So I made the first draft of this ruleset a couple of years ago (before Ghosts of Saltmarsh was announced) so it is quite a bit different from those rules. And now that I'm about to actually start a sea-faring campaign, I decided to dust them off and make a new draft. These rules mainly focus on customizing and battling with sailing ships. They rely heavily on black powder siege weapons so a campaign setting that incorporates black powder will get the most out of this. I'm especially curious about the combat system. I have yet to give it a real test-run so if anyone has any ideas about what I've come up with so far, or actually manages to get a group to try it out, I'd really love to hear your thoughts. On the topic of ship combat, I feel like I've put together a system with a moderate amount of crunch, a good portion of which comes in the form of "group tactics" and decision making relying heavily on maintaining position awareness of multiple ships. If that sort of thing sounds fun to you and your group, I encourage you to check these rules out and give them a try.
I want to make a follow-up draft after posting here with some changes if we can workshop anything. And I definitely want to add some simple diagrams to better explain the way the ships and the different siege weapons work on a grid. Other than that, I think I've included everything I would personally want from a nautical ruleset. So now I want to share it with you guys and see what feedback the community has to offer. For a quick summary of what's included in this 20-page document...
- Stats for 5 generic ship types. - Extensive rules for customizing ships with weapons, cabins, and other utility items. - A 1st-20th leveling system for ships. - Naval combat rules. - Hazards and rules for damage types. - Guides and rules for officers and crew.
So I made the first draft of this ruleset a couple of years ago (before Ghosts of Saltmarsh was announced) so it is quite a bit different from those rules. And now that I'm about to actually start a sea-faring campaign, I decided to dust them off and make a new draft. These rules mainly focus on customizing and battling with sailing ships. They rely heavily on black powder siege weapons so a campaign setting that incorporates black powder will get the most out of this. I'm especially curious about the combat system. I have yet to give it a real test-run so if anyone has any ideas about what I've come up with so far, or actually manages to get a group to try it out, I'd really love to hear your thoughts. On the topic of ship combat, I feel like I've put together a system with a moderate amount of crunch, a good portion of which comes in the form of "group tactics" and decision making relying heavily on maintaining position awareness of multiple ships. If that sort of thing sounds fun to you and your group, I encourage you to check these rules out and give them a try.
I want to make a follow-up draft after posting here with some changes if we can workshop anything. And I definitely want to add some simple diagrams to better explain the way the ships and the different siege weapons work on a grid. Other than that, I think I've included everything I would personally want from a nautical ruleset. So now I want to share it with you guys and see what feedback the community has to offer. For a quick summary of what's included in this 20-page document...
- Stats for 5 generic ship types.
- Extensive rules for customizing ships with weapons, cabins, and other utility items.
- A 1st-20th leveling system for ships.
- Naval combat rules.
- Hazards and rules for damage types.
- Guides and rules for officers and crew.
With that, here is my homebrew nautical ruleset: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSAPu6Rw2rOLjJlo3zzh-8TNUtCl9tfB0N3rJ4ey-GHrhJsEnuZrfWAmQMb3rbHMi7OkpW_3Fc8yib2/pub