Broadsides!

[Messageboard Golem]

Broadsides! is a compendium of Naval Adventure for the D20 System. This book contains:
- Rules for adventuring both above and below the waves
- Complete tactical rules for ship to ship combat
- Rules for playing extended voyages, able to be as complex as day-by-day progress or as simple as a single roll of the dice
- New feats, skills and prestige classes to add more depth to your naval campaign
- New spells and rituals to lend more power to the ocean-borne spellcaster
A gallery of NPCs, able to help or hinder any adventuring party
- Random encounters usable by any GM to help expand their own naval adventures
- New monsters, magic items, and more!

 

[Psion]

Broadsides

The flurry of publishers eager to utilize the d20 system license have produced a large amount of material. Perhaps it was inevitable that some topics received treatment from several publishers. One such topic is naval adventuring, which already has books by two of the industry's most prolific publishers, Mongoose Publishing and Fantasy Flight Games. So, can freshman publisher Living Imagination hope to make good when competing directly with these two "big boys"?

A First Look

Broadsides is a 128 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.95 US. This is comparable to Mongoose's line of 128 page books, and is a fairly good value.

The cover of the book has a light blue background tone. The front cover has a mediocre picture of a sea dragon of some sort assailing a ship. The front cover art is by artist Jeff Himmelman.

The interior is black and white. The interior are ranges from passable to very good, and is a significant improvement in the quality of art in this book over Living Imagination's Twin Crowns. The most noteworthy talent is Marcio Fiorito, who does several nice character drawings. You may recognize Marcio's work from the pages of some of Mongoose's books such as the Quintessential Rogue.

The typeface is rather modest, and the column spacing is tight, delivering a fairly high word count per page. Combined with the low price per page, the book is a good value based on quantity of content.

A Deeper Look

Broadsides is organized into thirteen chapters, plus a ship log, an appendix, and an index, plus the obigatory Open Game License.

The first chapter covers navigation and piloting. It introduces five new skills for use in a seafaring game. Four of these are profession skills: artillerist, navigation, pilot, and sailor, all of which seem perfectly reasonable to me. The fifth new skill is sea legs, which covers keeping your balance on a pitching ship. I feel that this last skill is too narrow, and the balance skill should be used for such tasks.

The remainder of the first chapter provides rules and guidelines for negotiating sea travel. The rules are fairly detailed and take into account equipment, weather, and terrain. Guidelines are provided for choosing and handling the effects of prevailing winds. Rules are also provided for handling character seasickness and for handling flying ships, even including effects of altitude on characters.

The second chapter covers ships. Similar to other books of its ilk, Broadsides develops a sort of stat block. The stat block seems functional. Broadsides differs from its competitors in that it does not try to use a variant of the D&D size categories.

The chapter has several sample ships. Alas, the ship illustrations are not as nice as those of the competitors, and deckplans are not provided. There is no ship construction system; a page of guidelines is provided for modifying existing designs.

The third chapter provides step by step direction for resolving a sea voyage. Advice is provided for the GM to plan out the journey and discussion is provided when player skill checks may be called for.

Chapter four covers naval combat. The combat system utilizes hex maps, and invokes rules that provide a fairly realistic interpretation of events. For example, times are provided for the crew performing certain actions, and the ship maneuverability is restricted when the crew is occupied. Rules are provided for a variety of weapons, including cannons, (which are only sparingly covered in FFG's Seafarer's Handbook and not addressed at all in Mongoose's Seas of Blood.)

Chapter five covers underwater adventuring. Details are covered such as combat, holding your breath, effects of depth and temperature, vision, and spellcasting. Though the chapter is brief, it does a fairly good job of hitting most major points.

Chapter six provides new equipment for nautical campaign. The chapter includes details for sundry items needed for nautical travel. This includes things that make adventurers drool such as firearms and gunpowder. It also includes some items that you have probably never heard about unless you were in the navy or have studied ancient ships. For example, the log line is a knotted rope that a ship uses to determine its speed.

Chapter seven introduces new feats for use in a nautical campaign. Many of the feats are things that you might expect a skilled sailor to have, such as Jack Tar (provides bonus to balance and sea legs checks while on board a ship) and Naval Tactics. New combat related feats are provided like Quickload, which allows you to quickly reload a firearm. The only feats that bothered me where impale (doubles damage on a charge, which sounds like it might be a bit powerful) and amphibian (allows a character to breathe water, which sounds like an ability that should be beyond the realm of feats.)

Chapter eight introduces new prestige classes for use in a nautical campaign. The prestige classes are:
- Harpooner: Harpooners are warriors who have taken up the life of hunters on the open sea. The harpooner is an expert at engaging aquatic creatures in combat and in using the harpoon as a weapon.
- Marine: The Marine is a seaborne warrior, with a few bonus feats and ability to better engage in combat in the water. The Marine actually seems sort of weak to me.
- Oceanic Sentinel: The Oceanic Sentinel is an arcane spellcaster specialized in defending a ship. The Oceanic Sentinel has its own spell list and advancement, and has class abilities that improve its spellcasting on board the defended ship. The Oceanic Sentinel is missing a listing for skill points per level.
- Privateer: The privateer is a ship captain who has taken on the task of attacking ships of a hostile power. The privateer is a good leader of his crew, and has abilities to that effect.
- Surgeon: The surgeon is a character specialized in non-magical healing.
- Sea Captain: As the name implies, this character has good ability to command a ship.
- Sea Scout: The sea scout is a character with a penchant for swimming and operating in the water.

Overall, I thought the classes were well done, with a few exceptions as notice above. My only other quibble is that I thought that some of the concepts were general enough that they didn't really deserve a prestige class.

Chapter 9 introduces new spells and rituals. The rituals use the ritual rules introduced in the Twin Crowns book, so you will need that book to use them unless you are willing to adapt them. The new spells are, of course, aimed at assisting seafaring characters or harassing other ships at sea. Example spells are Call School (summons food fish to your location), Clear Vision (lets the recipient see normally through smoke, fog, or gas, or underwater), Curse Voyage, and Enlarge Reef. Rituals include Air Ship (gives the ship the ability to fly), create ship, and skeleton crew (in this case, skeleton is literal). Overall, the spells seemed like reasonable additions to a nautical campaign.

Chapter 10 introduces new magic items. Many of these items are merely weapons or armor with a nautical theme, such as armor of swimming or a harpoon of piercing. Other items are of special use in a seafaring environment, such as the farscope (an enchanted telescope) and boots of shipwreck survival.

Chapter 11 introduces 6 new creatures for use in a nautical campaign. These are:
- Ichthymus: small fishlike humanoids.
- Orctopus: A giant with a humanoid head, arms, and torso, but with octopus like tentacles.
- Siren: A hideous aberration with the ability to create enticing images and a beautiful song to lure travelers.
- Helicorpion: A gargantuan shark. Being beasts, they should have had a d10 hit dice type, but instead have a d8.
- Tiger Dwarves: Strange furry dwarves with black stripes around their face. I'm not exactly sure why they are in this book.
- Jonah: The jonah is a template creature that possesses a doomed sailor moments before they die in some nautical tragedy. The jonah is a fey, not an undead creature.

Chapter 12 introduces new nautical organizations. Presumably many of these are from the Twin Crowns setting, but the chapter is brief and you should be able to adapt these ideas to your own campaign. Examples include an organization that has tripped upon the idea of using a fledgling insurance scheme to gain wealth.

The last chapter is entitled adventuring, and includes both individual encounters to use in a campaign and an adventures of a nautical nature set in the Twin Crowns setting. The chapter also includes some nautical figures and famous ships for your use.

Conclusion

Broadsides is a fairly well executed book, and a substantial improvement in production values over Living Imagination's Twin Crowns setting book. As such, it is fair competition for its two competitors.

The strengths of Broadsides compared to its rivals seems to be the detailed travel system and combat system, as well as a larger selection of prestige classes if you have a taste for such. However, it lacks the abstract crew combat system of Seas of Blood, and does not have the imaginative background material and ideas or shipbuilding system of Seafarer's Handbook. The ships also lack detailed illustrations and deckplans that its rivals has.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Broadsides is another set of naval adventuring rules and subject matter in the recent glut of product of this type. It is compatible with Living Imagination's Twin Crowns campaign setting and is an expansion of the rules found there.

At $19.95 for 128 pages, and with good use of the space available, this is fairly average in pricing for a product of this size. Art is generally good - the front cover is particularly good and is indicative for once of the quality of the art inside. Though most of the text is rules-orientated, it is well-written, and editing is generally good.

Chapter 1: Navigation & Piloting, reproduce the skills introduced in Twin Crowns, discuss the use of the Profession: Navigation, and Profession: Piloting skill rules in a little more detail, give explanations of some nautical instruments such as sextant and compass, and briefly covers maps and charts. It moves on to cover the shipping environment - underwater hazards, ice, weather (including a random weather chart), wind direction, and prevailing winds and currents. After some brief rules and discussion of seasickness, there is a larger section on flying ships and the effects and dangers of altitude.

Chapter 2: Ships, gives general statistics and definitions for each part of a standard ship and some rules for such things as manoeuvrability, acceleration and aerodynamics. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to about 40 different examples of ships including long ships, galleys, galleons and fantastic ships (such as elven assault ship and sky chariot). There is also a final section on ship construction and design.

Chapter 3: The Voyage, gives a step-by-step guide to the GM for running a voyage, including advice on determining weather and navigation.

Chapter 4: Naval Combat, expands the combat rules given in Twin Crowns and includes detailed rules for initiative, movement, attacking, boarding, damage (to both the ship and the crew) and weapons (such as catapults, ballista, cannon, rams, fireshooters (i.e. flamethrowers) and spells), and some further information on repairing ships.

Chapter 5: Underwater Adventuring, begins with rules for surviving, moving and fighting underwater as well as perception restrictions. The remainder of the chapter deals with underwater vessels, giving some examples and a couple of underwater weapons (bow harpoon and dorsal ram).

Chapter 6: Nautical Equipment, covers gunpowder before going on to general equipment (e.g. anchor, bilge pumps, and diving grease), surgical supplies (e.g. emetic, ether, and tincture of opium), and weapons (e.g. cannon, bomb, and muskets).

Chapter 7: Feats, offers 21 new ship-orientated feats including deep diving, naval expertise, quickload (for muskets) and water combat.

Chapter 8: Prestige Classes, offers 7 new prestige classes - Harpooneer, Marine, Oceanic Sentinel (Sea Wizard), Privateer, Surgeon, Sea Captain and Sea Scout.

Chapter 9: Spells And Rituals, offers about 40 new spells related to the subject matter including such dweomers as determine location, enlarge reef, founder ship, mend ship, repel ice and underwater communication. There are also 12 new rituals to be used with the Ritual System explained in the Twin Crowns sourcebook (e.g. Air Ship, Raise Atoll, and Skeleton Crew).

Chapter 10: Nautical Magical Items, includes such items as armor of swimming, harpoon of piercing, ring of protection from sharks, and cloak of storms as well as a couple of minor artifacts.

Chapter 11: Sea Creatures, includes five new monsters including Siren and Orctopus, as well as the 'Jonah' template, a type of fey that inhabits the bodies of the drowned. This seemed to me to be more appropriate as an undead as they are described as spirits created by fear and mourning.

Chapter 12: Nautical Organizations, offer four short descriptions of organisations such as smugglers, pirates and insurance brokers.

Chapter 13: Adventuring, offers 9 short adventure ideas (complete with ELs), a short (3-page) adventure, three famous pirates, and four famous pirate vessels.

There is also a ship's log, nautical glossary and index.

Conclusion:
This is a detailed and well-written book, and is recommended for those of you who wish to bring greater depth to your campaign setting in terms of ships, ocean travel and underwater adventuring. It has a particularly detailed naval combat system. It is not recommended for those who do not wish to take their games to this much detail. Although it has some interesting information in general regarding nautical equipment, there is not enough on offer here to appeal to those who do not wish to bring this fairly specialised area into their games. Therefore, it is limited in its usefulness, dependent on this factor.

 

[Voadam]

Broadsides is a $19.95 128 page softcover book devoted to naval adventuring. It sets out in-depth rules for sea voyages, statting vessels, naval combat, underwater and high atmosphere travel. It also presents new prestige classes, magic, and monsters as well as some NPCs and short scenarios. It is designed to be a stand alone product of naval rules and an expansion and support product for the Twin Crowns campaign setting's world of Ptalmanar. It presents an excellent set of naval rules but has some issues as both a stand alone product and as a world expansion.

The naval rules really impressed me. They use profession sailor, pilot, and navigator skills as the basis for running ships and the numbers have meaning. The rules incorporate weather, sail type, speed of the ships, wind direction, etc. They model ship sailing very well in a manner that is useable in game. There are diagrams giving examples of possible ship movements based on maneuverability, speed, and wind direction which help demonstrate the multiple factors in play on a ship.

29 separate realistic ships are statted, ranging from small fishing sailboats to Viking longbats to galleons with hundreds of crew and dozens of cannon. There are twelve fantasy based ships ranging from racial variants of historical ones such as the Dwarvish knorr to the two ships designed to fly and the three underwater vessels.

There is information on getting lost, sailing coasts versus open ocean, and how much food is necessary to keep the crew going and how much cargo space that food will take up. The only thing not covered seemed to be press ganging actions. The system seemed to break down a little for smaller craft such as canoes and it has a weakness in making Viking fighters and barbarians the worst sailors of any class due to the cross-class profession skill availability, but overall it is quite a good system. If you want to run a ship based campaign, this is an excellent system to use.

There is a hex combat system using three different time and distance scales for prolonged ship chasing (ten minute rounds), tactical ship combat (in minute rounds) and finally for boarding actions(normal six second melee rounds). Firearms covered range from pistols and muskets to hand-held bombards to cannon of various sizes. There are different types of cannon shot from standard to heated to sail cutting chain to antipersonnel grapeshot.

Note that cannons and ballista/catapults use profession artillerist and siege engineer instead of weapon proficiencies, so again fighters lose out on all ship combat except boarding actions. Also there is a new skill called sea legs which handles shipboard balance and avoiding getting seasick. These situations could probably be handled better by use of the balance skill and con checks or profession sailor checks modified by con, but those are easily modified by a DM.

The underwater and high atmosphere rules present pressure acclimatization mechanics and serious environmental factors for consideration. Cold, limited visibility, and combat and spellcasting considerations (such as the effects on fire, electricity, acid, and sonic spells, and even the impairment verbal and somatic components) are presented for underwater activities.

For flying ships a number of systems are introduced, such as a type of expensive magically buoyant wood to make ships out of, magic items to fly ships, a powerful ritual for making a ship fly, and how to hook flying animals to ships to create flying chariots.

There are 22 new feats introduced. About two thirds are noncombat and seem a little underpowered and niche. I do not expect PCs to take many of these, but they are great bonus feats for the prestige classes that follow and are great feats for NPC cohorts and crew.

Seven prestige classes are included, each covering ten levels except for the five-level surgeon:

Harpooneer: Warrior hunters of big sea creatures. A power at every level but the majority of these are only useable against large sea creatures or with a harpoon, which is only described in Sword and Fist and not here.

Marine: Basically fighters with good reflexes, sailor skills, fewer bonus feats and some storming-the-beach type abilities. Four empty levels with no abilities. Straight fighters seemed more appropriate to the concept to me.

Oceanic Sentinel: Arcane spellcasters with their own spell list (including a 3rd level cure light wounds) and who can cast target creature spells upon ships they bond to. At first they struck me as weak, but they would make very valuable members of any crew for giving ships magical defense, speed, or curing.

Privateer: Captains commissioned to make legal pirate raids on ships of an enemy nation. Good concept and archetype, but I do not like the class that much. In particular the empty levels with no abilities and the 10th level power's reputation mechanic which has enemy captains make will saves or flee. The fear mechanic seems inappropriate for affecting PCs or important NPCs. This class was originally presented in the Twin Crowns Campaign Setting book.

Surgeon: Completely non-magical healers who rely upon the profession healer skill, can heal increasing amounts at each level with their surgeon's kits, but can cause more damage on critical failures.

Sea Captain: Gain bonus captaining feats every even level and specific captain abilities at levels one, five, and nine. Strong fortitude and will saves but weak attack progression (reversed to 1/0 instead of 0/1 BAB advancement). I really like the captain class. They meet the archetype well, would make great NPC hirelings, and would be a good PC choice if playing in a heavily naval campaign.

Sea Scout: Underwater scout/warriors. They are used to defend against underwater menaces or to spy on or attack ships (sabotaging) from swimming up to them. They get a bunch of water based bonus feats.

There are 37 spells, 12 high powered rituals, 30 magic items, and two minor artifacts. I like the range of spells and rituals, although the rituals do not include the casting rules from the Twin Crowns campaign setting so people without that resource are not sure what Korba is (a rare alchemical substance worth 2,000 gp a shot), what skills to use for the rituals' DC (a new arcane or divine ritual skill) and what flaw (just made DC within flaw amount, results in working but flawed effect) or critical success or failure means (same mechanic as in attack rolls, with charts for various effects if confirmed crit). For this section to be useable on its own there really should have been a quick paragraph for spot rules for using the rituals. There are five repeated spells and six repeated rituals from the campaign book. Some of the magic items seemed too niche specific (specific leather +1 that grants feather fall, cutlass of captain slaying, harpoon that causes large sea creatures to make a fortitude save or die, etc.). My favorite items are repeated from the campaign book, the 50,000 gp each liftstone and dragstone which can levitate a ship so it can fly (but requiring special training and lateral sails, and then provide a pseudo-water level so it can be sailed like a ship in water (without the extra sails).

The selection of six monsters was a bit disappointing. The siren is fine, an aberration using mermaid illusions to lure prey, as is the orctopus a giant/big octopus centauroid mix which is aggressive, strong and dumb. The tiger dwarves seem really odd, fur covered, fanged, barbaric dwarves who worship nature spirits and have a small bonus to swim skill and a history of saddling killer whales. The giant shark was OK but the picture makes it look like a snaggletoothed catfish rather than the ultimate sea predator. I was disappointed that there was no sea serpent such as is depicted on the cover.

Finally, there are some short scenarios, secret societies, and npcs. The scenarios seemed poorly thought out or too skimpy to use except for the sea battle scenarios which would probably be a good way to get familiar with the naval combat system and the last longer adventure. About half the encounters use elements exclusively found in the Twin Crowns campaign setting (divine initiation, the Kithraas race, the background of the god Jaad). The societies did not appeal to me and they would realistically work or be great elements to bring into a game (insurance brokers with networks of informants, for example. I like the NPCs. All pirates, they have great art and are good examples of the prestige classes or other elements presented in the book and seemed interesting characters to me. I was surprised, however, to see a gnomish pirate crew included, as the Twin Crowns does not have any gnomes in it.

At the very end there is a photocopiable ship log character sheet and a good glossary of naval terms.

I was sorely disappointed to not find any merchanting rules, rules for hiring crews, or specific discussion of piracy, merchanting or navy styles of campaigning. Also, there are no samples for varying grunt sailors and pirates. An expert sailor example, and some discussion of the average pirate and sailor (expert? rogue? warrior? levels?) would have been nice. There are great rules for getting from place to place, and for ship combat, skills, and classes, but nothing specific about basing a campaign around these concepts or getting people to man your boat.

As a campaign support book, there are a few problems. There are a number of spells, rituals, items, and even a class repeated from the campaign setting book. Most significantly, the core naval sailing and combat rules are all repeats from the campaign setting, so you only get more ships and the (useful) example diagrams to expand upon those from the campaign book. You do get more classes, spells, six new rituals, and underwater and atmospheric rules for new mechanics, as well as some NPCs.

As a stand alone, the whole ritual spells section is pretty much unuseable without a quick explanation of the ritual system or the DM making up his own system or adapting the effects of the rituals to normal spells or another ritual system (such as from relics and rituals). The rituals only take up six pages, however. There are also a number of places in the sample adventures and NPCs that Twin Crowns specific rules and backgrounds crop up, but these are minor and can be modified easily.

Overall, the heart of the book is the naval rules which are excellent. The actual sailing rules, naval combat, the supporting underwater and flying rules, the new feats, spells, items, and classes all add up to a great naval supplement.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Steve Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine Rack

This review is for Broadsides! from the design team at Living Imagination, Inc. A note of thanks goes out to Inger Henning and the rest of staff at Living Imagination for providing me with a review copy. Broadsides! is a 128-page naval supplement that retails for $19.95. While primarily designed for use with Living Imagination’s campaign world of Ptalmanar, this book is easily useable in any naval-based campaign setting with virtually no modifications needed. There are a fair number of naval d20 supplements on the market today and choosing which ones to purchase can be a daunting task. In past reviews, I’ve posted my thoughts on those products, including The Travellers’ Tales series by Mongoose Publishing, The Seafarer’s Handbook by Fantasy Flight Games, and Living Imagination’s own Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration Fantasy. Broadsides! is an extension of that book, however it is not necessary to own Twin Crowns before buying Broadsides!

Broadsides! wastes no time in presenting new goodies to use. In the first chapter, five new nautical skills, four professions plus one to help maintain balance on a pitching and rocking ship, are detailed. All of the information in this chapter pertains directly to navigation and piloting. Short sections on nautical equipment, maps and charts, and terrain follow the skills section.

Weather is a major influence on naval sailing and adventuring and Broadsides! is one of the few books to devote more than a few paragraphs to its effects. A supplementary weather system (other than the one in the Dungeon Masters Guide) describes how to determine weather at sea and develop a Weather DC that is used in pertinent skill checks. Use of winds like prevailing and trade winds are also covered. Of course, no section on weather would be complete without addressing seasickness, which is a Fortitude save against the Weather DC.

Flying ships also are discussed with an attention to sail mechanics that is not usually seen. Although magic is still the engine for flight (in this case, a liftstone), winds still dictate direction and speed of travel. This is a refreshing change from the old magical throne idea that has been the norm for the past ten years.

Chapter two is devoted to ships, their types and characteristics. All aspects of a ship such as oars, speed, maneuverability, seaworthiness, cargo, hull and armaments are covered. The next 12 pages list the different ship types and their statistics. These ships include shallow and deep-water hulls with my favorites being the brigantine, catarina carrack, merchantman, man-o-war, and Gnomish trade fluist.

The third chapter gives you everything you need to put it all together and start voyaging in four steps; outlining the voyage, piloting (river or coastlines), navigation (open ocean), and piloting (open ocean). This is the chapter where those piloting and navigation skill checks come into play.

Naval combat in chapter four is very straightforward and easy to understand. This was one of the strengths to Twin Crowns and Living Imagination uses those same rules and expands upon them. Ship-to-ship combat, maneuvering, crew and PC damage, armaments, and addressing ship damage are all covered with simple and easy to understand rules.

Rules for underwater adventuring are also covered with the same clarity and ease of comprehension as other parts of the book. The underwater effects on abilities, mundane items, and element-based spells (fire, acid, electricity) are laid out clearly. Underwater ships and combat have a brief mention.

An extensive list of equipment fills chapter six while chapter seven gives us 21 new feats. Some of the feats are a little unbalanced such as Amphibian (you can survive underwater), but the bulk is well balanced and perfect for a naval campaign. I like Deep Diving, Graceful Diver, and Impale for feats.

Chapter eight gives us seven prestige classes. The Harpooneer is your open seas hunter and quite formidable. Personally, I think this class is cool. Just think Moby Dick when you read about it. Marines are your shipboard soldiers and invaluable in combat. The Oceanic Sentinel is a naval spellcaster. She uses her spells to attack other vessels and defend her own. A Privateer is your legally sanctioned pirate. This makes a great NPC prestige class. Surgeons are vital to have aboard a vessel and are a natural extension of clerics who serve aboard ships. Sea Captain also makes an excellent NPC prestige class along with the Sea Scout, who specializes in underwater reconnaissance.

Chapter nine goes into spells and rituals. Ritual magic is covered in Twin Crowns and the new rituals given here improve upon the choices offered. Both the spells and rituals listed are all nautical in theme and/or concept. Spells such as enlarge reef, founder ship, privateer’s delight, and summon drowned and rituals like arcane cartography, cloud fortress, ship of bone, and whirlpool are testament to the diversity and creativity of the types of magic presented.

Nautical magic items, sea creatures and templates, and nautical organizations fill the next three chapters. The Jonah template is an interesting concept as it’s written and worth using at least once in a naval campaign.

The final chapter s filled with adventuring hooks and sample encounters. Some are old standby themes while others are quite original. I like the maelstrom encounter, the Octopus Rock hook, and the Elves attack tactical combat scenario. Finally, four NPCs and four famous pirate ships finish out the chapter and book.

In conclusion, Broadsides! is a very strongly written and solid naval supplement. It functions well as a complement to Twin Crowns or as a stand-alone work. The rules are comprehensive and easy to follow and stay true to the mechanics of sailing. If you want a magic heavy book, you’ll be disappointed. The bulk of its contents deal with practical rules with just enough magic to keep it interesting. I recommend it and feel it’s worth the price of $19.95 when compared to the other naval supplements out there.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[GameWyrd]

In the world of movies there are two kinds of successes: the blockbuster and the sleeper. The blockbusters are those movies that launch with much fanfare and acclaim; blockbusters make their impact and their revenue in the first few weeks. The sleepers are the movies that have a much lower profile but which people keeping on coming to see and then have DVD/videos that keep on selling. Over the course of a few years sleepers make as much money as the blockbusters. If Broadsides! was a movie then it would be a sleeper success. It’s not the money making that interests me, it’s the inherent quality that a sleeper needs to have to make it successful and the quality and interest that Broadsides! certainly has.

Broadsides! is a nautical d20 supplement and although that’s not unique, it’s certainly rare. You don’t really need to have the Twin Crowns setting from Living Imagination, the Broadsides! publishers, or even know anything about the world to use the book. It’ll help though. Broadsides! has a few pages of rituals and the rules for these are in Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration book. The Twin Crown campaign setting is full of magic and has Renaissance level technology and so you’ll find rules for magical boats (flying ships) as well as some information on ships and navigation techniques that are best suited to Renaissance or thereabout worlds.

One of the ways Broadsides! does well is with sheer thoroughness; rules for ships, for navigation and piloting, naval combat, underwater adventures, equipment, feats, prestige classes, new spells, magic items, sea creatures, notes on nautical adventures, organisations and even a glossary of nautical terms. This is why Broadsides! is the sleeper success that it is; there might be no compelling reason to rush out and buy a nautical supplement but when you come to want one the chances are pretty high that you’ll find yourself buying Broadsides!.

The Navigation and Piloting rules introduce a bunch of new skills. New skills are required. The core d20 rules simply wouldn’t cut it. The rules are quite detailed, taking key elements of sailing one at a time and providing mechanics for them. The problem with this is that you don’t really have an easy and generic sailing d20 roll to make; you and the GM will have to work out all the modifiers for the skill roll and for the DC value. The advantage of this is that it’s easy for the GM to cut out influences that aren’t appropriate; if your campaign world doesn’t have a magnetic pole then it’s a simple matter to remove the compass modifier. The winning factor, that single thing that tips the scales and gets my support for this detailed approach, is that plotting and planning a nautical journey in game terms manages to carry through some of the feel of a Sea Captain studying old charts, calculating the odds and making the decision. Sample rules include altitude for flying ships and for working out just how much ice a vessel can ram through.

The second chapter presents a bunch of sample ships. You’ve illustrations, description and stat block for a number of ships. The stat blocks include the size (length, keel, beam, depth), crew numbers (optimal through to skeleton), riggings/sales, oars/oarsmen, speed, acceleration/deceleration (by sail and oar), manoeuvrability, seaworthiness, cargo, transport, hull (hp and hardness), deck (hp) and notes on armaments. Types of ships include ones you might find here on Earth, flying craft, elf, dwarf, gnome and other fantasy race vessels too.

The third chapter puts the first two together and comes up with rules and mechanics for the whole Voyage. It’s here that you’ll find modifiers for trying to sail straight over the ocean with nothing but shifting waves in sight compared to trying to hog the coastline, rules for weather and random encounters.

The Naval Combat chapter stretches to include the wide range of possibilities between high magic and gun powder technology that needs to be catered for in a Twin Crowns adventure (other games too, Ravenloft for example). Just as you’ll find rules for magical fireshooters used by elves you’ll find rules for cannon too, catapults, rams, ballista and all sorts of things. Of course there’s the core nautical combat rules as well, not just mechanics on how to do damage with interesting bits of equipment. There are rules for damaging ships with magic as well. A minor quibble; under these rules sea battles would be mapped out on hex paper. Hex tends to be more precise than squares but it lacks clear "North, South, East and West" points (unlike the edges of a square) and the basic sailing rules use these cardinal points. Diagonal movement from a squared grid would also cater for northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest. Broadsides! provides rules for repairing damage done to ships but there are no detailed rules for building and designing a ship from scratch.

It might well be the case that you don’t really care too much about ships at all and are simply interested in an underwater adventure; Sea Elves versus the Sahuagin for example. Broadsides! has rules for you – although it’s not really the book’s focus. The Underwater Adventuring chapter takes a rather unique (since I’ve not seen it in other underwater rpg notes) look at issues of buoyancy and temperature as well as complications with depth. The chapter takes a quick look at problems with spell casting underwater but gets to the point quickly with the note that unless the caster has the Silent Spell feat its unlikely they’ll be able to vocalise as required. Broadsides! has a Submerged Spell feat which insures that spells cast below the surface of the water work in exactly the same way as they would above the water no matter how the elements might react. I like this. It’s magic. I do puzzle at players who are happy with the notion of a ball of fire leaving the fingertips of some old man, travelling in a firing arch for a considerable distance without dispersing and then impacting with an explosion as it hits a selected target – but who think its unrealistic to have a flame burn in water. There are quite a few other feats in the book, a whole chapter’s worth, but that’s the one that stands out the most.

Where there are feats there are prestige classes. Broadsides! gives us the Harpooneer, Marine, Oceanic Sentinel, Privateer, Surgeon, Sea Captain and Sea Scout. I think some of the racial restrictions to these classes are subjective (again bias towards Twin Crown) but they’re easy to ignore. They’re all ten level classes with the exception of the Surgeon. There are enough PrC special abilities in each class to avoid being one of those powerful but dull Prestige Classes.

Most of the spells the book introduces have a suitable nautical slant. Aspect of the Shark, Call School, Founder Ship, Glassbottom, Solid Water, Summon Drowned and Underwater Communication are some examples from the 8 pages of spells. The new rituals (which you do need Twin Crowns for) have 6 pages to themselves, I think they’re also clear enough as to be easily converted into your game or just used a plot device. There’s a bunch of nautical magic items too.

For some reason, in the small chapter of sea monsters, I find myself fixated on wondering whether the Orctopus (half giant, half squid) is boneless or not and just how small a hole could a 15-foot adult squeeze through. There’s about a half dozen new creatures here.

The Adventuring chapter contains some sample encounters – just one off scenes which could be thrown into almost any setting. There’s a sample adventure designed for 4 to 6 characters of 4th to 6th level (and, yup, for Twin Crowns too).

The book finishes with some record sheets for ships and a two-paged glossary of terms. I really do like to have snippets of glossaries in RPG supplement and especially so for nautical supplements since the players know fine well that sailing is steeped in jargon. A GM needs to be able to talk about the backstay, the boom, the transom or a ship being by the lee while he’s NPCing a sailor otherwise it just doesn’t feel right.

Even though I mentioned the Twin Crown settings a half dozen times in this review I’m going to stick by what I said near the start; you don’t need the book to use and get plenty from Broadsides! Broadsides! is a success by the time it’s reached chapter four; by then a GM will be able to run a smooth and interesting nautical adventure. The rest of the book serves as bonus material or as extra-special bonus material if you had a specific interest there (in the nautical spells or prestige classes, say). Since it does well in such a key and under catered for speciality the Broadsides! really is one of those rare "should haves" for any d20 GM.

* This Broadsides! review was first published by GameWyrd.

 

[CarlZog]

As far as rules governing sailing ships are concerned, Broadsides! provides surprisingly high technical accuracy without turning into a wargame. A lot of this could be adapted to other d20 games like Pulp Heroes. Great stuff!