D&D 5E Docks Illustration?

[Jfdlsjfd]

Which version did you use? There is a lot of progress between the earlier version available, the 4o version with web crawl and the newer o1 version of the model. Progress can be significant (but using the latest is'nt always necessary). Asking the model for sources can help, but sometimes chatgpt in particular tries too hard to please the prompter unless explicitely prompted not to do so.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Which version did you use? There is a lot of progress between the earlier version available, the 4o version with web crawl and the newer o1 version of the model. Progress can be significant (but using the latest is'nt always necessary). Asking the model for sources can help, but sometimes chatgpt in particular tries too hard to please the prompter unless explicitely prompted not to do so.

Not sure, it was whatever the current default is at the url.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

By default, they use a less compute-intensive choice (and the paid version is still limited in such a way that you can't use o1 all the time, there is a monthly limit). That might explain the discrepancies between what you experienced and the result to which I linked.

 

[Hussar]

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Well to be fair, the image in the OP is not from Saltmarsh, it isn't even from a D&D product!

Honestly wasn’t even thinking of the OP’s pic. Just DnD pics in general.

 

[Umbran]

... there is no need to bash it when the result is satisfying for the expressed needs.

With respect, I did graduate research on what is these days called "generative AI" before it was cool (or called that). I am well aware of its strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Lanefan]

According to the module, any version, dock it. Which, yup, makes Saltmarsh a pretty decent deep water port. And yeah, 100 foot cog is freaking huge. I more chalk that up to the designers not bothering to actually look up historical ships. They got the shape right - single mast, wide body, that sort of thing, but, greatly overestimated the size.

Of course, it doesn't help that it's also an adventure location, which means that you have to make it bigger to work on D&D scale.

In any case though, you can dock major sailing ships - the food merchants that sail north to Iuz would also be a good example of this - in Saltmarsh.

I'll have to read the 1e version again - I got halfway through running it a few years ago then that party got put on hold and we haven't got back to it since.

Naval stuff is my own hang up. I freely admit that.

Same here, only in the opposite direction.

The anachronisms in D&D for sailing stuff just flies right up my nose.

Where I just love the anachronisms and try my best to make them fit together, where each culture might have borrowed maritime technology and methods from other cultures while retaining their own identity and shipbuilding style(s).

No, I'm sorry, that 17th century British Ship of the line complete with gun ports does NOT belong in a D&D setting.

I have them, only they use 'tween-decks mounted ballistae instead of cannons as artillery. Many years ago I even banged together a set of homebrew combat rules for such vessels, but I've yet to get a chance to run it out in play as my gang are and have always been rather boat-averse.

Since the DMG and Saltmarsh both set naval technology at about the same line as the rest of equipment, 15th century, maybe 16th century is about as late as I expect to see.

Unless we're talking Spelljammer, in which case, all bets are off. But, it gets really, really weird to see viking long ships in the same water as, say, a caravel. Those poor vikings wouldn't stand a chance. You wouldn't even need to shoot at them, just ram their tiny little boats and you'd be done with it. Grrrr. It annoys me to no end that when it comes to naval stuff, so many publishers can't be bothered to open a history book.

Where I just have it that, were this the situation, the Vikings over time learned how to build longships that were better able to withstand (and-or avoid!) being rammed, having been on the receiving end of such abuse just one time too many.

 

[Hussar]

Where I just have it that, were this the situation, the Vikings over time learned how to build longships that were better able to withstand (and-or avoid!) being rammed, having been on the receiving end of such abuse just one time too many.

But there's a reason they stopped using Longships. They were obsolete. When your deck is about four feet off the waterline, you're just a sitting duck to any cog or caravel who is about ten or fifteen feet above you, raining down arrows with impunity. A Hanseatic cog - which is what the Sea Ghost is modeled on could sail around the world. A longship barely could island hop across the North Atlantic.

Or, to put it another way, a Cog is closer to an Aircraft Carrier, technologically, than it is to a longship which is basically a giant rowboat with a single square sail. Longships were fantastic for their time, but, there's about four hundred years of development between a longship and a cog. That's a HUGE amount of advancement.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Naval stuff is my own hang up. I freely admit that. The anachronisms in D&D for sailing stuff just flies right up my nose. No, I'm sorry, that 17th century British Ship of the line complete with gun ports does NOT belong in a D&D setting. Since the DMG and Saltmarsh both set naval technology at about the same line as the rest of equipment, 15th century, maybe 16th century is about as late as I expect to see.

The whole smuggling plot revolves around avoiding import duty on alcohol and other luxury goods. That didn't really become a thing until the 17th century, one reason being you needed those ships of the line to enforce it. The adventure was written by TSRUK, which never really bought into Gygaxian faux-medievalism. A pseudo-17th-early 20th century setting is clearly supposed. The story itself is clearly inspired by Jamaica Inn, Moonfleet* and other less well remembered smuggling stories. The size of the ship was clearly exaggerated (doubled) to support D&D combat. I suspect it was based on real deck plans, it's what I would do, easier than making it up from scratch. Of course, if you double all the dimensions, you end up with eight times the tonnage. That probably escaped the authors.

*Moonfleet was set in 1757. There was both a Hollywood movie in 1955 and a BBC TV series in 1964, so it's likely the authors where familiar with it. There was another British TV adaptation in 1984, not long after the publication of U1.

 

[pukunui]

The size of the ship was clearly exaggerated (doubled) to support D&D combat.

This. D&D boats are always oversized so there are enough 5-foot squares for the PCs and their enemies to move around in while fighting each other.

 

[el-remmen]

Ya think the Sea Ghost is big. . . check out the Emperor of the Waves from Salvage Operation!