on the rocks (nearly killing everyone after the giant carnivorous lizards descended to the gutted boat and the unconscious occupants) or getting blasted to pieces with cannon fire. The last campaign I ran in my fantasy setting began with the party figuring out how to steal a ship and flee across the sea from their pursuers.

The campaign I'm devising will be mostly based on river travel. All the shippy goodness and I can cause the river to bend into whatever direction I want the PCs to head. The plan is for a vast river system with an endless supply of branches and tributaries to keep the wandering fresh. With an overall campain 'plot' but lots of Star Trek-like one shots when docking at small villages on the riverbank.

I think the variety might be more limiting than you'd think. With land based adventuring it can take place in the mountains, desert, vast cityscape, snowy tundra, underdark, great plains, etc. With a ship you're pretty much locked into a large waterscape and shore visits. Also with a ship base, you're probably always going to be on the move(otherwise what's the point of the ship?), while land based campaigns can run entirely in one place, or be a traveling caravan.

Ship adventuring probably makes more sense for a specific campaign(50 Fathoms, Skull and Shackles, Spelljammer) than as the default.

Quote from: Dracones;1118381... can take place in the mountains, desert, vast cityscape, snowy tundra, underdark, great plains, etc.

Most of what you listed can be reached by ship/boat. Just a matter of wanting to.

I'm sure it would be less creative work by a GM if you were to run a specific campaign(50 Fathoms, Skull and Shackles, Spelljammer).

Quote from: Greentongue;1118383Most of what you listed can be reached by ship/boat. Just a matter of wanting to.

Exactly. It also broadens the potential variety of cultures, races, etc. which can be encountered among those adventures (ala sailing from South America to Western Europe, with the potential to become an adventure itself). It's definitely worth noting that the party does not need to stay with the ship at all times; pay a docking fee, use your contacts, or find a nice hideaway for it and get going; think of it as something like the PC's home city or home town. It need not be adhered to as the vehicle for adventure at all times, but it serves as a hub and can be a source of intrigue and adventure in and of itself.

Quote from: Greentongue;1118061When 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?

I'm literally running this right now in my weekly Talislanta game. The PC's are part of a crew of a Cymrilian Windship traveling on a science/diplomacy/surveying/first-contact tour of the continent. On the way, they're doing missions for their respective factions they represent, exploring locales (while the ship travels elsewhere and returns to pick them up) returns back to the Seven Kingdoms for R&R (and training), all the while geo-political stuff occurs based on the results of their trip.

Fantasy Sword-and-Sorcery Star Trek.

While a ship-board campaign can be a special kind of campaign, it also means the PCs will be very dependent on a ship, theoretically also a crew, and circumstances.  Handling storms, and long voyages with little to do along the way, has a way of disempowering the players in relative comparison to a land-based adventure where the PCs can basically decide to go in any direction and without being so directly dependent on the whims of nature or other people.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1118868While a ship-board campaign can be a special kind of campaign, it also means the PCs will be very dependent on a ship, theoretically also a crew, and circumstances.  Handling storms, and long voyages with little to do along the way, has a way of disempowering the players in relative comparison to a land-based adventure where the PCs can basically decide to go in any direction and without being so directly dependent on the whims of nature or other people.

We are talking about a game here where the GM can control the time line and weather correct?
If these factors are not fun, why are they being included? What value does it add to include details that are boring and disempowering?