Are there any submarine based RPGs?

[Kannik]

I think Blue Planet is the way to go, I've had a quick read of looks pretty interesting. They're just so underrated in my opinion

This is what I love about the RPG space: so many games for so many genres and play environments. I dove into this thread being in the dark of this particular kind and now I've learned there's a school of submarining RPGs swimming around. Now I want to take a gander at Blue Planet to see what it's all about.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Off topic, but I find it amusing that Savage Worlds' 50 Fathoms setting has absolutely nothing to do with submarines or even underwater adventuring despite its title suggesting otherwise.

 

[ericmpaq]

Another submarine rpg is Terra Incognita where the PCs are members of NAGS Society (National Archaeological, Geographic, and Submarine Society). Think National Geographic Society as a secret agency in a Jules Verne style setting.
Here's it's site: Terra Incognita: The NAGS Society Website

 

[Bohandas]

There's gotta be some WWII ones with at least submarine rules in the core book

 

[John Dallman]

I figure any modern-set RPG can be set in a submarine? That's just the adventure plot, surely?

I've played several adventures set on board submarines under GURPS, one as a one-shot and other as parts of a Reign of Steel campaign. We needed to acquire a few extra skills, but we had similar ideas to the GM about submarine tactics and evasion, so it all went well.

The players do need to be willing to have significant periods of tension that end anticlimactically, as the enemy hunting you looses you. The trouble with "winning" submarine-vs-submarine battles is that explosions give away your location.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

If we're just talking about adventures (which isn't what the title says) then there's also The Bonin Horse, a Cyberpunk 2020 module from Atlas. As you'd expect it adds rules for subs and underwater action to the game, but it certainly isn't a game unto itself. Be a pretty strange CP campaign that centered on subs, although maybe you could do something with them as anti-corporate hideouts or smuggling vessels.

If anyone wanted inspiration (if that's the right word at all) for near-future (from an 80/90s viewpoint) naval action, the nearly forgotten author David Mace wrote a couple of "technothrillers" that cover different angles. Demon-4 is probably the most relevant, Fire Lance less so, but both are set in post-nuclear exchange settings that's at best apocalypse light. Be warned, they're some of the bleakest examples of their kind from the peak of "Reagan era WW3 predictions" school. Never read a book of his that didn't make me contemplate self-destruction. Supposedly he lightened up in some post-2000 shorter works, but I'm not taking my chances.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Not submarine-based as such, but the Swedish game Leviathan's setting us supposed to be that mankind has been forced to live in cities underwater as Aliens came and took over the surface of the world. But as such submariunes of course play an inmportant role as that is how you travel between cities, and explore what is down there.

Only availiable in Swedish.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I was looking at some random stuff on DTRPG yesterday and it dawns on me that technically Rifts probably qualifies as a game with enough submarine shenanigans going on to deserve mention, although I sure wouldn't recommend it. They've done a number of splatbooks over the years dealing with nautical stuff, including parts of Atlantis, Underseas, Lemuria and Coalition Navy plus whatever other stuff is hiding in other books or the countless Rifter issues. Almost certainly more pages spent on this stuff than anything out there except Blue Planet, and even that's probably close.

 

[Alby87]

Reading this post, got me thinking wish we had a "Nadia - The secret of blue water" RPG. That would be fantastic: steampunk submarine adventures with a touch of Jules Verne at the end of the 19th century.

 

[BigJackBrass]

"An accident at sea transports the Canadian Research Submarine HMCS Chalk River into intersteller space."

Probably not quite what you had in mind…