Ship Building, Sea Life, and Naval Warfare

[Lanefan]

I've never read any of it, but does any of the material for the Seventh Sea game delve into ships?

Oh, and if you find yourself needing ship minis for sea battle scenes, the ships from the Wizkids collectible game "Pirates of the Barbary Coast" (and its many expansions) work really well for this. The game's discontinued now, so if you can find any they might be selling cheap...but as it's random what you get in each pack you might want to pick up several packs to give yourself some variety in ship types and sizes.

Lanefan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Second the suggestion about the "Pirates" minis. I don't own any- I wish I did!- but I do own some of their spaceship minis from their "Rocketmen" game that used the same system. Considering they're made of plastic the thickness of a credit card, they're pretty durable.

 

[RangerWickett]

Jack7, what did you end up going with? I'm interested in what people think were the best seafaring and ship combat rules they've seen in RPGs.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you're interested in chap mini boats, I recommend the Pirates constructable card game!

 

[Hussar]

Just because it wasn't mentioned, but the Broadsides!! rules from Living Imagination and their companion book Pirates, have about the most detailed ship construction rules I could find for 3e D&D. Great books. VERY simulationist.

Not sure if I liked the ship to ship combat rules though. They tend to be REALLY slow. Great if you like sim style wargames, but, for an RPG, spending five or six hours on a ship to ship combat might be a bit extreme.

I have to admit, this has always been my problem with doing ship to ship combat in D&D. D&D doesn't handle this size combat - about 50-100 combatants - very well. It's too big for standard rules and too small for mass combat rules.

FWIW, I'd bolt on the Savage Worlds mass combat rules for doing this. Much faster and a lot less rigourous.