Trade In Fantasy Ch. 4: Modes Of Transport, Pt 4
Finally! After the diversions caused by Rafts and boats, today the series focuses on Ships at sea, with a bonus sci-fi section or two on the side.
The original plan was to also include Weather at Sea and Exotic Transportation Modes but the former has quickly grown to the point where the post would not be ready to publish if I insisted on including it.
So, even though I’ve put 1900 words into it already, those sections have been excerpted from this post and relegated to part 13, soon to follow – I have some original game mechanics for weather that I want to get down on ‘paper’ before I forget them, so I will be trying to strike while the iron is hot!
Unfortunately, there also wasn’t time to convert my quick-and-dirty spreadsheet into a fully-functional version to give away as a bonus freebie. Besides, if I did one for rafts – a minor side-note within the bigger topic – I would then have to ask why I hadn’t done one for more important parts of the system, and the answer of “too complicated, too little time” would have sounded rather hollow. The process is there and clear, and that will have to do, I’m afraid.
Table Of Contents: In part one of Chapter 4: Modes Of Transport
4.0 A Word about Routes
4.0.1 Baseline Model
4.0.2 Relative Sizes
4.0.3 Competitors
4.0.4 Terrain I
4.0.5 Terrain II
4.0.6 Multi-paths and Choke Points
4.0.6.1 Sidebar: Projection Of Military Force
4.0.7 Mode Of Transport
4.1 Backpack / Litters / Shanks Pony
4.1.1 Capacity
4.1.2 Personalities / Roleplay4.2 Horseback
4.2.1 Capacity
4.2.2 Requirements
4.2.3 Personalities / Roleplay4.3 Mule Train
4.3.1 Capacity
4.3.2 Requirements
4.3.3 Personalities / Roleplay4.4 Wagons
4.4.1 Capacity
4.4.2 Requirements
4.4.3 Other Exceptions – Animal Size
4.4.3.1 Sidebar: Road Trains
4.4.4 Fodder / Food & Water Needs
4.4.4.1 People
4.4.4.2 Horses
4.4.4.3 Mules
4.4.4.4 Oxen / Cattle
4.4.4.5 Elephants
4.4.4.6 Other4.4.5 Personalities / Roleplay
In Part 2:
4.5 River Boats & Barges
4.5.0 A Splice Of Maritime History
4.5.0.1 Dugouts & Canoes
4.5.0.2 Rafts
4.5.0.3 Boats
4.5.0.4 Poled Rafts & Barges
4.5.0.5 Oars
4.5.0.6 Land-based motive power
4.5.0.7 Sail
4.5.0.8 Better Sails
4.5.0.9 Trading Ships
4.5.0.10 Warships & Pirates
4.5.0.11 Beyond the age of sail
4.5.0.12 Riverboats
4.5.0.13 Sources4.5.1 Riverboat Capacity
4.5.2 Favorable Winds
4.5.2.1 The Beaufort Wind Scale
4.5.3 Favorable Currents
4.5.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
4.5.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions
4.5.6 Extreme Weather Events
4.5.7 The Tempest Scale
4.5.8 Vessel Rating
4.5.9 Weather CataclysmsIn Part 3:
4.6 Rafts
4.6.1 Rowing Time & Exhaustion
4.6.2 The basics of vector sums
4.6.2.1 An Example
4.6.2.2 A better example
4.6.2.3 With Maths
4.6.2.4 Simplified Vector Sums
4.6.2.5 Multi-hour Vector Sums4.6.3 Raft Design & Operation
4.6.3.1 Buoyancy
4.6.3.2 Raft Calculation Process
4.6.3.3 Why all this matters
4.6.3.4 Category 1 Raft Table
4.6.3.5 Category 2 Raft Table
4.6.3.6 Category 3 Raft Table
4.6.3.7 Category 4 Raft Tables
4.6.3.8 Category 5 Raft Tables
4.6.3.9 Category 6 Raft Tables4.6.4 Overloaded Rafts
4.6.5 Raft Breakup
4.6.6 Construction Time
4.6.7 A final word on Overloading Capacities4.7 Canoes etc
4.7.1 Proportions
4.7.2 Frontal Dimension
4.7.3 Base SpeedIn today’s post:
4.8 Seagoing Vessels
4.8.0 Logistics At Sea and In Space
4.8.0.1 “But I don’t need to know this stuff, my PCs aren’t Space Traders…”
4.8.0.2 Using the analogy
4.8.0.3 A Word on Historical Accuracy4.8.1 Capacity
4.8.2 Ships As Monsters
4.8.3 Ship Specifications
4.8.3.1 Physical Dimensions
4.8.3.2 Movement Parameters
4.8.3.3 Functionality
4.8.3.4 Combat
4.8.3.5 Data Sources
4.8.3.6 Ship Specifications4.8.4 Some Thoughts About Cannon
4.8.4.1 Having Your Cannon And Your Flavor, Too
4.8.4.2 Crippled Land-Cannon
4.8.4.3 Personal Firearms
4.8.4.4 Bombs and other explosive devices4.8.5 Exotic Crews
4.8.5.1 Human Height Adjustments
4.8.5.2 Non-human Height
4.8.5.3 Non-human Proportions
4.8.5.4 Crew Strength
4.8.5.5 Handling and other parameters4.8.6 Mixed Crews
In the next post:
4.8.7 Weather At Sea
4.8.7.1 An Introduction to Weather (oversimplified)
4.8.7.2 Accumulated Potential and Threshold
4.8.7.3 Seasonal Weather Averages
4.8.7.4 Seasonal Weather Trends
4.8.7.5 Daily Temperature Variation
4.8.7.6 Weather Change Threshold
4.8.7.7 Humidity
4.8.7.8 Clouds & Rain
4.8.7.9 Winds4.8.7.9.1 Favorable Winds
4.8.7.9.2 Becalmed
4.8.7.9.3 Unfavorable Winds
4.8.7.9.4 Violent Winds
4.8.7.9.5 Extreme Winds: Hurricanes etc4.8.7.10 Currents
4.8.7.10.1 Favorable Currents
4.8.7.10.2 Still Currents
4.8.7.10.3 Unfavorable Currents
4.8.7.10.4 Violent Waves
4.8.7.10.5 Extreme Waves: Tsunamis & Walls Of Water4.8.7.11 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
4.8.7.12 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions4.9 Exotic Modes Of Transport
4.9.1 Flight
4.9.2 Teleport
4.9.3 Magic Gates & Portals
4.9.4 CapacitiesAnd, In future chapters (most of them much shorter):
- Land Transport
- Waterborne Transport
- Spoilage
- Key Personnel
- The Journey
- Arrival
- Journey’s End
- Adventures En Route

Image by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower) from Pixabay
4.8 Seagoing Vessels
The defining trait of ships is that anything other than sails or mechanical power is a secondary or backup form of motive energy. Seagoing vessels are an order of magnitude more complicated than river trade, but potentially an order of magnitude more profitable as well.
In many ways, deep-water sailing vessels are the nearest thing in Fantasy to Interstellar Trade in a Sci-Fi game, for exactly the same reasons: You are a long way from anywhere, so if you need something, you had better have taken it with you.
When you’re miles (or light years) – perhaps a dozen, perhaps hundreds – away from an established port, you can’t exactly nip on down to the corner store any time you feel like it.
That means that a lot of planning has to go into these expeditions; they have far more stringent personnel needs, and far more rigorous preparations that have to be made, or they might never leave port.
Those needs have been in the back of my mind throughout this project, and have had considerable influence over the Key Personnel chapter, for example.
Before I get into the broad mechanics of sea travel, though, I want to talk a little more about the logistics of these voyages.
4.8.0 Logistics At Sea and In Space
Over time, people will have learned from successful trading voyages and a few unsuccessful ones, too, I would imagine. They would have learned that there are certain risks involved which could lead to catastrophic failure, but that if you have this, and someone on the crew knows how to do that, there is at least a chance (if not a certainty) of staving off that disaster.
Having the right resources and personnel is a form of insurance; not having them is something that you might get away with, time and again – but sooner or later, it would come back to bite you.
If you could carry everything you might possibly need, there would be no problem, but you can’t. Some things are too big or too expensive to justify, given the relatively low risk that they will be needed. That alone makes for competing imperatives and interesting choices, but there is a third factor: every kilogram or pound of resources that you carry will occupy space that is therefore not available to be used to carry cargo, and its’ cargo that pays the bills.
You would never carry a spare keel, for example – if the one you have happens to break in a storm, well that’s just tough luck, that vessel is probably headed for the bottom (unless you manage to limp into port somewhere or make landfall, and can then craft and install a replacement or repair – a singularly difficult and improbable task).
You wouldn’t carry a replacement mainmast – if yours gets blown away, you have to make your way to land and again see about constructing or buying a replacement. But you might be able to save the one you already have just by cutting the ropes attaching your mainsails and letting them blow away – and storms happen often enough that it would be worth carrying one or perhaps even two spares.
Anchors are essential, but large and heavy – they are probably a borderline spare. More likely, you would carry a smaller, lighter, emergency anchor with which to make do, temporarily.
Ships need a certain level of crew, but people die at sea all the time (especially in a fantasy environment), so anyone who doesn’t carry spares has rocks in their head. But those people need food and water, and you have to carry that, too – so getting the numbers right is another vital decision. And carrying someone who can keep them healthy is definitely desirable. And someone who can prepare that food.
In fact, it’s in the food-and-water department that the greatest differences between space trading and sea traders can be found – because those who travel the oceans are surrounded by water, and that water contains food, in the form of fish.
The problem is that you can’t stop to fish – who knows what the winds will be like tomorrow? If the wind is even half reasonable, you have to take advantage of it while you can. And as for sea water, you can’t drink it.
It’s possible, were the ship to be becalmed, that you could set the crew to fishing and purifying sea water, but you will never produce enough of either commodity in that way, and you’re often better off putting the crew to work rowing toward someplace where the winds are more likely to be useful and reliable.
In space, it might be possible to find a source of potable water in the form of ice – it would need to be melted and filtered, but that’s a relatively easy operation. But there is no likelihood of food, so that side of things is worse.
All of which means that navigation is vital – in both instances. And so it goes, on down the line.
Someone actually said this to me at one point. To anyone thinking that way, I would ask, Do your PCs ever need to buy anything not made locally? Do they ever need to use a service provided ‘on the side’ by traders? Do they ever interact with any NPCs who do trade, or who try to protect traders from pirates? Do you ever need to take trade patterns into consideration when assessing the viability of outposts and colonies?
If the answer to any one of these questions is ever even just a little bit “yes,” then you need to have a grasp of the basics and of what a trader needs to know in order to be prosperous.
You might not need to take every trade exchange into detailed consideration, but you need to know the basics, just so that you can do a reasonable job of integrating them into your campaign environments.
Use sea trade, then, as an analogy to your situation when thinking about interstellar trade, and you will have everything you need to succeed at at least this minimal level.
Okay, so where was I? Oh, yes….
The principle is, then, that anything that can be encountered by a ship at sea will have some analogous encounter for a ship in space, and vice-versa. These encounters won’t just affect trading vessels, of course; any ship that journeys from Port A to Port B, for any reason, can have one.
Let’s say the PCs have undertaken some task with a firm deadline, but one that they should be able to meet easily. That doesn’t suit the GM; he wants them to be under some time pressure so that when real problems arise later in the adventure, the PCs can’t make the lazy decisions, they will have to take a few risks. But how to delay them long enough to make time more critical?
How to delay them? is therefore the question, and to answer it, the GM deploys this analogy and thinks of all the things that could delay a merchant ship going to sea.
▪ A paperwork snafu delays departure.
▪ While at sea, encounter a Beholder.
▪ Becalmed.
▪ Pirates.
▪ A military vessel hunting pirates who is suspicious of the PCs ship.
First question: one delay, or several smaller ones? The GM decides to have an each-way bet: one longer delay, Becalmed, and several smaller ones that can be dropped in or left out as needed to achieve the total delay desired.
Second question: How much delay does he want? Somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks, he decides. That’s not enough to make time a critical factor, but it is enough to make the timetable uncomfortably tight.
Third through seventh questions: what are the equivalents of the maritime problems that he has listed?
▪ A paperwork snafu delays departure. Unchanged, really, it just needs a bit of fleshing out.
▪ Beholder. Some equivalent creature might reside in an Asteroid belt that the PCs have to traverse on their way out of the system. Give it powers useful to a space-going creature – beams from some of its eyes that are adept at locking onto and destroying incoming missiles; some sort of x-ray vision; something that penetrates hull armor; something that ablates or drains shields. Have it live on something in the engine compartment (details depend on game background); it uses it’s x-ray vision to search for it and its powers to go after it. Once driven off / defeated, the ship will need temporary repairs to be space-worthy. Or they can return to their departure point and get the repairs done properly – at the cost of even more time.
▪ Becalmed. A ship jumps into hyperspace just as the PCs are arriving, and it’s evident that it was not properly configured, causing it to misjump. If the game system uses jump gates, maybe this causes the gate to malfunction, and the PCs can’t go anywhere until it’s repaired. If the ships generate their own jumps, as in Travelor, maybe a misjump ‘curdles’ space making misjumps more likely even if the ship is properly configured. All the PCs can do is wait for space to ‘calm down’. Or maybe an Asteroid has impacted a nearby gas giant and kicked up a super-storm of gas-giant proportions, and it’s the radiation and electrical discharges that make FTL travel unsafe. Lots of options, pick an appropriate one.
▪ Pirates. Self-explanatory, but largely done to death. The focus should be on making this pirate encounter distinctive. Maybe they have heard rumors of an incredibly valuable shipment coming through and won’t believe the PCs when they say ‘it’s not us’? Rare, 20th century comic books perhaps, or something else equally attention-getting? I remember the outrage amongst my players when the original Kermit The Frog puppet was listed amongst some recovered stolen property… After the battle, the ship might need repairs. Again.
▪ A military vessel hunting pirates who is suspicious of the PCs ship. Again, fairly self-explanatory. They would insist on boarding, would search the ship and demand proof of purchase for anything and everything that might, or might conceal, cargo. Which might be especially problematic if the mission is to smuggle something somewhere.
Each problem (other than “Becalmed”) might be resolved in 1 or 2 days with a successful check of the appropriate skill, or 2-3 days with an unsuccessful one. The PCs can be “Becalmed” for 4, 6, 9 days, that’s up to the GM. There should probably be some sort of instrument that would warn the crew it’s unsafe to jump, and someone should be monitoring this and reporting back to the captain on a regular basis. This is a chance to delve into how the world works, don’t waste it! That means that if the PCs succeed in every check, 4-8+6 = 10-14 days elapse; a failed check simply takes one of the subsequent encounters off the list.
I would also rank the encounters in terms of game world / storytelling strength. As mentioned, Pirates are a bit of a cliche; so they would rank fairly low. The “Beholder” is a bit better, but stretches credibility a little thin. It’s next best. The Pirate hunter is pretty good, and might be encountered even in systems where there is little or no pirate activity. And the different FTL problems (“Becalmed”) are gold in terms of throwing the occasional spanner into the predictability that is often a feature of these games.
That gives a good idea of which encounter to drop, if need be. Logically, the pirate hunter should be at the destination, not in the departure system – but if you change them to be hunting smugglers, that can work, too. So the sequence can be tweaked as well.
I would be careful about putting the two weakest encounters after the “Becalmed” sequence, though; one weak encounter and one stronger one are a better mix in terms of sustaining interest and entertainment throughout.
I have seen travel to a jump point, jump, arrive, and travel to destination hand-waved down to three minutes game time and a skill check; I’ve seen it take an hour or so, game time; and I’ve seen it occupy a full game session. This 1-2 week delay is closer to the latter.
And, to state what should be obvious: No, you don’t do this every time. You save it for when it adds story value to the game – like shortening a deadline to the point of discomfort.
Don’t expect more than a bit of lip service to this concept herein. Trying to compress the entire maritime history through to the end of the age of sail into a coherent and cohesive system requires massive generalization and more than a little romanticization, even before allowance gets made for any Fantasy element.
Functionality and a superficial credibility were far higher priorities than accuracy or realism.
4.8.1 Capacity
Seagoing vessels tend to be fairly big, and that generally means that the size of a Trade Unit tends to be larger as well. As a general rule, 1/2, or 1, 2, or 4 tons (or tonnes) are probably the most practical sizes for this kind of cargo transportation. That increases the size of a Labor Unit as well, because there is more to be handled – loaded or unloaded – in a given time frame.
All ships are NOT alike. There are huge variations in design and capacity. Some trade capacity for speed, the better to run away; others bulk up on defenses, the better to survive; and some aim for the maximum cargo.
Not all ports are able to handle ships of every size. The larger the vessel, the deeper the water that it needs (as a general rule of thumb).
So cargo capacities are specific to each ship design and limited by what the ports can handle on a trade route. Or, more properly said, cargo capacities are specific to each ship design and trade routes are restricted by the size of the ship.
And don’t forget that supplies and operational reserves eat into the cargo capacity.
Crew sizes are also generally proportional to the cargo capacity, because each increase represents an increase in the size of the ship.
There are 14 sizes that are reasonably common. Below, in a table, I set these out and cross-reference them with the listed ‘optimum Trade Unit’ sizes to get total cargo capacity in conventional units. After that, there are some modifiers for different optimizations.
But you should work backwards – select a vessel of appropriate size and type, reverse the adjustments to get cargo capacity, and then find that capacity listing in the column of your chosen Trade Unit size.
Cargo Capacity |
1/2 T = 1 TU |
1 T = 1 TU |
2 T = 1 TU |
4 T = 1 TU |
1 |
1/2 T |
1 T |
2 T |
4 T |
2 |
1 T |
2 T |
4 T |
8 T |
4 |
2 T |
4 T |
8 T |
16 T |
5 |
2.5 T |
5 T |
10 T |
20 T |
8 |
4 T |
8 T |
16 T |
32 T |
10 |
5 T |
10 T |
20 T |
40 T |
15 |
7.5 T |
15 T |
30 T |
60 T |
20 |
10 T |
20 T |
40 T |
60 T |
25 |
12.5 T |
25 T |
50 T |
75 T |
35 |
17.5 T |
35 T |
70 T |
(140 T) |
50 |
25 T |
50 T |
100 T |
(200 T) |
60 |
30 T |
60 T |
(120 T) |
(240 T) |
65 |
32.5 T |
65 T |
(130 T) |
(260 T) |
75 |
37.5 T |
75 T |
(150 T) |
(300 T) |
100 |
50 T |
100 T |
(200 T) |
(400 T) |
Notes:
() signifies vessels that did not exist in the historical periods commonly used as a basis for Fantasy games, even at a stretch – but that might exist in a Fantasy reality, nevertheless.
Units:
1 Tonne = 1000 kg = 1.102 short tons = 2205 lb
1 short ton = 2000 lb = 907.2 kg = 0.9072 tonnes
1 long ton = 2240 lb = 1.12 short tons = approx 1.016 tonnes = 1016 kg
Long tons are used for the displacement (weight) of vessels.
Cargo is supposed to be recorded in short tons, but this only generates confusion and opportunities for fraud (using long tons for cargo to reduce mooring fees and sound tolls [a toll for using the strait separating Denmark and Sweden that for 200 years generated up to 2/3 of Denmark’s state income], for example).
It’s also useful to notice that, to two significant digits, the difference between tonnes and long tons is a rounding error.
4.8.2 Ships As Monsters
It can often be useful to use standard combat as an analogy for naval battles – hit points, armor class, etc. While not going fully down this path, there have been any number of tips of the hat to the idea in the content that follows.
If you decide to commit to this more fully, just remember that – unlike monsters – (1) there is no flanking advantage; (2) ships will keep going – unlike monsters, they won’t stop on a dime – and collisions between ships can easily sink both; (3) it takes time to furl or open sails. How long depends on all sorts of factors, and is better left up to the GM;.and (4) ships tend to be big and heavy, and even though there isn’t a lot of friction to overcome, they are still going to be slow to get moving even when sails have been hoisted or engines engaged.
4.8.3 Ship Specifications
Ship sizes may include Small / Light*, Medium, Heavy / Large, and Over-sized.
* These are also sometimes called “Pocket” ships
Ship Sub-types may include Fast (optimized for speed at the expense of other attributes) and War (optimized for offensive capacity at the expense of other attributes)
Length: typical length in feet, but every ship will be a little different
Weight (empty):typical weight in long tons, but every ship will be a little different
Masts (normally): 0, 1, 2, 3. 4+ was possible but rare, and assumed to be ‘fantasy’ in nature.
Turning Circle: 1 Very Tight, 2 Tight, 3 Moderate, 4 Wide, 5 Very Wide, 6 Incredibly Wide.
This is usually measured as a multiple of fudge* × length × speed / 4.
The actual meaning of these turning circles depends on the map scale, wind conditions, and too many other factors to go into here. GMs should decide what they mean on the day and under the current in-game conditions – while noting that each is worse / wider than the one before. GMs aiming for realism should note that the extra speed from a wind at the stern actually permits a tighter turn, while any wind from square of the hull forward increases turning circle by 1 class to the worse.
Any ship with <1/4 max crew also adds 1 to the turning circle.
* Fudge is an adjustment that is consistent over a class of ship (usually) and is used to scale the turning circle designated by the GM to the scale of the ship. It’s what is commonly known as a ‘technical term’.
Speed: 8 = Incredibly Fast, 7 = Very Fast, 6 = Fast, 5 = Medium, 4 = Slow, 3 = Very Slow, 2 = Incredibly Slow, 1 = 1/2 Slow, 0 = 1/10 Slow
Incredibly Fast (8)= 2 × Very Fast (typically), available only to vessels with “Fast” in the descriptor
Very Fast (7) = 3 × Medium (typically)
Fast (6) = 2 × Medium (typically)
Slow (4) = 1/2 Medium
Very Slow (3) = 1/3 Medium
Incredibly Slow (2) = 1/4 Medium
1/4 Slow (1) = 1/8 Medium = 1/2 Incredibly Slow
1/10 Slow (0) = 1/20 Medium – only when sailed/rowed into the wind (otherwise,s speed 0 in those conditions)
Draft:
There are 5 categories of Draft value. All come with both benefits and liabilities in terms of what a particular vessel is capable of.
In sci-fi terms, think of gravity wells as reefs, shoals, and distances to the coast – the stronger the local gravity well, the lower the “draft equivalent” that is needed. Having way-stations in orbit or on nearby planets / moons is the equivalent of deeper harbors, obviating the need to go into the deep, nasty, gravity well.
1 Shallow (can use coastal waters, cross shoals & some reefs without danger)
2 Near Shallow (can use coastal waters, cross most shoals & reefs without danger)
3 Medium (can use coastal waters, cross deep shoals and reefs with little danger but shallow ones are a threat)
4 Deep (can only use bays, cannot cross shoals or reefs without extreme risk)
5 Very Deep (can only use ‘deep water’ bays at any time, needs high tide to use other bays, all shoals and reefs pose extreme risk)
Crew:
Crew numbers are specified as a range, minimum to maximum. Another significant value is 2x minimum. The numbers given are a base value that has to be adjusted for the number of officers and high-value passengers.
Officers count as 3 crew but increase max crew by 1 each.
Passengers in steerage / low-berths count as crew but NOT as minimum crew (Passengers who are in cold-sleep or something similar consume no rations and count only as dead weight, obviously).
Passengers in high-berths count as officers but NOT as minimum crew.
There is also a “virtual crew count” used for the consumption of rations. For this purpose, officers may count as 1, 2, 3, 4, or even 5 crewmen. That doesn’t mean that they eat five times as much – but they may eat five times as well. Nor is this necessarily consistent amongst the entire officer corps – the captain, first mate, and high-berth passengers will often have one value while other officers are 1/2 or 1 less.
Crew Provisions
As per 3.1.1.13 & 3.1.1.14, the minimum requirement in food and water totals 5.25 kg/person per day. When you do the math, you get to a value of 0.0402 long tons × crew, per week. This number includes increased mess and galley size, which is one reason why Officers count as more extra crew than just their numbers. It does NOT include crew quarters, locker space, etc.
But it’s not that simple. When you’re crossing a desert, an arctic tundra, or out at sea, you can’t simply replace food that has spoiled – so you have to carry extra supplies just in case. How much in extra supplies is a function of paranoia and climate (things go bad more slowly in cold environments). I consider values of +10%, +25%, +33%, +50%, +75%, and +100%.
But that’s feeding people the minimum they need to survive – one minimal meal a day. Unless you had no choice but to impose such a regimen, crews would revolt at the imposition of such a regimen. So you also need to decide how many meals a day, and of what relative size (where that essential minimum =100%). I consider values of +10%, +25%, +33%, +50%, +75%, +100%, +150%, +200%, and +250%.
100%+250% means 350% total each day. How this gets broken up is irrelevant – there could be three light snacks and a feast, or one light snack and three solid meals, or whatever – so long as the grand total adds up to 350%.
When you correlate all these factors, you get the following table:
spoilage |
+0% |
+10% |
+25% |
+35% |
+50% |
+75% |
+100% |
|
better |
+0% |
0.04 |
0.044 |
0.05 |
0.054 |
0.06 |
0.07 |
0.08 |
+10% |
0.044 |
0.049 |
0.055 |
0.06 |
0.066 |
0.077 |
0.088 |
|
+25% |
0.05 |
0.055 |
0.063 |
0.068 |
0.075 |
0.088 |
0.101 |
|
+33% |
0.053 |
0.059 |
0.067 |
0.072 |
0.08 |
0.094 |
0.107 |
|
+50% |
0.06 |
0.066 |
0.075 |
0.081 |
0.09 |
0.106 |
0.121 |
|
+100% |
0.08 |
0.088 |
0.101 |
0.109 |
0.121 |
0.141 |
0.161 |
|
+150% |
0.101 |
0.111 |
0.126 |
0.136 |
0.151 |
0.176 |
0.201 |
|
+200% |
0.121 |
0.133 |
0.151 |
0.163 |
0.181 |
0.211 |
0.241 |
|
+250% |
0.141 |
0.155 |
0.176 |
0.19 |
0.211 |
0.246 |
0.281 |
For example: +35% spoilage allowance, +150% better than minimum, 16 crew: 0.136 × 16 per week = 2.176 long tons = 2.43712 short tons. If your ship has 50 long tons cargo capacity, you could carry provisions for those 16 and nothing else and have 20.5 weeks’ capacity. If you want to provision for a 6 week voyage, plus 2 weeks’ margin, it would reduce cargo capacity by 19.5 long tons. Note that for a journey of this short length, 35% spoilage is being really paranoid.
Ships owners will always look to cut unprofitable corners. Six weeks is short enough that even if there was 80% spoilage of the food, the crew could make it all the way to their destination without starving to death, and go even further if rations were cut in response to the emergency. What’s more, the crew can progressively eat their way through that extra two week’s worth, so you can cut the ‘better than minimum’ to +50% and still be feeding the crew reasonably well. That reduces the requirement from 0.136 per crew per week to just 0.06. This returns (0.136 – 0.06) × 16 × 8 = 9.728 long tons of cargo capacity to the pursuit of making profits – nearly 20% of the 50-ton capacity.
Cargo Capacity (short tons)
The numbers given are base values that need to be adjusted as follows:
-1 cargo / 6 crew (or part thereof) over 2x min
-0.5 cargo / cannon
At first glance, you might think that actual crew numbers should be used for these adjustments, but no, no, no – all crew and high-level officers have the capacity for personal baggage / comforts, and the highest ranking have even more of it. So use x3 for most crew & high-berth passengers and x5 for the cream – certainly that Captain, maybe the navigator, maybe the first mate, and maybe the doctor. Larger ships may further differentiate.
So total up the ‘effective’ crew numbers. If the result is less than double the minimum, they have not intruded into the cargo capacity; if the result is more than double that, but less than the maximum, then cargo capacity is reduced as shown; and if the total is more than the maximum, the ship is effectively overloaded and has NO spare cargo capacity.
If you cut rations, you cut the ‘effective crew’. I’ve made the assumption that we’re allocating 1016 kg / 5.25 kg per day × 3 = 580.6 meals per ton of capacity – and then applied a fudge factor to lift that to a neat 600, because a small overload will quickly disappear. Dividing that by 6 means that we’re effectively working in units of 100 meals – a nice, convenient number.
Some crew may require more or less nourishment than others. A Halfling would count as 1½ crew, for example. A Giant may count as 10 or more! Don’t forget to take such things into account.
Ships carry enough provisions for 2 × the minimum number of crew without intruding on the cargo space. But if your crew numbers exceed that quantity, you need to add extra provisions that won’t fit into the holds designated for the purpose.
Total Food Reserves
With the above information, you can quickly determine 2 × Min crew / 100 + the excess cargo calculated above to get a total provisions weight. Multiply the result by 100 meals in a long ton and divide by the number of crew determined previously (the count that factors in how well various people eat). The result is the number of days that the ship has provisions for – both food and water – if fully laden. This is often a useful number to know, to say the least, but because it varies according to so many factors, it’s not something that can be specified in advance – it needs to be recalculated for every trip, or sometimes for every leg of a trip.
Hit Dice / Hit Points:
Potential HD = Class #
Class 1-6 rafts = d2
Class 1-6 Boats = d6
Class 7-8 = -1 die, size to d8
Class 9-20 = -2 die, size to d10
Class 21-30 = -4 die, size to d12
Class 31+ = -4 die, / 1.6 die, size to d20
Reinforcement = – 2^(x-1) cargo where × is +1 defense & +1 HD.
Actual HP = (Potential HP + Reinforcement) × Crew / Max Crew
Again, a note: If you only have 1/2 the maximum crew, you only have 1/2 the capacity for taking damage. That’s because you have fewer crew to replace the injured or killed, and fewer crew to work as damage control parties.
Damage
It doesn’t matter how damage is inflicted – it could be a cannon, a whole bunch of cannon, a fireball spell, a laser cutter, a beam weapon, or a whole bunch of rowdies with axes. This combat analogue measures Ship HP on the human scale, so all these things to whatever damage they would normally do.
Instead of rolling for each individual, if there are a lot of them, determine the roll required with all modifiers taken into account and translate that into a % successful.
Next, we need to apply a fudge factor. Divide the number of attackers by 6 (counting cannons as 6 attackers, fireballs as the number of d6 in the fireball, and so on). Roll that many dice and add the result to the % successful, then roll it again re-rolling all sixes and subtract the result from the adjusted % successful.
The more attackers there are, the less likely it is that there will be a significant variance. The ‘re-roll sixes’ is a deliberate abstraction to allow for the fact that sometimes a near miss is good enough.
Multiply the net % successful by the number of attackers, broken down by size of damage die if necessary, to get the number that actually hit – and them multiply by the average damage result, no need to roll it unless you want to do so for dramatic effect.
My Technique would be to actually roll the first wave of damage,. then apply average damage until the target vessel has less than 3 ‘salvos’ capacity remaining, then go back to rolling. This maximizes dramatic effect while minimizing inconvenience and inefficiency. Of course, if no PCs are involved, it’s average damage all the way – the ‘fudge factor’ provides enough randomness to seem realistically variable.
Damage Distribution:
(3d20+40)% of damage is applied to crew. The rest is applied to the ship.
Crew Damage: Use half the indicated total damage to kill crew, based on average hit points etc. Apply the remainder as evenly as possible over the surviving crew (and note that this will reduce their average hit points for the next salvo).
Ship damage includes sail damage that slows the ship but doesn’t actually sink it, offensive damage that reduces a target’s ability to attack back, defensive damage that reduces a ship’s ability to stay intact, and hull damage that reduces it’s ability to stay afloat. So you may need to further break it down.
That breakdown depends on where the attackers were aiming which depends on what they were trying to accomplish. The attacker should nominate one of the four damage types indicated; this choice will persist until changed, and it takes 8 × minimum crew / surviving crew foregone attacks, round up, to make such a change (officers count as 3 as usual, due to their greater experience).
Example: Minimum crew is 20, current surviving crew is 65; it takes 8 × 20 / 65 = 2.46, rounds up to 3, attacks foregone to change targets.
The GM needs d6 in 4 different colors. One color represents sail damage, one offensive damage, one damages the targets’ defenses, and one hull damage. The GM needs 3 dice of the color that matches the chosen target of the attacker and 1 dice each of the other three, for a total of 6 dice (yes, there are ways of doing this will dice of only a single color – roll 1d6 three times and 3d6 once, recording the totals).
Divide the damage done by the total of the six dice (rounding off to the nearest 1/2) and then for each type of damage, multiply the result by the total of that colored dice. Round results in the opposite direction to any rounding that too place following the division.
Example: 1 red die (6), 1 green die (2), one black die (3), and 3 blue dice (10), total of 19. Damage done to the ship = 45. So, 45/19 = 2.368, which rounds to 2.5. Multiply the three dice total (10) by 2.5 to get 25 – that’s the number of dice of damage to whatever the attacker was targeting. Multiply the red die result (6) by 2.5 to get 15 – that’s the damage done to whatever the red die represented. The green die gives 5 points, the black die gives 7.5 – which gets rounded down to 7 because we rounded up to get to the 2.5.
Damage Effects
Divide the damage done to each area of effect (except hull damage) by 6, but record remainders as fractions of 6 – these can accumulate over multiple salvos / rounds.
Sail / Speed damage: it takes 6 points to drop from the vessels top speed rating by 1, then 5 to drop by another one, then 4, and so on, until the vessel reaches 0 and is dead in the water.
Defensive Damage: the result is the bonus that the attacker inflicting the damage will be at for their next attack. If the target vessel has enough excess crew to perform damage control, this will reduce by 1 on the attack after that, by another 1 on the attack after that, and so on. Damage control is limited to HALF the defensive damage done – the rest needs more time / resources than can be accommodated during battle. Furthermore, every -6 or part thereof has a 1 in 6 chance of becoming 1 worse during combat maneuvers.
Offensive Damage: this reduces the number of dice of damage that the attacked vessel can inflict on their next attack by the indicated number. If they have sufficient excess crew to work damage control, this will reduce by 1 on the attack after that, then by 1 more, and so on. Offensive damage repairs are limited to HALF the inflicted offensive damage, the rest can’t be fixed on the fly. Furthermore, for every -6 or part thereof, there is a 1 in 6 chance of doing an additional d6 damage to one of the other areas of the ship (roll a d3 to choose).
Hull Damage: The damage done comes off the ships hit points. If there are sufficient crew to work damage control, they can restore 1d6 points of hull damage in a combat round, and if they roll a six, they roll again and repair +6 points. Hull repairs are limited to HALF the inflicted damage, the rest can’t be repaired so easily. Furthermore, for every 6 points of hull damage done in a single attack after the first 6, there is a 1 in 6 chance of an extra d6 of hull damage resulting from combat maneuvers. Do enough hull damage to a target and it can literally tear itself apart, sending it to the bottom.
Furthermore, ships that lose 1/2 their HP in hull damage are slowed one additional Speed, and another when they lose 1/2 of what’s left, and a third when they reach 0.
Zero HP means that a ship is sinking. How long this takes is up to the GM but it’s usually measured in minutes for small ships and potentially hours for large ships. Or should that be seconds and minutes, respectively? The first is more historically accurate, the second ups the ante considerably. Ongoing Repairs / damage control may stem this. Each Ship-Class additional HP inflicted thereafter reduces this by 1 of the larger time units. So a class 9 vessel needs 9 additional HP of hull damage to hasten its’ sinking, a class 15 vessel needs 15, and so on.
Cannon
Cannon are divided into two classes for ‘ship vs ship’ battles: Light and Heavy.
‘Light’ means that each counts for only half the standard weight, but the cannonballs are lighter and smaller and do 1d6 per cannon per shot. Heavy means that each counts fully for the weight, the cannon have greater range, and they do d10 per cannon per shot.
Remember that cannon are usually arranged in pairs, one to each side of the ship, so at most half can fire in a given round.
An additional weight class, “Gargantuan”, is occasionally trotted out because they look really mean, but the cannon weigh twice as much as normal and only do d12, take twice as long to reload, and have no significant range advantage, so they actually have less effect than regular cannon.
A lot of research went into the above rules and the tables given below. Credit where it’s due:
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (Video Game, various incarnations)
★ Link 1
★ Link 2
★ Link 3
Wikipedia
★ Pinnace (ship’s boat)
★ Full-Rigged Pinnace
★ Sloop
★ Schooner
★ Lugger
★ Fluyt
★ East Indiaman
★ Brigantine
★ Brig
★ Frigate
★ Galleon
★ Clipper
★ Ship Of The Line
★ Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad
★ Ottoman ship Mahmudiye
Other (was actually used for the previous post):
★ Gouth AI a raft of 8 logs
This was originally one big table. At the last minute, I’ve broken it into three similarly-sized tables so that the headings are never too far away, and I’ve repeated the heading at the end of the third table for good measure. When this gets edited into an e-book, they might get rejoined or split into two, depending on how they fit on the page.
Class |
Class Name |
Len |
Wt |
Masts |
Turn |
Speed |
Draft |
Cargo Cap (st) |
Crew |
Cannon (Tot) |
7 |
Pinnace* |
28-40 |
100 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
Shallow |
20 |
6-50 |
8 |
8 |
Small Sloop |
45 |
140 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
Shallow |
30 |
8-55 |
6 |
9 |
Medium Sloop |
50 |
160 |
1 |
2 |
6 |
Near Shallow |
40 |
10-65 |
10 |
10 |
Large Sloop |
55 |
180 |
1 |
2 |
6 |
Near Shallow |
50 |
12-75 |
12 |
11 |
Small Schooner |
60 |
160 |
2 |
2 |
6 |
Medium |
40 |
10-80 |
12 |
12 |
Medium Schooner |
65 |
180 |
2 |
2 |
7 |
Medium |
50 |
11-90 |
14 |
13 |
Large Schooner |
70 |
220 |
3 |
2 |
7 |
Medium |
60 |
14-100 |
18 |
(14) |
Over-sized Schooner |
75 |
240 |
4-6 |
3 |
6 |
Medium |
70 |
18-140 |
22 |
15 |
Small Barque† |
45 |
160 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
Medium |
60 |
10-90 |
12 |
16 |
Medium Barque† |
50 |
180 |
2-3 |
2 |
5 |
Deep |
70 |
12-100 |
16 |
17 |
Large Barque† |
60 |
200 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
Deep |
85 |
16-120 |
20 |
18 |
Small Cargo Fluyt |
50 |
160 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
Shallow |
65 |
10-60 |
10 |
19 |
Medium Cargo Fluyt |
80 |
200 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
Shallow |
100 |
12-75 |
12 |
20 |
Large Cargo Fluyt |
90 |
250 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
Shallow |
140 |
16-85 |
14 |
(21) |
Over-sized Cargo Fluyt |
100 |
300 |
3 |
5 |
2 |
Near Shallow |
180 |
20-100 |
16 |
Class |
Class Name |
Len |
Wt |
Masts |
Turn |
Speed |
Draft |
Cargo Cap (st) |
Crew |
Cannon (Tot) |
22 |
Small Merchantman (East Indiaman) |
150 |
185 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
Medium |
90 |
12-90 |
14 |
23 |
Typical Merchantman (East Indiaman) |
170 |
210 |
3 |
5 |
4 |
Deep |
100 |
16-100 |
16 |
24 |
Large Merchantman (East Indiaman) |
175 |
230 |
3 |
5 |
3 |
Deep |
120 |
16-125 |
20 |
(25) |
Over-Sized Merchantman (East Indiaman)‡ |
190 |
260 |
(4) |
5 |
3 |
Very Deep |
140 |
20-140 |
22 |
26 |
Small Brigantine† |
50 |
50 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
Medium |
60 |
12-110 |
20 |
27 |
Medium Brigantine† |
110 |
110 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
Medium |
65 |
14-115 |
22 |
28 |
Large Brigantine† |
250 |
250 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
Medium |
70 |
16-125 |
24 |
29 |
Large Brigantine (Brig)† |
480 |
480 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
Medium |
70 |
16-125 |
28 |
30 |
Light Frigate‡ |
120 |
800 |
3 |
6 |
3 |
Deep |
60 |
12-140 |
28 |
31 |
Fast Frigate‡ |
150 |
1000 |
3 |
7 |
4 |
Deep |
50 |
20-160 |
24 |
32 |
Frigate‡ |
135 |
1200 |
3 |
6 |
4 |
Deep |
90 |
28-200 |
32 |
33 |
Heavy Frigate‡ |
140 |
1500 |
(4) |
5 |
4-5 |
Very Deep |
120 |
32-200 |
36 |
Class |
Class Name |
Len |
Wt |
Masts |
Turn |
Speed |
Draft |
Cargo Cap (st) |
Crew |
Cannon (Tot) |
34 |
Light Galleon |
100 |
500 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
Medium |
70 |
12-140 |
20 |
35 |
Fast Galleon |
120 |
1100 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
Deep |
80 |
16-160 |
24 |
36 |
Medium Galleon |
140 |
1000 |
5 |
4 |
3-4 |
Deep |
120 |
16-100 |
20 |
37 |
Heavy Galleon |
145 |
1600 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
Very Deep |
140 |
16-200 |
32 |
38 |
War Galleon |
150 |
2000 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
Very Deep |
90 |
16-200 |
40 |
(39) |
Over-sized Galleon |
165 |
2500 |
5 |
3 |
4-5 |
Very Deep |
120 |
24-250 |
44 |
(40) |
Extreme Clipper‡ |
220 |
825 |
3 |
5 |
6 |
Medium |
100 |
20-140 |
36 |
41 |
Standard Clipper‡ |
180-250 |
1080 |
3-(4) |
5 |
6 |
Medium |
100 |
20-140 |
38 |
42 |
Large Clipper‡ |
250-300 |
1410 |
3 |
4 |
6 |
Medium |
120 |
20-140 |
44-60 |
43 |
(301-350) |
1600 |
3-(4) |
4 |
6 |
Medium |
(125) |
30-160 |
(50-70) |
|
44 |
(351-400) |
2000 |
(4)-(5) |
4 |
6 |
Medium |
(135) |
40-180 |
(60-80) |
|
43 |
Ship Of The Line (4th rate)‡ |
150 |
830 |
3-(4)-(5) |
5 |
5 |
Very Deep |
110 |
30-500 |
50-60 |
44 |
Ship Of The Line (3rd rate)‡ |
170 |
1440 |
3-(4)-(5) |
6 |
5 |
Very Deep |
115 |
40-600 |
62-74 |
45 |
Ship Of The Line (2nd rate)‡ |
200 |
2500 |
3-(4)-(5) |
5 |
6 |
Very Deep |
120 |
40-700 |
90-98 |
46 |
Ship Of The Line (1st rate)‡ |
250 |
4300 |
3-(4)-(5) |
5 |
6 |
Very Deep |
140 |
40-800 |
100-140 |
(47) |
Imperial Ship Of The Line‡ |
200 |
5000 |
3-(4)-(5) |
6 |
6 |
Very Deep |
160 |
50-1050 |
116-148 |
(48) |
Other?? |
GM’s Choice – see Exotic Crews, Below |
||||||||
Class |
Class Name |
Len |
Wt |
Masts |
Turn |
Speed |
Draft |
Cargo Cap (st) |
Crew |
Cannon (Tot) |
* The term Pinnace was used for two entirely different but very similar vessels – the full-rigged Pinnace is the one used in the table as a vessel in it’s own right, while the Pinnace (Ship’s Boat) is only used in conjunction with a larger vessel (see ‡ below).
† There are two different types of ship that have been referred to as “Barques”. I have based these numbers on the “Lugger” class of vessel. Similarly, a “Brig” is a related vessel class to the normal “Brigantine” but is larger and heavier. This sort of nonsense makes researching vessel classes and their characteristics a real nightmare…
‡ Includes a ship’s boat; for an Imperial Ship Of The Line, this is a (medium) Sloop, for anything else it is either a Pinnace or, for ships >2000 long tons, a small Sloop. Note that Galleons had nothing but rowboats for service in this capacity, usually 16-man.
() denotes a configuration or vessel that did not exist in real life. For example, under “Masts”, you might see an entry 3-4-(5). This means that the real life versions had 3 or 4 masts but in a fantasy world, you might have 5.
4.8.4 Some Thoughts About Cannon
Maritime vessels place the GM in something of a quandary that these rules cannot avoid or evade looking at: Without cannon, an essential flavor of the swashbuckling expectations that come with these vessels is lost, causing dissatisfaction all round (no matter that it’s more ‘realistic’ and ‘historically accurate’).
But let them in, and you also let in everything else that gunpowder and cannonballs can do, and that can be an even higher price to pay. Cannon can pulverize castle walls. Grapeshot can wipe out whole battalions with a single salvo – from a handful of the devices. And some bright spark PC will want to create muskets and flintlocks, either personally or by paying someone else to do it. And then, there’s the issue of bombs, and of other explosive substances like nitrocellulose – once you’ve opened the door, everything from det cord to white phosphorous can crawl through it.
Some GMs are fine with all that, pointing out that in a world with Umpteen-d6 Fireballs and Meteor Swarms, a few cannon are really quite small potatoes, and that may be true – but again, some of the essential flavor is lost.
Some draw the line and say “this works, anything further doesn’t” – but they will sooner or later be met with the eternal challenge of the small child, “Why not?” – and he’d better have a good answer at the ready.
Others (including me, for a very long time), simply ban gunpowder and explosives outright. If you want a fusillade of cannon raking an enemy vessel, the equivalent in-game-world is an arcane spellcaster lobbing fireballs (etc) – you hire a bunch of them and they stand on the (lower) deck, casting through a ‘gunport’ (usually called something else, because you can’t use the word ‘gun’ before the gun exists). That’s just rubbing players noses in it.
But some of the research linked to above suggested that there may be a way….
Specifically, it was mentioned somewhere that what is called a Cannon on land, and what is called a Cannon on board a seagoing vessel, are two completely different things. The land-going version is much smaller and lighter and uses a much smaller and lighter cannonball. They also use much less explosive propellant to launch those cannonballs. As a result of all this, they had about half the range of their larger seagoing versions. The basic reason for these differences is two-fold.
First, if your cannon is insufficiently-strongly anchored, a large part of your propellant force is simply going to launch it backwards, through your own troops.
And second, by the time you include frame and cannon and ammunition and black powder and everything else, it becomes too much to transport overland except on the very best roads. And a cannon without portability / mobility is worse than useless, 90% of the time.
Let us suppose, then, for the sake of argument, that Gunpowder works a little differently in the game world. In sufficient quantities, and ignited by sufficient heat, it will explode, right enough – but that requires either a mage or a fire elemental.
That means that your shipboard cannon are still perfectly fine, because it has long been established in most fantasy canon that arcane spells can be placed in scrolls that anyone can use. Now, that might be going too far, but if that’s the case, then it’s certainly not out of the question to compromise and state that a non-mage can use such a scroll, but doesn’t have the training to be able to set off gunpowder with it. THAT requires a ‘gunnery’ expertise.
This proposal doesn’t just permit the flavor of swashbuckling and pirates, it infuses them with the fantasy flavor that was supposedly being sacrificed!
It’s when you consider the implications outside of sea battles that this pays off, big-time.
Use enough gunpowder to set off an explosion under the above concept, and you will blow any normal land cannon to pieces.
There are ways around that – using Adamantine or something similar – but they increase the weight of the cannon to the equivalent of the too-big seagoing cannon anyway, and would cost an absolute fortune. There’s nothing that can be done to lighten the load because the cannon would no longer be strong enough to resist the explosive force within.
Or, you might throw a bone, and let smaller cannon and smaller gunpowder loads function – at 1/4 the normal power. While the results may be effective against enemy troops, they won’t do squat against castle walls. And the cannon is too big and inconvenient to carry around just for an antipersonnel weapon. Magic gives you far more potent and far more portable options.
Blunderbusses and Flintlocks go away, too – they fire not with a bang, but with a fsst. No bullets flying, which means that your Fighters are still supreme up close and personal, and aren’t going to be cut down (short of magic) before getting into position to absolutely ruin somebody’s day. And untrained nobodies aren’t running around stealing spellcaster thunder, either. Again the Fantasy within the Fantasy Genre is protected.
Bombs remain possible – but they need someone lobbing a fireball into exactly the right place, or a fire elemental charging into that right place, to set the device off. A wick or fuse won’t cut it. Again, the fantasy element is preserved, even enhanced.
And as for the rest of the canonical realm of explosives? The changes to the way gunpowder works should tell any player worth his table-space that the laws of chemistry are different. This should be obvious, anyway – alchemy can do things, and potions work, neither of which are true outside of the fantasy genre.
And that means that all the other panoply of explosive compounds and related materials that mankind has come up with, over the years, are also off the table. They simply won’t work. Soaking rags in nitric acid simply eats holes in the rags – it doesn’t create nitrocellulose.
Or maybe they will work – but only on the Elemental Plane of Water, or something – and they still need a fire elemental to set them off. Given the environmental complications, that’s sure to be more trouble than it’s worth.
So yes, you can have cannon on board ships, all you want, without sacrificing the important bits of the genre elsewhere. You are the GM, you decide the game physics, i.e. what will work and what won’t.
4.8.5 Exotic Crews
Section 3.1.1 gives you everything you need to be able to amend ship designs to create vessels built for non-human crews. In particular, the size factor and the proportions factor are your guide, but the specifics given in 3.1.1.10 will be just as useful.
If you have a crew that are somewhat smaller than human average, there are two routes that you can go – either you keep the vessel more-or-less the same physical dimensions and increase the crew capacity, then tweak the other values accordingly, or you scale the vessel down to fit.
If you have a crew that are somewhat larger, you have little choice but to scale the vessel up somewhat.
In both cases, at least one fundamental will change in terms of the shape – the height. Humans build decks to be about 2m apart, plus double the thickness of the deck itself, probably 2 × 2.5cm more, for a total of 2.05m. (That’s 6′ 8.7″ in American, and decking that’s 1″ thick). That’s built to accommodate relatively tall individuals of the era, and a fairly normal range of heights today.
It’s hard for the modern mind to come to grips with how much smaller people were back then, mostly due to malnutrition over multiple years during youth. Even the nobility didn’t eat as well, in terms of nutrition, as most poor people today.
The simplest way of adjusting modern height tables is simply to lop 6-12″ (15.24-30.48cm) off the indicated height – so 5’5″ becomes 4’5″ to 4’9″ (165cm becomes 134.52-149.76cm). Or, to simplify it, 65″ becomes 52-59″.
But that doesn’t really get precise enough for most people. My method of calculation isn’t as neat or as simple, but it gives more specific results. It’s based on nothing more than having visited a number of houses that were more than a century old and built proportionately to the inhabitants. That last is an important point; nobility and gentry and wealth tended to build high and impressive ceilings, so they are still high and impressive in modern times, just a little less so.
Modern |
Medieval Nobles & Wealthy |
Fantasy Professionals |
Fantasy Poor |
||||||||
‘ |
“ |
cm |
‘ |
“ |
cm |
‘ |
“ |
cm |
‘ |
“ |
cm |
3 |
0 |
91.4 |
2 |
4 |
71.1 |
2 |
9 |
83.8 |
2 |
7.5 |
80 |
3 |
1 |
94 |
2 |
6 |
71.1 |
2 |
10 |
86.4 |
2 |
8.5 |
82.6 |
3 |
2 |
96.5 |
2 |
7.5 |
76.2 |
2 |
11 |
88.9 |
2 |
9.25 |
84.5 |
3 |
3 |
99.1 |
2 |
9 |
80 |
3 |
0 |
91.4 |
2 |
10.5 |
87.6 |
3 |
4 |
101.6 |
2 |
10.5 |
83.8 |
3 |
1 |
94 |
2 |
11.25 |
89.5 |
3 |
4.5 |
102.9 |
2 |
11.25 |
89.5 |
3 |
1.5 |
95.3 |
3 |
0 |
91.4 |
3 |
5 |
104.1 |
3 |
0 |
87.6 |
3 |
2 |
96.5 |
3 |
0.75 |
93.3 |
3 |
6 |
106.7 |
3 |
1.75 |
91.4 |
3 |
3 |
99.1 |
3 |
1.5 |
95.3 |
3 |
7 |
109.2 |
3 |
3.5 |
95.9 |
3 |
4 |
101.6 |
3 |
2.5 |
97.8 |
3 |
8 |
111.8 |
3 |
5.5 |
100.3 |
3 |
5 |
104.1 |
3 |
3.25 |
99.7 |
3 |
9 |
114.3 |
3 |
7 |
105.4 |
3 |
6 |
106.7 |
3 |
4.25 |
102.2 |
3 |
10 |
116.8 |
3 |
8.75 |
109.2 |
3 |
7 |
109.2 |
3 |
5 |
104.1 |
3 |
11 |
119.4 |
3 |
10.5 |
113.7 |
3 |
7.75 |
111.1 |
3 |
6 |
106.7 |
4 |
0 |
121.9 |
4 |
1 |
118.1 |
3 |
8.75 |
113.7 |
3 |
7 |
109.2 |
4 |
1 |
124.5 |
4 |
2 |
124.5 |
3 |
9.5 |
115.6 |
3 |
8 |
111.8 |
4 |
2 |
127 |
4 |
3 |
127 |
3 |
11 |
119.4 |
3 |
8.75 |
113.7 |
4 |
3 |
129.5 |
4 |
4 |
129.5 |
4 |
0 |
121.9 |
3 |
9.5 |
115.6 |
4 |
4 |
132.1 |
4 |
5 |
132.1 |
4 |
1.5 |
125.7 |
3 |
10.75 |
118.7 |
4 |
5 |
134.6 |
4 |
6 |
134.6 |
4 |
2.5 |
128.3 |
4 |
0 |
121.9 |
4 |
6 |
137.2 |
4 |
7 |
137.2 |
4 |
4 |
132.1 |
4 |
1 |
124.5 |
4 |
7 |
139.7 |
4 |
8 |
139.7 |
4 |
5 |
134.6 |
4 |
2 |
127 |
4 |
8 |
142.2 |
4 |
9 |
142.2 |
4 |
6 |
137.2 |
4 |
3 |
129.5 |
4 |
9 |
144.8 |
4 |
10 |
144.8 |
4 |
7 |
139.7 |
4 |
4 |
132.1 |
4 |
10 |
147.3 |
4 |
11 |
147.3 |
4 |
8.25 |
142.9 |
4 |
5.25 |
135.3 |
4 |
11 |
149.9 |
5 |
0 |
149.9 |
4 |
9.5 |
146.1 |
4 |
6.5 |
138.4 |
5 |
0 |
152.4 |
5 |
0.75 |
152.4 |
4 |
10.5 |
148.6 |
4 |
7.5 |
141 |
5 |
1 |
154.9 |
5 |
1.5 |
154.3 |
4 |
11.5 |
151.1 |
4 |
8 |
142.2 |
5 |
2 |
157.5 |
5 |
2.25 |
156.2 |
5 |
0 |
152.4 |
4 |
8.75 |
144.1 |
5 |
3 |
160 |
5 |
3.5 |
158.1 |
5 |
0.5 |
153.7 |
4 |
9.5 |
146.1 |
5 |
4 |
162.6 |
5 |
4 |
161.3 |
5 |
1 |
154.9 |
4 |
10 |
147.3 |
5 |
5 |
165.1 |
5 |
4.5 |
162.6 |
5 |
1.75 |
156.8 |
4 |
10.5 |
148.6 |
5 |
6 |
167.6 |
5 |
5 |
163.8 |
5 |
2.5 |
158.8 |
4 |
11 |
149.9 |
5 |
7 |
170.2 |
5 |
5.75 |
165.1 |
5 |
3.5 |
161.3 |
4 |
11.35 |
150.7 |
5 |
8 |
172.7 |
5 |
6.5 |
167 |
5 |
4 |
162.6 |
5 |
0.5 |
153.7 |
5 |
9 |
175.3 |
5 |
7.25 |
168.9 |
5 |
4.5 |
163.8 |
5 |
1 |
154.9 |
5 |
10 |
177.8 |
5 |
8 |
170.8 |
5 |
5 |
165.1 |
5 |
1.75 |
156.8 |
5 |
11 |
180.3 |
4 |
11 |
172.7 |
5 |
5.5 |
166.4 |
5 |
2.5 |
158.8 |
6 |
0 |
182.9 |
5 |
10.5 |
149.9 |
5 |
6 |
167.6 |
5 |
3 |
160 |
6 |
1 |
185.4 |
5 |
11.75 |
179.1 |
5 |
7 |
170.2 |
5 |
4 |
162.6 |
6 |
2 |
188 |
6 |
0.5 |
182.2 |
5 |
8 |
172.7 |
5 |
4.75 |
164.5 |
6 |
3 |
190.5 |
6 |
1.75 |
184.2 |
5 |
8.5 |
174 |
5 |
5.25 |
165.7 |
6 |
4 |
193 |
6 |
2 |
187.3 |
5 |
9.25 |
175.9 |
5 |
6 |
167.6 |
6 |
5 |
195.6 |
6 |
2.5 |
188 |
5 |
10 |
177.8 |
5 |
6.75 |
169.5 |
6 |
6 |
198.1 |
6 |
3 |
189.2 |
5 |
11 |
180.3 |
5 |
7 |
170.2 |
6 |
7 |
200.7 |
6 |
3.5 |
190.5 |
6 |
0 |
182.9 |
5 |
7.75 |
172.1 |
6 |
8 |
203.2 |
6 |
4 |
191.8 |
6 |
0.5 |
184.2 |
5 |
8.5 |
174 |
6 |
9 |
205.7 |
6 |
4.5 |
193 |
6 |
1.5 |
186.7 |
5 |
9.5 |
176.5 |
6 |
10 |
208.3 |
6 |
5 |
194.3 |
6 |
2.5 |
189.2 |
5 |
10 |
177.8 |
6 |
11 |
210.8 |
6 |
5.5 |
195.6 |
6 |
3.25 |
191.1 |
5 |
11 |
180.3 |
7 |
0 |
213.4 |
6 |
6 |
196.9 |
6 |
4 |
193 |
6 |
0 |
182.9 |
I realize it can be hard to see exactly what’s going on – the human mind doesn’t do well at assessing columns of numbers without analytic tools being employed. One such tool is graphical analysis, and so here’s one (with a couple of minor mistakes) that I prepared earlier:
This not only factors in nutritional effects, it incorporates nutritional requirements (higher for those with height) and social attitudes (it also takes into account that we’re operating in a heroic environment, in which people are bigger and better; for ‘real world’ numbers, lop another 4.5 inches off). Because of these additional factors, the ratios change a number of times as heights increase.
So, with a comparative yardstick, let’s begin.
First, cargo capacity depends on two factors – volume and buoyancy. Volume is length × width × depth × shape factor. If the shape and proportions of the vessel are unchanged (at least for the moment), then the shape factors will cancel out, and everything will be adjusted proportional to the Height of the non-human species, proportionate to a 6′ modern human – i.e. a 5’10.5″ human (70.5″, 149.9 cm but I would use 150 for convenience).
EG: Let’s do a Halfling-scale merchantman. Length is usually 175 feet, Wt 230 long tons, cargo capacity 120 short tons, crew of 16-125, 20 cannon. 3 Masts, Turn 5, Speed 3, Draft Deep.
Halflings are about 3′ tall, so we need to reduce the height of our vessel to 91.4/150 = 0.60933 = 60.933% of normal. But our stats don’t mention height, or width for that matter; only the product of those – volume, and even that is implied only by assuming that the density of cargo and wood are the same.
If we’re going to reduce things proportionately, we need to multiply those values by the cube of our ratio – once for length, once for width, and once for depth.
★ 175 ft long × 0.60933 = 106.633 ft.
★ 230 long tons × 0.60933^3 = 230 × 0.2262376 = 52.034648 long tons.
★ Cargo capacity = 120 × 0.60933&3 = 120 × 0.2262376 = 27.1485 short tons.
# Cannon is a function of length, and has to be an even number.
# of Masts is also a function of length, but rounds down to any whole number, and has a minimum of 1. But you can round up if the answer is reasonably close to a whole number.
★ Canon: 20 × 0.60933 = 12.1866, rounds down to 12.
★ Masts: 3 × 0.60933 = 1.82799; close enough, call it 2.
The crew have to be able to work. If the shoulder width relative to the height is the same as human, there’s no problem – but if the crew are slender, or broad-shouldered, that will affect both the horizontal dimensions of the vessel.
Halflings are often compared to human children, and children grow vertically a LOT more than they do horizontally.
8 year old boys average 50-52 inches in height (127-132 cm)*; our Halflings are 91.4cm tall max. Too much, let’s try lopping off the years one at a time.
* Determined by asking Google for the “proportions of an 8-year-old boy”.
7 year old boys range from 45-53 inches in height (114-135 cm). Still too tall.
6 year old boys run from 43-50 inches with an average of 46 inches (117 cm). Still too big.
5-year-olds are typically 110-115 cm tall (3′ 9″) – still too big.
4-year-olds typically range from 37.5 and 43 inches – getting close but not quite there yet!
At 3 years old, the average human male height is 37.5 inches, about an inch-and-a-half too tall.
BUT WAIT: Those are all for children exposed to modern nutrition. We need to boost our 36-inch height to get a correct comparison!
★ 36 × 183 / 150 = 43.92 = 44 inches (3′ 8″ or 118.8cm).
Bang! Right away we’re back with 6-year-old boys.
Chest sizes for a 6-year-old are 23-24″ and waists are around 21″ – but we’re talking Halflings, so let’s set the latter to 25″.
★ 23.5 × 72 (adult height) / 46 (3-year-old height) = 36.78″.
★ 25 × 72 / 46 = 39.13″
Human Adult shoulders are an average of 18″ but anything from 15.8 to 20.9 is normal.
★ 39.13 / 18 = × 2.174 – so our Halflings are more than twice the size of a scaled human.
We need to apply that factor to length and breadth, and the square of it (4.726276) to anything ‘three-dimensional”: Or we can reduce the maximum number of crew by this number to make room for them. That seems the more sensible answer, so:
★ Max Crew = 125 / 2.174 = 57.5 – round up to 58.
It might be that the ship Needs fewer crew, anyway. To find out, we need to scale the average human Lift by our original Halfling Factor and compare it to the average Halfling Lift value. We can absorb up to a × 2.174 ratio; beyond that, we either make the ship bigger (to take maximum advantage of the crew strength) or we have to again cut crew numbers. The danger of the latter is that we can’t let the number drop below the minimum of 16 indicated for operating this class of vessel.
★ Average Human Strength = 10, giving lift (maximum load) of 2 × 100 lb = 200 lb.
★ Average Halfling Strength = 8, giving lift (maximum load) of 2 × 80 lb = 160 lb.
★ 200 / 160 = × 1.25.
That’s no problem; in fact, it’s reasonable to reduce the minimum number of crew by this factor.
★ 16 / 1.25 = 12.8, round up to 13.
★ Total crew: 13-58.
Masts, Weight, Length, Cargo, Crew. That sequence is important.
Using the ship tables, we need to find the vessel that most accurately matches our modified vessel, in that sequence. That in turn will give us speed, turn, and draft.
In this case, our needs are 2 masts, 52 long tons, 107 feet, 27 tons cargo, and 13-58 crew. Obviously, we’re going to be looking on the first table, and probably toward the top. Or are we?
Looking for a Masts match, I find:
Small Schooner = Masts 2.
Medium Schooner = Masts 2.
Medium Barque = Masts 2.
Small Cargo Fluyt = Masts 2.
Medium Cargo Fluyt = Masts 2.
Small Brigantine = Masts 2.
Medium Brigantine = Masts 2.
Large Brigantine = Masts 2.
So that’s my short list.
Vessel Weight of 52 eliminates most of these. I’m left with:
Small Schooner 160 lt
Small Barque 160 lt
Small Fluyt 160 lt
Small Brigantine 50 lt
I need search no further; it’s clear that the Halfling Merchantman will most closely resemble the Small Brigantine, in fact it’s not even close. Our length is twice that of the normal small Brigantine, so we’re going to be half as wide – and that shape is better at cutting through water, so we can add one to the Speed. All of which gives us:
★ Turn 4, Speed 6. Medium Draft
…compared to our staring values of Turn 5, Speed 4, Deep Draft. So the Halfling vessel is a little more maneuverable, a lot faster, and can operate in shallower waters.
4.8.6 Mixed Crews
There are multiple ways of handling this, but the best one is to ask, “who was this vessel designed for?”
If it’s a Frost Giant ship being crewed by humans, scale it up for frost giants. Next, look at the most common crew, or the closest to Frost Giants in size and strength (if you need to break ties). Work the numbers based on the abilities of that race relative to Frost Giants.
Then look at anyone not already accounted for. If they are larger / stronger than the reference race, they count as multiple ‘people’ for the purposes of crew requirements. If smaller, they count as a fraction of a crew for that purpose.
Which brings me to the end of this post, and the beginning of the next, which should finally bring this chapter of “Trade In Fantasy” to a close.