naval combat systems oh my!

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I have a largish collection of d20 supplements and now have four different ship-to-ship combat systems. I've got Seas of Blood (Mongoose), Broadsides! (Living Imagination), Swashbuckling Adventures (AEG) and now the Arms & Equipment Guide, and they'll all different.

Swashbuckling Adventures lists Broadsides, Seas of Blood and the Seafarer's Handbook on its OGL page so I guess it might be using the same ship rules as the Seafarer's Handbook which is the only one I don't have.

I'm thinking about buying Airships, but this might give me a different system again.

So... if you've used any of these, which one plays best and why?

And... do you think d20 companies will continue to reinvent the wheel (or invent the wheel at the same time) or will we start to get cross-publisher cooperation on additional rules for stuff like this?

Any comments?



Richard

 

[Mark Chance]

Seafarer's Handbook has the best ship to ship combat system. Of course, since I wrote that chapter, I'm probably biased.

 

[Umbran]

And... do you think d20 companies will continue to reinvent the wheel (or invent the wheel at the same time) or will we start to get cross-publisher cooperation on additional rules for stuff like this?

I don't think you'll see this particular wheel done too much more, as most of the major 3rd parties have published one of them. I think, htough, that re-inventing the wheel wil be the standard operating procedure.

There simply isn't much impetus to drive them to cooperate. Meanwhile there is some impetus to put out their own version - the fact that no one set of rules for a thing will please everyone.

Plus, I expect a number of those books were in the development and production process simultaneously. Cooperation in that case would require companies to share the contents of their books beore printing them. While they all try to play nice, that seems to be asking for trouble to me.

 

[RichGreen]

Mark,

Since Seafarer's Handbook is the one I don't have, other than your suberb writing what makes it the best? Did AEG use your rules in Swashbuckling Adventures?

Cheers


Richard

 

[BV210]

I've got both Seas of Blood and Seafarer's Handbook and my two cents is that SoB has a "quicker, less detailed" method while SH is more complex, but also much more detailed. So which one I use in my campaign is dependent on how much the naval battle means in terms of overall campaign objectives. YMMV.

 

[Mark Chance]

Since Seafarer's Handbook is the one I don't have, other than your suberb writing what makes it the best?

Well, maybe not the best.

But as has been mentioned, the Seafarer's Handbook is a more detailed, tactical simulation. The goal was to create a round-to-round system to account for ship movement and positioning that could be used as part of the normal initiative system, thus permitting PC action in addition to the ship movement.

It is a bit detailed, perhaps on the too-slow side of things. For people who like a more miniatures-sort-of-feel to their combat, it will probably serve nicely.

Did AEG use your rules in Swashbuckling Adventures?

Not that I'm aware of. I haven't seen that product. I do know Mike Mearls used the catching fire rules for Seven Cities. I was a bit tickled to see that since I think Mr. Mearls is an ace game designer/author.

 

[kenjib]

Since you own them, have you read the books yet? Broadsides has the most realistic system. I believe it's the only one that adequately accounts for wind during tactical maneuvering and navigation. If anyone in your group is a sailing buff you might want to consider this. If you want something quick and easy though, and don't know about, care about, and/or want to hassle with real sailing dynamics, you might look at the other books first.

Our DM in this play by post:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29114

Uses Broadsides and chose that book, having some knowledge on the subject of real world sailing himself. So far we've done navigation and it's worked really well. We haven't done ship to ship combat yet though. Just reading Broadsides, however, I can see great care was put into capturing the tacitcal nuances that make combat between sailing ships very different from combat between other types of vehicles. There are important limitations on which direction you can go, the types of turns you can make, and how fast relative to wind and sails versus oars that IMO the other books just don't capture as well (whether or not you want to bother with all of that is, of course, the real question).

 

[Chauzu]

I prefer Broadsides for reasons listed above.

 

[Storminator]

I didn't like using Broadsides. Yes, it was very detailed and matches my reading of historical sailing fights (no actual sailing experience for comparison), but it was light on how to actually put together a round of combat. If one ship moves 4 spaces and another 3 spaces as they pass each other, and a "ship's round" takes a minute, how does one decide who is where and doing what when? I had to work all that out myself.

I really liked reading Broadsides, and I learned a lot of sailing info, but I was a bit disappointed in the playtesting.

PS

 

[Emiricol]

I used Broadsides a couple of times. In the end, my game was about swashbuckling, not the intricasies of tacking into the wind (so to speak). Seas of Blood ended up being what we use by default because the system is a lot simpler and runs faster.

YMMV of course.