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In my experience nothing lights the evil glimmer in a DM's eye so much as the characters boarding a ship: storm clouds gather, pirates sharpen their swords and seaborne menaces leap off the pages of the Monster Manual. As a player I never expect my character to safely sail from Point A to Point B, and as a DM I have wreaked absurd amounts of havoc upon characters who venture into the open sea.
What sort of nautical adventures have you experienced? When you're a player do you expect a higher level of craziness on sea voyages, and when you're a DM do you go out of your way to meet such an expectation?
Yeah, pretty much anytime a PC sets foot on a ship, bad things are about to happen.
I have started not one, but TWO campaigns with a fight on a pirate ship. One was for the Savage Tide AP, and the fight didn't turn out well for the PCs (due to some very poor rolls, only one PC was able to make it on the ship, with the other three trying to climb aboard and failing while eight rogues surrounded the lone PC on deck).
The other was in my "Roman Style Look in an empire based off Ten Kingdoms China" campaign. The PCs started off fighting against a bunch of slaves revolting, on a slaver barge, during a storm. It was a really cool fight, with the PCs kicking butt (as they should, in the first encounter of a campaign), and it really set the tone for everything.
__________________ Current Campaign:The Shattered Isles Homebrew - Hammer (Minotaur Fighter 8), Kirra (Drow Rogue 8), Shedin (Dragonborn Paladin 8), Zahar (Half-Eladrin/Half Drow Bard 8), and Seahorse (Halfling Rogue 8). Currently the group is in the Feywild, trying to discover who is poisoning the drow.
i haven't run a boat-based encounter/campaign in a long, long time, but last time i did they were attacked by a huge sea serpent to theme of JAWS as they saw it approaching. I dunno, the ocean scares the hell of out of me in real life, i guess it's natural for me to try and convey that kind of fear in a game. If i were to do it again they would meet hordes of awful, awful things.
I haven't had any nautical D&D experiences, though I would wager part of the reason behind the DM whipping up such menaces is that there are several aquatic monsters that generally cannot be used, and so they jump on the opportunity when they are a viable addition?
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Unless my PC is some kind of heavy armor type, I'd jump on a boat in a heart beat. And if my PC is the heavy armor type, I'd buy some lighter armor (or some magic), and then jump on the boat.
If sailing is a sure way to encounter monsters and adventure, it's no different than going down into a dungeon. And I love going down into a dungeon.
Dungeons and ships -- it's where the adventure is.
Generally, I try not to overwhelm the PCs when they travel. I like to give them a thematic encounter or two, just for fun, though.
Once my PCs got boarded by pirates who just stripped the crew of all the valuables they could find, and left without much fight. Another time, it was the excisemen who did the seizing, claiming the captain didn't have the proper tax-seals on his goods. Since they missed the really valuable smuggled goods in the secret hold, nobody complained too much!
Krakens are for when you go LOOKING for trouble. Although I think I did once have the PCs get attacked by fish-men once, when they camped on the beach (which they'd been warned was dangerous).
i haven't run a boat-based encounter/campaign in a long, long time, but last time i did they were attacked by a huge sea serpent to theme of JAWS as they saw it approaching. I dunno, the ocean scares the hell of out of me in real life, i guess it's natural for me to try and convey that kind of fear in a game. If i were to do it again they would meet hordes of awful, awful things.
i Have a fear of heights in real life, in my D&D games falling damage is 1d6 per 10' for each 10' fallen.
Let's see, the last two times the PCs in my group got on a Ship I ran the modules Ship of Horrors and Mysteries of the Razor Coast. Before that I did a treasure diving adventure from one of the cardstock quick adventures in the City of Greyhawk boxed adventure and before that there was an uninterrupted river cruise aboard a Rhenee barge. So its not always a guaranteed encounter.
One of our campaigns began with the group forming during the boat trip (a coming together while fighting off pirates). I bonded with the wizard as, after he blew the masts off the pirates ship, I summoned an elephant onto the deck, convincing a large number of crew members to abandon ship soon afterwards
I also recall being boarded by Sea Trolls. One member of our party had the ingenious idea of tossing the corpses overboard ... d'oh!
After shipwrecking (the boat were we on sank quickly, so we had to take over the pirate ship, which was in pretty bad shape as well) we got to an island, but did some deep sea diving in search of treasure in the bottom of boats ... which ended up getting us into some trouble with an intelligent underwater humanoid group.
The situation worked well as a means of getting the party together, and for my character allowed for extra fun. As a bard on the cusp of becomming a chameleon, I met each of the party members in the guise of a different class [I convinced the rogue I was a fellow rogue by breaking into my own cabin; I convinced another party member I was a druid thanks to my ability to summon animals ... with a magic item; fighter, wizard and cleric were relatively easy after that] and each thought these other personas were on board ... meaning once I joined the party as a 'simple' bard Jack of all trades, no questions were brought up about the other guys they met as they simply died during the pirate battle.
Unless my PC is some kind of heavy armor type, I'd jump on a boat in a heart beat. And if my PC is the heavy armor type, I'd buy some lighter armor (or some magic), and then jump on the boat.
If sailing is a sure way to encounter monsters and adventure, it's no different than going down into a dungeon. And I love going down into a dungeon.
Dungeons and ships -- it's where the adventure is.
Bullgrit
I concur. A PC who avoids getting on a boat, because the GM might throw some danger at him, might as well stay home in the safety of PeaceVille where nothing bad ever happens.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The PC is the hammer. Go pound on some stuff.
I have DMed a campaign that took place mostly on the open seas (using the Stormwrack supplement, which is still one of my favorite sourcebooks) and DMed another Spelljammer joint using the Dragon mag/Polyhedron write up along with my old materials for fluff, and played in another nautical game as player where the group tried their hardest to be pirates (but we just could not find the easy marks ;; )
Some of my favorite moments included:
1. As a player my group sprang an attack on a fat looking merhcant ship only to find out that it was not a merchant ship at all, but rather a ship full of rakshasa slavers who conveniently had room for our party after they soundly trounced us (but we did execute a break-the-mast, perfect cinema style boarding of their vessel before we got our butts kicked). We ended up getting sold to a real bastard too, after several failed escape attempts from the ship proper (the best of which had one of our players trying to swim away from the ship in the middle of the ocean, with the ship following slowly behind him waiting for him to tire out. It was pretty funny). The escape from out owners floating fortress, was fairly classic.
2. As a DM I ran a naval combat between the players vessels (they had three at the time) and the fleet of the enemy they were chasing (a chosen by god, purify everything with fire, viking flavored BBEG). Monster summoning was employed by both sides, and weather controlling magic was emplyed by both sides, and canonballs were flying to and fro. The fight was epic and ended up with all vessels on the ocean floor and the surviving party members starnded on a starnge island chasing their enemy into the jungle with afew days in green hell followed up with a grand finale in the crater of an active volcano.
3. I ran another game that had PCs exploring (plundering) a sunken (lost civilization, sunk in the sea by the gods type of site) city, in competition with other groups. It was a great run with a few ship to ship skirmishes (complete with Hadozees gliding from ship to ship), a metric crapton of underwater encounters, and even an epic battle between two modified apparatus' of the crab (Kwalish*) in a sunken catacomb deep beneath the ruin.
The sea has come up few other times in other games, but it tends to only be a major theme for an adventure or two at best (in the form of coastal raider or a journey by boat or something of the like).
My best experience was not on the sea, but on a river. I was running the Enemy Within campaign, where the characters may acquire their own river boat. I downplayed the problems of running a boat until they were confronted by a vessel manned by chaos worshipers.
When the characters wanted to flee, I asked them what their characters were doing ... what they were doing exactly. Being a moderately experienced sailor myself, I had loads of fun computing their boat's reaction to their less than inspired actions.
It didn't exactly ease my players' minds that the river was populated by some weired fish-man mutants.
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Of course my character boards the boat - he's an adventurer, and the ocean is filled with adventure.
__________________ On weird fantasy: "The Otus/Elmore rule: When adding something new to the campaign, try and imagine how Erol Otus would depict it. If you can, that's far enough...it's a good idea. If you can picture a Larry Elmore version...it's far too mundane and boring, excise immediately." - Kellri, K&K Alehouse
One time under 3.5 I had a centaur monk with horseshoes of water walking threaten to sunder the PCs' ship. It almost worked...
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2. As a DM I ran a naval combat between the players vessels (they had three at the time) and the fleet of the enemy they were chasing (a chosen by god, purify everything with fire, viking flavored BBEG). Monster summoning was employed by both sides, and weather controlling magic was emplyed by both sides, and canonballs were flying to and fro. The fight was epic and ended up with all vessels on the ocean floor and the surviving party members starnded on a starnge island chasing their enemy into the jungle with afew days in green hell followed up with a grand finale in the crater of an active volcano.
That. Sounds. Awesome.
My favorite nautical event came when I was DM for a 2E game. The characters were members of a highly organized thievi--um, merchant organization sailing ships full of smuggled goods from Lantan to Waterdeep. A mysterious maelstrom swallowed one of their ships. The maelstrom was supposed to be a bad omen--a sign that the characters were involved in something more evil and dangerous than they realized at the time--but the players were more concerned that one of their favorite NPCs (a crusty sea captain) was sucked away with the lost boat. That, and the way the maelstrom played out was pretty tense and creepy. So I changed up my plans: I tossed the simple "bad omen" plan and expanded on the idea of the storm that captured the players' attention.
The maelstrom had heralded the arrival of Mask (God of Thieves) on their plane, where he hoped to hide from The Chaos Hound that was hunting him at the time. A few sessions down the road the sea captain NPC showed up at their warehouse: he was ten years older and he spoke in Planescape jargon. He had been sucked through the planar gate into Sigil, and had returned to warn the characters that they were caught in the crossfire of a battle between Mask and Cyric. They thought he had been driven insane, and the feeling was mutual: he declared them all "Barmy!" and set out to find a way back to Sigil.
It wasn't as eventful as the pirate attack they repelled on the way to Lantan (complete with circling sharks) but the players were really affected by the dark maelstrom, the loss of their beloved Captain, and his unsettling return.
In my current campaign the PCs had to defeat a Blue, coastal cave dwelling dragon. The dragon had been attacking local ships. The PCs decided that they didn't want to go into the Dragon's Lair, as it would be too difficult. Instead they borrowed a ship, sailed out near a cave, and waited for the Dragon to attack them.
At least one party member had no ranged attacks.
. . .
Lets just say, the cleric didn't make it, and the warforged came very close to becoming part of the Dargon's hoard.
I ran a Spelljammer campaign from about 1990 to 1993. Much space-based swashbuckling ensued.
More recently, I ran a 4E adventure inspired by the Savage Tide AP module Sea Wyvern's Wake. In short, the PC's were at sea for about 2 months, traveling from civilization into the tropics. Highlights included a stowaway goblin hexer (whose Imp familiar was invisibily terrorizing the crew), an attack by goblin pirates (on their war catamaran!) a lengthy side trek involving a Mayan-ish ruin, and a pitched battle against lizardfolk warriors among the ruins of a looted trading outpost.
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