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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2008950" data-attributes="member: 172">BroadsidesThe 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 LookBroadsides 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 LookBroadsides 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.ConclusionBroadsides 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</blockquote>

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