[Skull & Bones] Naval Combat

[Captain Boff]

GMSkara .. given the information i provided you'd be correct, but I neglected to say that due to wind conditions we were hauling and thus at a -0.9 to speed making our speed 0.5 knots or 5 feet per round. I think i just need to modify the skull and bones rules into 1-minute rounds and everything would be a lot less tedious ...

P.S. discuss whatever you like that is related to naval combat here ..

 

[Rel]

Okay, so I pounded out some rules for maneuvering ships and I hope they're relatively clear. I've toyed with a few scenarios in my head but as of yet I've not officially playtested these so there may be holes or inadequacies. I figured I'd post them here as a work in progress...

Maneuvering

I’ll be using a battlemat with 1” square grid. There are eight possible facings for a ship and the bow of each ship will be pointed toward either a corner of the square or the middle of a side of the square. Turning a ship will always involve going from the bow pointing toward a corner to a side and so on as the ship makes its turn.

Speed

Ships are either Slow or Fast. Slow ships have a base speed of 2 squares and Fast ships have a base speed of 3 squares. Speed is affected by Wind Speed and Point of Sail.

Wind Speed

I’m going to chop Wind Speed up into five categories called Dead Calm, Light Winds, Moderate Winds, Heavy Winds and Gale Force Winds. The default assumption is that most battles will take place in Light, Moderate or Heavy winds. In a Dead Calm, only ships with oars can move and other ships are very slow to turn. In Gale Force Winds the captains should be more concerned with simply keeping the ship afloat and less concerned with blasting their enemies. Plus, even if there is no rain involved, the tossing of the ship on the waves and the sea spray would likely combine to cause cannons to be utterly ineffectual anyway. So…

Dead Calm: Only ships with oars can move. Other ships may turn 1/8 turn each round.
Light Winds: Ships use their normal base speed.
Moderate Winds: Ships add 1 to their base speed. Increased difficulty of turning upwind.
Heavy Winds: Ships add 2 to their base speed. Increased difficulty of turning upwind.
Gale Force Winds: Ships add 3 to their base speed but cannot fire any cannons. Ships cannot sail Close Hauled.

Points of Sail

Starting at the top of an eight pointed star and going clockwise we’ve got Eye of the Wind in position 1, 2 is Close Hauled, 3 is Beam Reach, 4 is Broad Reach, 5 (bottom of the star) is Running, 6 is Broad Reach, 7 is Beam Reach and 8 is Close Hauled.

Ships can never sail directly into the eye of the wind. Aside from that, ships can sail in whatever direction they want but the angle of the wind on the sails will effect the ship’s speed. This will (in my game anyway) be dependant on the ship and her sail design. As a general rule, Square Rigged ships sail better directly with the wind and Fore and Aft Rigged ships sail better across the wind. Therefore these two types of ships will have different “Favored Points of Sail” (FPOS). So…

Square Rigged Ships FPOS: Broad Reach (either 4 or 6) and Running (5)
Fore and Aft Rigged Ships FPOS: Beam Reach (3 or 7) and Broad Reach (4 or 6)

While faced to a Favored Point of Sail, a ship may add 1 to her speed. All ships suffer -1 to speed when sailing Close Hauled (2 or 8).

Turning

I’m (somewhat arbitrarily) dividing ships into two categories based on how they turn: Tight and Wide. Tight turning ships may turn 1/8 turn each time they move a square. Wide turning ships may turn 1/8 turn for every 2 squares they move.

A ship can always turn “with the wind” without having to make any sort of check, so long as the crew is trained in handling a ship. Crews lacking the necessary skills (like maybe a group of PC’s who have never set foot on a ship before) will have to make a Sailing check every time they turn. Turning “against the wind” will require a roll against the appropriate skill AND immediately reduce the ship’s speed by 1, taking away 1 point of movement remaining for that round. If the roll fails then the ship was unable to make the turn upwind but still suffers the loss of speed. This can lead to the ship being “Stuck in Irons” and unable to turn.

One other maneuver that must be included is a “Tack”. This would have the ship turn from Close Hauled in one direction to Close Hauled in the other and effectively “skipping” being pointed into the Eye of the Wind. This maneuver would be resolved with a skill check modified by the wind speed.


Any feedback you'd care to give would be welcome. I may get a chance to playtest these tonight so I'll report here the results if I do. I'm also going to dash off one more post that covers a brief breakdown of which ships I consider Fast, Slow, Tight and Wide.

 

[Rel]

Pinnace (fore & aft): Fast, Tight
Sloop (fore & aft): Fast, Tight
Brig (fore & aft): Fast, Tight
Barque (fore & aft): Slow, Tight
Fluyt or West Indaman (square): Slow, Wide
Merchantman or East Indiaman (square): Slow, Wide
Frigate (square): Fast, Wide
Ship of the Line (square): Fast, Wide
Galleon (square): Slow, Wide

 

[Pbartender]

Brig (fore & aft): Fast, Tight
Barque (fore & aft): Slow, Tight

Nickpick...

A sloop was a fore-and-aft rigged ship, usually with only a single mast.

A schooner was a sloop with two or more masts.

A sloop of war was ANY type of small ship that was commissioned for war, and used only a single gun deck.

A brig was a two-masted square rigged ship.

A brigantine was a two-masted ship with a fore-and-aft mainsail, and all the other sails square rigged.

A barque (or bark) was a ship with three or more masts and square rigged sails, except for the mizzensail, which is fore-and-aft.

A barquentine was a ship with three or more masts and fore-and-aft sails, except for the foresail, which is square rigged.

In general "ship" refered to any square-rigged ship with three or more masts and a bowsprit, wheras others would called by their type... brig, sloop, etc...

 

[GMSkarka]

GMSkara .. given the information i provided you'd be correct, but I neglected to say that due to wind conditions we were hauling and thus at a -0.9 to speed making our speed 0.5 knots or 5 feet per round. I think i just need to modify the skull and bones rules into 1-minute rounds and everything would be a lot less tedious ...

...or just avoid sailing dead into the wind like that. It would make things go a bit faster.

 

[Rel]

Nickpick...

A sloop was a fore-and-aft rigged ship, usually with only a single mast.

A schooner was a sloop with two or more masts.

A sloop of war was ANY type of small ship that was commissioned for war, and used only a single gun deck.

A brig was a two-masted square rigged ship.

A brigantine was a two-masted ship with a fore-and-aft mainsail, and all the other sails square rigged.

A barque (or bark) was a ship with three or more masts and square rigged sails, except for the mizzensail, which is fore-and-aft.

A barquentine was a ship with three or more masts and fore-and-aft sails, except for the foresail, which is square rigged.

In general "ship" refered to any square-rigged ship with three or more masts and a bowsprit, wheras others would called by their type... brig, sloop, etc...

Interesting. I don't disagree with you whatsoever but my information source was at odds with this in one or two areas. No big deal either way and I'd be willing to change things in any areas where you felt strongly that my broad brush categories would alter game play.

 

[Pbartender]

Interesting. I don't disagree with you whatsoever but my information source was at odds with this in one or two areas.

Out of curiosity, what was the source?

Most of this I picked up from multiple sources of historical fiction, historical non-fiction, and various reference materials. A lot of these terms you can simply look up in the dictionary... I dod a lot of reasearch on thise stuff a while back specifically for a Skull & Bones game that never quite materialized.

Oh... and I was looking at the terms from the perspective of 17th and 18th century sailors. Some of those terms very well may have shifted meanings a little bit over the years, and many of them were mistakenly used by 'lubbers.

 

[Captain Boff]

GMSkara: "...or just avoid sailing dead into the wind like that. It would make things go a bit faster."

smartass lol ... it was just as tedious for those of us who were quartering and making 50 feet per round .. oh and what do sails modify? i would assume that it modifies your current speed .. allowing you to move faster than the wind speed limit yes?

 

[Rel]

Out of curiosity, what was the source?

Most of this I picked up from multiple sources of historical fiction, historical non-fiction, and various reference materials. A lot of these terms you can simply look up in the dictionary... I dod a lot of reasearch on thise stuff a while back specifically for a Skull & Bones game that never quite materialized.

Oh... and I was looking at the terms from the perspective of 17th and 18th century sailors. Some of those terms very well may have shifted meanings a little bit over the years, and many of them were mistakenly used by 'lubbers.

Embarassingly enough, one of the major sources of pirate lore has been the computer game, Sid Meier's Pirates!. However, now that I'm looking a bit closer, I'm seeing that some of the discrepencies between your info and mine is that I was misreading some of the material in the book. Oops.

 

[GMSkarka]

oh and what do sails modify? i would assume that it modifies your current speed .. allowing you to move faster than the wind speed limit yes?

Yes. Current speed.

Crew modifiers to speed (based on Crew Quality) affect the ships Speed rating, not its current speed. (Which is important, because it's possible, in a strong wind and with the right sail settings, to exceed your ship's Speed rating ,which does 1 structure point of damage every 3 rounds in stress to the masts.)