Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Seas of Blood: Fantasy on the High Seas
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2008672" data-attributes="member: 172"><p><strong>Seas of Blood</strong></p><p></p><p>And they're off!</p><p></p><p>Many publishers are putting out some sort of naval rules of the d20 system, including Living Imagination's <em>Twin Crowns </em>and FFG's <em>Seafarer's Handbook</em>. This is somewhat unusual, because most publishers are a little gun shy in putting out a product that they know will get direct competition. Apparently some publishers think that there is a sizable demand for naval books, or that their product is going to win out.</p><p></p><p><em>Seas of Blood</em> is Mongoose Publishing's contribution to this fray. <em>Seas of Blood </em>is a d20 system rules supplement adding classes, feats, and other rules for bringing naval adventures to your d20 system fantasy game.</p><p></p><p><strong>A First Look</strong></p><p></p><p><em>Seas of Blood </em>is a 128 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.95 US. The cover is decorated by a wrap around picture of a fantasy naval battle, with a longship crewed by some sort of gruff looking humanoids.</p><p></p><p>The interior is black-and-white. The interior illustrations are generally good. I especially like the work of Danilo Moretti, who I am told also did the ship diagrams (his pictures are those signed with the caligraphic symbol that looks like a circle over a “U” and a line.) Some of the illustrations are computer-generated graphics by Luis Corte Real (who did many of the pieces in Mongoose's <em>Gladiator: Sands of Death</em>.) The textures in his illustrations look great, but when he does people, the faces just look wrong.</p><p></p><p>The interior text density is fairly good, with a compact but readable typeface. Combined with the price per page, which is good for d20 publishers (and much better than the comparably priced WotC classbooks), this delivers a good value based on cost and content density alone.</p><p></p><p><strong>A Deeper Look</strong></p><p></p><p>As with prior Mongoose products, Seas of Blood is divided into topical sections too small to be called chapters. Also following the lead of other Mongoose books, there are short stories and flavor text interspersed throughout in shaded boxes.</p><p></p><p><strong>Men of the Sea</strong></p><p></p><p>After a somewhat long introduction, the first section is entitled Men of the Sea, and covers adaptations and additions of character creation rules. The first section discusses the existing classes. Most of this part is devoted to discussing the role of the existing character classes in a nautical campaign. However, there are a few new rules. Most prominently, there is a large sidebar showing how to create nautical variant of the druid, the sea druid. The sea druid receives a few abilities replacing those in the PHB for their landbound peers. For example, a nautical druid receives <em>speed of the fish </em>(increases swimming speed) in the place of <em>woodland stride</em> and <em>salt synthesis </em>(allows them to subsist on salt water for short periods) instead of <em>trackless step</em>.</p><p></p><p>The chapter introduces two new skill specialties, <em>knowledge (seamanship)</em> and <em>profession (navigator)</em>. Where I can see the purpose of both of these, I wonder why they felt the need to cast seamanship as a knowledge skill, especially when one of the basic skill specialties listed in the PHB is <em>profession (sailor)</em>. Indeed, they state that ranks in the two skills are equivalent, and I am at a loss to why they would want to make it a knowledge skill at all when it seems like a menial profession that a commoner could have, and makes much more sense in the hands of classes like rogue than wizards and bards.</p><p></p><p>Three new classes are introduced in the chapter, one base NPC-caliber class and three prestige classes. The base class is <em>sailor</em>, and only five levels are listed for it (not unlike the <em>slave </em>class in Mongoose's <em>Gladiator: Sands of Death</em>). Though one can make sailors with the existing <em>expert </em>and <em>commoner </em>NPC classes, this class would make a nice replacement in a heavily nautical campaign as its hit dice, attack bonus, and skill selection are more appropriate to what you would expect from a rough-and-tumble hardworking sailor.</p><p></p><p>The prestige classes are <em>buccaneer, reaver</em>, and <em>navigator-wizard</em>. The <em>buccaneer </em>is a deft, dextrous, witty swashbuckling sailor with abilities that focus on mobility in a shipboard environment. The <em>reaver </em>is a more combat-oriented seaman type, with class abilities that revelve around shipboard combat and leadership. The <em>navigator-wizard </em>is an arcane spellcaster that receives a variety of abilities that improves their ability to navigate and improve the movement capability of the ship.</p><p></p><p>A short discussion is engendered on piracy, with some worthwhile thoughts on how such seaborne scoundrels can be used (or played) in the game. Strangely, the author muses of the absence of any sort of pirate class (funny, just what is a <em>buccaneer </em>again?)</p><p></p><p>The section gives guidelines on hiring a crew, and gives sample statistic blocks and typical fees for a variety of crewmen and mercenaries.</p><p></p><p>While the selection of new classes is rather thin (and understandably so), the section does provide a number of new feats that should help customize characters to the role of a sailor, captain, or pirate rather easily. Most of them are fairly reasonable and useful, but some are problematic. </p><p></p><p><em>Amazing agility </em>lets the character take 20 on balance checks that would not normally allow this. This is nonsensical to me, as "taking 20" is a mechanical convenience designed to simulate being able to retry tasks without consequence. Essentially what this feat boils down to is allowing the character to take 10 regardless of conditions, plus granting a +10 skill modifier while doing so. While this didn't strike me as a game break, I do think that gives you more or a benefit towards your skills than feats were meant to give.</p><p></p><p><em>Bargain </em>gives you a +4 bonus to profession (merchant) checks when buying or selling goods. My only quibble here is that diplomacy checks are typically used for such tasks, but the intent is good.</p><p></p><p><em>Duck and weave </em>is pretty slick mechanically: you are always granted cover against range attacks while onboard a ship. <em>Sea legs </em>gives bonuses to a variety of skills while onboard ship. <em>Strong swimmer </em>improves your swim speed on a successful swim check (though it specifies no DC).</p><p></p><p><strong>Nautical Travel</strong></p><p></p><p>The next section covers the basic mechanics needed for nautical travel. It provides rules for handling navigation of ships, getting lost at sea, movement rates at sea, handling weather, seaworthiness, visibility, long voyages, and handling mutiny. The rules provide good coverage of the types of situations that may arise in a nautical campaign, and most of the rules are fairly straightforward and use the existing d20 system conventions where possible.</p><p></p><p><strong>Battles on the High Seas</strong></p><p></p><p>The Battles on the High Seas section covers shipboard and ship-to-ship combat in the d20 system. The section begins with a classification system and statistics layout for ships.</p><p></p><p>A scale similar to the one used by the d20 system rules is used for ships. However, the ship scale is somewhat larger that the scale used for creatures, but there is a correspondence. For example, a rowboat would be the size of a large creature. However, using the <em>Seas of Blood </em>scale, it is a tiny ship.</p><p></p><p>Ships are given types and subtypes that help define their characteristics. Again, this somewhat parallels the d20 system method for creatures. The <em>Seas of Blood</em> system defines damage capacity of a ship in terms of <em>structure points</em>, parallel to hit points. <em>Structure dice</em> rolls determine a ship's <em>structure points</em>. The ship type determines a ship's structure dice; warships have a larger structure dice type than merchantmen. Other characteristics of a ship include <em>speed</em>, <em>hardness </em>and <em>manoeuvrability </em>(that's maneuverability to us yanks.)</p><p></p><p>Essentially, this sets you up to use the existing d20 system combat rules, with a few tweaks outlined herein, to resolve such combats. Special circumstances are covered such as ramming, ship movement, boarding, fires, and sinking ships.</p><p></p><p>After ship-to-ship combat is dealt with, the section turns its attention to crew combat. The rules for crew combat are an outtake from the <em>Open Mass Combat System </em>detailed in Mongoose's <em>The Quintessential Fighter</em>. Basically, the crew combat system works by treating a unit of men (or other creatures) as an entity and assigning them statistics, and then using a system based on the d20 combat system to resolve combat. Units track damage in terms of unit hit points (which are approximately equivalent to the hit dice of the whole unit) but otherwise are treated similarly to a creature in the d20 system. The crew combat system includes a few details pertinent to naval combat that are not in <em>OMCS</em>, but <em>OMCS </em>has other factors important to army combat.</p><p></p><p>For more details on <em>OMCS</em>, see my review of <em>The Quintessential Fighter</em>.</p><p></p><p><strong>Ships of the Sea</strong></p><p></p><p>Now that a method has been set forth to describe ships in the d20 system, we are ready for a small selection of ships for use in the game. The Ships of the Sea section details a variety of sea vessels, from the tiny rowboat to the colossal dwarven floating fortress. Each ship has a side view illustration. At the end of the chapter are ship deck plans for each, though only the weatherdecks are shown. The illustrations do have a standard d20 system scale 5' grid, but you will have to blow up your copies if you wish to use them with miniatures.</p><p></p><p>In a stroke of creative genius, the author was not content to stop there with the similarity to creature stat blocks. The Ships of the Sea section includes a number of templates that can be applied to ships, allowing you to make any ship into a <em>cursed ship, death hulk, ghost ship, </em>or <em>skyship</em>. </p><p></p><p>Finally, the section includes a variety of shipboard equipment, including shipboard weapons.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sea Magic</strong></p><p></p><p>This section introduces a variety of new spells for use in your seafaring fantasy campaign. This includes some potentially useful spells such as <em>control currents, delay sinking, distill water, predict weather, teleport ship</em>, and <em>tsunami</em>.</p><p></p><p>Then the section discusses new shipboard magic, such as a selection of magic figureheads for your ship, enchanted shipboard weapons, as well as items like a <em>spyglass of farseeing </em>and the <em>staff of the deep</em>. Finally, it is possible that a ship itself may become enchanted as an intelligent ship, which gains mental statistics and abilities in a similar fashion to other enchanted magic items.</p><p></p><p><strong>Trade and Commerce</strong></p><p></p><p>If you are seeking ways to gold and glory other than by hewing the local dragon to bits and taking its treasure, then the trade and commerce rules may appeal to you. As with real life, the main way to make money is to buy low and sell high. A variety of goods are listed, and the character with a modicum of skill can usually get them at a low price and sell them at a higher price.</p><p></p><p>Though the rules pay some attention to the conditions in the markets, it seems like there could have been more attention paid to the concept that some places have surpluses of some types of goods and deficits of others in pricing a product. Then you could get some use out of all of those old FR maps with the local goods markings on them!</p><p></p><p>The chapter also has a few rules on making a few gold pieces on fishing. The rules are well enough done, but I seriously doubt they will see much use. At least roleplaying fishermen isn't <em>my</em> idea of fun. But then, perhaps you had to grow up with my dad to understand that… </p><p></p><p><strong>Underwater Adventuring</strong></p><p></p><p>Adventuring underwater is a topic that could fill another book this size, but lets face it: if you have a wild and wooly seafaring campaign, you are going to end up in the water at some point. The rules section on underwater adventuring is brief, but in that short space it does give the topic some good coverage. The section discusses factors that affect characters underwater such as vision, breathing (or lack thereof), water pressure, and combat in a fluid environment. As well, rules are provided for using magic underwater, including effects on several categories of spells and a few notes on specific spells.</p><p></p><p><strong>Monsters of the Deep</strong></p><p></p><p>This section introduces a variety of new creatures for aquatic adventuring. The chapter has a great variety of creatures, with a seeming desire to hit as many of the d20 system creature types as possible. Indeed there is a giant (the <em>sea giant</em>), an outsider (the <em>fisherman</em>, a dangerous evil outsider encountered amongst the waves), an oozes (the <em>killer wave</em>), an undead, a plant, a humanoid, a beast, a magical beast, a dragon, and a monstrous humanoid.</p><p></p><p>Though not credited, <em>Creature Catalog </em>(http://www.enworld.org/cc/ ) gurus Erica Basley and Scott Greene created these creatures. That being the case, you won't find the all to common gaffes you find in many d20 system monster books like undead with constitution scores and woefully off the mark CRs.</p><p></p><p><strong>Campaigns on the High Seas</strong></p><p></p><p>This section contains advice and ideas on running games with the seas as a setting. This includes both single journeys and entire campaigns. Topics are discussed such as how seafaring campaigns may affect the characters' role in their game and their interaction with NPCs. Finally, a number of scenario hooks and adventure ideas are provided to spurn your imagination.</p><p></p><p><strong>Other Stuff</strong></p><p></p><p>There is a short section on designer's notes, a ubiquitous feature in Mongoose's books. There is also a ship record sheet, a glossary of nautical terms, a rules summary so you don't have to peck through the book for that one table, and an index.</p><p></p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p><p></p><p>This is possibly the best effort by Mongoose to date. <em>Seas of Blood </em>provides complete and thorough coverage of the topic at hand, and most of the mechanical implementation is very solid. This is a must buy if you plan on running a nautical campaign, and it is hard to imagine that their competitors will outmatch them unless they are just as complete and much more clever.</p><p></p><p><em>-Alan D. Kohler</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Psion, post: 2008672, member: 172"] [B]Seas of Blood[/B] And they're off! Many publishers are putting out some sort of naval rules of the d20 system, including Living Imagination's [I]Twin Crowns [/I]and FFG's [I]Seafarer's Handbook[/I]. This is somewhat unusual, because most publishers are a little gun shy in putting out a product that they know will get direct competition. Apparently some publishers think that there is a sizable demand for naval books, or that their product is going to win out. [I]Seas of Blood[/I] is Mongoose Publishing's contribution to this fray. [I]Seas of Blood [/I]is a d20 system rules supplement adding classes, feats, and other rules for bringing naval adventures to your d20 system fantasy game. [B]A First Look[/B] [I]Seas of Blood [/I]is a 128 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.95 US. The cover is decorated by a wrap around picture of a fantasy naval battle, with a longship crewed by some sort of gruff looking humanoids. The interior is black-and-white. The interior illustrations are generally good. I especially like the work of Danilo Moretti, who I am told also did the ship diagrams (his pictures are those signed with the caligraphic symbol that looks like a circle over a “U” and a line.) Some of the illustrations are computer-generated graphics by Luis Corte Real (who did many of the pieces in Mongoose's [I]Gladiator: Sands of Death[/I].) The textures in his illustrations look great, but when he does people, the faces just look wrong. The interior text density is fairly good, with a compact but readable typeface. Combined with the price per page, which is good for d20 publishers (and much better than the comparably priced WotC classbooks), this delivers a good value based on cost and content density alone. [B]A Deeper Look[/B] As with prior Mongoose products, Seas of Blood is divided into topical sections too small to be called chapters. Also following the lead of other Mongoose books, there are short stories and flavor text interspersed throughout in shaded boxes. [B]Men of the Sea[/B] After a somewhat long introduction, the first section is entitled Men of the Sea, and covers adaptations and additions of character creation rules. The first section discusses the existing classes. Most of this part is devoted to discussing the role of the existing character classes in a nautical campaign. However, there are a few new rules. Most prominently, there is a large sidebar showing how to create nautical variant of the druid, the sea druid. The sea druid receives a few abilities replacing those in the PHB for their landbound peers. For example, a nautical druid receives [I]speed of the fish [/I](increases swimming speed) in the place of [I]woodland stride[/I] and [I]salt synthesis [/I](allows them to subsist on salt water for short periods) instead of [I]trackless step[/I]. The chapter introduces two new skill specialties, [I]knowledge (seamanship)[/I] and [I]profession (navigator)[/I]. Where I can see the purpose of both of these, I wonder why they felt the need to cast seamanship as a knowledge skill, especially when one of the basic skill specialties listed in the PHB is [I]profession (sailor)[/I]. Indeed, they state that ranks in the two skills are equivalent, and I am at a loss to why they would want to make it a knowledge skill at all when it seems like a menial profession that a commoner could have, and makes much more sense in the hands of classes like rogue than wizards and bards. Three new classes are introduced in the chapter, one base NPC-caliber class and three prestige classes. The base class is [I]sailor[/I], and only five levels are listed for it (not unlike the [I]slave [/I]class in Mongoose's [I]Gladiator: Sands of Death[/I]). Though one can make sailors with the existing [I]expert [/I]and [I]commoner [/I]NPC classes, this class would make a nice replacement in a heavily nautical campaign as its hit dice, attack bonus, and skill selection are more appropriate to what you would expect from a rough-and-tumble hardworking sailor. The prestige classes are [I]buccaneer, reaver[/I], and [I]navigator-wizard[/I]. The [I]buccaneer [/I]is a deft, dextrous, witty swashbuckling sailor with abilities that focus on mobility in a shipboard environment. The [I]reaver [/I]is a more combat-oriented seaman type, with class abilities that revelve around shipboard combat and leadership. The [I]navigator-wizard [/I]is an arcane spellcaster that receives a variety of abilities that improves their ability to navigate and improve the movement capability of the ship. A short discussion is engendered on piracy, with some worthwhile thoughts on how such seaborne scoundrels can be used (or played) in the game. Strangely, the author muses of the absence of any sort of pirate class (funny, just what is a [I]buccaneer [/I]again?) The section gives guidelines on hiring a crew, and gives sample statistic blocks and typical fees for a variety of crewmen and mercenaries. While the selection of new classes is rather thin (and understandably so), the section does provide a number of new feats that should help customize characters to the role of a sailor, captain, or pirate rather easily. Most of them are fairly reasonable and useful, but some are problematic. [I]Amazing agility [/I]lets the character take 20 on balance checks that would not normally allow this. This is nonsensical to me, as "taking 20" is a mechanical convenience designed to simulate being able to retry tasks without consequence. Essentially what this feat boils down to is allowing the character to take 10 regardless of conditions, plus granting a +10 skill modifier while doing so. While this didn't strike me as a game break, I do think that gives you more or a benefit towards your skills than feats were meant to give. [I]Bargain [/I]gives you a +4 bonus to profession (merchant) checks when buying or selling goods. My only quibble here is that diplomacy checks are typically used for such tasks, but the intent is good. [I]Duck and weave [/I]is pretty slick mechanically: you are always granted cover against range attacks while onboard a ship. [I]Sea legs [/I]gives bonuses to a variety of skills while onboard ship. [I]Strong swimmer [/I]improves your swim speed on a successful swim check (though it specifies no DC). [B]Nautical Travel[/B] The next section covers the basic mechanics needed for nautical travel. It provides rules for handling navigation of ships, getting lost at sea, movement rates at sea, handling weather, seaworthiness, visibility, long voyages, and handling mutiny. The rules provide good coverage of the types of situations that may arise in a nautical campaign, and most of the rules are fairly straightforward and use the existing d20 system conventions where possible. [B]Battles on the High Seas[/B] The Battles on the High Seas section covers shipboard and ship-to-ship combat in the d20 system. The section begins with a classification system and statistics layout for ships. A scale similar to the one used by the d20 system rules is used for ships. However, the ship scale is somewhat larger that the scale used for creatures, but there is a correspondence. For example, a rowboat would be the size of a large creature. However, using the [I]Seas of Blood [/I]scale, it is a tiny ship. Ships are given types and subtypes that help define their characteristics. Again, this somewhat parallels the d20 system method for creatures. The [I]Seas of Blood[/I] system defines damage capacity of a ship in terms of [I]structure points[/I], parallel to hit points. [I]Structure dice[/I] rolls determine a ship's [I]structure points[/I]. The ship type determines a ship's structure dice; warships have a larger structure dice type than merchantmen. Other characteristics of a ship include [I]speed[/I], [I]hardness [/I]and [I]manoeuvrability [/I](that's maneuverability to us yanks.) Essentially, this sets you up to use the existing d20 system combat rules, with a few tweaks outlined herein, to resolve such combats. Special circumstances are covered such as ramming, ship movement, boarding, fires, and sinking ships. After ship-to-ship combat is dealt with, the section turns its attention to crew combat. The rules for crew combat are an outtake from the [I]Open Mass Combat System [/I]detailed in Mongoose's [I]The Quintessential Fighter[/I]. Basically, the crew combat system works by treating a unit of men (or other creatures) as an entity and assigning them statistics, and then using a system based on the d20 combat system to resolve combat. Units track damage in terms of unit hit points (which are approximately equivalent to the hit dice of the whole unit) but otherwise are treated similarly to a creature in the d20 system. The crew combat system includes a few details pertinent to naval combat that are not in [I]OMCS[/I], but [I]OMCS [/I]has other factors important to army combat. For more details on [I]OMCS[/I], see my review of [I]The Quintessential Fighter[/I]. [B]Ships of the Sea[/B] Now that a method has been set forth to describe ships in the d20 system, we are ready for a small selection of ships for use in the game. The Ships of the Sea section details a variety of sea vessels, from the tiny rowboat to the colossal dwarven floating fortress. Each ship has a side view illustration. At the end of the chapter are ship deck plans for each, though only the weatherdecks are shown. The illustrations do have a standard d20 system scale 5' grid, but you will have to blow up your copies if you wish to use them with miniatures. In a stroke of creative genius, the author was not content to stop there with the similarity to creature stat blocks. The Ships of the Sea section includes a number of templates that can be applied to ships, allowing you to make any ship into a [I]cursed ship, death hulk, ghost ship, [/I]or [I]skyship[/I]. Finally, the section includes a variety of shipboard equipment, including shipboard weapons. [B]Sea Magic[/B] This section introduces a variety of new spells for use in your seafaring fantasy campaign. This includes some potentially useful spells such as [I]control currents, delay sinking, distill water, predict weather, teleport ship[/I], and [I]tsunami[/I]. Then the section discusses new shipboard magic, such as a selection of magic figureheads for your ship, enchanted shipboard weapons, as well as items like a [I]spyglass of farseeing [/I]and the [I]staff of the deep[/I]. Finally, it is possible that a ship itself may become enchanted as an intelligent ship, which gains mental statistics and abilities in a similar fashion to other enchanted magic items. [B]Trade and Commerce[/B] If you are seeking ways to gold and glory other than by hewing the local dragon to bits and taking its treasure, then the trade and commerce rules may appeal to you. As with real life, the main way to make money is to buy low and sell high. A variety of goods are listed, and the character with a modicum of skill can usually get them at a low price and sell them at a higher price. Though the rules pay some attention to the conditions in the markets, it seems like there could have been more attention paid to the concept that some places have surpluses of some types of goods and deficits of others in pricing a product. Then you could get some use out of all of those old FR maps with the local goods markings on them! The chapter also has a few rules on making a few gold pieces on fishing. The rules are well enough done, but I seriously doubt they will see much use. At least roleplaying fishermen isn't [I]my[/I] idea of fun. But then, perhaps you had to grow up with my dad to understand that… [B]Underwater Adventuring[/B] Adventuring underwater is a topic that could fill another book this size, but lets face it: if you have a wild and wooly seafaring campaign, you are going to end up in the water at some point. The rules section on underwater adventuring is brief, but in that short space it does give the topic some good coverage. The section discusses factors that affect characters underwater such as vision, breathing (or lack thereof), water pressure, and combat in a fluid environment. As well, rules are provided for using magic underwater, including effects on several categories of spells and a few notes on specific spells. [B]Monsters of the Deep[/B] This section introduces a variety of new creatures for aquatic adventuring. The chapter has a great variety of creatures, with a seeming desire to hit as many of the d20 system creature types as possible. Indeed there is a giant (the [I]sea giant[/I]), an outsider (the [I]fisherman[/I], a dangerous evil outsider encountered amongst the waves), an oozes (the [I]killer wave[/I]), an undead, a plant, a humanoid, a beast, a magical beast, a dragon, and a monstrous humanoid. Though not credited, [I]Creature Catalog [/I](http://www.enworld.org/cc/ ) gurus Erica Basley and Scott Greene created these creatures. That being the case, you won't find the all to common gaffes you find in many d20 system monster books like undead with constitution scores and woefully off the mark CRs. [B]Campaigns on the High Seas[/B] This section contains advice and ideas on running games with the seas as a setting. This includes both single journeys and entire campaigns. Topics are discussed such as how seafaring campaigns may affect the characters' role in their game and their interaction with NPCs. Finally, a number of scenario hooks and adventure ideas are provided to spurn your imagination. [B]Other Stuff[/B] There is a short section on designer's notes, a ubiquitous feature in Mongoose's books. There is also a ship record sheet, a glossary of nautical terms, a rules summary so you don't have to peck through the book for that one table, and an index. [B]Conclusion[/B] This is possibly the best effort by Mongoose to date. [I]Seas of Blood [/I]provides complete and thorough coverage of the topic at hand, and most of the mechanical implementation is very solid. This is a must buy if you plan on running a nautical campaign, and it is hard to imagine that their competitors will outmatch them unless they are just as complete and much more clever. [I]-Alan D. Kohler[/I] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Seas of Blood: Fantasy on the High Seas
Top