See aforementioned thread on using FH&W with Razor Coast. Does anyone have a favorite OSR game that I don't happen to know about that has rules for Ship Combat, Piracy, Ships, etc. Something abstract.
Give those ships an AC and HP. At the beginning of each combat round allocate crew either for ATK-Bonus (canons) or higher AC (navigation). Done.
EDIT: As far as I remember, the original AC rules were inspired by Dave Arneson's naval wargame "Don't Give Up The Ship", but I might be wrong.
ACKS's got me covered.
What do you want out of your naval combat? Do you want strategy, maneuvering, winds, crew complement, or anything else to matter? I mean, you can run ships as just giant PCs who can only move in certain ways and shoot in certain arcs, or you can use one of the many (of varied complexity) naval battle games that have been produced if you want complexity and realism to real-world naval combat.
If you are going to go for complexity, I would steel from a game dedicated to such things. Lots of general games (such as gurps and hero system) have vehicle combat systems that break down when dealing with big slow ships where facing is very important.
You could get yourself a copy of Heart of Oak... the rules for naval battles that came with FGU's Privateers & Gentlemen RPG. There's a PDF of it on RPGNow.
It's probably waaaay more complicated than you need... yet I've heard that for naval wargames it's relatively lite.
Here we use Twin Crowns (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XTwin+Crowns+RPG.TRS0&_nkw=Twin+Crowns+RPG&_sacat=0) and d20 Pirates (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Living-Imagination-d20-RPG-Pirates-SC-MINT-/361432319764?hash=item54270b8714:g:qRYAAOSwT4lWTacL).
These are out of print, but you can still get them on Ebay.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;868466If you are going to go for complexity, I would steel from a game dedicated to such things. Lots of general games (such as gurps and hero system) have vehicle combat systems that break down when dealing with big slow ships where facing is very important.
Actually, I'm tolerably happy with the GURPS naval combat rules (and I ignore Vehicles altogether). It's a variant of the mass battle rules, and I'd say it was "old school" friendly.