What's to stop a the group sailing direct to Farshore rather than hugging the coast, or resupplying water at rivers?
Two castings of Create Food or Water a day could feed the entire ship.
Oh and they also came up with the idea of towing the boat horses that have horseshoes of waterwalking, to get above the 1.5 miles an hour.
What's to stop a the group sailing direct to Farshore rather than hugging the coast, or resupplying water at rivers?
Two castings of Create Food or Water a day could feed the entire ship.
Hmmm. Perhaps hugging the coast makes navigation easier? I seem to remember that exact charts to the Isle of Dread are few and far between. Also, unless your ship's captain is an amazing navigator, he might want to use certain landmarks on the island (offered up by Urol) to steer his way down to Farshore.
Oh and they also came up with the idea of towing the boat horses that have horseshoes of waterwalking, to get above the 1.5 miles an hour.
Horses are finicky creatures. The PCs might have to charm the them into doing something as outlandish as pulling a ship across the open sea for hours at a time. Can you imagine how terrified those poor beasts would be? It would be an interesting sight to behold though!
Just my 2 coppers.
The navigation check is only DC 17 in open water, (not counting the Pearl Current) and so my PC's can make that with a take 10.
Also you could just cut corners so that you get a bearing on land occasionally. For example go straight for Sasserine to Fort Blackrock, then from there to the Temple, then admittedly hugging the coast for a while is a shorter route, but if you do a lot of corner cutting, and never stop to take on water, you can skip some encounters, and save a bit of time.
Yeah it as generally decided that the horseshoe plan would not be used, didn't stop them trying to cost it up.
The navigation check is only DC 17 in open water, (not counting the Pearl Current) and so my PC's can make that with a take 10.
Also you could just cut corners so that you get a bearing on land occasionally. For example go straight for Sasserine to Fort Blackrock, then from there to the Temple, then admittedly hugging the coast for a while is a shorter route, but if you do a lot of corner cutting, and never stop to take on water, you can skip some encounters, and save a bit of time.
Yeah it as generally decided that the horseshoe plan would not be used, didn't stop them trying to cost it up.
The open seas are going to be a heck of a lot harder to navigate on, since there's no land marks what-so-ever. Also, being close to the coast allows you to take shelter in case of a storm. Finally, by never stopping for food or drink you get life sustaining (yet uninteresting) food, no chances for trade or exploration and the chances of cabin fever go very high. Party members with Affiliations should want to stop various places for various reasons, and don't forget that Urol was promised he could investigate Tamaochan's Ruins.
~ Bryon ~
There is the matter of crew morale to think of as well. Sailling for three months with no stops is very hard, and most sailors would find it disagreeable.
What's to stop them? The DM. And the fact the adventure is written to follow the coastline.
Leading by the nose? No more than a director of a movie getting his characters, scenes, and action together to make a story. No actor gets to declare "I know the movie takes place in NY, but I think my character wants to live in Boston". Follow the freakin' script!
First off, the coastline is radically safer than the open ocean. Even in the real world, hugging the coast means you're always close to emergency supplies and shelter from sudden storms. And the real world doesn't have super-intelligent kraken cerebremancers or dragon turtle berserkers in the Pacific Ocean Abyss. Greyhawk does.
Second, following the usual shipping lanes is usually a lot faster than forcing your own path, because the shipping lanes are where they are because there are dominant oceanic currents. For example, there are essentially a series of oceanic rivers in the Atlantic that caused all the early Spanish explorers to end up in the Caribbean rather than going straight west to the east coast of what is now the United States. To get to that coast, it is actually faster to ride the current across the Atlantic and then hug the coast northward, or to ride another current past Greenland and then hug the coast south.
What's to stop them? The DM. And the fact the adventure is written to follow the coastline.
Leading by the nose? No more than a director of a movie getting his characters, scenes, and action together to make a story. No actor gets to declare "I know the movie takes place in NY, but I think my character wants to live in Boston". Follow the freakin' script!
But D&D isn't a movie. The DM is not the writer/director/producer and most players rebel against obvious and heavy-handed railroading. If you were joking, my apologies--hard to read emotions in text and all that.
The best way to handle stuff like this is to suggest in-game reasons such as the one's in this thread, rather than tell them they have to do something because that's what the adventure says.
Creative Director
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For what it's worth, the in-game reason in the adventure is that the route to the Isle of Dread is one that's relatively unknown; the place is remote, and the charts that lead the way do so in the route given in the adventure. The PCs are free to try to improvise, but that's a good way to get lost or un afoul of pirates or the dragons that live in the Mist Kingdom or whatever.
As for PCs rebelling against being railroaded... I beg to differ. I think that PCs want to be railroaded. They just don't want to KNOW they're being railroaded. I've played in plenty of campaigns before, and the ones where there's no rails and no plot and the DM just lets the PCs do what they want end up being unfocused and agrivating, in my experience. Especially when you get a half-dozen or so players who can't agree on what to do because the DM either gives them too many options or no options.
I agree, James. The PC's do want to have some relatively clear idea of what sort of thing they should be doing next. But what they don't want is when they say: "We're going to go this way to get to the Dungeon of Big Evil Things rather than the way you're suggesting" and the DM responds with "No, you can't go that way because that's not the way the adventure I have planned," which is what the post I responded to sort of sounded like.
For my part, as a player, when I get the sense of what the DM has in mind for us to do, I make it my job as a player to come up with a reasonable excuse for why my character would want to do it. Of course it's nice if the DM gives my character a hook that will attract him. It's a collaborative effort, after all.
IRL there are pros and cons to sailing coastwise.
Depending on the direction the storm is coming from, being in something less than an excellent, well protected harbor can be much worse than being in the open ocean. If the wind blows from seaward (which it quite often does in a storm), you can be driven onto a "lee shore" (i.e. one that is downwind from you).
Shipboard food is uninteresting unless you stop every week for fresh food. Given the wildness of the coast your following here, that means stopping to hunt, or carrying a nice cargo of chickens and goats and hoping there's some fresh fruit. With a three month voyage, there'll be plenty of salt horse and ship's biscuit to go around before the voyage is done, regardless.
Since we don't have a map of prevailing winds or currents for the Vohoun Ocean, it's kind of up to the DM to decide how such things affect navigation. Generally, you'll have westward-flowing currents along the equator, which are deflected toward the poles when they run into a land mass. If you're playing in Greyhawk, that means the Isle of Dread is in a belt of westward flowing currents, but the current near the southern coast of the Amedio Jungle flows eastward instead (this matches the Pearl Current at H on the map). As for winds, the huge size and east-west orientation of Oerik probably means that these are governed by a monsoon effect, with winds flowing southward out of the continent in the winter and northward into the continent in the summer.
Given this picture, I'd say that it might be advantageous to cut off some of the bights in the coastline, at the least--though one could stop at Tamoachan without too big of a detour. Depending on how advanced you envision navigational technology to be, it might make more sense to sail due south from the straight between the Olman Islands and the Tamoachan peninsula (D on the map), turning west and following the prevailing winds and currents once you reach the latitude of the Isle of Dread. This is a long voyage out of sight of land, but navigationally is simple, as long as you have an astrolabe or a cross-staff and a fairly good star chart. It would actually be easier to make landfall this way than the route proposed in the adventure. Of course, this brings one straight through the Pirate Isles and uncomfortably close to Scuttlecove. This is a good rationale for following the route as given in the adventure. The optimal track might save you two or three weeks, but is it worth the risk of an encounter with the Crimson Fleet?
If you want to strive for a little realism, the expedition should depart late in the year (Ready'reat or Sunsebb) to take advantage of the winter monsoon that blows eastward across Jeklea Bay and the Azure Sea, southeastward across the Densac Gulf, and southward across the Pearl Sea. The hurricane season ought to be over by the end of Ready'reat, though storms are always a danger. There is no overwhelming reason they can't sail straight for Fort Blackwell. Since Urol Forol has paid good money to go to Tamoachan, a water stop at B isn't too far out of the way, but if the party skips Tamoachan the encounter there can be run on the open ocean just as easily. A little time can be saved by cutting off the bight of coastline between D and E (Fort Greenrock), which is sensible as a planned supply stop. From Fort Greenrock, running due south would still bring the ships uncomfortably close to the Crimson Fleet's base area, and the lack of supplies there makes it desirable to stop in Renkrue (G), the only friendly port where some sort of resupply is possible before attempting the daunting ocean voyage. The stop in Renkrue necessitates coasting from E to G, so F is right on the way. From G, the rest of the encounters are in the open ocean except for the minor encounter of a landfall at I (the Isle of Ruja). The navigating strategy would be to try to travel south-southeast from Renkrue, estimating the set and drift caused by the Pearl Current, and hoping to make landfall at Ruja to get a mid-voyage navigational fix. If the ship passes the latitude of Ruja without sighting the island, the ship continues in a southeasterly direction until the latitude of the Isle of Dread is reached, then turn due west, running with the equatorial winds and currents until land is sighted.
Anyhow, it's easy enough to rearrange the significant encounters along the route if your players choose a different one. You can always penalize them with a Crimson Fleet encounter if they annoy you with their bullheadedness and ignore your warnings.