So last night on one of the History Channels they did a couple episodes of "Superships" one of the ancient world and one of China. Really cool stuff. In particular they showed a junk with the deck the size of a football field. As well as a few multi hulled vessles with wooden castles on them.
Naturally this lead me to think about the Shackles campaign. Adding a few giant troup ships to the Chel Armada. This led me to also think about more fantastical ships and ship design. Most of the ships in the AP seem to be very straight forward european ships. Is anyone adding more weird or fantastical designs. Frost Giants on iceburgs (too far south really), ship hulls made from colassal creatures, and so forth.
I have been considering some "large" ship designs inspired by Part 4, Island of Empty Eyes. Undecided on modeling after euro ships or just having insanely large rafts.
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Take a look at some of the various ship designs of the old Spelljammer setting! Many of the ships could "land" on water and function just as a "normal" sea-faring ship...
You can find most of the deckplans HERE...
But most of the boxed sets for the setting had full color pictures of the various ships as well. Well worth checking out IMO...
Though you could probably Google many of the images (e.g. Hammership)...
Yeah I was plundering old spelljammer sites all weekend. The history channel show was cool because it had mundane ships on a really massive scail. The chineese made these giagantic forts that floated down river with giant two story hammers that they dropped on enemy boats.
chinese navy ended kinda badly tho, in the opium wars. ~1200 ships and half a million sailors vs 3 western ships. Ended 0-1200.
Yes but the size and scale of the ships was really huge. It was cool to see just mundane design very different than we normally think of for ancient naval warfare. Also the opium wars was centuries after the ships featured in this special. The greeks built ridiculously large ships as well.