Broadsides!

[Galfridus]

I have to say I am very hyped about getting this book. My copy is sitting in the game store now...I'll be picking it and Hero System 5th Edition up tomorrow afternoon, and reading it first.

I think the idea of having Ship Construction rules is great...but when I thought about it, I realized that only rarely in d20 games would I expect the players to design their own ship. DM guidelines should be just fine -- as long as the example ships are nice and varied, of course!

I have to say, however, that deck plans would be a major plus, accurate or no. /Every/ game that involves a ship is going to revolve around where things are -- it's like running a dungeon crawl without a map (possible, I know, but come on! ). Of course, I'd rather see more/better rules than deck plans, since I can always use the deck plans from another book or draw my own.

Lastly (this time around, anyway!), I applaud your decision to focus on historically accurate ships. IMO, both Seas of Blood and Seafarers Handbook had too many weird, fantastic ships and not enough "plain" ones. Of course, I'm assuming you accounted for the existence of 3E magic...guess I'll find out tomorrow!

 

[Galfridus]

Got my copy...will post impressions once I've had a read!

 

[Donatello]

Excellent, Galf!

Can't wait to hear what you have to say.

 

[Galfridus]

I've finished my first reading of Broadsides, and I'm impressed.

The ship rules are the best of the three d20 nautical supplements. They are simple enough to be runnable, but do by far the best job of giving a nautical "feel" to sea travel and combat. They take into account things like wind direction (Seafarers Handbook doesn't!), sail type, etc., and seem to be the only book that actually thought about handling tacking as a tactical maneuver. They establish three scales for handling combat, so you can (for example) do the Sea of Shrieking Eels chase scene from Princess Bride without resolving movement on a round by round basis. There are simple rules for resolving journeys, which easily slide into large, medium, and tactical scale combat. The range of technologies goes from early medieval to Age of Exploration: I would have liked to see Roman/Greek ships as well, but I'll live. There are rules for cannon and gunpowder which I won't be using, but they're there.

Of course, there are a couple things that could be better. I would have liked to see deck plans, but I can make those myself (or wait for a web supplement ). The writing/layout is not ideal; it took me a couple reads of the ship rules to "get it", but once I did, the rules made perfect sense. The rest of the book holds up as well, but handling ships is the clear focus of the book and where it really shines. I had been planning to use Seafarer's Handbook rules, but had to modify them extensively to get them to a level I was happy with. I don't think that will be necessary with Broadsides.

If you're looking for ship-to-ship rules, get Broadsides.