Naval Combat

(previously: Simple Seafaring)

Handling ocean travel like an overland pointcrawl is all well and good for most use cases. When you're just going from island A to island B, you can ignore the gritty details and boil the experience down to 1) do we get to where we're headed? 2) how long does it take? 3) do we have to fight any monsters?

What's a pirate-themed game, though, without the occasional high-seas battle? Not much point to having all these warships lying around if we never have them blast each other to splinters with ranks of cannon fire. 

With that in mind:

HERE ARE SOME NAVAL COMBAT RULES

Game in progress using this system

Thoughts

This ruleset is intended for use with Kevin Crawford's Godbound; terms such as "straight" damage and "mobs" are drawn from that book.

The eagle-eyed may notice that there are no rules for wind and weather, changing speed from round to round, or any number of other subtleties to which veteran naval warfare gamers may have become accustomed. That's by design; this isn't a wargame. It's a framework to be interpreted by a GM, hopefully with the best interests of the whole table at heart. 

My goal here was to balance simplicity with depth (isn't that always the goal?). A classic tactic like "crossing the T" works as expected if you know your naval history, without becoming a distraction from the Role-Playing part of the RPG experience. 

If you're tempted to think these rules are TOO simple, be aware that a playtest battle with only one PC ship tool almost three hours. On the other hand, if that's really your cup of tea, feel free to tack on more complexity! 

-V