Has anyone come up with a spreadsheet of locations and miles between them by water? This would be great for calculating how long it takes to get anywhere.
Any suggestions before I go too far along making one?
/cevah
If you make something like this then please share it. That sounds like a very useful resource.
I just did it the bog standard simple way without the need for spreadsheets of tables.
I just divided the map into 50 mile squares, sail ship can move 48 miles per day. This assumes they are travelling at night though so if not its 24 miles a day. So just round it up to 50 miles in 24 hours of 25 miles in 12 hours, its rough but good enough I feel, you can do the same with the map for the Mwangi expanse which has the Fever Sea on it in Heart of the Jungle to give a bigger picture.
If you want to factor in wind it works too, simple version, with the wind x2 speed, against the wind twice as slow, its very rough but its simple which I think is really all you need unless you want to make it a saliing simulater.
If you are able it might be easier to use hexes but these are harder to draw.
Should be relitivley easy to work out journey time between locations then.
It strikes me that ships in Skull & Shackles move at the speed of plot - they get where they need to go whenever they need to get there.
It strikes me that ships in Skull & Shackles move at the speed of plot - they get where they need to go whenever they need to get there.
nope, nope, nope....
Its important for a wizard to keep track of travel time, for hedge wizard and scribe scroll feat, its a money maker.
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It strikes me that ships in Skull & Shackles move at the speed of plot - they get where they need to go whenever they need to get there.nope, nope, nope....
Its important for a wizard to keep track of travel time, for hedge wizard and scribe scroll feat, its a money maker.
Obviously, no disagreement here. But unless you're going to model sailing ship speeds, sea conditions, crew quality, tides, wind speed and direction, and random luck, you might as well just be a DM and make some narrative-driven decisions:
Is the party getting low on potions and scrolls? Fine, the winds are light and it takes them an extra day or two to get where they're going. Are they rolling in cash and just crafting stuff to sell? Strong tail winds take them right where they need to go, and if they choose to dawdle (which they very well might), they run the risks of pirate hunters, storms, and bored crews.
I disagree too, if you move ships from one place to another in a narative form you are missing the point of the whole AP. It's a pirate ap therfore you need to be able to be a pirate and get plunder to keep the ship going and the crew happy. Yes the GM could just say ok here you meet a ship but that takes so much out of the players hands and it becomes a railroad from one adventure site to another. It's an understated sandbox that needs some work from the GM to get the most out of it, that's why a lot of people say it's not an AP for a begining GM.
It's not very clear in the books as to how to do this and it does need a GM to work it out but the info is there if you look for it. Book 2 you need this as its pretty much a sandbox. The corebook states general ship travel per 24 hours, the maps give you a scale. You have most of the info you need it's just how much you use it and fill in the dots. You could just use that and say a ship will travel x amount in 24 hours and then work out how many days it will take to travel and leave it at that or do what I do and just make some simple wind strengh and direction tables and then alter the days travel based on that. Then each day of and night make a randon encounter roll to see if anything happens be it a ship, monster, hazard or shipboard event. It keeps it interesting and the players feel as if they are control. The game then becomes it's own adventure as they sail from site to site or just plunder or head to a port to gain infamy.
There really is a lot more to it than just go to x and do y, rinse and repeat, you just need to figure it out.
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Here are some responses to a couple of previous versions of this question.
Vikingson's 02/24/13 response was one of the posts that inspired me to start tinkering with the map.
I'm going to assume that the prevailing winds in the Shackles blow roughly ENE to WSW. That makes the spin of the Eye a little odd, but it's a magical hurricane that has blown for 100 years; its spin direction is small potatoes compared to its longevity.