Ashy's Homebrew PbEM - new stuff posted...

[Ashy]

Greetings, all!

I really need some ideas from all those who will respond - feel free to inundate me with info! I am cranking up a PbEM in a homebrewed setting. However, some of the first chapters of the game will involve the party travelling via ship (stops along the way are permitted). So, please post ideas, info links, devious tricks and twists, or even sea-based stories from your own gaming (or real life) experiences...

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: See below for some new stuff that I've created for this homebrew - please provide some feedback...

 

[pigi314159]

Ghost ships are always good. Whether or not they actually have crew aboard them is another good one. For instance...the ship could run into a storm and become wrecked. Eerily, another boat comes to the rescue. Problem is, this a is a boat that takes souls to the afterlife....doodoo...let the adventure begin.

 

[Ashy]

Very cool idea!!! Thanks!


Any more out there???

 

[LizardWizard]

First DM's rule in this case:
If the PCs travel by ship, the ship will sink.
To be serious, there are many possibilities to challenge seafaring adventurers. They could find themselves in the centre of a large battle between merfolk and sahuagin - and take collateral damage from both sites. They could land on an island, only to discover that the "island" is really the back of a giant, dormant sea monster. They could get swallowed by an unbelievably large whale - and find whole cities inside his gigantic belly. They could be trapped by floating ice and fend off hungry polar bears and orca whales. They could navigate the Ocean to find the fabled Islands of the Blessed. They could...

 

[Ashy]

Keep the ideas flowing, gang! Also, remember if you have any links to cool naval or aqua sites, please post them here!

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

A big tentacled thing.

Always livens up a sea journey... there's quite a range to select from depending on party level.

I've been meaning to have 'things' extracting tolls at a choke point between 2 landmasses as in the Odessy's - Scylla & Charybdis.

A floating city made of lashed together boats. Populated by pirates and/or exiles from some country.

Sahugain Ninja attack!

An island choc full of dinosaurs.

An iceberg that broke off a glacier and has drifted into warmer waters... The warmer water is shrinking it and the *whatevers* living on it are starting to get desparate... Possibly freaky walrus men or a (white?) dragon - complete with a nest of flightless wyrmlings?

LizardWizard - That cities inside a whale idea is really cool

 

[Ashy]

I agree - the cities inside a whale (or other big critter) is cool.... Another very cool idea is the melting glacier with a wounded (?) white dragon on it - a desperate white dragon who cannot swim or fly and who is very likely hungry...

Excellent ideas, all - keep them coming!

Also, does anyone have any links to sites with naval vessels? I am looking for diagrams of different types of sailing ships!

Thanks!

 

[Carnifex]

Read China Mieville's 'The Scar' for cool ideas of things to find at sea

Floating cities of lashed-together ships, drilling rigs, brine elementals, strange and alien sea-going specuies, immense extraplanar beasties that swim through the deeps, huge rifts where water just splashes down in a massive waterfall, isolated islands populated by a deadly species that can't be allowed to spread to anywhere else... etc...

 

[Ashy]

Coolness, Carny! THANKS!

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

After reading all the replies a memory came forth from years ago about a movie set in an area of an ocean that was like the Sargossa Sea. There were all these masted sailing vessels in various states of disrepair, stuck forever in heavy vegatation, some of it quite deadly. The survivors were in the 2nd and 3rd generation by the time the main characters of the story found them; they knew about the outside world but only by stories. People could walk to and from their neighbors on the carpet of this vegatation, but there were real risks involved, because as I said, some of this vegatation was extremely deadly, i.e. carnivorus and once you were gotten hold of that was it. In a D&D setting no resurrection would be possible.

I could see some strange variations on the Druid in this kind of world. Clerics and Fighters would be essential for survival. Hmmm, now what would a wizard do, however, with such a limited source of components?