"Broadsides!" Reviews?

[Donatello]

About two weeks ago a Naval thread opened up where a few people all said they were planning to write reviews of "Broadsides!" by Living Imagination. Since then I've only seen one review.

Is anyone else out there reviewing that book? Perhaps in a Head to Head fashion with "Seas of Blood" and "Seafarer's Handbook"? We at LI are anxious to hear the opinions of the public.

 

[kenjib]

Hi Donatello,

I wasn't one of the folks that promised a review but I was one of the folks eagerly awaiting a look at the book. Finally it came into a local shop here and I compared it to Seas of Blood and Seafarer's Handbook. The result....


ballot please...


I bought Broadsides.

I haven't read it yet, but here's why I got it based on thumbing through/previewing each book. I liked the fact that it seemed more grounded in research than the other books. The ships were especially interesting to me. I like how they were organized roughly into different tech levels, which makes it very easy for me to pick and choose which to drop into my world and decide which cultures have access to which ship types. The mighty Dorian Empire and their naval oriented island vassal state will have a fleet of Carracks level ships. Some mercantile based city states will also have them. Many other nations will mostly only have galley level ships. Some of the other cultures in more remote areas will remain at the longship level. That was a great little touch.

The nice detail given to accurate navigation, combat maneuvering, naval equipment, provisions and repair, and the nice PRCs (surgeon is very cool!) also lend more toward a lower magic, gritty, campaign that draws on sources like Melville and R.L. Stevenson.

Now I just can't wait to read it more thoroughly!

A couple of things that I thought were really nice in the other books and I would have liked to see in Broadsides as well:

Seafarer's: Info on costs of hiring/retaining a crew and crew hierarchy (what's a boatswain and what does he do? how are the duties of the master and captain divided - which one is in charge? etc. - note that Seafarer's was a little bit shakey on this one too but at least it was there); a classic sea serpent type monster

Seas of Blood: Info on trade, the mass combat system for boarding actions & crew-to-crew combat

 

[Donatello]

Hi kenjib, and thanks for the praise!

You'll be happy to know the following things about Broadsides:

1) The trade info/economics of seafaring is covered in an article we wrote for Gaming Frontiers #3. We've included prices for common goods, wages for hirelings (sailors and the like), depreciation of ship value, and costs for booking passage and having specific items shipped to new locations. We also included random encounter tables for the open seas...

2) We are having a cartographer design deck plans for all of the ships that appear in Broadsides. The plans will be available for download from the Living Imagination site in the next few weeks.

3) We are also going to be designing more ocean-borne monsters, also available for download from our website.

4) We are going to be supporting our own product! We have, on the drawing board, three or four books specifically designed for use with the Broadsides rules set. We intend to have new ships, new PrC's, new equipment, NPC's, encounter areas, port towns, and so on! We're not sure of a release schedule yet, but keep your eyes open.

In regards to your request for the mass combat/boarding action mention, we're not sure if we're ever going to do that. Plain and simply, we're not happy with any of the mass combat rules that currently exist, and designing a whole set of rules for that purpose may be beyond our scope. But, the future is uncertain... we shall see what happens in the next 3-6 months. Expect a lot of changes form LI as a company, and our products will reflect that.

Again, thanks for the praise!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I am still in the middle of reading thus far for Open Game Exchange. When done, I'll repost the link here.

 

[Psion]

I wrote a review!

 

[Donatello]

Indeed you did, and thank you, Psion. Your comments were certainly appreciated (and taken to heart in some cases, as you can see given our future announcements)

And thank you, as well, JoeGK - I look forward to reading your thoughts.

 

[kenjib]

1) The trade info/economics of seafaring is covered in an article we wrote for Gaming Frontiers #3. We've included prices for common goods, wages for hirelings (sailors and the like), depreciation of ship value, and costs for booking passage and having specific items shipped to new locations. We also included random encounter tables for the open seas...

All of that sounds really great. I'm looking forward to see what comes. It's just a shame that GF is so expensive.