A neat little package of Proficiencies for a “trained oarsman”, which has already come up in my naval PbP game. Endurance, Labour (oarsman) and Seasoned Voyager (which is an Adventuring analogue for experience at sea, making camps on beaches etc). That leaves a Normal Man who is a trained oarsman with one free General Proficiency slot for personalisation.
Some thoughts on areas I need to work on (both for people to see and for me to have a written reminder I can check up on):
-
I need to drop shp for ships in the next draft. I had missed the development post on structures (including ships) generally having 1 shp per ton. I had instead taken the core book values for galleys and fitted them to a formula curve based on tonnages I had for similar vessels. The formula was elegant, it worked within the limits of what was previously published…and it’s totally broken with larger ships. I tested it on Ptolemy’s “forty” mentioned above, and each hull would have had over 14,000 shp, which is just a wee smidgen higher than I want anything to have.
-
Tying into 1, I need to go back and recalculate tonnages. I was using numbers from the Actium article, but the more I read of experimental archaeology and more scholarly works, the less I like the numbers from the article. I like the light/normal/heavy, aphract/cataphract, and multi-bank/single-bank splits, but need to figure how those would affect the size of the ship. I’ve gotten decent information on how to figure the length and width of ships based on the number of rowers, so that will help.
-
I also need to figure how many soldiers can actually fit on a ship. I have some data points (Greek aphract triremes carried 14 marines, while cataphracts carried 40, and Roman cataphract quinqueremes carried 120).
-
Tying into 3, I need to figure how engines of war replace soldiers. Again, I have a data point that a Roman cataphract quinquerene with a specific artillery load carried only 40 marines instead of 120.
-
I need to finish up the sailing rules. Included in this will be small tweaks to the wind charts, which will affect sailing speed and potentially damage ships at high winds.
-
I want to change cargo capacities to stone, to make them mesh better with how weights are measured in ACKS. This should also make it easier to figure how much is left over after adding crew and equipment.
-
I want to add rules reflecting that war galleys typically didn’t carry masts in battle, and you really didn’t want to ram with a mast standing. This will involve rules for stepping or unstepping a mast, carrying an unstepped mast, and variants for the hemiolia/trihemiolia, which were much quicker to unstep the mast.
-
Speaking of ramming, I want to tweak it so that different ships do different ramming damage. A bireme/liburnian just isn’t going to do the same damage as an enneres/deceres. Also, rules for shearing oars need to be worked out. I have an idea for this, but haven’t fully worked it out yet.
-
I’m not totally happy with my speed chart. It works, but it’s more bookkeeping than I like.
The Dark - I’ll be very interested to see where your historical research leads you. The ACKS ship statistics were, partly, “legacy” statistics inherited from earlier iterations of D&D, so you might find that a deeper dive into history leads to needed corrections.
One area I spotted early on was how absurdly small the tonnages of cargo carried by B/X D&D ships were relative to their size. But the fact that those cargo sizes were so off suggests there might be other data flaws.
The best information I’ve found so far on cargo ships came from Lionel Casson’s dissertation, which was published by Yale. He used references from Greek and Roman sources to extrapolate information on merchant galleys. One of the vaguer ones is the lembas, which was a 50-oar galley that carried 25 tons of cargo.
However, far more detailed was the curcuros. This was a broad range of ships, which (according to source material) varied from around 9,000 to 18,000 artabs. From other sources, it is known that 40 artabs equal a modern ton (so these ships ranged from 225 to 450 tons burden, or around 375 to 750 tons displacement). It’s also known that a cubic cubit was considered to be 3 3/8 artabs, and that 10 cubic cubits is 1 cubic meter. Casson knew that merchant galleys had a beam:length ratio of about 6:1 (compared to 10:1 for war galleys), and that merchant galleys had their maximum beam for about 70% of their length, and that they had around a 2 meter depth of hold. Based on this, he estimated the size of a 750 displacement ton curcuros at 50 meters long and 7.7 meters maximum beam.
I’m still waiting for an opportunity to examine The Archaeology of the Roman Economy, which I am hoping will help further with developing non-warships. Honestly, though, the developments were so relatively minor from Greek to Medieval times (compared to the massive changes wrought by gunpowder and the need for gunports), that most sailing ships at this level of granularity have no distinguishing characteristics by era.
Also, there is a 10 that I forgot - ideas for nonhuman ships. This is partially done.
#1 (ship hull points) is done. #8 (ramming and shearing) is done (shearing can be a captain’s choice of attack or a random critical). #5 (sailing) is mostly done. #6 (using stone) is just a math change, and I have started recording things in stone rather than pounds or tons, using a 10 pounds to 1 stone ratio (or 200 stone to 1 ton when working with larger numbers). I think I will just live with #9 (the speed chart) unless I get some sudden spark of inspiration. It is mildly clunky on the bookkeeping side, but it works well enough as a unified mechanic that I don’t have a better replacement.
#2 (ship tonnages) I need to sit down and work math on; I was traveling for work last week, and didn’t have a chance to do any reading or number crunching. This goes likewise for #3 (number of marines that can comfortable fit on deck). #4 (siege engines on deck) may need to wait for D@W’s release, since I’ll want to utilize that information as best as possible.
#7 (masts) I will possibly get to this weekend. I’m still mulling over ideas.
#10 (ships for other races) has a tiny bit of work done so far. There’s a special piece of equipment for elves, and a type of ship for dwarves. Both are based on actual historical nautical things, but ones which I believe are unusual enough to work well for nonhumans.
Just a post to say I’m looking forward to seeing how these turn out.
I have a few questions for the peanut gall…I mean crowdsourcing participants.
-
Does anyone have any good fiction references for ships? I’m keeping a bibliographic list, and currently it’s entirely non-fiction - useful for research, but unbalanced. I’m aware of (though I haven’t read) the Aubrey/Maturin and Hornblower series, but there seems to be very little fiction predating the Age of Sail that focuses on naval travel or combat. I suppose I could include the first few novels of David Weber’s Safehold series, since up until Like A Mighty Army it’s heavily naval-based, with the technology being late Renaissance to Elizabethan up through A Mighty Fortress.
-
Are there any particular cultural parallels that people see with the nonhuman species (i.e. elves, dwarves, gnomes, Thalassians, orcs, goblins, etc) that would allow me to focus on making their ships a certain way? I already have ideas for dwarves, and I have a really nice reference work I want to incorporate into another species’ ship types (although I may have to really file off the serial numbers to avoid the appearance of Unfortunate Implications). However, if people say “oh, I see goblins as being similar to X,” then I can try to make their ships fit in with what X culture made.
Hm. Finding:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6239462-ship-of-rome
from this thread on GoodReads, there’s not much else going on for ancient references however.
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/791866-historical-naval-nautical-fiction
For the first one, both of Christian Cameron's series, The Long War and Tyrant have a lot of ancient Greek historical naval stuff in them.
Actual! New! Rules!
Crew quality: As with armies, historical writings on navies focus on the captains and the admirals, but it is the quality of the crew that is vital, yet overlooked. Well-trained rowers are better able to maintain their rhythm and are more efficient with their stroke. Well-trained sailors can read the wind and adjust sails to better take advantage of the varying zephyrs.
Green crew: A green crew can be gathered anywhere, whether it’s on a coast or not. These can be bored farmboys, down-on-their-luck mercenaries, or just people too drunk to avoid the press gang. These are the same sort of folks that become spear-carriers in armies, and are paid 3 gp per month. Ships with green crews suffer a 1 point penalty to initiative, morale, and turn rate. Green crew members have the same availability as light infantry in any city.
Average crew: An average crew is made up of people who are familiar with living on water. They include fishermen and ferrymen, as well as formerly green crew that have survived a voyage or two. They are competent to run a ship with minimal oversight. They are paid 6 gp per month, and a ship with an average crew has no modifier to its stats. Average crew have the same availability as light infantry in coastal cities or heavy infantry in inland cities.
Veteran crew: A veteran crew has been on the water their entire life or been heavily trained for their job. They’ve often served on multiple ship types, or at least multiple ships, and have either sailed widely across the known world or served in at least one military campaign. Veteran crew are paid 9 gp per month, and a ship with a veteran crew gets a 1 point bonus to initiative, morale, and turn rate. Veteran crew members have the same availability as medium cavalry in coastal cities and heavy cavalry in inland cities.
Elite crew: An elite crew cannot be hired. This is a veteran crew that has served on a particular ship for at least six months and in at least one battle. An elite crew, like a veteran crew, is paid 9 gp per month, and gets an additional 1 point bonus to morale.
Hiring and improving a crew: A crew hired on to a ship has the same rating as the majority of its members, and is paid accordingly. Thus, a sailing ship that hires 4 green, 2 average, and 3 veteran crew is considered to have a green crew, and pays them accordingly (and suffers the penalties for a green crew). A green crew becomes average after one month of active travel (time in port does not count). An average crew becomes veteran after three months of active travel, and a veteran crew becomes elite after another six months of active travel.
Replacing crew: As long as at least 50% of the crew remains intact, the crew’s rating does not change. If less than half the original crew constitutes the new crew, treat it as a new hiring, counting the existing crew as their current rating. If a ship with 5 surviving Veteran crew hires 6 Green crew, 3 Average crew, and 2 Veteran crew, it now has 6 Green crew, 3 Average crew, and 7 Veteran crew, and still counts as a Veteran crew.
Awesome stuff!
Traditionally sailors were paid more than oarsmen. Indeed oarsmen were paid different amounts depending on where they sat - those at the bottom were paid the least.
I had an exchange, ironically, with Christian Cameron on his fora about ships. Apparently as far as ancient naval vessels go, research is really rather thin, and what we have is quite old (predating the reconstruction of the Olympias, for example).
Yes, I’ve been running into that. Quite a bit of what I’ve been reading are the books that were written by the Olympias builders as they were working on the ship. I also found a copy of Lionel Casson’s “Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World,” which is amazing (although very mildly outdated by newer research). My other major source so far for ancient ships is William Murray’s new book, “The Age of Titans,” which was published in 2012.
I’m looking a bit further forward, also, since I have Osprey books on the Tudor navy of Henry and Elizabeth, and the local libraries have extremely good works on the Grande y Felicísima Armada by people who dove the wrecks for archaeology. The books I’ve currently been unable to find are the ones by G. R. G. Worcester on Chinese ships (Junks and Sampans of the Upper Yangtze, Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze, and Chinese War-Junk).
I did find a Vietnam War-era American assessment of Vietnamese sampans, which I’m slowly reading through, since many of them were still built in traditional fashions.
I’ve also read a bit on Arab-Indian ships, but technical detail has so far been lacking.
If you’re willing to go as far forward as the Tudor navy, there’s a book on the Venetian shipyards: “The art and archaeology of Venetian ships and boats”, 2001.
Cool!
What about allowing Veterans to have reached level 1 (via the gain of 100XP, or the 1 month timeframe)? The pay for a “normal man” specialist sailor is 6GP/mo (matching your average crew) and the veteran status would add 12GP to that (D@W:C, pg 12, probably elsewhere as well) for a total of 18GP. (it also matches Light Infantry, which plain sailors are well matched to)
Veterans occur at a rate of 25% amongst human mercenaries, so that also subsumes any availability-per-market changes.
That does double the costs for veterans, however, it makes them a lot more effective in combat.
It does make them a lot more effective in combat, but that’s a very dangerous temptation. While oarsmen can fight (and indeed there’s evidence Athenian “skirmishers” were often armed rowers), you are risking the motive power of your vessel every time you use them in combat. Plus they’ll be even more tired than they would be from rowing if they’ve been fighting.
I’m just saying it’s something to be careful about, routinely using your oarsmen as infantry can significantly increase your crew turnover.
As with so many things about ancient times, pay depends on when precisely we’re looking at. Thucydides mentions that all of the sailors received 3 obols per day (8.45.2), while during the blockade/siege of Poteideia, pay was increased to 1 drachma per day for sailors and 2 per day for hoplites (who had an unpaid servant with them) (3.17.4). During the Quadruple Alliance of 420 BCE, the four allied states stipulated by treaty that the pay for a hoplite, sailor/oarsman, or toxotai was 3 obols per day, while a horseman would receive 6 obols. This suggests (to me, at least), that the 3/6 obol level was for domestic service, while the 1/2 drachma level was for expeditions away from the city (a sort of hazard pay, or, if you will, the difference between garrison forces and expeditionary forces). Individual captains might offer more to get better thranites, but Thuc. 6.31 states it was the captain’s decision: “The fleet had been elaborately equipped at great cost to the captains and the state; the treasury giving a drachma a day to each seaman…while the captains gave a bounty in addition to the pay from the treasury to the thranitae and crews generally…”
Roman sailors in the Imperial era were paid roughly the same as auxilia, or about 5/6 of a legionary’s pay. To the best of my knowledge, there’s no evidence of the pay varying, except for some of the immunes (like doctors or carpenters). That said, I haven’t looked that much at the Roman era yet, so it’s possible there are sources that I haven’t encountered yet.
One thing I am adding in now are some true Seaworthiness rules. I had originally left them out because my experience with them in 2e’s Of Ships and the Sea was that the numbers seemed rather arbitrary, and were not necessarily good indicators of the actual seaworthiness of the ship. I’m also working on abstracting ship construction so that it doesn’t require multiple spreadsheets to make a ship.
I just got a copy of Casson’s book from my local library. It’s thinner than I was expecting, but I’m looking forward to digging in.
If it’s slim, it’s probably “Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times” from University of Texas Press, which is 160 pages. “Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World” from Johns Hopkins University Press is 592 pages.