Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Ships of the Inner Sea (PFRPG)

Announced! Cover image is a mockup and subject to change.

Is this going to reprint the Ship Combat rules from Skull and Shackles too?

Awesome! This will be coming out in plenty of time for the start-up of my Razor Coast campaign!

Is this going to reprint the Ship Combat rules from Skull and Shackles too?

It will not. It will, however, provide statistics for each ship to be used with those rules as part of the Skull & Shackles campaign.

I am both intrigued and wary.

Intrigued because this means more insight into naval elements and presumably the expansion on the ship combat rules in S&S.

Wary because as somebody who does have some interest in nautical stuff in reality, I worry that the authors won't and that the final rules (and representation of naval elements in PF) will come out looking like some unholy spawn of Davy Jones and a swarm of crabs. In which case I'd have to throw a lot of stuff out the window and create from scratch anyway.

I'm always up for more piratical/nautical stuff!

Please tell me one of them is a SPACESHIP.

Alexander Augunas wrote:

Is this going to reprint the Ship Combat rules from Skull and Shackles too?

It will not. It will, however, provide statistics for each ship to be used with those rules as part of the Skull & Shackles campaign.

Hm, that's going to have to make me re-evaluate whether or not I want this product or not. I don't own Skull and Shackles, so a book that gives ship statistics without context isn't much use to me.

Mark Moreland wrote:

Alexander Augunas wrote:

Is this going to reprint the Ship Combat rules from Skull and Shackles too?

It will not. It will, however, provide statistics for each ship to be used with those rules as part of the Skull & Shackles campaign.

Hm, that's going to have to make me re-evaluate whether or not I want this product or not. I don't own Skull and Shackles, so a book that gives ship statistics without context isn't much use to me.

Well, you're in luck then, because all those rules were printed in the Players Guide, which you can download for free.

Really hope my S&S campaign hasn't started or hasn't gotten very far before this book comes out. Looks great.

I am both intrigued and wary.

Intrigued because this means more insight into naval elements and presumably the expansion on the ship combat rules in S&S.

Wary because as somebody who does have some interest in nautical stuff in reality, I worry that the authors won't and that the final rules (and representation of naval elements in PF) will come out looking like some unholy spawn of Davy Jones and a swarm of crabs. In which case I'd have to throw a lot of stuff out the window and create from scratch anyway.

Well I know for sure at least one of the authors is in the US Navy, so I expect he might know something. :)

Interesting but weird that an AP that came out a while ago is getting some love lately.

Not when you consider that the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game version of that AP is just about to hit the shelves.

I'll be getting this one for a number of reasons, not least of which it seems to be flaming near impossible to get any information on pre-gunpowder ships aside from things like drakkar and classic-era galleys.

Can we please make this work with the ships' decks maps?

Interesting but weird that an AP that came out a while ago is getting some love lately.

Plunder and Peril is the next module in the quarterly module line, though, so it makes sense to come out with a book that relates to that theme. (Sorta like Dragonslayer's Handbook and Dragons Unleashed coming out close in time to Dragon's Demand. Although of course Dragon's Unleashed isnt' directly useful for the module, it's thematically related.)

Anyone else feel like some of these products are revenue filler products like what Wizards started doing near the end of 3.5?

Can we please make this work with the ships' decks maps?

Each of the ships in this book will have a new map, but there's no reason you couldn't use existing maps to represent them in your game. You'd just need to adjust some of the details of the ships' inhabitants, traps, treasures, and so forth to accommodate the maps you use.

Ooooh can't wait to see this one :D

Me, either! ;)

Will this use the naval combat rules from Fire As She Bears?

Will this use the naval combat rules from Fire As She Bears?

Since they said: "The perfect companion to the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path and Pathfinder Module: Plunder & Peril, Ships of the Inner Sea presents seven unique sailing vessels" I am guessing not.

Yay, I LOVE ships! Can't wait.

I still remember buying an airship in a campaign and named it The Lying Bastard.

Hopefully this book will cover the sea trade routes and ocean currents on Golarion. Silks from Tian Xia, nutmeg and mace from Minata, black tea, cinammon, and black pepper from Vudra, frankincense and myrrh from the nations of the Obari Ocean, sugar from Sargava, cocoa, coffee, gold, and slaves from Arcadia?

Cocoa, coffee, gold, and slaves do not come solely from Arcadia. Trying to do a comparison of Earth trade routes and luxury goods to Golarion's isn't going to line up perfectly.

Sorry if I come off as nitpicking, but i sorta hope they did their homework. The mistakes that authors and game publishers have made over the years are numerous (particularly in the artwork). Just because its built of wood and has sails doesn't mean it fits.

Ships from 900 BC to 1660 AD are certainly the kinds you can find on Golarion. Basically, anything you’d see sailing from Ancient Greece, to part of the Renaissance; the galley, galleass, longship, cog, caravel, carrack certainly work. But ships, especially warships, like those that appeared from the late 1600s to the 1800s don't fit. The Sloop, Brig, Brigantine, Frigate, Schooner, Cutter, Clipper, Windjammer and the famous "ship-of-the-line," don't work.

I know it's all fantasy, but I guess if you know enough about a certain thing, it gets harder to look past stuff.

Sorry if I come off as nitpicking, but i sorta hope they did their homework. The mistakes that authors and game publishers have made over the years are numerous (particularly in the artwork). Just because its built of wood and has sails doesn't mean it fits.

Ships from 900 BC to 1660 AD are certainly the kinds you can find on Golarion. Basically, anything you’d see sailing from Ancient Greece, to part of the Renaissance; the galley, galleass, longship, cog, caravel, carrack certainly work. But ships, especially warships, like those that appeared from the late 1600s to the 1800s don't fit. The Sloop, Brig, Brigantine, Frigate, Schooner, Cutter, Clipper, Windjammer and the famous "ship-of-the-line," don't work.

I know it's all fantasy, but I guess if you know enough about a certain thing, it gets harder to look past stuff.

I'm pretty much sure that if a setting can have muskets, laser rifles, stasis chambers and cannons, it can have ships made of wood that look a little different from other ships made of wood.

Ships from 900 BC to 1660 AD are certainly the kinds you can find on Golarion. Basically, anything you’d see sailing from Ancient Greece, to part of the Renaissance; the galley, galleass, longship, cog, caravel, carrack certainly work. But ships, especially warships, like those that appeared from the late 1600s to the 1800s don't fit. The Sloop, Brig, Brigantine, Frigate, Schooner, Cutter, Clipper, Windjammer and the famous "ship-of-the-line," don't work.

We made a point of hiring as many authors for this book as we could that we knew had naval or nautical backgrounds. Two of them live or have lived on sailing ships, and one is an active duty naval officer. While neither of those achievements guarantees that the book will be acceptable to readers with a passion for nautical history, we have put in as much effort as we can to be historically and technically accurate with the book.

That said, our setting does have a number of the ships you listed as not working. The Stargazer from the novel Pirate's Honor is a brigantine, for example. While variations in technology and ship design may have occurred one way in our world, they evolved differently on Golarion. As such, we have all sorts of ships in the world, and work to remain consistent when we've said one place that a given ship is a frigate that it's always a frigate.

For one thing, with guns and cannon so uncommon that there's exactly one known ship that carries them, I'd expect, like DaemonAngel, that you wouldn't have ships that looked anything at all like that bunch. Their design evolved to carry a heavy load of cannon; Golarion's modern ships will not have. (I've been reading David Weber's Safehold novels. It's quite an education. ^.^ )

DaemonAngel wrote:

Ships from 900 BC to 1660 AD are certainly the kinds you can find on Golarion. Basically, anything you’d see sailing from Ancient Greece, to part of the Renaissance; the galley, galleass, longship, cog, caravel, carrack certainly work. But ships, especially warships, like those that appeared from the late 1600s to the 1800s don't fit. The Sloop, Brig, Brigantine, Frigate, Schooner, Cutter, Clipper, Windjammer and the famous "ship-of-the-line," don't work.

We made a point of hiring as many authors for this book as we could that we knew had naval or nautical backgrounds. Two of them live or have lived on sailing ships, and one is an active duty naval officer. While neither of those achievements guarantees that the book will be acceptable to readers with a passion for nautical history, we have put in as much effort as we can to be historically and technically accurate with the book.

That said, our setting does have a number of the ships you listed as not working. The Stargazer from the novel Pirate's Honor is a brigantine, for example. While variations in technology and ship design may have occurred one way in our world, they evolved differently on Golarion. As such, we have all sorts of ships in the world, and work to remain consistent when we've said one place that a given ship is a frigate that it's always a frigate.

Having authors/artist who are familiar with the subject is a great start. Also a brigantine is more of a type of mast/rigging so it's plausible it could have developed sooner than it did on Earth.

For one thing, with guns and cannon so uncommon that there's exactly one known ship that carries them, I'd expect, like DaemonAngel, that you wouldn't have ships that looked anything at all like that bunch. Their design evolved to carry a heavy load of cannon; Golarion's modern ships will not have. (I've been reading David Weber's Safehold novels. It's quite an education. ^.^ )

Basically, yes. The frigate (example: USS Constitution) and the ship-of-the-line (example: HMS Victory, a First Rater) wouldn't likely have evolved without the introduction of the cannon as the standard primary weapon. There's at lest a century of evolution between say the Mary Rose and the HMS Victory.

That all said, I'm certainly looking forward to this item.

Will there be any fantastic ships here? By which, I mean things that might not be possible in the real world (other than ghost ships, that is)?

As such, we have all sorts of ships in the world, and work to remain consistent when we've said one place that a given ship is a frigate that it's always a frigate.

Paizo has been willing to retcon material before. Don't be afraid to do so when, as here, the idea that frigates (as we know them) exist on Golarion is nonsense.

Paizo has been willing to retcon material before. Don't be afraid to do so when, as here, the idea that frigates (as we know them) exist on Golarion is nonsense.

Even in a pre-cannon world, there could be a role for a fast light ship, to avoid ramming and strafe foes with ballista or alchemical shot or to avoid combat spells like fireball by remaining out of (minimum 520 ft.) spell range.

You can be sure, anyone who survives a larger slower vessel getting it's decks cleared by a fireball is going to wish they were on a faster ship that could stay out of that spell range, while attempting to retaliate with their own options (perhaps ballista, although the range penalties would stack up quickly, perhaps their own spellcaster, with the Enlarge spell metamagic and magic missile dedicated to preventing anyone from fireballing his ship, perhaps even funkier options like alchemical 'mines' tossed overboard to discourage pursuit, or flying animals trained to drop alchemical fire on pursuers by the animal-handling Gozren on board).

And, arms races being arms races, the attackers are going to want smaller faster ships, to get their fireball-throwing mages (or ballista, or alchemist's fire-hurling catapults) in range of bigger slower enemy ships trying to evade them. (And both sides seeking out casters with feats to increase range, the best long-range spells and / or caster level bonuses to eke out that extra 40 ft. of range here and there.)

Swap out magic and alchemy for guns and cannons, and it's not unreasonable for the frigate design to have appeared earlier than it did on Earth.

It's a common fallacy to assume that Golarion – or, in fact, any fantasy world – corresponds to a certain time period of Earth. The basic tenets of the world are so different from earth that a comparison like this simply makes no sense.

A term like "earlier than on Earth" has no meaning in this context at all.

I wonder if we will ever get some more variety in "Sailing Ship" stats. I still can't wrap my head around what the thought was putting a Sloop and Carrack in the same state block (two ship that could easily vary by hundreds of tons).

Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:

Paizo has been willing to retcon material before. Don't be afraid to do so when, as here, the idea that frigates (as we know them) exist on Golarion is nonsense.

Even in a pre-cannon world, there could be a role for a fast light ship, to avoid ramming and strafe foes with ballista or alchemical shot or to avoid combat spells like fireball by remaining out of (minimum 520 ft.) spell range.

You can be sure, anyone who survives a larger slower vessel getting it's decks cleared by a fireball is going to wish they were on a faster ship that could stay out of that spell range, while attempting to retaliate with their own options (perhaps ballista, although the range penalties would stack up quickly, perhaps their own spellcaster, with the Enlarge spell metamagic and magic missile dedicated to preventing anyone from fireballing his ship, perhaps even funkier options like alchemical 'mines' tossed overboard to discourage pursuit, or flying animals trained to drop alchemical fire on pursuers by the animal-handling Gozren on board).

And, arms races being arms races, the attackers are going to want smaller faster ships, to get their fireball-throwing mages (or ballista, or alchemist's fire-hurling catapults) in range of bigger slower enemy ships trying to evade them. (And both sides seeking out casters with feats to increase range, the best long-range spells and / or caster level bonuses to eke out that extra 40 ft. of range here and there.)

Swap out magic and alchemy for guns and cannons, and it's not unreasonable for the frigate design to have appeared earlier than it did on Earth.

Not unreasonable at all. The English Man-o-Wars ran circles around the great Spanish galleons of the Armada. Wouldn't use the frigate though.

It's a common fallacy to assume that Golarion – or, in fact, any fantasy world – corresponds to a certain time period of Earth. The basic tenets of the world are so different from earth that a comparison like this simply makes no sense.

A term like "earlier than on Earth" has no meaning in this context at all.

Since Golarion's currently several thousand years past Earth in recorded history, 'earlier than on Earth' was meant in relation to the invention of cannons and their common use on ships, necessitating new ship designs. Which I should have bothered to type out, I guess.

The year '4712' in Golarion does not equal much of anything, relative to any specific year on Earth, obviously, but since the discussion was on the use of frigates to maximize use of (and defense against) cannon was the topic of discussion, I lazily assumed that would be obvious in context, since the entire point of the post was that magic messes with assumptions anyway.

Obviously, I explained that poorly. Too late to go back and edit it into something comprehensible, so, punt, I guess. :)

Mark Moreland wrote:

As such, we have all sorts of ships in the world, and work to remain consistent when we've said one place that a given ship is a frigate that it's always a frigate.

Paizo has been willing to retcon material before. Don't be afraid to do so when, as here, the idea that frigates (as we know them) exist on Golarion is nonsense.

Old people flinging balls of fire from their fingertips at flying, ice breathing lizards is also nonsense, but we get along with that just fine ;)

Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:

Mark Moreland wrote:

As such, we have all sorts of ships in the world, and work to remain consistent when we've said one place that a given ship is a frigate that it's always a frigate.

Paizo has been willing to retcon material before. Don't be afraid to do so when, as here, the idea that frigates (as we know them) exist on Golarion is nonsense.

Old people flinging balls of fire from their fingertips at flying, ice breathing lizards is also nonsense, but we get along with that just fine ;)

The thing is, the suspension of disbelief breaks down when people in the game world do not behave socially or intellectually the way people in the real world behave. For example, why build a style of ship designed to maximize the offensive power and defsnsive power of cannons (or even particular types of cannons) if those cannons or another form of offense does not fill the same role? Why would people waste their time constructing a type of ship that costs a bunch extra and makes a bunch of other design concessions to a feature that is not included?

The "nonsense" as you call it, is not the inclusion of the old people flinging balls of fire or ice breathing flying lizards, it's how the people of the world react or fail to react in a sensical way to these inclusions in the game world.

Because its a shared world that needs to have evocative art, which means it has to have ships that, when drawn, are something the reader would recognize.

Because many authors don't have a lot of naval experience, and need to be able to just write 'a ship' without thinking too hard about what that means.

Because even the authors that do have naval experience can't anticipate what millenia of ship design under different constraints would produce, so trying to come up with an alternative design and standardize THAT across Golarion lore will inevitably lead to people finding design flaws down the line that a shipwright in-universe would have already learned the hard way, leading us to have a similar conversation.

Because the setting is, by design, a genre pastiche and thus needs everything from 17th-century ships for Pirate stories (the Shackles), to 15th and 16th-century caravels (for visiting Arcadia), to viking longboats (Linnorm Kings), to slave-rowed galleys (Osirion, or Absalom depending on how hard you want to push the Grecian/Crete thing), to Junks (Tian Xia) (which have been used for two thousands years, in fact), to magic-driven steam-paddleboat analogs (River into Darkness).

It's the same reason Osirion is running around with bronze armor and khopeshes while Hellknights wear full plate while Eagle Knights cheat using 'armored coats'. It's best to apply the MST3K mantra sometimes.

There were pirates long before there were "17th-century ships".

There are a lot of things in Golarion that require the willing suspension of disbelief. If I couldn't get around that, I wouldn't be playing there.

I play EVE Online. When the ships there move, you hear a "woosh". When the ships aren't moving, but just sitting in space, they bob up and down as if they were floating in water. In the game, it is speed, not acceleration, that is the key to combat, and for outer space, ranges are ridiculously low. It's still a fun game.

In another medieval fantasy world, called Kethira, the King of Melderyn is said to have a '57 Chevy in his basement. There is actually reason within the game to believe that's possible, but the first time I heard that rumor my first thought was "no way". :-)

"Just repeat to yourself it's just a game, I should really just relax!"

When dealing with kitchen sink RPG settings, when I've encountered something that didn't seem to fit, rather than insist "This can't be!" I've generally found it more creatively satisfying to instead ask "How come?"

Quick example: Way back in the protean days of Usenet, WotC listservs, and 2nd edition AD&D, there was a Ravenloft module, set in an isolated quasi-Victorian London demiplane, where one of the NPCs (a wizardy Sherlock Holmes stand-in) had Silver Dragon listed as a language. This fact was meaningless to the adventure (where there were no dragons and no one else spoke the language), but the inclusion these two words of flavor text actually led to some pretty heated debate. Most folks making their voices heard insisted that there was no possible explanation for *that* NPC learning *that* language.

Personally, I played the Devil's advocate and suggested that perhaps, in that setting, "Silver Dragon" was actually a language of magic and eldritch lore. And to be brutally honest, my argument didn't hold any ground. Not in that flame war, at any rate...

So long story short, my suggestion is that rather than drawing a line in the sand to cut off the larger warships, to instead dig in and imagine reasons why those kinds of ships could exist.

Disclaimer One: My entry in this book is about a ship which, historically, was edged out of use by certain other sailing vessels... for reasons about as weighty as a kobold's eyelash in a world with arcane fireballs and adventuring barbarians. So I had the advantage of, rather than swatting away history, simply scratching it behind the ear before gently setting it aside.

Disclaimer Two: I'm typing this right now from my bunk in the great cabin of a replica 17th-century Dutch jaght. There's a cannon roughly seven feet directly below me, and I know how to use it. :)

When dealing with kitchen sink RPG settings, when I've encountered something that didn't seem to fit, rather than insist "This can't be!" I've generally found it more creatively satisfying to instead ask "How come?"

It'd be cool if the designers did this when adding elements to their world. Good fantasy/sci-fi authors do this. As Ross aluded to above, the lower grade B-movies tend to ignore it and tend to get ridiculed for it by the audience. I'd prefer for the designers to aim for the higher quality end of things, but maybe I'm an outlier in that way.

For the case at hand, feel free to have classic sailing vessels that evolved on Earth in response to cannon warfare, just figure out an in-world reason they exist in Golarion where cannons are not typically part of the warfare. The justification doesn't have to be great, just stand up to a cursory glance so as to maintain the suspension of disbelief. A good example of this is Kirth Gersen's house rule on stone >thickness blocking teleportation and scrying. It nicely explains why BBEG and cults live in dungeons and why kings and nobles build castles in a world where all the fantastic creatures and characters have many ways of making the classic castle obsolete.

I'm not demanding perfection or 100% accuracy here. I want this book to be successful, and not make the mistakes other publishers/authors have made. Between the look of the cover and the authors familiar with the subject matter, it looks great.

Besides there's plenty of ships up to the 17th century that would be there regardless of the cannon (the ship's main purpose is trade after all). The "high-charged" ship (with it's big castle-like structures fore and aft for defense and archers) lingered well "after" the cannon become common. It didn't completely vanish until the late 17th century.

I think that cover's still a mock-up. Just forewarnin' ya.

It is a mockup cover.

Cocoa, coffee, gold, and slaves do not come solely from Arcadia. Trying to do a comparison of Earth trade routes and luxury goods to Golarion's isn't going to line up perfectly.

And on Earth, two of those could be found in both hemispheres, and coffee evolved in Ethiopia.