Campaigning under the Sea

[Talon]

I´m looking into starting a Pathfinder Campaign under the sea, using Cerulean Seas from Alluria Publishing (highest recommendations btw!). I´d be delighted If someone could help me with some aspects of this consideration:

First of all, I don´t want to create my own adventures from scratch, but since there are no underwater adventures (as far as I know of, please prove me wrong) I am wondering whether it would be possible to convert a Pathfinder Adventure Path to the Undersea setting. In the world of the Cerulean Seas setting, there is almost no land but there are civilizations of differing humanoid sea creatures in the oceans, complete with cities, trade routes and so on. I have some knowledge about the official Pathfinder Adventure Path but I´m looking for your insights into which of them would best fit for a conversion.

My second question is about Sunken Empires (Open Design), which I do not yet possess but am thinking about obtaining. Could anyone compare this to Cerulean Seas? Is it worth it´s price if I already have the other?

Last but not least I would be very interested in hearing about your undersea campaigns, if any. I am only thinking about campaigns in which the players are natives to the oceans, not ones in which they temporarily enter the depths.

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

Check out the 3.5 book stormwrack. It's got a lot of ideas plus a couple of mini-modules in the back.

[gbonehead]

Great. Now I have a Jamaican singing crab stuck in my head.

[Talon]

gbonehead wrote:

Great. Now I have a Jamaican singing crab stuck in my head.

Unfortunately I failed at linking to the youtube page of this song...

[fictionfan]

What level are you playing at?

I did a campaign like this.
I played Seaborn Sorcerer. I was going for becoming a sea witch.

Stormwrack was great book. I was trying to make a submarine with a front of pearlsteel. Because pearlsteel weapons have no water resist then a pearlsteel sub with non-pearlsteel propellers should be able to go faster that any airship.

of course of you are real high lv you could make a sub out of walls of force. Then if you want it be about indistrutable (spell fail) put it in a anti-magic field.

[Shizzle69]

I agree with the golem. Stormwrack is a great book. I am also very interested in what i hope will be numerous replies. My current campaign is going to be taking a dive as soon as the characters can return to their submersible. Sorry I don't have any real advice but I'm sure your campaign is going to be sweet regardless.

[Talon]

fictionfan wrote:

What level are you playing at?

I´ll probably go for E6 and start at 3rd level.

[BigNorseWolf]

My apologies for your sanity checks but it has to be done

[Slipstream]

Semi-related... but for inspiration of water fights, I highly recommend the three episode Mon Cal arc from Star Wars The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network. The story is completely under water and there are a ton of very inspiring scenes in it worth checking out. The animation of that show have come a long, long way from the awful pilot movie. The three episodees even managed to redeem Gungans for me. Gungans! For real. Oh plus there's a young ACKBAR! :)

It made me want the Cerulean Seas book. All the best on your campaign!

[Talon]

Slipstream wrote:

Oh plus there's a young ACKBAR! :)

Thanks, I will check it out.

[Talon]

In thinking about my Underwater campaign a bit more I have decided to convert single adventures instead of whole Adventure Paths.

Easy conversions would be

Crypt of Everflame - plays out in the underwater hometown of the seafolk characters and in the nearby dungeon.

From Shore to Sea - I´m thinking about turning the premise around. Instead of creatures from the sea abducting normal folk, it could be horrible creatures from land - all of which were thought to be extinct - abducting the people from the seafolk community. Will have to think about this some more.

City of Golden Death - the city is sunken and submerged. Reaching it is hard for several reasons. Pressure is a danger, aboleths are common in these depths and the city is at the ground of an abyssal channel, surrounded by heavy, storm-like currents (instead of the negative energy storms in the module).

This could build up to be a nice little E6 campaign arc, tying them together somehow. What do you think? Ideas for other easy conversions?

[Caedwyr]

The Harrowing might work as a stand-alone adventure you can mix in. It's also gotten some very high reviews.

For a more Lovecraftian adventure, Carrion Hill might work. You'd have to modify some of the material to place it underwater.

There was also a 2nd edition series of adventures (The Sea Devils, or Night of the Shark) that might fit, plus some other ones involving Aboleths. I'm not sure on the quality of the adventures and you'd have to do a bit more converting.

Here's an older thread with a similar focus

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/general/underwaterSeaBasedCampaign&page=1

[Derwalt]

I don't know if Sunken Empires from OpenDesign / Kobold Quarterly is still in sale - there's some mentioning of it here: http://www.koboldquarterly.com/kqforums/viewtopic.php?t=882

If you don't know Kobold Quarterly, then google it and get acquainted - it's good stuff :)

[Thanael]

Some Links to other threads and resources:
Brainstorming Aquatic Adventure Ideas
Sources for Absalom and Azlant structures (with lots of links to extras for Sunken Empires...)
The 3.X Aquatic Database Enworld thread
Aeolius Heirs of Turucambi campaign
Aeolius excellent Undersea Adventures: Comments, Concerns, & Concepts thread
Undersea Campaign at giantitp forums
Resources for the Pirate AP
Good modules for a pirates campaign?

2E's Sea of Fallen Stars sourcebook described an underwater campaign in the Forgotten Realms. Just google "sea of fallen stars" with the double quotes...

There's also a D20 book named The Deep by Mystic Eye Games.

And there should be at least one underwater adventure in Dungeon magazine. And perhaps in the Al Qadim setting somewhere...

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

FYI: Aquatic sorcerer = Aquaman. Enjoy.

[Anonymous Visitor 163 576]

there is a set of underwater adventures from 1st edition, the U-series. It's been years, but I think the first one is the sinister secret of saltmarsh. Conversions exist, check the conversion area of this board.

Then, go look at the Savage Tide. 3.5 is not a big deal to convert. Lots of boats, and some underwater action too.

[Thanael]

From Dungeon Magazine Index (1 - 71):

Issue #6 Volume I, Number 6 (July/August 1987)
AFTER THE STORM
AD&D adventure, 4-6 characters of levels 8-10
Written by: Nick Kopsinis & Patrick Goshtigian
Artwork by: Jim Holloway
Coastal/Underwater, temperate
12 pages

Description: A wereshark lurks in the waters of Bluewater Cove, guarding the treasures of a sunken pirate ship.

Issue #18 Volume III, Number 6 (July/August 1989)
WHITELAKE MINE
AD&D adventure, 3-6 characters of levels 2-4
Written by: Willie Walsh
Artwork by: Tim Bradstreet
Underwater/subterranean, any climate
9 pages

Description: A gnome's underwater mining operation is thwarted by a giant pike and a clan of evil aquatic ogres.

Issue #64 Volume XI, Number 4 (September/October 1997)
GROTTO OF THE QUEEN
AD&D FORGOTTEN REALMS adventure, for 4-6 characters of levels 6-9
Written by: Paul and Shari Culotta
Artwork by: Valerie Valusek
Coastal/subterranean, temperate
16 pages

Description: Clerics of Umberlee have stolen a magical boat capable of travelling underwater. To retrieve the craft, the heroes must penetrate the B&@#* Queen's underground temple.

Issue #66 Volume XI, Number 6 (January/February 1998)
SUNKEN SHADOW, THE
AD&D adventure, for 3-5 characters of levels 1-3
Written by: James Wyatt
Artwork by: Terry Dykstra
Coastal sea or ocean/Underwater, temperate to sub-tropical
17 pages

Description: A terrible curse besets the captain and crew of the Ocean's Call. The secret of the curse lies at the bottom of the sea, amid the treasures and wreckage of a sunken pirate ship.

I havn't checked this more complete Dungeon index yet: Complete Dungeon Index

[Thanael]

The Kopra Ruins (LVL 12) by Darrin Drader

A race of cruel undersea creatures called the kopru once conquered a vast expanse of territory and established a huge, underwater empire. Since the demise of their civilization thousands of years ago, their race has steadily declined, until it became a mere shadow of its former self. While most of the kopru have succumbed to their monstrous natures and degenerated into barbarism, a few kopru matrons remember the tales of their race’s former glory and seek to restore the golden age of the kopru empire. Most avoid their ancestral ruins because of the powerful magical safeguards placed there by the conquering elves to bar access to those sites, but recent raids in the area of a ruined kopru city suggest that one matron may have found a way around them and begun rebuilding the once-great Kopru Empire.

Link here

[Thanael]

GA1 The Murky Deep is a 2E underwater adventure...

[Lincoln Hills]

I've never tried to run an entire campaign based underwater - good luck with that! - but my last campaign included a couple stretches of underwater campaigning. My first tip is to pick up Stormwrack but to carefully pick and choose what you want to integrate into your PF campaign. Here are a couple of others:

1) The most important distinction in an undersea campaign is depth. The brightly lit, life-filled "green water" near shorelines or on seamounts is equivalent to lush forest terrain. Deeper down, the "blue-green" zone tends to have extremely long and concealing plant life, and house larger predators: think of it as jungle. The deeper blue regions may consist of days of travel across gravel, sand or slime: here food is scarce and the rock formations are almost the only landmarks aside from shipwrecks. Think of this territory as badlands. And last, of course, comes the purple water and the perpetual darkness below. That's kraken country and your PCs should be scared even to swim above it: think of the black zone as an arctic zone - not because it's cold (although it is), but because it is a region no sane person will wander into without very good reason.

2) Almost everybody can "fly" all the time: always keep that in mind when designing your encounters and your cities. Put a dome or pyramid over the top of any building that's meant to be fortified: remember that streets are unimportant and doorways are more likely to face up, to catch sunlight, than to face sideways.

3) In terms of spell effects, remember that fire spells either won't work or will produce scalding water instead: ice created by a spell will be buoyant: and sonic and electrical effects tend to travel further than they would up top. Force, acid, and negative/positive energy act more or less as they would up top.