So far, I'm loving this Adventure Path. So much so that I bought Stormwrack just to help me give my group more immersion in the type of setting. But after reading the rules on sailing in Stormwrack, I have a few questions pertaining to The Sea Wyvern's Wake.
Based on the distance traveled and the time between stops, it seems as though the ships are sailing all day long and resting at night (a common practice along coastlines, according to Stormwrack). This makes sense for the coastlines, but once they get into open sea, it seems it would be more difficult to just stop for the night. If they sailed on through the night, I could see adjusting the times between each "event," but then it would seem like they would need double the crew to sail all that time, since I doubt the watch of 7 would be working the whole time.
This detail seems small, but I'd like to be able to describe the general routine aboard the ship without losing consistency and such. All night sailing also changes the discovery of the sargasso, considering if there were people on deck all night, they would notice (even if it were completely dark) the lack of movement, sound of waves, etc, instead of the crew wakening to the unsettling sight.
Some ideas on reconciling this from both a real world perspective and a game mechanics perspective would be much appreciated. As well, any general info on the routine running of a sailing ship would be great too, since I know there are some old salts in these forums :)
Thanks!
Paolo
Yeah, I agree all around. But the adventure was cool enough that we decided not to nit-pick over realism; I kind of assumed there was a crew of colonists on-duty at night (not detailed because the PCs were asleep during their watch, of course), but I kept the total travel distance per day the same (PC checks charts in the morning, remarks, "daggone, we haven't gotten anywhere!").
Creative Director
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Weird... I was sure I posted something here but it's not here...
Anyway.
The reason the Sea Wyvern takes so long is that it's loaded to the gills with cargo. If you put 60 tons of cargo on a caravel like the Sea Wyvern her speed drops by half. She's carrying, at minimum, 80 tons of cargo in the adventure (most of which is food or supplies for Farshore), so that's what slows her down. She's otherwise sailing non stop; she doesn't stop at night for sleep, and the time spent at encounter areas along the way doesn't count on the times listed between encounters. So there's no need to adjust time; indeed, if the ship DOES stop every night to sleep, the journey's length will increase dramatically.
The Sea Wyvern's crew of seven isn't all on watch at the same time; in fact, when everything's running smoothly, not the entire crew is needed and some can sleep or relax. As long as the ship has at least seven, though, you can assume that at least one person's on watch at all times.
As for exact schedules of who does what, take care there. The line between realism and boring overdetail is a fine one indeed. It's probably best to just describe what the general day at sea is like on the first day, and then during the voyage just drop comments here and there about what the other NPCs are doing. Reading sea-voyage books like Moby Dick, Mutiny on the Bounty, Uncharted Seas, the Master & Commander books, and so on (or watching the movies they inspire) is a great way to get the feel for a sea voyage in your head for running the adventure.
As for noticing that the ship's run into the Sargasso immediately rather than waking up; the end result is the same. If you have a group of alert PCs on watch, they'll notice the change in the boat's motion and the surrounding sound quickly enough, but not quickly enough to do anything about it. Remember that the ship sails into the sargasso during a fog bank so it's hard to see it coming. If the PCs are tricksy enough to remove any fog banks they see and hard-core enough to avoid creepy sargassos in the first place, and they're already 7th level, just go ahead and skip the whole sargasso section and crash them on the island.
Thank you for reminding me about the cargo. Score one idiot point for me.
Keep up the good work!
just go ahead and skip the whole sargasso section and crash them on the island.
Hell no! LOL that is the best encounter i've come across in a long time! They are going in to the Sargosso...even if I have to build "railroad" tracks straight to the mother LOLOLOL
YEah I gotta agree. Sargasso stays, even it it means it suddenly appears directly under them.
The railroad tracks are easily built! Just have the ship be becalmed and let the current do the rest. The current acts more strongly on the heavily laden ship (which sits more deeply in the water than the sargasso) and so the ship gradually overtakes the huge patch of surface seaweed. In a calm sea with no moonlight, it would take a very good spot check to notice that you're entering the seaweed, and even if you did, there's not much to be done about it. (Last time I checked control water doesn't alter the direction of the current).
As for watch routines, it was typical on sailing vessels to divide the crew into two watches which would alternate time on deck at night, usually every two or four hours. Anytime the captain called for a significant course change, or if the winds changed in direction or intensity, the entire crew would be called on deck to add or reef sail, change the angles of the sails to the wind, and so forth. During the day, there was typically plenty of maintenance work for the sailors to do, so the entire crew would normally be on deck (or in the hold performing various cargo-related tasks). Conditions permitting, one day per week would be work-free except for standing watch and turning out to maneuver the ship. Occasionally, a captain might allow a "rope-yarn Sunday"--a day on which sailors did not have to turn out for ship's work and were instead free to take care of personal tasks like patching their clothing.
A senior crewmember like the ship's boatswain or the mate would normally take care of regulating the ship's routine. Changes of watch and calls for all hands to appear on deck would be marked by ringing the ship's bell or sounding the boatswain's pipe (for all you trekkies out there, some of the traditional boatswain's pipe calls were replicated on the original Star Trek). In the days before ship's chronometers (clocks that could keep accurate time at sea were an 18th century invention), crews probably used hourglasses to mark the watches, and would cast the "log" (a float tied to a knotted rope) to get an approximate idea of their speed so that they could estimate how far they had travelled and reckon their approximate position. When coasting, the captain or pilot would keep track of where the ship was in relation to the landmarks noted on the charts, and when on open ocean, this individual would use "dead reckoning" to estimate the ship's position based on the speeds and compass headings recorded in the ship's log. This could be used to estimate when and where the ship would make landfall (i.e. sight land), although storms and unknown currents could throw off such an estimate considerably.
As James noted above, the first couple of days at sea might be a novelty to PCs and their players, but sea life gets to be a dull routine pretty quickly--it's 99% sheer boredom and 1% sheer terror. (Read Melville's Moby-Dick and you'll get the idea). Once you've made clear exactly how dull it is, it's a good idea to fast-forward to the exciting parts, since those are the main point of the game. I wouldn't even bother to check for getting lost every day at sea--just check once for every period when the captain has no landmarks, and have the ship make landfall 50 miles left or right of the anticipated spot for every 5 by which he fails the check, and have the landfall come a day or more early or late. When shooting for the Isle of Dread, it is possible in this way to miss the island entirely and wind up in the great southern ocean. But I wouldn't have this happen unless you want to have an "Odyssey" like adventure. (Or at least I'd clue them in after a few days and say it looks like you missed your landfall and have them make a DC 20 Knowledge (geography) check to figure out how to backtrack to the right latitude and turn east or west to make the Isle. It is easier to have them run into another island at the same latitude, whose natives can point them in the right direction. The main point of all this would probably be to run short of food and water (although the former problem can probably be solved in the short term by breaking into the stores destined for the colony). It might be easier still to have the result of the failed navigation check be the "unexpected" encounter with Masher Reef--it's railroading, but certainly hitting a reef is a realistic possible consequence for failing a navigation check.
Bong--it's one bell on the forenoon watch, which means it's time for me to get in the car and navigate through the fog to work. Fair winds and following seas, fellow Oceanmasters! (Yes, I think OM is an appropriate substitute for DM in Savage Tide).
For realism's sake:
Minimum crew for a watch would probably be 3 people awake at a time. This would generally be a watch officer (a mate) and two deckhands. The deckhands would take turns steering and standing lookout, while the watch officer would keep up with the navigating, turning the hourglass, keeping the captain informed of changes in the weather/other ships etc. Depending on the watch officer, they may take a trick at the helm just to relieve the boredom for the deckhands, but that's most likely just modern softness. :) The ships' boy would definitely be thrown into the mix, at the very least as lookout.
Also for nit-picky realism with no real impact on the adventure... Sargasso seaweed (also called sargassum) is mostly a yellow-brown color (a small change from the green described in the adventure). Sargassum is host to a surprising number of other creatures many of whom have adapted very specifically to living in the weed. There are all kinds of little fish and crabs living in it which might help to add a little color to your description of the vine horrors. When sailing in an area with a lot of sargasso seaweed, it is very common to sail past numerous small clumps (the seaweed grows free-floating, it never attaches to the bottom). When the wind picks up to around 20 mph, you start to see "windrows" of the seaweed - it lines up in a row parallel to the direction of the wind. The windrows can be quite long (maybe half a mile) at times and are often spaced in a strangely regular pattern.
I thought this kind of background might help create a feel for the area. One might describe seeing the clumps of seaweed and windrows for days/weeks before meeting the Mother of All to help provide a context for such a creature.
I also have a quote that I really need to share with the messageboards. It's a great speech given by an old salt (and movie actor) by the name of Sterling Hayden to his newbie crew as they leave the sight of land for the first time. However, it's not at work with me, so I'll have to post it later.
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Creative Director
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Keep in mind, of course, that the sargasso seaweed in the adventure is far from natural. It's actually one big monster infested with little monsters, and they'd pretty much eat anything that tried to live in it. As for the color, the picture of the sargassum got the color right, at least! But in the end, the stuff's probably a mixture of green and yellow-brown.
But yeah, to the trained eye, the sargasso in the adventure wouldnt' necessarilly raise any suspicions when it was first sighted. It's not uncommon at all to see large swaths of seaweed floating on an ocean, especially after a storm (although perhaps not so far out to sea...).