Ships of War
Ships of War is the third follow-up book to Mongoose's Seas of Blood, a comprehensive and widely acclaimed book on nautical warfare and adventuring in the d20 system. The first two such books where Ships of the Goblinoids and Ships of the Elves. As with those two books, Ships of War is a provides new ships and other resources for such nautical campaigns.
A First Look
Ships of War is a 32 page staple-bound softcover book. The book is priced at $9.95 US. This gives a price per page ratio of thirty one cents, which is rather high, even for books this small.
The cover is color. The back cover is gray with a blurb about the book. The front cover is dominated by a single picture depicting a few ships fighting and a dragon in the background.
The interior is black and white with the exception of the inside covers. The front inside cover depicts an elven whale-ship, a structure that is mounted on the back of a whale. The back insider cover has a gallery of Mongoose's other products. The interior illustrations are overall very good. The deckplans and ship illustrations are very nice, and presumably by Danilo Moretti, who did the ships in earlier books. Eric Lofgren, whose works have also appeared in FFG products, also has some nice illustrations of characters and shipboard weapons.
The typeface in the book is rather modest. Given the price per page of this book, it is rather expensive for its small size.
A Deeper Look
In addition to the introduction, the book has four sections: War at Sea, Crews, Weaponry, and Ships of War.
War at Sea is a short (3 page) bit of exposition regarding the nature of the various races' ships and their tactics in war. As it is written by a different author, this is a different take than the commentary on ships that appeared in Seas of Blood. However, I still felt like this material was somewhat redundant with that book.
The section entitled Crews starts off with some exposition on the nature of crews – again a topic well covered in Seas of Blood. A few new sample crewman are provided: an artillerist (a 2nd level expert), a boarding trooper (a 2nd level warrior), and a seasoned veteran (a 2nd level sailor / 1st level warrior). These where more sensible to me than some of the earlier characters in the series. There were also two sample captains, an expert strategist (a 2nd level aristocrat / 10th level rogue) and a legendary admiral (a 13th level wizard / 5th level Navigator-Wizard).
The weaponry chapter introduces a number of shipborne weapons, including the firebreath spitter (a weapon that spews alchemist's fire), hull hammer (a gnomish contraption that smashes an enemy's hull), snaring anchors (a floating snare to keep ships from maneuvering behind you) and the sun mirror (an array of mirror that can be used to cause fire damage.) There is additional catapult ammo such as mast reavers (a ball and chain contraption made to crack a ship's mast) and ballista bolts with special properties such as the corrosive bolt. Finally, there are a few magic items for shipboard use, such as a ballista of true strike and a plank of boarding.
The final section is entitled Ships of War. It introduces two new ship subtypes that can be applied to ships: ironclad and enchanted. And there are 16 new ship designs including straightforward designs such as galleys and battleships, as well as exotic designs like the elven whaleship (which is basically a conveyance strapped to the back of a whale.) Each ship is illustrated, and there are deckplans for the wheatherdecks using a standard 5' grid. Each ship is statted out using the Seas of Blood system.
Conclusion
This is a nicely illustrated book without any noticeable errors. However, for all that, I really don't see it as being all that compulsory of a buy. I have commented about Seas of Blood that it is hard to imagine a more thorough treatment of the topic of nautical adventuring. This book (like Ships of the Elves) has to stand in the shadow of that book.
However, if you have a deep interest in or are running a detailed nautical campaign, this book should be a nice addendum to Seas of Blood.
-Alan D. Kohler
