So, you may have seen me post about my next campaign before. If you haven't, its theme is a Western/Mage-Punk frontier game centered around settling a new wild continent. It will be starting on New Years. My current campaign has just ended giving me all the time I need to focus purely on the new one. What I'm looking for now is stuff to do at the VERY beginning.
IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN! STOP HERE!!!
Here's what I have so far for the opening session
So they will be starting off by getting on a luxurious cruise ship (think titanic) after being invited to join a settlement founded and sponsored by an eccentric old man (Jack Harmon). Harmon has invited them with the intention of them working in his new settlement as "problem-solvers" (basically salaried adventurers). To get to the new continent takes 2 months (60days) travel by ship. He has provided their lodging on a cruise ship that will be circling around the new continent and dropping them off, though with the caveat that they will help out around the ship when needed. Getting on this ship will be the big opening session of this campaign so I'm looking for a good exciting hook adventure that will span the length of travel, but only take up at MOST 2 sessions (the point of the campaign will be the settlement so I don't want to prolong getting there too much).
I currently have the idea of them coming across a derelict ship and finding the crew missing except for 2 (fight some stuff on board, I'll think of a reason later), have them bring the remaining 2 back to the ship, make them a red herring for something else going on in the ship. My problem is... What is going on in the ship?? I was thinking about having thefts occurring and possibly have them try and stop a heist of a rare jewel or something. But I can't see that taking 2 months in-game time. Should I try to flesh out this idea and make it into a 2 month time frame, or do what some of the premade adventures do and have a random sea-encounter table with 2 preset encounters?
Personally, I would take a few minutes to narrate a descriptive but relatively uneventful voyage and then they’re there. As soon as you start having anything happen onboard (or otherwise en rout), there is a high probability that your players will take the brief, 2-session railroad you are planning, and as Vedexent once phrased it “smash it into a sandbox.” Each subsequent session onboard only increases that probability. Next thing you know, you’re 6 or 8 sessions in and it’s still day 3 of the voyage with 57 more to go, and now your Wild Wild West campaign is a nautical one instead.
If you really do want to have a brief sea voyage before arriving at the destination, perhaps some fun social encounters with the crew and other passengers. I mean, those cruise liners are basically self contained floating hotel casinos with a transient population equivalent to a town. It could be a fun way for them to gather more information about their characters’ unfamiliar destination without you having to inflict an info-dump on them. It would also be a chance for them to make contacts they might be able to call upon later in the campaign, while simultaneously giving you a chance to lay the foreshadowing for future subplots and side plots since it will likely be a one-way trip for other people on the boat too. And it could also give them a chance to procure additional supplies to supplement their starting equipment without it feeling like you just handed stuff out by doing a little shopping and “charging it to their cabins.” (With a reasonable spending limit of course. Perhaps 50gp per PC, enough for a piece of basic equipment like an expensive toolset like tinker's tools or a potion of healing, or perhaps a simple common magic item like maybe a pole of collapsing or a rope of mending.
PS- This is just a noodley detail, but one books ”lodging” on land, like in a hotel, one books ”passage” on a vessel such as a ship. I just wanted to point that out in case you are interested. (My father worked on cruise ships for years, so I learned about this stuff growing up. On one particular voyage he met a special passenger, a beautiful American woman. They dated long distance for a few years before marrying, and eventually had a kid. That’s how youse all ended up stuck with me. 😉) Also, in case it comes up depending on the level of technology in your world, ships don’t have “propellers” they have “screws,” (airplanes have propellers). But, in the IRL time period of the “old west” I don’t think they had invented screws quite yet. If I recall, the hight of seafaring technology at the time was the clipper ship. Clippers had both standard sails for when there was wind, and also a very large wooden paddlewheel for locomotion during light winds and doldrums.
To expand on Sposta's idea about foreshadowing, either the BBEG, or one of their top lieutenants should be on the ship, too. Let the characters interact with them a bit so you can humanize the villain. Could be they heard about this new group of fixers Harmon is bringing in, and they wanted to check them out personally. Could be just coincidence. Even have them help the characters -- if the ship gets attacked, they are just as vested in it not sinking as the PCs -- but let the players think the villain is just helping because they're a good person, or whatever motivation the players want to assign to them. Make them likable so its more surprising/upsetting when they find out they were duped. And if they choose their words and topics of conversation carefully, they should be able to avoid having to make too many deception checks.
And don't be afraid to hand wave the passage of time if it starts to get boring. If the players solve the mystery in the first session, don't feel like you need to do a second one on the boat just to fill space.
And if you didn't think of it, Sahuagin are a great low-level aquatic/amphibious enemy. Either by themselves, or riding sharks to up the awesome quotient.
It sounds like an interesting concept. I have a couple of questions though ..
1) Why would a "luxury cruise ship" be "circling around the new continent and dropping them off". A backward, undeveloped, primitive colony on a new and unexplored continent would have little to motivate a bunch of rich people to travel there.
- colonization ships - Yes
- merchant ships - Absolutely
- luxury cruise ships? - It doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, from the viewpoint of transportation - any vessel should do.
2) In terms of what happens, that is up to you but as soon as you start planning "something else going on in the ship". You've extended the journey to several sessions since you need to develop and resolve whatever "else is going on in the ship".
I started a campaign earlier this year on a ship. I'm running Ghosts of Saltmarsh mixed with Tales from the Yawning Portal and the party meets taking passage on a merchant vessel traveling to Saltmarsh. They book passage at a reduced rate which included acting in defense the ship if it was attacked. Their fare is refunded if they are called upon to fight. The trip took a week, I narrated most of it, the characters introduced themselves, and the ship was attacked by Sahaugen raiders trying to capture the cargo and possibly prisoners. The party assisted the crew in defending the ship and the ship successfully made it to Saltmarsh.
- the intro included the ability for the characters to introduce themselves
- an interesting encounter
- started to build a reputation for the characters with the merchants in Saltmarsh
- avoided some of the sand box issues since the ship had a fixed destination so unless the characters want to become pirates, the DM gets to say where it is going.
- the whole intro took one session and was a good way to bring the characters together and introduce them to the locale and some NPCs.
It sounds like you might have something similar in mind. Find a derelict ship, some encounter, perhaps related to the larger plot - return to the ship. However, unless you want the ship to expand to several sessions then you really don't want to introduce a complex storyline on the ship that needs to be resolved on the ship. If you want a ship storyline, I would suggest sabotage. There is a faction that doesn't want to see this ship reach the colony perhaps due to mercantile reasons (this kind of explanation might make more sense for a colony ship or merchant ship than a luxury cruise ship) ... it is very inefficient to target one individual on a cruise ship by sabotaging the whole ship. On the other hand if there is a critical cargo or other aspect that a competitor might like to see go missing then the other people on board are just collateral damage.
Anyway, the party could prevent the sabotage while the perpetrator escapes or clues lead toward some organization with representatives in the new colony. I would avoid any sort of plot line with the ship that doesn't immediately lead to shore unless you want to play the campaign on the ship.
In general I think session 1 should be introducing the theme of the campaign, rather than an unrelated one-off, so I'd avoid having a side plot that is really unrelated to your plans. If you don't want to just handwave it (as people above suggest), I suggest one of two things
Have a purely role-playing thing, which mostly helps the PCs get to know the various NPCs.
Have someone on board who is trying to sabotage the settlement, probably starting off with vandalism and eventually escalating to homicide. Note that one of the problems with low level adventures is always "why are the PCs doing this, rather than <obviously more competent NPC X>", and killing off some of the competent NPCs creates an opening for the PCs to shine.
You control the flow of time, you can chop each time block any way you wish, and if you players want to hijack anything, well... anyone remember what happened when Jonah tried to run from God?
Starting with session 0, establish the sort of campaign your players are likely to want. Do they want to follow your storyline or do they want to sandbox it? If they want to follow your storyline, don't be afraid to twist the flows of space and time to stop the CN/CE character from hijacking the ship. (Oh! It turns out the captain you have at knifepoint actually had a protective charm of hold person on him! Too bad the perception check didn't catch that ;P)
Sposta has a good point with skipping over the details. Again with session 0, if you tell them they'll be starting with some downtime, maybe you all can come pre-set with something to start learning/researching/crafting while they're there. From there you can divide the voyage into week-long blocks of time. Give them a description for the events of the week (or maybe a short scene for each week for them to play through), and skip through the rest. Maybe give each player an opportunity to describe their actions for the week, roll anything necessary, and move on.
This is more or less how the Harry Potter series does it, glazing over long periods of time and then jumping into the action when something plot-relevant happens, stretching out a 500-page adventure to the in-world timespan of nine entire months and still keeping the pacing feeling smooth. Each scene of dialogue you read in those books can be as much as a week or three apart from each other. Taking that example, you can totally shoehorn in the adventure concerning the shipwreck, and the mystery happening on-board the ship, and have your voyage done in a couple sessions too.
The first good ships with screws were in service during the mid-1800's so by the wild west times, there should be luxury liners that would look familiar by today's standards. Titanic was 1912 so...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
It sounds like an interesting concept. I have a couple of questions though ..
1) Why would a "luxury cruise ship" be "circling around the new continent and dropping them off". A backward, undeveloped, primitive colony on a new and unexplored continent would have little to motivate a bunch of rich people to travel there.
- colonization ships - Yes
- merchant ships - Absolutely
- luxury cruise ships? - It doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, from the viewpoint of transportation - any vessel should do.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Go look at a map of the world.* Look how tiny Europe is compared to all the other contents on that list. So, why would those rich Europeans rush out to gobble up as much of the rest of the world as they could from the people who already lived there before anyone could stop them? And the Europeans didn’t just do it to one of those continents, they did it to all of those continents, for centuries. For one tiny ass little continent like that to go out and basically take over the world, musta been a giant, monumental pain in the ass. Kings sent out random ass expeditions to potentially nowhere just to find out if there was something there in the first place. Think about that, the only parts of the map they even had at all were Europe, Russia, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. They had to go out just to find out if there was anything else to add to the maps. And sending those expeditions was effing expensive. And the ratio of ones that came back with news of discoveries compared to the ones that never came back.... Then, once they found out that there was more they still had no idea what it was. Then bunches of richass Europeans had to get together, pool piles of resources, and then send out even more expeditions where the know that there’s stuff they don’t know about just to find out what it is they don’t know about and who was already there. Then when they knew what was there and who it belonged to, the kings would get involved again and hit up their buddies that worked for them and offer them “exciting opportunities to open up brand new branch locations,” and even “completely cover the relocation.” Armies eventually got involve.... They often needed investors (The Church, each other, or other Kings) for capital, or to offset the expenses by funding their own expeditions. And it went on for a longlong time, hundreds of years. This was a multigenerational undertaking. I’m talking it must have been an absolutely, ridiculously massive, monumentally gimungis pain in the ass to pull all that off. As you pointed out, they must have had a reason. Any guesses yet?
Fun Fact: did you know that those maps are not actually to scale? Yup, when you make a sphere flat you get that weird looking roundy-but-not maps with the pie slice shaped cutouts. Hard to read, hunh? Well, maybe not for you, I don’t know, but they are definitely not as easy to read as a nice, flat rectangle. So the map companies make nice, rectangular maps without the slices cut out. But there are only three ways to make a picture of the surface area of a sphere fit perfectly on a rectangle.
Cut a rectangle out of the middle and leave the rest off. (No good people do like to only get part of a product when that pay for the whole thing.)
Cut it up more and rearrange it to fit. (No good.)
Distort the image. Make some parts of the picture bigger to fill in the gaps where you need to, and make parts smaller to shrink in a little where it puckers. Europe is and the continents of the Northern hemisphere in general got stretched to fill, and all the southern continents got shrunk to make space.
The answer is because wherever there is a lot of “new and unexplored” that nobody owns yet, there is a potential opportunity to make lots and lots of money. I’m talking about piles of gold so big one would make Scrooge MacDuck’s vault look like a piggy bank, and there were piles and piles of piles, with piles on top and an extra large side of piled gold. Like, basically, all of it.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Not to mention Hawaii.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
You wrote “luxury cruise liner,” but what I think you actually mean is a “passenger ship.” The former is basically a “floating casino-resort.” The latter more of a “floating stack of hotels” I used that metaphor because the upper decks are swankier than the Ritz, and the lower down the decks, the cheaper the tickets. Basically like the difference between 1st Class and Coach on an airliner, only designed for journeys measured in weeks instead of hours. A curtain and an attendant can keep the riff-raff from coach from disturbing the first class passengers for a few hours but not for months. They really are like separate buildings in a way.
Which brings me to a point I came back to add, the employer would most likely purchase inexpensive tickets for the party because rich people get rich and stay rich by saving money doing things like purchasing the least expensive tickets possible when they need to relocate employees. So, the only way they would buy expensive tickets in a situation like that, is if they decide that springing for expensive tickets is still cheaper compared to other alternatives.
Maybe that long-standing employee is so valuable that they cannot afford to loose them, so making them too happy to want to leave us cheaper.
Maybe they want to flatter the hell out of the new wunderkind exec they just hired.
Maybe not flaunting money would make them look less wealthy, and therefore weaker than their rivals so they throw it around to keep business.
That 1st level party basically the equivalent of what we call in modern parlance, “private contractors.” They are mercenaries, and as 1st level ones, they are a startup company that nobody has ever heard of. Those companies get hired because they are expendable and anonymous. They would have likely gotten cheaper tickets.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Not to mention Hawaii.
I only listed continents, including all of the independent archipelagos would take research.
What about if the ship you encounter has 2 people on board, and it transpires that one of them has stolen a cursed treasure, which causes endless calamities, mishaps, and accidents to prevent any who stole it from returning to shore. One of the people has worked this out and is trying to get rid of the treasure, casting it overboard. The other is jealously hording the treasure and refuses to part with it. As soon as the people are picked up, bad things start to happen - ill winds, sea monsters, random encounters, bad weather, food poisoning. the players have to chat with the survivors to work out why things are happening.
For added depth, pick one of the party for people to be naturally distrusting of, if possible - perhaps a superstition that it's bad luck for a Teifling to be on board, or a woman for that authentic chauvinism of the wild west. As bad things happen, the passengers suspect the party as being the cause for it, so they have reason to try and sort this mess out. If they take too long, the passengers will host a mutiny, and then maroon the party in an effort to appease whatever gods were angered when they came aboard.
It sounds like an interesting concept. I have a couple of questions though ..
1) Why would a "luxury cruise ship" be "circling around the new continent and dropping them off". A backward, undeveloped, primitive colony on a new and unexplored continent would have little to motivate a bunch of rich people to travel there.
- colonization ships - Yes
- merchant ships - Absolutely
- luxury cruise ships? - It doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, from the viewpoint of transportation - any vessel should do.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Go look at a map of the world.* Look how tiny Europe is compared to all the other contents on that list. So, why would those rich Europeans rush out to gobble up as much of the rest of the world as they could from the people who already lived there before anyone could stop them? And the Europeans didn’t just do it to one of those continents, they did it to all of those continents, for centuries. For one tiny ass little continent like that to go out and basically take over the world, musta been a giant, monumental pain in the ass. Kings sent out random ass expeditions to potentially nowhere just to find out if there was something there in the first place. Think about that, the only parts of the map they even had at all were Europe, Russia, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. They had to go out just to find out if there was anything else to add to the maps. And sending those expeditions was effing expensive. And the ratio of ones that came back with news of discoveries compared to the ones that never came back.... Then, once they found out that there was more they still had no idea what it was. Then bunches of richass Europeans had to get together, pool piles of resources, and then send out even more expeditions where the know that there’s stuff they don’t know about just to find out what it is they don’t know about and who was already there. Then when they knew what was there and who it belonged to, the kings would get involved again and hit up their buddies that worked for them and offer them “exciting opportunities to open up brand new branch locations,” and even “completely cover the relocation.” Armies eventually got involve.... They often needed investors (The Church, each other, or other Kings) for capital, or to offset the expenses by funding their own expeditions. And it went on for a longlong time, hundreds of years. This was a multigenerational undertaking. I’m talking it must have been an absolutely, ridiculously massive, monumentally gimungis pain in the ass to pull all that off. As you pointed out, they must have had a reason. Any guesses yet?
Fun Fact: did you know that those maps are not actually to scale? Yup, when you make a sphere flat you get that weird looking roundy-but-not maps with the pie slice shaped cutouts. Hard to read, hunh? Well, maybe not for you, I don’t know, but they are definitely not as easy to read as a nice, flat rectangle. So the map companies make nice, rectangular maps without the slices cut out. But there are only three ways to make a picture of the surface area of a sphere fit perfectly on a rectangle.
Cut a rectangle out of the middle and leave the rest off. (No good people do like to only get part of a product when that pay for the whole thing.)
Cut it up more and rearrange it to fit. (No good.)
Distort the image. Make some parts of the picture bigger to fill in the gaps where you need to, and make parts smaller to shrink in a little where it puckers. Europe is and the continents of the Northern hemisphere in general got stretched to fill, and all the southern continents got shrunk to make space.
The answer is because wherever there is a lot of “new and unexplored” that nobody owns yet, there is a potential opportunity to make lots and lots of money. I’m talking about piles of gold so big one would make Scrooge MacDuck’s vault look like a piggy bank, and there were piles and piles of piles, with piles on top and an extra large side of piled gold. Like, basically, all of it.
Wow. Did you actually read what I said? Merchant vessels, colony ships, expeditions, all of these make sense. Luxury cruise ships?
I absolutely agree with everything you said. Making money is why they send merchant vessels. They send expeditions. The rich people fund these to make MORE money. I said that.
The part I didn't understand and the part that doesn't make sense to me is why a luxury cruise ship would transport a large number of very wealthy individuals touring around the new world, out of touch with their businesses for months (it takes 60 days to get there and longer to get around). These people PAY other people to do the leg work. They don't spend vast sums of money and time NOT making money touring around. The people funding the exploitation of the new world aren't idle rich folks and most idle rich folks don't want to experience the lack of luxury present in a colony.
Note: I am assuming wild west circa 1700 for the campaign with a newly opened up continent without large advanced settlements on the coasts ... if it is more like the US circa 1912 then the coast has many large urban centers and other attractions for wealthy tourists ... however, by 1912, most of the exploitation in the colony is likely domestic anyway since the settlements have existed for centuries and local rich people will have developed. In addition, if the colony was that large and advanced there would be no need to ship in "troubleshooters" so the plot line starts to get a little thin.
P.S. Historically, the first "luxury cruise ship" wasn't built until 1900 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship ). They aren't economically feasible until you have a very wealthy upper class that doesn't need to spend their time making money and can afford to travel around.
I may have forgotten to mention that this campaign is going to have an "over-the-top/goofy" feel with moments of seriousness. The group I'm playing with are all close friends I've had and been playing with for YEARS so we all have relatively the same sense of humor and are very good at just "going with it". I did a fancy cruise ship rather than a realistic merchant or passenger ship because, quite frankly, its funnier lol.
Jack Harmon is a man of indeterminable wealth (I'm planning on a running gag about how he always has the exact amount of funds for anything that is convenient lol). My previous campaign was really serious and had a lot to do with heavy themes so for this follow-up, i wanted a totally different feel. (if you're into DnD shows, my last campaign was a little more "Critical-Role-ish" and this one is a little more "Adventure Zone-ish"). In regards to reasons why a luxury cruise is going down to "The Frontier" (as its been dubbed) there are 2 main reasons: The experience of the boat itself (magic powered, think modern technology but explained humorously via "its magic") and The Frontier has several unique landmarks that can be seen off shore. They are not dropping off the rich folk, just the players (due to Harmon's influence, the company owes him a favor). Think of it as the passengers and characters get off for a guided tour, the passengers return afterwards, and the characters stay. or something like that.
My party has a pretty clear expectation that the "Intro Quest" is meant to be more like a Cold-Open from a TV show and they know that its going to have to be a little railroady before it opens up into the sandbox and they're fine with that and would work with it.
I would be inclined to just handwave the intro Ship part (or simplify it to a couple non-combat/light combat encounters like senior shuffleboard night, or happy hour at the bar as a method of character introduction) because I PERSONALLY am more excited for the sandbox I've made. But, I have a few players who would HATE to have any of the introduction parts handwaved because they LOVE the "getting to know the party" phase of play and I would have to deal with "We had 2 months, wouldn't we know this? wouldn't we have talked about such-n-such? Don't I know this about this character?" So hence the reason I'm putting in this intro.
Tl;dr: I saw a lot of people commenting were discussing the realism of the scenario and wanted to point out that I'm not to concerned with that lol. AND I know if I set up an intro mission, my party won't work against me to bust open the railroad so don't worry to much about that! (they already know a sandbox is coming).
I suppose I should reword the question to: "What are some fun/goofy new-campaign character icebreakers that could take place on a 2 month trip" (I also think I'll be breaking the trip into 4 2-week chunks)
It sounds like an interesting concept. I have a couple of questions though ..
1) Why would a "luxury cruise ship" be "circling around the new continent and dropping them off". A backward, undeveloped, primitive colony on a new and unexplored continent would have little to motivate a bunch of rich people to travel there.
- colonization ships - Yes
- merchant ships - Absolutely
- luxury cruise ships? - It doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, from the viewpoint of transportation - any vessel should do.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Go look at a map of the world.* Look how tiny Europe is compared to all the other contents on that list. So, why would those rich Europeans rush out to gobble up as much of the rest of the world as they could from the people who already lived there before anyone could stop them? And the Europeans didn’t just do it to one of those continents, they did it to all of those continents, for centuries. For one tiny ass little continent like that to go out and basically take over the world, musta been a giant, monumental pain in the ass. Kings sent out random ass expeditions to potentially nowhere just to find out if there was something there in the first place. Think about that, the only parts of the map they even had at all were Europe, Russia, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. They had to go out just to find out if there was anything else to add to the maps. And sending those expeditions was effing expensive. And the ratio of ones that came back with news of discoveries compared to the ones that never came back.... Then, once they found out that there was more they still had no idea what it was. Then bunches of richass Europeans had to get together, pool piles of resources, and then send out even more expeditions where the know that there’s stuff they don’t know about just to find out what it is they don’t know about and who was already there. Then when they knew what was there and who it belonged to, the kings would get involved again and hit up their buddies that worked for them and offer them “exciting opportunities to open up brand new branch locations,” and even “completely cover the relocation.” Armies eventually got involve.... They often needed investors (The Church, each other, or other Kings) for capital, or to offset the expenses by funding their own expeditions. And it went on for a longlong time, hundreds of years. This was a multigenerational undertaking. I’m talking it must have been an absolutely, ridiculously massive, monumentally gimungis pain in the ass to pull all that off. As you pointed out, they must have had a reason. Any guesses yet?
Fun Fact: did you know that those maps are not actually to scale? Yup, when you make a sphere flat you get that weird looking roundy-but-not maps with the pie slice shaped cutouts. Hard to read, hunh? Well, maybe not for you, I don’t know, but they are definitely not as easy to read as a nice, flat rectangle. So the map companies make nice, rectangular maps without the slices cut out. But there are only three ways to make a picture of the surface area of a sphere fit perfectly on a rectangle.
Cut a rectangle out of the middle and leave the rest off. (No good people do like to only get part of a product when that pay for the whole thing.)
Cut it up more and rearrange it to fit. (No good.)
Distort the image. Make some parts of the picture bigger to fill in the gaps where you need to, and make parts smaller to shrink in a little where it puckers. Europe is and the continents of the Northern hemisphere in general got stretched to fill, and all the southern continents got shrunk to make space.
The answer is because wherever there is a lot of “new and unexplored” that nobody owns yet, there is a potential opportunity to make lots and lots of money. I’m talking about piles of gold so big one would make Scrooge MacDuck’s vault look like a piggy bank, and there were piles and piles of piles, with piles on top and an extra large side of piled gold. Like, basically, all of it.
Wow. Did you actually read what I said? Merchant vessels, colony ships, expeditions, all of these make sense. Luxury cruise ships?
I absolutely agree with everything you said. Making money is why they send merchant vessels. They send expeditions. The rich people fund these to make MORE money. I said that.
The part I didn't understand and the part that doesn't make sense to me is why a luxury cruise ship would transport a large number of very wealthy individuals touring around the new world, out of touch with their businesses for months (it takes 60 days to get there and longer to get around). These people PAY other people to do the leg work. They don't spend vast sums of money and time NOT making money touring around. The people funding the exploitation of the new world aren't idle rich folks and most idle rich folks don't want to experience the lack of luxury present in a colony.
Note: I am assuming wild west circa 1700 for the campaign with a newly opened up continent without large advanced settlements on the coasts ... if it is more like the US circa 1912 then the coast has many large urban centers and other attractions for wealthy tourists ... however, by 1912, most of the exploitation in the colony is likely domestic anyway since the settlements have existed for centuries and local rich people will have developed. In addition, if the colony was that large and advanced there would be no need to ship in "troubleshooters" so the plot line starts to get a little thin.
P.S. Historically, the first "luxury cruise ship" wasn't built until 1900 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship ). They aren't economically feasible until you have a very wealthy upper class that doesn't need to spend their time making money and can afford to travel around.
Wow, you’re rude. Did you bother to read the very next post I made to the OP explaining the difference between a “cruise ship” and a “passenger ship” is?
You wrote “luxury cruise liner,” but what I think you actually mean is a “passenger ship.” The former is basically a “floating casino-resort.” The latter more of a “floating stack of hotels” I used that metaphor because the upper decks are swankier than the Ritz, and the lower down the decks, the cheaper the tickets. Basically like the difference between 1st Class and Coach on an airliner, only designed for journeys measured in weeks instead of hours. A curtain and an attendant can keep the riff-raff from coach from disturbing the first class passengers for a few hours but not for months. They really are like separate buildings in a way.
And before they dug a canal tactics Panama, ships used to sail from Europe, all the way around South America and back up again to get to San Francisco?
Wow. Did you actually read what I said? Merchant vessels, colony ships, expeditions, all of these make sense. Luxury cruise ships?
I absolutely agree with everything you said. Making money is why they send merchant vessels. They send expeditions. The rich people fund these to make MORE money. I said that.
The part I didn't understand and the part that doesn't make sense to me is why a luxury cruise ship would transport a large number of very wealthy individuals touring around the new world, out of touch with their businesses for months (it takes 60 days to get there and longer to get around). These people PAY other people to do the leg work. They don't spend vast sums of money and time NOT making money touring around. The people funding the exploitation of the new world aren't idle rich folks and most idle rich folks don't want to experience the lack of luxury present in a colony.
Note: I am assuming wild west circa 1700 for the campaign with a newly opened up continent without large advanced settlements on the coasts ... if it is more like the US circa 1912 then the coast has many large urban centers and other attractions for wealthy tourists ... however, by 1912, most of the exploitation in the colony is likely domestic anyway since the settlements have existed for centuries and local rich people will have developed. In addition, if the colony was that large and advanced there would be no need to ship in "troubleshooters" so the plot line starts to get a little thin.
P.S. Historically, the first "luxury cruise ship" wasn't built until 1900 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship ). They aren't economically feasible until you have a very wealthy upper class that doesn't need to spend their time making money and can afford to travel around.
Wow, did you actually read the very next post I made addressing the OP? The one where I corrected them a bit and explained the difference between a “luxury cruise ship” and a “luxury passenger liner” for them? Or were you just too busy being rude and assuming I’m either I stupid or ignorant?
Fun Fact: Before they carved a canal stretching from one side of Panama to the other linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, passenger ships most certainly sailing from Europe to North America, resupplying as needed. Then the ship would continue onward, sail all the hell the way down South America, round Patagonia, and then sail north again all the way the hell back up again to San Francisco.
I hadn't read your follow up when I replied.
However, I don't understand the long post trying to "educate" me on the motivations for exploration apparently criticizing my comment that a luxury cruise ship didn't make sense in context when you actually agreed with my comment (It certainly came across as if YOU were assuming I was "stupid and ignorant"). The long post clearly seemed to be disagreeing with my assertion about luxury cruise ships and my statements that merchant vessels, colony ships/passenger ships would be more in context. Your post pointed out all sorts of reasons why rich people would fund expeditions and other facts that were completely unrelated to my one comment that a "luxury cruise ship" didn't fit the theme in my opinion.
So, what was the point of all the wasted historical verbiage that I more or less agree with when you actually agreed with the point I was making? If you agreed and had read my original post then I don't understand your first reply since it appeared to be trying to correct some misimpression of what I was saying that wasn't there in the first place. I apologize if it was rude to ask if you had read what I wrote but you then admit to agreeing with what I wrote which makes your first reply make even less sense if you HAD actually read it.
Some additional fun facts since we seem to be on the topic of education:
Fun fact: A passenger ship isn't a luxury cruise liner.
Fun fact: Ships sailed the long way around because it was faster (at least until the trans-continental railroad was constructed) though generally not safer nor very comfortable. Once the railway was built in 1869, the trans continental trip took less than a week. The panama canal wasn't opened until 1914 (after the US took over construction in 1904) ... so I expect most wealthy passengers wanting to reach San Francisco would have sailed to New York then taken the train. However, at this point trade with China was picking up so the Cape Horn route was used to transport goods to the American east coast as well as Europe. (though Cape Horn was notoriously challenging at times).
Fun fact: Distance from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn: 13,328 Nautical Miles
Fun fact: The record time for New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 1851 was 90 days. ( https://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/2_4.html ) The california gold rush in the mid 1800's drove a lot of passenger traffic though most traveled over land.
You seem hung up on the “luxury cruise ship” part and I am trying to explain that I think they just used the wrong terminology. I get that impression based on little things like when they wrote “booked lodging” instead of “booked passage.” That stuff leads me to believe that they don’t know a ton about ships.
Your assertion is that the rich wouldn’t do it themselves, they would send minions. What I was patiently trying to get across to you is that the minions they sent, also happened to be other, slightly less rich people. All the way back in the 1700, super rich people would most definitely send other people to go colonize for them. A king would grant a title and a huge chunk of land in the americas to a rich person, and that rich person would come here and basically manage it for them. But those rich people still wanted to travel in style. Why would King send a lesser noble as a manager? Well, for one thing, if the manager is also rich, they have fewer reasons to skim the top. And why would that rich person want to be sent? Well, for one thing, whoever the king sent was only gonna profit from the arrangement themselves, so it was a type of a kickback, like granting valuable government contract to their buddies.
So, you can keep on harping on the “luxury cruise ship” part if you want to, or you can maybe realize that they may have just used the wrong term because they possibly didn’t know the difference, or just don’t care.
And you can keep harping on the “they wouldn’t go themselves, they would send minions to do that stuff for them” part if you want to, or you can maybe recognize the simple fact that to the super duper rich, other slightly less rich people are minions, and exactly the types of minions they actually used to appoint as Governors, and send IRL to go manage things for them.
The choice is yours, I honestly don’t flipping care anymore. Goodbye.
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Not to mention Hawaii.
I only listed continents, including all of the independent archipelagos would take research.
I brought it up as an additional point.Not only did they go to all the major continents for fun, they went into the middle of nowhere for fun. The other places have resource possibilities and hunting. There is like...nothing in Hawaii.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Note: I am assuming wild west circa 1700 for the campaign with a newly opened up continent without large advanced settlements on the coasts ... if it is more like the US circa 1912 then the coast has many large urban centers and other attractions for wealthy tourists ... however, by 1912, most of the exploitation in the colony is likely domestic anyway since the settlements have existed for centuries and local rich people will have developed. In addition, if the colony was that large and advanced there would be no need to ship in "troubleshooters" so the plot line starts to get a little thin.
P.S. Historically, the first "luxury cruise ship" wasn't built until 1900 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship ). They aren't economically feasible until you have a very wealthy upper class that doesn't need to spend their time making money and can afford to travel around.
The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was in 1893. That's in the ballpark of the timeline. They did hire "troubleshooters" during this time.
The first luxury hotel to cater to rich tourists was established in 1901. Still within the ballpark of the timeline.
It's D&D, you can make up whatever you want. Maybe the businessmen want to get an eyes on their herbitore farm and the party is there to bodyguard them Or they are there to protect the herd from ravaging t-rex.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I suppose I should reword the question to: "What are some fun/goofy new-campaign character icebreakers that could take place on a 2 month trip" (I also think I'll be breaking the trip into 4 2-week chunks)
I’m far too introverted to go on a cruise and be surrounded by strangers, but from people I know who have gone on them. I think they often have theme nights, like casino night or costume night or dances. Those could be little one off rp/skill check opportunities. I know you mentioned seeing some of the sights from shore, but I think most cruises make port a couple times during the trip to resupply (probably not as important in a world of create food and water) and let the passengers and crew not go stir crazy. This could allow you to introduce a couple of the costal cities in your campaign and give the PCs a day or so to explore them and seed plans for adventures in those areas. I still think introducing a villain is a good idea, but also, maybe a rival group of NPCs. Maybe Harmon didn’t bet everything on just one group, he hired a few different ones so he could pit them against each other, competition making the best rise to the top. (Or the last few have died, so he decided to hire two this time) And the PCs meet the rival group on the boat.
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So, you may have seen me post about my next campaign before. If you haven't, its theme is a Western/Mage-Punk frontier game centered around settling a new wild continent. It will be starting on New Years.
My current campaign has just ended giving me all the time I need to focus purely on the new one. What I'm looking for now is stuff to do at the VERY beginning.
IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN! STOP HERE!!!
Here's what I have so far for the opening session
So they will be starting off by getting on a luxurious cruise ship (think titanic) after being invited to join a settlement founded and sponsored by an eccentric old man (Jack Harmon). Harmon has invited them with the intention of them working in his new settlement as "problem-solvers" (basically salaried adventurers). To get to the new continent takes 2 months (60days) travel by ship. He has provided their lodging on a cruise ship that will be circling around the new continent and dropping them off, though with the caveat that they will help out around the ship when needed. Getting on this ship will be the big opening session of this campaign so I'm looking for a good exciting hook adventure that will span the length of travel, but only take up at MOST 2 sessions (the point of the campaign will be the settlement so I don't want to prolong getting there too much).
I currently have the idea of them coming across a derelict ship and finding the crew missing except for 2 (fight some stuff on board, I'll think of a reason later), have them bring the remaining 2 back to the ship, make them a red herring for something else going on in the ship. My problem is... What is going on in the ship?? I was thinking about having thefts occurring and possibly have them try and stop a heist of a rare jewel or something. But I can't see that taking 2 months in-game time.
Should I try to flesh out this idea and make it into a 2 month time frame, or do what some of the premade adventures do and have a random sea-encounter table with 2 preset encounters?
OOOOR anything else you guys have in mind lol?
Personally, I would take a few minutes to narrate a descriptive but relatively uneventful voyage and then they’re there. As soon as you start having anything happen onboard (or otherwise en rout), there is a high probability that your players will take the brief, 2-session railroad you are planning, and as Vedexent once phrased it “smash it into a sandbox.” Each subsequent session onboard only increases that probability. Next thing you know, you’re 6 or 8 sessions in and it’s still day 3 of the voyage with 57 more to go, and now your Wild Wild West campaign is a nautical one instead.
If you really do want to have a brief sea voyage before arriving at the destination, perhaps some fun social encounters with the crew and other passengers. I mean, those cruise liners are basically self contained floating hotel casinos with a transient population equivalent to a town. It could be a fun way for them to gather more information about their characters’ unfamiliar destination without you having to inflict an info-dump on them. It would also be a chance for them to make contacts they might be able to call upon later in the campaign, while simultaneously giving you a chance to lay the foreshadowing for future subplots and side plots since it will likely be a one-way trip for other people on the boat too. And it could also give them a chance to procure additional supplies to supplement their starting equipment without it feeling like you just handed stuff out by doing a little shopping and “charging it to their cabins.” (With a reasonable spending limit of course. Perhaps 50gp per PC, enough for a piece of basic equipment like an expensive toolset like tinker's tools or a potion of healing, or perhaps a simple common magic item like maybe a pole of collapsing or a rope of mending.
PS- This is just a noodley detail, but one books ”lodging” on land, like in a hotel, one books ”passage” on a vessel such as a ship. I just wanted to point that out in case you are interested.
(My father worked on cruise ships for years, so I learned about this stuff growing up. On one particular voyage he met a special passenger, a beautiful American woman. They dated long distance for a few years before marrying, and eventually had a kid. That’s how youse all ended up stuck with me. 😉)
Also, in case it comes up depending on the level of technology in your world, ships don’t have “propellers” they have “screws,” (airplanes have propellers). But, in the IRL time period of the “old west” I don’t think they had invented screws quite yet. If I recall, the hight of seafaring technology at the time was the clipper ship. Clippers had both standard sails for when there was wind, and also a very large wooden paddlewheel for locomotion during light winds and doldrums.
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To expand on Sposta's idea about foreshadowing, either the BBEG, or one of their top lieutenants should be on the ship, too. Let the characters interact with them a bit so you can humanize the villain. Could be they heard about this new group of fixers Harmon is bringing in, and they wanted to check them out personally. Could be just coincidence. Even have them help the characters -- if the ship gets attacked, they are just as vested in it not sinking as the PCs -- but let the players think the villain is just helping because they're a good person, or whatever motivation the players want to assign to them. Make them likable so its more surprising/upsetting when they find out they were duped. And if they choose their words and topics of conversation carefully, they should be able to avoid having to make too many deception checks.
And don't be afraid to hand wave the passage of time if it starts to get boring. If the players solve the mystery in the first session, don't feel like you need to do a second one on the boat just to fill space.
And if you didn't think of it, Sahuagin are a great low-level aquatic/amphibious enemy. Either by themselves, or riding sharks to up the awesome quotient.
It sounds like an interesting concept. I have a couple of questions though ..
1) Why would a "luxury cruise ship" be "circling around the new continent and dropping them off". A backward, undeveloped, primitive colony on a new and unexplored continent would have little to motivate a bunch of rich people to travel there.
- colonization ships - Yes
- merchant ships - Absolutely
- luxury cruise ships? - It doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, from the viewpoint of transportation - any vessel should do.
2) In terms of what happens, that is up to you but as soon as you start planning "something else going on in the ship". You've extended the journey to several sessions since you need to develop and resolve whatever "else is going on in the ship".
I started a campaign earlier this year on a ship. I'm running Ghosts of Saltmarsh mixed with Tales from the Yawning Portal and the party meets taking passage on a merchant vessel traveling to Saltmarsh. They book passage at a reduced rate which included acting in defense the ship if it was attacked. Their fare is refunded if they are called upon to fight. The trip took a week, I narrated most of it, the characters introduced themselves, and the ship was attacked by Sahaugen raiders trying to capture the cargo and possibly prisoners. The party assisted the crew in defending the ship and the ship successfully made it to Saltmarsh.
- the intro included the ability for the characters to introduce themselves
- an interesting encounter
- started to build a reputation for the characters with the merchants in Saltmarsh
- avoided some of the sand box issues since the ship had a fixed destination so unless the characters want to become pirates, the DM gets to say where it is going.
- the whole intro took one session and was a good way to bring the characters together and introduce them to the locale and some NPCs.
It sounds like you might have something similar in mind. Find a derelict ship, some encounter, perhaps related to the larger plot - return to the ship. However, unless you want the ship to expand to several sessions then you really don't want to introduce a complex storyline on the ship that needs to be resolved on the ship. If you want a ship storyline, I would suggest sabotage. There is a faction that doesn't want to see this ship reach the colony perhaps due to mercantile reasons (this kind of explanation might make more sense for a colony ship or merchant ship than a luxury cruise ship) ... it is very inefficient to target one individual on a cruise ship by sabotaging the whole ship. On the other hand if there is a critical cargo or other aspect that a competitor might like to see go missing then the other people on board are just collateral damage.
Anyway, the party could prevent the sabotage while the perpetrator escapes or clues lead toward some organization with representatives in the new colony. I would avoid any sort of plot line with the ship that doesn't immediately lead to shore unless you want to play the campaign on the ship.
In general I think session 1 should be introducing the theme of the campaign, rather than an unrelated one-off, so I'd avoid having a side plot that is really unrelated to your plans. If you don't want to just handwave it (as people above suggest), I suggest one of two things
My two coppers on this:
You control the flow of time, you can chop each time block any way you wish, and if you players want to hijack anything, well... anyone remember what happened when Jonah tried to run from God?
Starting with session 0, establish the sort of campaign your players are likely to want. Do they want to follow your storyline or do they want to sandbox it? If they want to follow your storyline, don't be afraid to twist the flows of space and time to stop the CN/CE character from hijacking the ship. (Oh! It turns out the captain you have at knifepoint actually had a protective charm of hold person on him! Too bad the perception check didn't catch that ;P)
Sposta has a good point with skipping over the details. Again with session 0, if you tell them they'll be starting with some downtime, maybe you all can come pre-set with something to start learning/researching/crafting while they're there. From there you can divide the voyage into week-long blocks of time. Give them a description for the events of the week (or maybe a short scene for each week for them to play through), and skip through the rest. Maybe give each player an opportunity to describe their actions for the week, roll anything necessary, and move on.
This is more or less how the Harry Potter series does it, glazing over long periods of time and then jumping into the action when something plot-relevant happens, stretching out a 500-page adventure to the in-world timespan of nine entire months and still keeping the pacing feeling smooth. Each scene of dialogue you read in those books can be as much as a week or three apart from each other. Taking that example, you can totally shoehorn in the adventure concerning the shipwreck, and the mystery happening on-board the ship, and have your voyage done in a couple sessions too.
The first good ships with screws were in service during the mid-1800's so by the wild west times, there should be luxury liners that would look familiar by today's standards. Titanic was 1912 so...
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
So, you ask why rich people would want to go to those. For the exact same reasons all those rich Europeans did it in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Go look at a map of the world.* Look how tiny Europe is compared to all the other contents on that list. So, why would those rich Europeans rush out to gobble up as much of the rest of the world as they could from the people who already lived there before anyone could stop them? And the Europeans didn’t just do it to one of those continents, they did it to all of those continents, for centuries. For one tiny ass little continent like that to go out and basically take over the world, musta been a giant, monumental pain in the ass. Kings sent out random ass expeditions to potentially nowhere just to find out if there was something there in the first place. Think about that, the only parts of the map they even had at all were Europe, Russia, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. They had to go out just to find out if there was anything else to add to the maps. And sending those expeditions was effing expensive. And the ratio of ones that came back with news of discoveries compared to the ones that never came back.... Then, once they found out that there was more they still had no idea what it was. Then bunches of richass Europeans had to get together, pool piles of resources, and then send out even more expeditions where the know that there’s stuff they don’t know about just to find out what it is they don’t know about and who was already there. Then when they knew what was there and who it belonged to, the kings would get involved again and hit up their buddies that worked for them and offer them “exciting opportunities to open up brand new branch locations,” and even “completely cover the relocation.” Armies eventually got involve.... They often needed investors (The Church, each other, or other Kings) for capital, or to offset the expenses by funding their own expeditions. And it went on for a longlong time, hundreds of years. This was a multigenerational undertaking. I’m talking it must have been an absolutely, ridiculously massive, monumentally gimungis pain in the ass to pull all that off. As you pointed out, they must have had a reason. Any guesses yet?
Fun Fact: did you know that those maps are not actually to scale? Yup, when you make a sphere flat you get that weird looking roundy-but-not maps with the pie slice shaped cutouts. Hard to read, hunh? Well, maybe not for you, I don’t know, but they are definitely not as easy to read as a nice, flat rectangle. So the map companies make nice, rectangular maps without the slices cut out. But there are only three ways to make a picture of the surface area of a sphere fit perfectly on a rectangle.
Cut a rectangle out of the middle and leave the rest off. (No good people do like to only get part of a product when that pay for the whole thing.)
Cut it up more and rearrange it to fit. (No good.)
Distort the image. Make some parts of the picture bigger to fill in the gaps where you need to, and make parts smaller to shrink in a little where it puckers. Europe is and the continents of the Northern hemisphere in general got stretched to fill, and all the southern continents got shrunk to make space.
The answer is because wherever there is a lot of “new and unexplored” that nobody owns yet, there is a potential opportunity to make lots and lots of money. I’m talking about piles of gold so big one would make Scrooge MacDuck’s vault look like a piggy bank, and there were piles and piles of piles, with piles on top and an extra large side of piled gold. Like, basically, all of it.
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Not to mention Hawaii.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
LeBattery,
You wrote “luxury cruise liner,” but what I think you actually mean is a “passenger ship.” The former is basically a “floating casino-resort.” The latter more of a “floating stack of hotels” I used that metaphor because the upper decks are swankier than the Ritz, and the lower down the decks, the cheaper the tickets. Basically like the difference between 1st Class and Coach on an airliner, only designed for journeys measured in weeks instead of hours. A curtain and an attendant can keep the riff-raff from coach from disturbing the first class passengers for a few hours but not for months. They really are like separate buildings in a way.
Which brings me to a point I came back to add, the employer would most likely purchase inexpensive tickets for the party because rich people get rich and stay rich by saving money doing things like purchasing the least expensive tickets possible when they need to relocate employees. So, the only way they would buy expensive tickets in a situation like that, is if they decide that springing for expensive tickets is still cheaper compared to other alternatives.
That 1st level party basically the equivalent of what we call in modern parlance, “private contractors.” They are mercenaries, and as 1st level ones, they are a startup company that nobody has ever heard of. Those companies get hired because they are expendable and anonymous. They would have likely gotten cheaper tickets.
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I only listed continents, including all of the independent archipelagos would take research.
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What about if the ship you encounter has 2 people on board, and it transpires that one of them has stolen a cursed treasure, which causes endless calamities, mishaps, and accidents to prevent any who stole it from returning to shore. One of the people has worked this out and is trying to get rid of the treasure, casting it overboard. The other is jealously hording the treasure and refuses to part with it. As soon as the people are picked up, bad things start to happen - ill winds, sea monsters, random encounters, bad weather, food poisoning. the players have to chat with the survivors to work out why things are happening.
For added depth, pick one of the party for people to be naturally distrusting of, if possible - perhaps a superstition that it's bad luck for a Teifling to be on board, or a woman for that authentic chauvinism of the wild west. As bad things happen, the passengers suspect the party as being the cause for it, so they have reason to try and sort this mess out. If they take too long, the passengers will host a mutiny, and then maroon the party in an effort to appease whatever gods were angered when they came aboard.
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Wow. Did you actually read what I said? Merchant vessels, colony ships, expeditions, all of these make sense. Luxury cruise ships?
I absolutely agree with everything you said. Making money is why they send merchant vessels. They send expeditions. The rich people fund these to make MORE money. I said that.
The part I didn't understand and the part that doesn't make sense to me is why a luxury cruise ship would transport a large number of very wealthy individuals touring around the new world, out of touch with their businesses for months (it takes 60 days to get there and longer to get around). These people PAY other people to do the leg work. They don't spend vast sums of money and time NOT making money touring around. The people funding the exploitation of the new world aren't idle rich folks and most idle rich folks don't want to experience the lack of luxury present in a colony.
Note: I am assuming wild west circa 1700 for the campaign with a newly opened up continent without large advanced settlements on the coasts ... if it is more like the US circa 1912 then the coast has many large urban centers and other attractions for wealthy tourists ... however, by 1912, most of the exploitation in the colony is likely domestic anyway since the settlements have existed for centuries and local rich people will have developed. In addition, if the colony was that large and advanced there would be no need to ship in "troubleshooters" so the plot line starts to get a little thin.
P.S. Historically, the first "luxury cruise ship" wasn't built until 1900 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship ). They aren't economically feasible until you have a very wealthy upper class that doesn't need to spend their time making money and can afford to travel around.
I may have forgotten to mention that this campaign is going to have an "over-the-top/goofy" feel with moments of seriousness. The group I'm playing with are all close friends I've had and been playing with for YEARS so we all have relatively the same sense of humor and are very good at just "going with it". I did a fancy cruise ship rather than a realistic merchant or passenger ship because, quite frankly, its funnier lol.
Jack Harmon is a man of indeterminable wealth (I'm planning on a running gag about how he always has the exact amount of funds for anything that is convenient lol). My previous campaign was really serious and had a lot to do with heavy themes so for this follow-up, i wanted a totally different feel. (if you're into DnD shows, my last campaign was a little more "Critical-Role-ish" and this one is a little more "Adventure Zone-ish"). In regards to reasons why a luxury cruise is going down to "The Frontier" (as its been dubbed) there are 2 main reasons: The experience of the boat itself (magic powered, think modern technology but explained humorously via "its magic") and The Frontier has several unique landmarks that can be seen off shore. They are not dropping off the rich folk, just the players (due to Harmon's influence, the company owes him a favor). Think of it as the passengers and characters get off for a guided tour, the passengers return afterwards, and the characters stay. or something like that.
My party has a pretty clear expectation that the "Intro Quest" is meant to be more like a Cold-Open from a TV show and they know that its going to have to be a little railroady before it opens up into the sandbox and they're fine with that and would work with it.
I would be inclined to just handwave the intro Ship part (or simplify it to a couple non-combat/light combat encounters like senior shuffleboard night, or happy hour at the bar as a method of character introduction) because I PERSONALLY am more excited for the sandbox I've made. But, I have a few players who would HATE to have any of the introduction parts handwaved because they LOVE the "getting to know the party" phase of play and I would have to deal with "We had 2 months, wouldn't we know this? wouldn't we have talked about such-n-such? Don't I know this about this character?" So hence the reason I'm putting in this intro.
Tl;dr: I saw a lot of people commenting were discussing the realism of the scenario and wanted to point out that I'm not to concerned with that lol. AND I know if I set up an intro mission, my party won't work against me to bust open the railroad so don't worry to much about that! (they already know a sandbox is coming).
I suppose I should reword the question to: "What are some fun/goofy new-campaign character icebreakers that could take place on a 2 month trip" (I also think I'll be breaking the trip into 4 2-week chunks)
Wow, you’re rude. Did you bother to read the very next post I made to the OP explaining the difference between a “cruise ship” and a “passenger ship” is?
And before they dug a canal tactics Panama, ships used to sail from Europe, all the way around South America and back up again to get to San Francisco?
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I hadn't read your follow up when I replied.
However, I don't understand the long post trying to "educate" me on the motivations for exploration apparently criticizing my comment that a luxury cruise ship didn't make sense in context when you actually agreed with my comment (It certainly came across as if YOU were assuming I was "stupid and ignorant"). The long post clearly seemed to be disagreeing with my assertion about luxury cruise ships and my statements that merchant vessels, colony ships/passenger ships would be more in context. Your post pointed out all sorts of reasons why rich people would fund expeditions and other facts that were completely unrelated to my one comment that a "luxury cruise ship" didn't fit the theme in my opinion.
So, what was the point of all the wasted historical verbiage that I more or less agree with when you actually agreed with the point I was making? If you agreed and had read my original post then I don't understand your first reply since it appeared to be trying to correct some misimpression of what I was saying that wasn't there in the first place. I apologize if it was rude to ask if you had read what I wrote but you then admit to agreeing with what I wrote which makes your first reply make even less sense if you HAD actually read it.
Some additional fun facts since we seem to be on the topic of education:
Fun fact: A passenger ship isn't a luxury cruise liner.
Fun fact: Ships sailed the long way around because it was faster (at least until the trans-continental railroad was constructed) though generally not safer nor very comfortable. Once the railway was built in 1869, the trans continental trip took less than a week. The panama canal wasn't opened until 1914 (after the US took over construction in 1904) ... so I expect most wealthy passengers wanting to reach San Francisco would have sailed to New York then taken the train. However, at this point trade with China was picking up so the Cape Horn route was used to transport goods to the American east coast as well as Europe. (though Cape Horn was notoriously challenging at times).
Fun fact: Distance from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn: 13,328 Nautical Miles
Fun fact: The record time for New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 1851 was 90 days. ( https://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/2_4.html ) The california gold rush in the mid 1800's drove a lot of passenger traffic though most traveled over land.
Okay, lemme rephrase for you:
You seem hung up on the “luxury cruise ship” part and I am trying to explain that I think they just used the wrong terminology. I get that impression based on little things like when they wrote “booked lodging” instead of “booked passage.” That stuff leads me to believe that they don’t know a ton about ships.
Your assertion is that the rich wouldn’t do it themselves, they would send minions. What I was patiently trying to get across to you is that the minions they sent, also happened to be other, slightly less rich people. All the way back in the 1700, super rich people would most definitely send other people to go colonize for them. A king would grant a title and a huge chunk of land in the americas to a rich person, and that rich person would come here and basically manage it for them. But those rich people still wanted to travel in style. Why would King send a lesser noble as a manager? Well, for one thing, if the manager is also rich, they have fewer reasons to skim the top. And why would that rich person want to be sent? Well, for one thing, whoever the king sent was only gonna profit from the arrangement themselves, so it was a type of a kickback, like granting valuable government contract to their buddies.
So, you can keep on harping on the “luxury cruise ship” part if you want to, or you can maybe realize that they may have just used the wrong term because they possibly didn’t know the difference, or just don’t care.
And you can keep harping on the “they wouldn’t go themselves, they would send minions to do that stuff for them” part if you want to, or you can maybe recognize the simple fact that to the super duper rich, other slightly less rich people are minions, and exactly the types of minions they actually used to appoint as Governors, and send IRL to go manage things for them.
The choice is yours, I honestly don’t flipping care anymore. Goodbye.
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Content Troubleshooting
I brought it up as an additional point.Not only did they go to all the major continents for fun, they went into the middle of nowhere for fun. The other places have resource possibilities and hunting. There is like...nothing in Hawaii.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was in 1893. That's in the ballpark of the timeline. They did hire "troubleshooters" during this time.
The first luxury hotel to cater to rich tourists was established in 1901. Still within the ballpark of the timeline.
It's D&D, you can make up whatever you want. Maybe the businessmen want to get an eyes on their herbitore farm and the party is there to bodyguard them Or they are there to protect the herd from ravaging t-rex.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I’m far too introverted to go on a cruise and be surrounded by strangers, but from people I know who have gone on them. I think they often have theme nights, like casino night or costume night or dances. Those could be little one off rp/skill check opportunities.
I know you mentioned seeing some of the sights from shore, but I think most cruises make port a couple times during the trip to resupply (probably not as important in a world of create food and water) and let the passengers and crew not go stir crazy. This could allow you to introduce a couple of the costal cities in your campaign and give the PCs a day or so to explore them and seed plans for adventures in those areas.
I still think introducing a villain is a good idea, but also, maybe a rival group of NPCs. Maybe Harmon didn’t bet everything on just one group, he hired a few different ones so he could pit them against each other, competition making the best rise to the top. (Or the last few have died, so he decided to hire two this time) And the PCs meet the rival group on the boat.