#dnd sailing

[snejkha]

Seafaring seagoblins//

Styx the Quartermaster (belongs to me) & Barbarossa (Barbie for short) the Captain who belongs to @chaotier //

(their og designs were made by Typue_kartinki on twitter)

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do you have any recommendations for games with fantasy pirates and tactical combat? I've really been enjoying running Pirate Borg, but I'm missing my crunchy strategy mini games. Thanks for everything you do for the community!

Theme: Tactical Pirate Fantasy

Hello friend, so by ‘tactical’ my best guess as to what you’re looking for is games that provide your characters with multiple options when it comes to resolving conflicts, with some options being better than others. This may or may not include maps in combat, but I think it might also include environmental considerations, buffs or de-buffs for using specific pieces of gear, and accounting for range or position when firing a gun.

However, really tactical games are much harder for me to find, probably because there’s so much math that goes into them. I did my best to give you a range of options, but I’m not entirely sure how well any one of these pirate games match your definition of ‘tactical’.

Bilge Rats, by Games by Cass.

Take to The Sea of Mischief and gamble your life away on high seas adventures as ratfolk pirates. Chase buried treasure, hunt wannabe pirate lords, and engage in some all together unsavoury action in Bilge Rats: A Sea of Mischief. This 78 page guide has everything you need to get your adventures on The Sea of Mischief up and running--except for the d6 dice, cups, and pencils you're gonna need. So, dust off your tricorn caps, get your cutlass shined, and get ready to set sail!

Bilge Rats’ form of strategy is probably unlike what you think of when you think of a tactical game, but I think it’s interesting and worth taking a look at! The basic system is centred around a game called “Liar’s Dice”, which involves rolling, bluffing if you don’t succeed, and calling other’s bluffs. You roll a pool of d6’s, with the difficulty being determined by a) the minimum number to beat to be considered a success and b) the number of successes you need to do the thing. As a player you’ll have to decide when a roll is worth bluffing, and if you enter PVP, it’s also about determining when your opponent is bluffing - challenge someone when they’re right, and you’ll pay the cost!

That being said, I think the most tactical part of this game comes into play during naval battles. Your character type is called a “Duty”, which determines your role upon the ship, your order of initiative, and a number of skill values. You’ll also have to consider wind speed, wind direction, and the roughness of the waves every time you engage in combat on a boat, so making strategic choices to improve your odds is probably pretty important.

The Runed Age, by Stormforge Productions.

In a world where magic and technology have fused together, where the limits that man is capable of have been broken, where a man can destroy the world with a stroke of a pen, the poor starve and the rich prosper off the blood of innocence. A world that should be a utopia has been turned by greed and pride into a battlefield where the poor wage war in the shadows for the ambitions of the wealthy. You are one of these scoundrels, these rogues, these pirates who struggle for the sport of the rich to achieve the glory, the riches, the power to break your chains and surpass the limits of The Runed Age.

The Runed Age is built on the Sigil System, a robust d100 roll-under system that allows you to play as narratively or simulationist as you want. The d100 genre of systems is a tried a true roleplaying method, and what sets the Sigil System (and thus the Ruined Age) apart from the rest is its combat and wounds system, which reflects the stresses and rigours of combat on the body to make combat as realistic as possible. This means that every fight in the Runed Age is a gritty, epic and lethal struggle for survival where you need to be prepared to do your best just to outlive your opponent.

The Runed Age is saturated with magic, using Runes as a mechanic to write your own spells. The openness of the system means that players have a lot of control over what they do with their magic, but the game definitely rewards system mastery because every time you try to write a spell, you’ll have to consider fiddly bits like power, range, and control.

When it comes to rolling dice, the system is heavily inspired by Call of Cthulhu. One review I found for this game mentions a possibility for tactical play, so I’m assuming that combat is more survival than CoC. If you want magic to be a significant part of the game, you probably want to check out The Runed Age.

Blood & Thunder, by Black Flag Printing Press.

You are a cutthroat aboard a pirate ship, seeking the fortune and glory that awaits those strong enough to take it. Brave the waterways of Erda and get rich or die trying in this nautical piracy TTRPG.

Lethal combat meets reactive gameplay at the infantry scale. Board, capture, or sink enemy vessels with naval play. Boasting rules for three dimensional range-finding and movement, even a regular swim in the ocean can become a deadly hazard as you're ripped apart by sharks, sea monsters, or something far worse.

Blood & Thunder is definitely fantastical, just judging from the races that you can choose from. Like D&D, your character choices are pre-packaged with stat bonuses and special abilities, but unlike D&D, you us a d100 for most of your rolls. Difficulty levels range from 0-100, with a limit on what you can even attempt to do depending on how high your skill rating is. If you can roll, you’ll aim to roll under your max skill rating.

Character levelling is also strategic; you need to meet certain requirements to take specific careers. Combat is also pretty dependent on a grid map, which I interpret to mean that range and positioning are two factors that you’ll have to consider, as well as an action economy that ensures that you’ll have to make your moves count.

Pirates and Musketeers, by Andrezj Buhlak.

The 17th century was rich in interesting events, political intrigues, bloody wars, and sea voyages. This book is a gateway to this fascinating period of history. If "dry history" is not enough for you, you can spice it up with fantastic assumptions, including vampires, werewolves, sea monsters and ancient ruins.

Pirates and Musketeers uses the Year Zero engine, which provides you with a number of d6s to roll that come from your base traits, character skills, and character gear. You have the ability to “push” your roll should your initial effort fail, which you will likely do often, as only 6’s are considered a success. However, should you “push” (or “re-roll”) your roll, any 1’s that you roll will also inflict penalties, doing damage to a stat or your gear. This means that in many stages of game-play, players will be balancing how much they value success against how many consequences they’re willing to face.

Language-wise, I’m not really a big fan of the way the game uses the term “savages.” The time period in this game is at the strength of many colonial empires, and some of that definitely bleeds through, so pick up this game with caution.

Caraval Crew, by iotsov.

A low fantasy TTRPG that focuses on sailing ships.

Right now, as far as I can tell, Caravel Crew is untested, but it has a lot of pieces for you to pick up and fiddle with. Combat has a lot of different kinds of options for your characters to exploit, with different outcomes if you bash, stab, shoot, parry, grapple, etc. There’s different weapons that are useful for different skills, and getting new weapons costs gold - an important resource to track. You’ll have a number of resources that you’ll need to keep track of and monitor, including hit points and something called EP.

On top of that, there’s also social and survival rules, so if you want a game that gives you engaging combat while still giving thought to other parts of the game, maybe pick up Caraval Crew and take it for a test drive!

24XX Skeleton Crew, by Jonah Boyd.

Dead men DO tell tales… on the other side. Skeleton Crew takes place in the sailor’s purgatory, Davy Jones’ Locker. When one dies at sea, their soul is brought to the Locker for a vast voyage to judge their fate. Some sailors only spend a few days in the Locker, but many form swashbuckling crews to preserve their non-lives for weeks, months, or years before judgement calls.

24XX games are another approach to the OSR (the same house of game design that fuels Pirate Borg), but use different-sized dice to represent a larger skill. I think there’s still more chance than strategy here, but again, this is a game that you could probably pull things from and then put into another system if you’re looking flavour.

The few fiddly bits that do exist in this game are things like different kinds of ships and different toys to put onto the ship - two things that you might be able to tack onto a game that doesn’t currently think about them, and thus opening up more pieces to consider should you get into a fight. Your ship could also come with flaws - what happens if you get in a fire-fight with a ship that has misfiring cannons? How might that complicate the battlefield?

You can also combine this game with another similar 24XX game, such as 14XX Golden Age to broaden your character origins or give yourself a few extra rules toys to play with.

Islands of the Far Sea, by Kindred Spirits, and Lilliputian, by ManaDawn Tabletop Games.

Islands of the Far Sea is a pirate-themed hack of Chris McDowell's Into the Odd, taking place in the Islands of the Oddworld. Play as one of seven Failed Careers in your new days as a Treasure-Hunter!

Lilliputian: Adventure on the Open Seas is an adventure game about exploring the vast and expansive ocean,  filled with uncharted islands, hidden treasure, weird weather and unspeakable horrors. Character creation is fast, fun and random, classless, and relies on fictional advancement. It is based on Mausritter by Isaac Williams, Into The Odd by Chris McDowall and Cairn by Yochai Gal, as-well-as so many more.

Into the Odd and Mausritter use the same bones, and both of these game books acknowledge that inspiration, although Lilliputian also draws quite a bit from Cairn. I don’t consider either of these games to be tactical games - but what they do have is possibilities that can be imported into other games. The Failed Careers from Islands of the Far Sea are packaged skills and gear that you can give a character to start with. They will then have to figure out how to make their kit work for the problems they walk into.

Lilliputian also has specific rules for naval combat, as well as lots and lots of random tables. I think more than anything it communicates a specific vibe, but taking a little bit from one game and a little bit from another is one way to customize your experience - as well as give your players more options when trying to figure out how to tackle their next salty obstacle.

[gavamont]

A rafting wizard of chartreuse

One day found a quite novel use

He took his big staff

Tied sheets to the aft

And his sail filled with wind, never loose

[doomngloomartist]

Adrik Ungart, the dwarf sea captain of the Fanged Harpy.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Dungeon: The Narrow Out

Looking to slip past the imperial naval blockades, you and your fellow strangers have paid for passage aboard a smuggler’s ship. Something's gone wrong however, you were supposed to meet at the mouth of the old sea cave but the person who was to be your guide hasn’t shown. With no hope of turning back, your only chance of escape is to press onwards into the dark.

This adventure starter is intended as an intro for a group of newer players and provides an introduction to a campaign full of mysteries, hidden motives, and nautical swashbuckling.  It lets you get a group of unrelated characters together, give them a starting point to begin constructing their backstories (why they need to leave the land under blockade), and familiarize them with the game’s mechanics (whichever that game might be) before sending them out into the world for larger adventures. 

Challenges & Complications

After some brief introductions at the mouth of the cave (perhaps asking how everyone is dealing with the chill of the evening, and the stress of trying to slip past the military blockade), you can send the party into the mouth of the cave with the shared understanding that their contact is long overdue. Finding their way through the caves is essential to them obtaining their freedom, but solving the mystery of what happened to their contact will prevent the same from falling into a similar fate. 

The initial leg of the journey through the cave is full of darkness, dead ends, and the usual denizens of any low level dungeon. The idea here is to teach your party the basics of game mechanics ( combat, skill challenges etc) before they get into exploration proper. These early tunnels are little more than various natural caves that the smugglers use as a buffer between their hideout and the outside world, sometimes creating false trails that lead would be interlopers into traps. 

The interior of the smuggler’s lair is an old fortress built into the walls of the cave itself, a secret dock constructed during the Grey Duke’s Revolution (or whichever conflict fits your campaign backstory)  and lost in the subsequent shift of power.  Since then it’s become a place for the smugglers to store their ill gotten good while blocking off several sections for being too dangerous to utilize, which just may prove to have unclaimed valuables. 

The smuggler’s ship, the Singing Eel is awaiting the party at the dock, all decked out and ready to sail but with no one apparently on board.  It’s an eerie sight, made all the eerier by the discovery that several of the innocuous statues stashed away in the cargo hold are in fact former members of the crew, victims of the flock of cockatrices the smugglers were transporting at a noble’s behest who managed to escape their cages and now lurk in the ship. 

While the party’s contact is stone dead, the rest of the crew is hold up in one of the old fortifications, ordered to hide by their all too cautious captain who’s scared of the beasts attacking.  The cockatrices haven’t left yet because one of their number, the lone rare female is still stuck in her cage, kept alive by the males foraging for her and passing food. The smugglers are on the edge of mutiny, some want to bolt, some want to try and fight, some want to recover their deadly cargo for the rich payout they were promised, and the party can have a strong impact depending on which side they talk up. Alternatively, if enough of the party are proficient in sailing, the thought might occur to them to cut the smugglers out of the deal entirely and take the ship and/or the surviving cockatrices for themselves and risk the blockade. 

While they’re exploring the old dock ruins, the party can come across a number of documents which might include maps of the dungeon, clues to hidden treasure, backstory on the cockatrices, blackmail information on the crew, as well as a hint of treasure in the location they’re headed off to. 

Art 1

Art 2

[tellusd20]

Appropriately enough for the recent HMS Terror posts that I've reblogged, I've spent the past few weeks slowly completing this map of the ill-fated ship. HMS Terror is underway through a sea of ice and slush, exploring the distant periphery of the known world. What dangers may her crew encounter?

Grid variants of the top two layers (overhead view and upper deck) are available for free on my Patreon in Roll20's preferred 70 DPI resolution. Subscribers have access to the full map (four decks + overhead view) in day/night + grid/gridless variants in PNG and VTT formats.

[mediacircuspod]

Y’all are literally so insane. The “I need to fix my car/holiday sale” for 20% is actually going strong and I might be able to fix my car BEFORE the new year, which I thought would be for sure not happening. Y’all are insane and wonderful and I’m so relieved to be a part of so many fantastic communities. Here’s a small reminder of everything I have in my shop for new guests!!!

Pins!

Stickers!!

Prints!

Tumblr only lets me post 10 images so believe me when I say I have MUCH MORE!!!!

https://frogprincearts.etsy.com

[danidrawsstuff]

🥳 🎉First post of 2025!! 🎉🥳

I'm still in DND brainrot and I wanted to try making a comic using the webtoon format so here's a little tidbit of my current's party first met before they all set off for Phandalin! Comic under the cut so we don't end up with a "Do you love the color of the sky" moment lmaooo

[mercenariespod]

she flint on my silver til i send him to a farm upstate

[2minutetabletop]

Genthrix’s Port

A port for all - pirates & sailors bold, even navy's fleets of gold. But bring the wizard's rightful share, or set sail elsewhere, if ye dare. 🏴‍☠️

→ Read it here!

[six-improbable-things]

I had to open the ship combat rules doc I made for Rook's campaign the other day, and man, that thing was (and still is tbh) my fucking magnum opus. I put so much effort into creating rules for a type of combat that dnd doesn't naturally support, and it was SUCH a fun challenge. I'll admit it's not perfect, but it works for our campaign, and everyone seemed to like it during our one test so far, so that's good enough for me.

I think between the stat blocks, the rules themselves, and the maps of the ships, I spent easily 48 hours total on making this sailing arc happen. (No, I'm not the DM, I just like homebrewing shit, and also happen to be the one who decided to play a pirate and make that involved in the story.)

[bowelfly]

Ahab the kuo-toa, for @iguanodont

[morgandarcyarts]

Their love language is healing each other and nature 💚

And a bit of raw bear *ex ofc, just to make the others feel uncomfortable.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Dare: Oh what do we do with a drunken Sailor~

The party are just about to ship off to their next adventure, whether it be into uncharted waters, a port full of opportunity, or some foreboding isle full of danger. The only problem is that the ship's navigator seems to have gone on a bit of a bender and is now lost somewhere in the port, drunk as a fish. With the crew's assistance the party will need to find him if they want to set out before missing the tides.. but as it turns out finding one surly sailor among a town full of them is only the start of the party's problems.

Challenges & Complications:

The crew won't leave without their navigator, no matter how much the party press, as practicality and seaborn superstition says it's bad luck to trust a stranger for your directions. Besides, the navigator took the ship's charts and you can't replace those on short order.

Eventually the navigator is found, charts nowhere to be seen. The man is incoherent resting somewhere in the twilight between blackout drunk and hungover, and can only mumble out a few half remembered snippet of the previous days. He lost the charts somewhere in the raukus chain of taverns, brothels, bathhouses, and gambling halls he's visited, and the party will need a bit of logic and investigation to figure out which.

As the party explore they realize they're being followed, the navigator ended up gravely insulting a dockside crimeboss somewhere along the way and now a number of ruthless toughs are coming the city looking to put a knife in the drunkard's guts and bleed him dry. They'll need to be cautious about where they step and what questions they ask, or they'll end up being chased through the streets dragging a grogsodden sailor behind them.

Artsource

[tellusd20]

This is possibly my most ambitious map yet; a light warship based on Royal Navy brigs of the Napoleonic period. She is armed with twelve cannons, measures 95 feet with a beam of 25 feet, and carries a crew of up to 101 officers and sailors. A warship of this size should be suitable for a nautical campaign, as its shallow draft would allow it to venture places that heavier vessels wouldn't dare, and it carries just enough firepower to be troublesome but not overwhelming. This map comes in five layers; overhead view with the fighting tops and lower sails, forecastle and quarterdeck, gun deck, berth deck (which comes in day and night configurations for meals and sleeping), and a cargo hold (not pictured). This map is available on my patreon in full size PNG and VTT, without watermark, in grid/gridless & night/day variants.

[ask-sail]

where and how does one acquire a pet rat

"Maybe you could prep a basket to trap 'em all under or something too? I wonder if Mibs would want more mice friends..."

[And so Sail was distracted for 1d4 hrs during his watch, whoops!]