Nautical campaign secrets

[bardolph]

I want to run a nautical campaign, where the PC's are all press-ganged onto a pirate ship.

Which supplements are must-reads or must-buys?

 

[BV210]

I've got both Seas of Blood (Mongoose) and Seafarer's Handbook (FFG). While both are pretty good and have some neat ideas, it all boils down to how detailed you want your ship-to-ship combat to be. In a nutshell, Seas of Blood has a simpler system (and a mass-combat system, fleshed out more in Quint. Fighter) than the Seafarer's Handbook. Since all of the nautical events in my campaign have been relatively small, I've stuck with SoB. Were I to do an entire nautical campaign, however, I think I would use SH as it seems more in depth (no pun intended ). Of the other ones out there (Twin Crowns, etc) I don't know much about them. YMMV.

 

[Aeolius]

There's also Pinnacle Entertainment's "Hostile Climes: Depths of Despair" and Living Imagination's "Broadsides!". Green Ronin is working on "Skull & Bones", while Mystic Eye is working on an unnamed undersea supplement.

 

[bardolph]

Well, the good news is that the PC's are probably not going to captain the ship, and I don't expect any really large-scale ship-to-ship-to-ship-to-ship battles. I have Seas of Blood, and I'm thinking to pick up Seafarer's Handbook. What Im really looking for is information about "life at sea," weather and hazard charts, good wandering monsters, encounters, information about trading, raiding, food, diseases, different kinds of ships, equipment on board, sailor-type weapons and skills, stuff like that.