This page isn't finished yet. I had a terrific breakthrough on the subject material today, mostly because I was under fire to get something in order before my game party sailed off. Before I go any further, I want time to think and I definitely want to get Sterling's response to it; Sterling is our local sailing guru, this being his main occupation. I haven't heard from him for a while, which usually means he's at sea right now.
The complete page, such as it is, can be found here.
The breakthrough was to measure the ability of the character to sail, not upon what they knew of sailing (I myself know zip; I've never actually been aboard a moving sail boat, but like Spiderman I've seen a lot of old movies), but upon the weather. My approach is to say that sailors of varying skill can handle a boat without any problems up to a specific point where the weather gets worse ... whereupon, rolls have to be made or bad things happen.
I've done my best making a list of "bad things." A sailor could probably create a list of about 250 things, which would be fantastic (Sterling) if every one of those bad things could be defined as an in-game consequence, and the % chance of that bad thing could be established into a table of sorts.
I know the system here is a terrible oversimplification; but that's not really important. Everything about D&D is an oversimplification to some degree. All I really want is for players to feel there's a "game" in choosing whether or not to take sailing skill as their option, whether or not they want to take other skills that will allow them to train other sailors, and whether or not they want to risk three hours of bad weather to get to their goal. It's not a game if there isn't a chance of risk, and that risk has to be something that players without any understanding of sailing (or any other subject) can still comprehend for themselves and mess with.
The weather being changeable, I think it is more than enough to say, "Okay, you leave port today, it's a beautiful day, you don't know what it is like tomorrow." This makes it spectacularly valuable to have "predict weather" as a spell, particularly if you know that you are absolutely going to be able to sail a particular kind of climate without fail. And since I use real world climate data for my game world, IF you know the climate of an area, then you can be really quite certain that the chances of a bad storm in this season and this part of the world is almost unheard of ... just like a real sailor would know.
I really like that as part of the ability's construction. A lot of players won't go to sea because the chances of getting caught in a storm and sinking are "random" and impossible to manage. Here, this system says, "If it gets super-stormy, and you are of this skill, and your crew is of this skill, then you'll come through under all but the very worst conditions." In short, you could sail in anything less than a full-on violent storm or hurricane, and know ahead of time that you can do it.
In addition, the system shifts the survival of said storm from "the condition of the ship" to "the ability of the crew." This argues that the ship's condition is what it is BECAUSE of the crew, and therefore only the crew needs to be rated.
P.S.,
Where the amount of wind on the wiki page is described, this refers to the "Beaufort" scale. I haven't added the page for the Beaufort Scale to the new wiki (though you can find it on the Control Weather page), so I'll repost it here. I have posted it to this blog before (I love this image).
Alexis, I was indeed at sea again until the middle of last week, but I'm ashore now and excited to lend a hand with this. Your breakthrough of keying the sailing skill to weather is spot on. For example, my 10-year-old daughter (with roughly 140 hours of formal training over 2 seasons, for reference) handles our boat fine in up to a 10-knot breeze, but becomes agitated in wind approaching that speed and too intimidated to be effective in any more than that. At least when there is someone more experienced to hand things over to. I’m sure she would be fairly effective beyond that comfort zone if forced by necessity.
ReplyDeleteI will follow up in the next day or two with a more thorough commentary on the specifics of your sage ability description. I think you are headed in the right direction, though, in fact are much of the way there. The only thing that strikes me as needing somewhat urgent attention is the fault chart. It has incorporated vessel type (e.g., "boom strike" could only happen on a fore-an-aft rigged vessel), weather (which mostly it should, but a broach requires sufficiently steep seas considering the size of the vessel), and location (running aground, as you note, can only occur in certain waters) into a single table. I think a two-stage table may be necessary here, where a more general type of fault is rolled, then the specifics determined based on the vessel and environment.
I am curious to hear, and I hope I am not putting you too much on the spot by asking, what you are thinking with regard to the Higher Path and Authentic Adventures now.
Welcome back and I'm glad you're safe. I credit the fact that I have read 8 - count them, eight - Hornblower books in half as many months, and even though much of the detail is deliberately dramatic, Forester was clearly in the navy and had some wherewithal to discuss the subject. I try to imagine setting a story at sea and feel my face grow pale as a consequence.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, the fault chart is a fail. I only realized there needed to be such a thing as I was writing the wiki page this morning; in fact, nothing whatsoever about the page existed in any manner until I began writing about 11 am this morning, about 10 hours ago. That I got as far as I did in so short a time, finishing it's present state about 3:30, is nothing short of a miracle. I'm quite proud of it, I must say, and sometimes wonder about what makes a guy like me think like I do. Sorry, I'll stop preening now.
Did you not exist, Sterling, I would treat the table as, "If it doesn't make sense, then it doesn't apply and you get this one free." The penalty chance for having to roll a fault is pretty high, or so it feels to me, so the chance of getting a lucky roll, like run aground, which then lets you off, seems a little fair. Then, if you're in more dangerous waters, where that is possible, that's one more concern.
Over time, I would think of things to add to the table, and adjust it perforce. Best I could do, really.
As regards Higher Path and Authentic Adventures, I am still considering my intentions there. I have a post about why, in the back of my mind that I need to set in and write. I'll try to move that forward.
This is the sort of content that 15 books into Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, I probably should have been able to produce for my own rules without needing you to get me started. Ah well. I look forward to converting these into the WFRP format, which really doesn't take that big an effort compared to working from scratch.
ReplyDeleteA shame my current campaign's party isn't that near the sea!