Experiences with letting players control a ship?

[Crothian]

IMC PCs like getting ships or other vehicles until they realize the cost to maintain and repair them. Ships are not cheap and are easily damage in combat. When a dragon comes in and rips out the mast and uses it as a baseball bat verse the PCs all my players thought was how much monewy they were going to loose because the cost to repair would be greater then the money from the dragon's hoarde!

 

[MarkB]

Running ships in combat is tricky, and varies in effectiveness depending upon both system and party build.

One of the major pitfalls is that ships run to a strict chain of command, whereas adventuring parties run through a form of flexible, inconstant consensus. It's possible to run a small ship without an official captain, but even then, whoever's at the helm or in the pilot seat is going to call most of the shots tactically.

Another problem is giving everyone things to do - especially, interesting things to do. On a starship, there tend to be limited numbers of posts to man, and some offer far more interesting tasks than others. In Star Wars Saga Edition, for instance, it ranks pretty much from pilot and gunner at the top, to engineer and co-pilot at the bottom, with the latter having little to do each round except make assist rolls to make the former look good.

There's also the question of division of skills. Unless the party spend all their time fighting naval battles, they're not all going to be specialised in shipboard activities. Some systems penalise that lack of specialisation more heavily than others, with characters built mostly for non-shipboard activities having to more-or-less just sit out the fight.

Finally, there's a distinct all-or-nothing aspect to shipboard combat, especially with spaceships. If all goes well, it's fine - but if things go bad, it may only take one fatal hit on the ship to take out the whole party.

If you're using a generalist system rather than one that specialises in shipboard combat above all else, I'd recommend either making it the focus of your game and having players build their characters around it, or else making it very rare and designing each of those rare encounters to offer opportunities for all players to use their characters' talents.

 

[Aramax]

I have a lot of experiance in this,Travaller,Star Trek and D&D and I have never had any problems at all,Ive never regretted any of it or had a bad time.this being said-THERE MUST BE A CAPTAIN !(The old IRL pirates captians only commanded DURING combat,the rest of the time it was anarchy(mostly))

 

[Stormonu]

Lets get a bit more specific.

How would you play out the following scenario.

The PCs are part of the crew of a pirate hunter (or the commanding officers, you decide whatever you think would be more fun for the players) on a 24 sloop-of-war encounter a equally well armed corsair xebec with damaged sails, so an escape is not possible unless it damages your sails first or dismasts your ship.

While I could run a scripted battle the outcome of it should be open (either side getting sunk, boarded or being able to flee).

So how would you run this encounter while providing the most "entertainment" for your players with no one sitting on the bench whle the others do their thing?

I've played in and run a pirate campaign in D&D (2E & 3E), as well as a Star Trek and Star Wars game aboard capital ships. Generally it's best if the characters are officer-type characters so they get a lot of say in how things are going.

As for your actual example, I'd have run out the battle w/ models with the final action being a full-on boarding attack. A skill challenge (or contested skill challenge) would probably work best for a descriptive account of getting the two ships to broadsides.

Primary positions would possibly be: Captain directing orders and checking ship status; Navigator plotting movement (possibly NPC, handled by the captain); Gunnery Officer in charge of ship's weapons; Boarding Officer in charge of the marines for the boarding operation; Sailmaster/Engineer trying to squeeze extra movement and maneuver out of the ship; Deck Officer seeing to positioning the crew and dealing with clearing/fixing damage to the ship. Other characters could act independently; spellcasters tend to have spell lists that can dramatically alter the course of events, for example.

While everyone may not have something to do every round, they can always give advice and you can find other things for them to do until something comes up; perhaps the Boarding Officer can move the ship models or you can engage him in a mini-game trying to hype the marines for the boarding action - or even have him attempting to snipe enemy crew to slow down their ability to maneuver or operate the enemy ship.

You might also want to consider giving more than one ship to the PC's - in my last pirate campaign, the party had acquired three (very different) ships; one a galleon loaded to bear with troops and heavy weaponry, a second a fast sloop with a single catapult that acted as scout and a third cog that fit in the middle between speed and strength. Each one was piloted by a PC, with the remaining PCs split across the boats (about 3 to each).

 

[TarionzCousin]

I have used One Bad Egg's Hard Boiled Armies for small-scale tactical combat and enjoyed it.

Or you could put your players on a real ship and see what happens. I recommend starting them off on a small lake. You'll need to work your way up to the ocean.

 

[TheNovaLord]

had loads shipboard fun and frolics many time in savage worlds Pirates, and a home brew sci-fi

i imagine doing something in d20 would be a bit slower and less fun plus you have lots spells to think about

 

[NewJeffCT]

Are there a lot of spellcasters with long-range abilities and/or access to things like cannons on board either ship?

If not, I would just ask the PCs what they want to do in game (ram the other ship, pull up alongside, attack from range, etc) and then assume they can do that since the other ship is nearly disabled. From there, you can have the intership fighting and/or negotiation.

remember, if a "flamethrower" like a wizard or sorcerer is around and reasonably common, then both ships will have access to countermeasures (smotherblend is an alchemical substance found in the Kenzer 3.5E book Salt & Sea Dogs: The Pirates of Tellene, which is a good source for combat at sea as well. Smotherblend will put out fires to prevent them from spreading)

If the PC ship is going to ram the other ship and the bad guys only have short range weapons, there is not much the bad guys can do to prevent the ramming, as the PC's ship will have momentum going forward and most low to mid level damage outputs won't sink/stop the ship in time once its in short range.

 

[Derren]

Are there a lot of spellcasters with long-range abilities and/or access to things like cannons on board either ship?

If not, I would just ask the PCs what they want to do in game (ram the other ship, pull up alongside, attack from range, etc) and then assume they can do that since the other ship is nearly disabled. From there, you can have the intership fighting and/or negotiation.

remember, if a "flamethrower" like a wizard or sorcerer is around and reasonably common, then both ships will have access to countermeasures (smotherblend is an alchemical substance found in the Kenzer 3.5E book Salt & Sea Dogs: The Pirates of Tellene, which is a good source for combat at sea as well. Smotherblend will put out fires to prevent them from spreading)

If the PC ship is going to ram the other ship and the bad guys only have short range weapons, there is not much the bad guys can do to prevent the ramming, as the PC's ship will have momentum going forward and most low to mid level damage outputs won't sink/stop the ship in time once its in short range.

I am not talking specifically about fantasy combat, but generally about every situation where the players (must?) share the control over a single vessel instead of each controlling his own characters he can move independantly.
In this regard it does not matter if the scenario is about triremes trying to ram each other, ship of the line trading broadsides or spaceships launching missiles and drones from 10.000 miles distance.
It is also not system specific.

So far, scripted combat seems to offer the greatest enjoyment for the players, or at least are the least cumbersome to run.
The problem is that I dislike scripted combat as I want the result of the combat completely open and dependant on the players actions (and luck of course).
And I think that creating a, for me, satisfying decision tree and modifying it on the fly to take into account unexpected actions from the players sounds like a lot of work.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Sorry, I did not make my point very well. I had meant to say that if you are involved in a lower magic ship-to-ship fantasy campaign, having a non-scripted encounter would likely be much easier to do than if you had a complex game of flying ships and/or high magic or high tech. With flying (through the air or space), you have two dimensions instead of two and higher magic and/or tech means there are many more options and (likely) greater range, so it would be more difficult/less fun to run a combat where you can just pummel the bad guys from a mile away with your cannons or from 1000 feet with multiple fireballs.

It really depends on what you are looking for in game. Running a complex ship encounter might take some work and a few combats before everybody (including the DM) gets the feel of it and it becomes smoother at the table.

 

[CarlZog]

Don’t script your ship combat. There are plenty of good rules systems and ways to adjudicate combat without everybody either waiting around or turning it into a wargame.

For starters, I recommend crafting moveable maps of the decks, so that the players can move around the ship, but the whole ship can also move relative to another ship. Makes boarding actions a lot easier. You don’t need to display every npc with a mini, just the pivotal characters on either side. Think of the best pirate movies where there is a mass of humanity fighting each other; the hero takes down a few mooks, but eventually seeks out the bad guy for the one-on-one combat in the middle of the chaos.

Yes, everyone is in a role, but via skill challenges and support bonuses, you should have each pc essentially directing a group of npcs as opposed to always just performing specific tasks themselves. The gunner is not rolling to shoot a specific cannon each turn; he’s rolling to direct the gunnery crew to successfully fire a broadsides. The captain is not rolling a skill check to steer the boat or handle, he’s rolling to direct the helmsmen and the sailing crew to steer and trim sails to his command. (Ideally to get in position for the gunner to do his thing!)

Meanwhile, the bosun is rapidly leading a team of sailors into the rig to repair the yard that’s just been shot out. It’s a series of skill challenges to get there, to convince the others to come with you, make sure they get there safely, and to get the job done. But without him, the ship will not be able to effectively get to where the captain wants to go. (Think Scotty in Star Trek).

The interconnectedness of everything on a ship makes it an environment in which the PCs really must work as a team to achieve anything.

Carl