Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Of Ships and The Sea

Interesting. There's an old AD&D 2e "blue book" with that title: Of Ships and the Sea

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

Keelboat is 20 ft wide and 60 ft long but has a crew of 3 and only holds 4 passagers?

Also what's up with saying ships can "move using thier Helm" under the actions section?

 

[Dessert Nomad]

The rules for owning and making money off of a ship look really ill-thought to me. You get a complication if you roll a 1 on any of the 5d20 you roll for determining how much profit the ship makes in a month, and the best result is that you make no money that month, while you can also lose as much per month as you would 'normally' make for 1D6 months, lose your ship for d4 months, have your ship impounded, have you ship captured and have to recover it, or have your ship run off so you have to recover it, kill the crew, and hire a new crew for about two months theoretical profit.

Unless I'm missing something, owning a ship is a massive money sink that often takes you away from your own objectives. It's basically impossible for it to actually profit you over the course of a year, and instead of getting to do adventures based around sailing your ship to interesting places, you're burning money probably stuck rescuing your ship over and over again. If you want a campaign based around constantly saving your own ship then this system is for you!

 

[Lanefan]

That would render it impossible to easily mix ship-combat with personal combat. I wouldn't be in favor.

Depends on the situation. If it's just ship-v-ship with nothing else interfering a 1-minute round is probably still in fact too slow, particularly if the ships have to maneuver between each attack. If it's ship-v-ship with combat also going on aboard one or more ships (but contained within each ship) then you can overlay one on the other by having the ship-v-ship stuff happen once every 10 or 20 or whatever rounds of melee combat.

It's when people are trying to cast spells etc. from one ship to another that it gets messy, and here I blame the too-fast combat rounds in 5e (and 3e, and 4e): 6-second rounds just don't translate into a situation where everything else is happening in terms of minutes at a time, meaning the casters and archers would finish the battle before a single cannon or ballista ever got fired. How boring!

And on a side note: if your game doesn't have gunpowder you can still have ship-v-ship combat rules, using ballistae in place of cannons.

 

[Lanefan]

After just a quick read of the article all I can do is congratulate them on their attempt while talking through the palm of my hand covering my face.

"Creature capacity" is far too low on both keelboat (a 60' keelboat can easily carry 12-15 people) and airship.

Their airship stats are completely out to lunch. If the whole thing including gasbag is only 80' long then there's no way it can have a cargo capacity of a ton; and if it's just the gondola that's 80' long then the gasbag is huge (think of something like the Hindenburg) and its carrying capacity is immense! And if they're thinking of something else other than a zeppelin-type vessel they're using the wrong term, as that's what "airship" usually refers to.

And under 'size' they give an example of a vessel that's 10' long by 20' wide? Other than a log raft I simply can't think of any such vessel in existence, so why on earth would they use that as an example?

Their ownership rules are also poor, but that's what houserules are for.

And a ship isn't immune to being prone - if its masts are touching (or in!) the water that sure looks like prone to me!

 

[robus]

Unless I'm missing something, owning a ship is a massive money sink that often takes you away from your own objectives. It's basically impossible for it to actually profit you over the course of a year, and instead of getting to do adventures based around sailing your ship to interesting places, you're burning money probably stuck rescuing your ship over and over again. If you want a campaign based around constantly saving your own ship then this system is for you!

Well you know how to make small fortune? Start with a large one and then buy a boat...

 

[Leatherhead]

And if they're thinking of something else other than a zeppelin-type vessel they're using the wrong term, as that's what "airship" usually refers to.

Not to defend the other quibbles, but they are thinking of these:
http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Elemental_Airship
Which have been around for three editions now.

 

[Azzy]

Not to defend the other quibbles, but they are thinking of these:
http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Elemental_Airship
Which have been around for three editions now.

And then there's the airships in Mystara before that, to boot. So, yeah, D&D has been using "airship" to refer to non-zeppelins for quite a while indeed.

 

[Von Ether]

Goodman Games' Island of Dread comes out next year, and now we know how to get there.

 

[DQDesign]

[MENTION=42037]Ik[/MENTION]j

one time one Italian Prime Minister said: "the difference between a project and a dream is respecting a deadline set in stone since the very beginning". is that a good approach? yes, imo.

Eugen Rochko, the founder and main developer of mastodon federated FOSS social network, regularly asks the users about their needs, and clearly and regularly states what is feasible, what is not, when and why. is that a good approach? yes, imo.

is opacity about deadlines (arbitrary? they choose them without caring about any other input, so they are arbitrary for us, not for them) and about the rational behind the development choices a good approach? no, imo. especially when that opacity is accompanied by a lot of (sometimes false) clues about the future and release dates announcements done when the printers are already rolling (and sometimes they have delays also in that case).

 

[DQDesign]

[MENTION=42037]Ik[/MENTION]j

one time one Italian Prime Minister said: "the difference between a project and a dream is respecting a deadline set in stone since the very beginning". is that a good approach? yes, imo.

Eugen Rochko, the founder and main developer of mastodon federated FOSS social network, regularly asks the users about their needs, and clearly and regularly states what is feasible, what is not, when and why. is that a good approach? yes, imo.

is opacity about deadlines (arbitrary? they choose them without caring about any other input, so they are arbitrary for us, not for them) and about the rational behind the development choices a good approach? no, imo. especially when that opacity is accompanied by a lot of (sometimes false) clues about the future and release dates announcements done when the printers are already rolling (and sometimes they have delays also in that case).