Quote from: Azraele;1085997Neither was I, until I transformed elves in a setting into pirates. Suddenly everybody liked elves again, and I had to make sunken dungeons and buried treasure and sea monsters and palm-treemen.

No regrets, except the generally uninteresting ship rules for the system I'd been using.

If I had a heavy naval focus every game, I think I'd grow to dislike it quick.  Instead, I've usually got one campaign with it, then one without, and then one where the players can turn up or down the naval focus by their choice of goals.  Then we start the rotation again, or occasionally throw in an oddball campaign as a fourth option.  Seems to sufficiently scratch the naval itch.

Not only high tech, but the reverse, outdated tech soldiering on can also be interesting. Games tend to assume that as soon as a tech is available, the old stuff disappears overnight, but in reality it generally hangs on for a longtime.

On a side project I was researching steam and sail shipping. The first practical iron hulled steam ships showed up in the 1820s, but steam didn't really start to challenge sail for another 30-40 years. The engagement between the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (aka Merrimac) in 1862 was the first meeting of iron clad warships, 43 years after the first steam ship had crossed the Atlantic and 25 years after the first ironclad warships were built.

It wasn't until the late 1890s that steam ships outnumbered commercial sailing ships, and the 1950s before the last commercial sailing cargo ships were retired. Sailing ships had a role in both World Wars.

It took 80s years for steam to dominate and 130 years before it completely replaced sail. In fact by the time steam finally eliminated sail, it was well on its way to being replaced itself by internal combustion engines burning fuel oil or diesel.


It can be fun to have your 1930s adventures head down to the docks to find passage. Walking past rows of powerful steamships, to find they are booked on a decrepit 3 masted schooner.

It wasn't always a straight line, either. The SS Great Britain, one of the first steamliners in the world, was converted to a dedicated sailor for a while, because it was much cheaper than having to find coal for its boilers (wind being free).

I would love to run a more naval campaign. The only issue is my players consistently manage to ruin their ships as soon as possible, in at least 3 cases running them aground, within 2-3 sessions tops.

They are probably fairly destruction-focused overall. I have had better luck with airships, I suspect the reason for that is they feel it is more imminently fatal to fall out of the sky than into the water or being stranded on an island (even when it's populated by carnivorous reptiles).

We liked naval warfare so much I laser cut a multi-layered ship models out baltic birch (me and my old business partner even sold them Origins/GenCon c. 2006) so we could easily deploy them for naval engagements.

5e has waterbreathing as a ritual cast spell that lasts all day, so certainly easy to encourage players to go exploring underwater.

Most of my MAZES & MINOTAURS games are nautical adventures. It's the influence of the Odyssey and the Argonauts. Also, it makes for great adventures as the PCs wander archipelagos and have the freedom of movement.

I've also run island based Rifts campaigns. Something fun about shooting sea monsters with plasma guns.

Quote from: Chris24601;1086144We liked naval warfare so much I laser cut a multi-layered ship models out baltic birch (me and my old business partner even sold them Origins/GenCon c. 2006) so we could easily deploy them for naval engagements.

I think I saw pictures of those. They were nice.

Steve Jackson at one point did a set of rules intended to be used with Lego pirate ships.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh comes out in a couple of weeks, seven nautical-themed linked adventures.