Naval Combat: Weather Gage

[Shimrath]

I was preparing for my group's arrival at the dig site off the coast of Ber, and was trying to learn the quick-start rules for naval combat presented in the Extended Player's Guide. I found the part about "Wind and the Weather Gage" a bit confusing, and so decided to review the full rules presented in Admiral of the High Seas. Oddly enough, there's no mention of the weather gage in that book at all.

I'm guessing that means it's quite OK to simply ignore those rules, but i was still curious about the absence.

 

[RangerWickett]

A piece of feedback we got from AotHS was that wind wasn't really mentioned. The system is supposed to be fairly abstract, but the weather gage addition was an attempt to patch in a bit more flavor, and to make the advantages of ships with engines more apparent.

In reality, if you have two sailing ships, whoever is downwind has a disadvantage in maneuvering. The ship that is downwind cannot easily turn back to approach the upwind ship, but the upwind ship can easily close the distance. We abstract it to a +2 bonus for the upwind ship.

I can try to come up with examples if you explain what confused you, but yeah, it's not critical to the mechanics.

 

[Shimrath]

I can try to come up with examples if you explain what confused you, but yeah, it's not critical to the mechanics.

I'm currently planning to leave the weather gage rules out, but only because i'm having trouble wrapping my head around it. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that i've only ever been on a sailboat once, and i was too young to really pay attention to anything mechanical. Here's what i think i am confused about:

"Upwind", in my mind, means that if the wind starts blowing it hits the upwind ship before it hits the downwind ship (but i kind of feel like i have that backwards, see below). Also, if i am chasing your ship with my ship, i could be either upwind or downwind depending on the direction of the wind, right? (I feel like the answer is actually "wrong", simply because you can't sail directly into the wind.)

But really, don't spend too much of your valuable time here. That's what Wikipedia is for! I'm headed to my online Sailing 101 course at this very moment. . .

 

[Shimrath]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship_tactics#Importance_of_the_weather_gage

I think those two pages sum it up nicely. After studying those and then re-reading the rules on "Wind and the Weather Gage", it is clear and i will add them to the mix!