Thanks to Eryk for reminding me about Shot & Splinters which belongs on this list: "Shot & Splinters is a tabletop roleplaying game of naval adventure, inspired by Horatio Hornblower, Aubrey & Maturin, and Richard Sharpe. Drawing on history but not beholden to it, the game is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, thrusting your characters into the heart of the conflict."
Great article! It left me thinking about space travel, which is often compared to naval travel, and the impossible distances and mind-numbing tedium of outer space. Most games there hand-wave long distances with faster than light jumps or some sort of stasis that lets the story jump past the actual long distance trip. I wonder if there might be a role for that approach in a TTRPG. Once you set your heading and destination, just jump there. Maybe act like a point crawl and roll for an encounter per leg of the journey, but don’t force a hex-by-hex exploration of the open ocean.
Agree, there are many similarities between Age of Sail long distance travel and sci-fi space travel. Both would need really solid and interesting random encounter systems to keep it interesting.
Great piece. I remember that Avalon hill game as well as Blackbeard - which provided lots of enjoyment. I also played a bit of WizKids simple “pirates” game which was fun too.
Was very surprised to get my pirate borg book today and see a very well thought out and robust system for many things the other borgs lack - great book, even if these days my tastes aren’t usually involved with pirates and the like!
Thank you! I agree that the Pirate Borg team did a really nice job with the book. It's more than just a re-skin/re-theme of MB, with rules for naval combat as a prime example.
In those early days there were several ship ttrpgs, though most were, like don’t give up the ship, miniature based, such as Privateers & Gentlemen, Flashing Blades with the High Seas Supplement, and Skull and Crossbones , all from Fantastic Games Unlimited. FB was a strict RPG while P&G was a miniature game with rpg rules added, sound familiar? S&B with its supplement pieces of eight, was closer to a Ttrp with a hex map and counters, but included ship maps so that you could fight the boarding actions character vs character. Each tried to capture the elusive aspects you outlined. Most required a supplement to reach its maturity. Iron Crown Enterprises had their version with SeaLaw that covered ship building and naval action on a blue hex map and tied the game to their game universe. Even Metagaming got in on the act with Ramspeed and their was wooden ships and Iron men distant cousin Trireme each with their map and ships. It would seem therir were many attempts to achieve the elusive naval game. That few remember or play them seem to support your article.
There does seem to be more Age of Sail games in the past, but perhaps that's just because we are looking back across so many years of gaming. Games like Oak & Iron are still quite popular today, but focus on tactical tabletop miniature wargaming rather than roleplaying (as far as I know).
Sails of Glory has an amazing movement and fire system that, in my opinion, works much better for ships than for planes. I find it really interesting because ship's firing arcs are less straightforward, ships usually can't fire each turn and need time to reload their cannons (with each side potentially firing and reloading separately), and wind making maneuvering non-symmetrical (you can't just mirror your enemy's movements, because wind will impact you differently). This is so much more engaging than dog fights!
I've seen Sails of Glory mentioned a few times. Will need to check that out if there's a rulebook online.
Was reading the Flying Colors (GMT) rulebook today and really like how they handle wind, movement points, and such. Seems like a good system. You ever try that one?
I'm not an expert on sailing, I was just exploring "of Glory" series, and was surprised that ships running on that engine were so much cooler than planes. I can imagine space ships (or agile flying mecha) could combine the best aspects of both.
There was Pirates from WizKids, which had fun little ships to punch out and assemble that came in packets like trading cards. The ships were very cool, the game that came with them was... less so.
Not naval, but aerial, there was Ace of Aces, where each player had a booklet full of pictures of your opponenet viewed from your cockpit. You each chose moves and resolved them to get to the new view based on what moves you both chose. It was fun, and got around some of the issues you mention by only simulating the dogfight. There were optional rules for a campaign that would get back into some of the problems, but I don't know anyone who tried that. But they were great as a quick game for two while waiting for the rest of the players to arrive for a bigger game.
I don't really have tremendous interest in naval themes, but I certainly did when I was a younger. Now it's a bandwidth and age thing, lol.
I played Wooden Ships and Iron Men at a convention (sort of reduced complexity for the con) last spring and di have a rather fun time. We basically used no advanced rules and probably hand-waved some things, but it was really easy to grasp after a few turns. We were each controlling a single vessel and planned out our moves as a team. Wind was actually a fun complication - as is whittling down masts/sails and crew.
I'd love to try a 'modern' naval game. Something in the 20th century, probably WWI or WWII era. That would be even more like a mech game with the incredible armaments and armor. Plus you'd have carriers, submarines, mines, torpedoes, missiles (later).
That’s so cool that you were able to play a game of Wooden Ships & Iron Men. Looking back, I’m sure that’s how we ran it when I was little… base rules and some hand-waving to keep the game going. Nothing but good memories of it.
Also, “mechs are just boats with legs” is my new hot take. 😂
I don’t know whether you’ve already covered it elsewhere, but tactical space combat shares a lot of the same problems of naval and air warfare. We often see strategic level space wargames, but more tactical level games are much less common. Two which I think are particularly interesting because they make a serious attempt to engage with space are Battlefleet Mars (SPI) and Mayday (GDW). My hazy recollection of Battlefleet Mars is that there was an optional Tactical System which had two hex maps, one for the horizontal plane and one for the vertical plane. Each ship had a counter on both maps, to identify its 3D position in space. I’d have to pull out the rulebook from a cupboard to get to grips with how that actually worked though!
Mayday by comparison didn’t worry about the 3rd dimension, but had a really neat way of handling Newtonian mechanics in space. Each ship had three counters - one for its current position, one for its past position and one for its future position. On each turn the future position is taken by looking at the vector between past and current, and putting ‘future’ in the appropriate new place. Then you can move ‘future’ by one hex for each point of thrust you have (which varies from 1 to 6 - few things have more than 1 to 3 though). Missiles are treated the same, and there is a chill when you can see that a missiles future position is mapping onto your future position! Gravity wells cause a 1 hex drift in the direction of the gravity well, which cleverly allowed you to use gravity slingshots around planet to change direction and alter your velocity.
I believe that Triplanetary in the 70’s might have had a vector based model, but I only ever heard rumours of that.
Anyhow, perhaps an interesting subject for a future examination?
Pirates Constructible Strategy game! Excellent fun, good rules, very unique! Check out https://pirateswithben.com/ to find rules and details. Highly recommend for a great example of a sailing ship game
Thanks to Eryk for reminding me about Shot & Splinters which belongs on this list: "Shot & Splinters is a tabletop roleplaying game of naval adventure, inspired by Horatio Hornblower, Aubrey & Maturin, and Richard Sharpe. Drawing on history but not beholden to it, the game is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, thrusting your characters into the heart of the conflict."
Great article! It left me thinking about space travel, which is often compared to naval travel, and the impossible distances and mind-numbing tedium of outer space. Most games there hand-wave long distances with faster than light jumps or some sort of stasis that lets the story jump past the actual long distance trip. I wonder if there might be a role for that approach in a TTRPG. Once you set your heading and destination, just jump there. Maybe act like a point crawl and roll for an encounter per leg of the journey, but don’t force a hex-by-hex exploration of the open ocean.
Agree, there are many similarities between Age of Sail long distance travel and sci-fi space travel. Both would need really solid and interesting random encounter systems to keep it interesting.
I could imagine someone adapting Galaxy Trucker to handle long distance travel.
Great piece. I remember that Avalon hill game as well as Blackbeard - which provided lots of enjoyment. I also played a bit of WizKids simple “pirates” game which was fun too.
Was very surprised to get my pirate borg book today and see a very well thought out and robust system for many things the other borgs lack - great book, even if these days my tastes aren’t usually involved with pirates and the like!
Thank you! I agree that the Pirate Borg team did a really nice job with the book. It's more than just a re-skin/re-theme of MB, with rules for naval combat as a prime example.
In those early days there were several ship ttrpgs, though most were, like don’t give up the ship, miniature based, such as Privateers & Gentlemen, Flashing Blades with the High Seas Supplement, and Skull and Crossbones , all from Fantastic Games Unlimited. FB was a strict RPG while P&G was a miniature game with rpg rules added, sound familiar? S&B with its supplement pieces of eight, was closer to a Ttrp with a hex map and counters, but included ship maps so that you could fight the boarding actions character vs character. Each tried to capture the elusive aspects you outlined. Most required a supplement to reach its maturity. Iron Crown Enterprises had their version with SeaLaw that covered ship building and naval action on a blue hex map and tied the game to their game universe. Even Metagaming got in on the act with Ramspeed and their was wooden ships and Iron men distant cousin Trireme each with their map and ships. It would seem therir were many attempts to achieve the elusive naval game. That few remember or play them seem to support your article.
There does seem to be more Age of Sail games in the past, but perhaps that's just because we are looking back across so many years of gaming. Games like Oak & Iron are still quite popular today, but focus on tactical tabletop miniature wargaming rather than roleplaying (as far as I know).
Sails of Glory has an amazing movement and fire system that, in my opinion, works much better for ships than for planes. I find it really interesting because ship's firing arcs are less straightforward, ships usually can't fire each turn and need time to reload their cannons (with each side potentially firing and reloading separately), and wind making maneuvering non-symmetrical (you can't just mirror your enemy's movements, because wind will impact you differently). This is so much more engaging than dog fights!
Found a copy of the rules. That card-based movement is pretty cool!
I've seen Sails of Glory mentioned a few times. Will need to check that out if there's a rulebook online.
Was reading the Flying Colors (GMT) rulebook today and really like how they handle wind, movement points, and such. Seems like a good system. You ever try that one?
Any systems for sailing that you don't like?
I'm not an expert on sailing, I was just exploring "of Glory" series, and was surprised that ships running on that engine were so much cooler than planes. I can imagine space ships (or agile flying mecha) could combine the best aspects of both.
There was Pirates from WizKids, which had fun little ships to punch out and assemble that came in packets like trading cards. The ships were very cool, the game that came with them was... less so.
Not naval, but aerial, there was Ace of Aces, where each player had a booklet full of pictures of your opponenet viewed from your cockpit. You each chose moves and resolved them to get to the new view based on what moves you both chose. It was fun, and got around some of the issues you mention by only simulating the dogfight. There were optional rules for a campaign that would get back into some of the problems, but I don't know anyone who tried that. But they were great as a quick game for two while waiting for the rest of the players to arrive for a bigger game.
Pirates of the Spanish Main!!! That’s a game I haven’t thought of in a long time!
I bought a couple packs because it seemed like a great idea. But agree that the game was just lacking on repeated plays.
Thanks for the nostalgia! :)
Nice article.
I don't really have tremendous interest in naval themes, but I certainly did when I was a younger. Now it's a bandwidth and age thing, lol.
I played Wooden Ships and Iron Men at a convention (sort of reduced complexity for the con) last spring and di have a rather fun time. We basically used no advanced rules and probably hand-waved some things, but it was really easy to grasp after a few turns. We were each controlling a single vessel and planned out our moves as a team. Wind was actually a fun complication - as is whittling down masts/sails and crew.
I'd love to try a 'modern' naval game. Something in the 20th century, probably WWI or WWII era. That would be even more like a mech game with the incredible armaments and armor. Plus you'd have carriers, submarines, mines, torpedoes, missiles (later).
Thanks for the post -great read before work!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
That’s so cool that you were able to play a game of Wooden Ships & Iron Men. Looking back, I’m sure that’s how we ran it when I was little… base rules and some hand-waving to keep the game going. Nothing but good memories of it.
Also, “mechs are just boats with legs” is my new hot take. 😂
I don’t know whether you’ve already covered it elsewhere, but tactical space combat shares a lot of the same problems of naval and air warfare. We often see strategic level space wargames, but more tactical level games are much less common. Two which I think are particularly interesting because they make a serious attempt to engage with space are Battlefleet Mars (SPI) and Mayday (GDW). My hazy recollection of Battlefleet Mars is that there was an optional Tactical System which had two hex maps, one for the horizontal plane and one for the vertical plane. Each ship had a counter on both maps, to identify its 3D position in space. I’d have to pull out the rulebook from a cupboard to get to grips with how that actually worked though!
Mayday by comparison didn’t worry about the 3rd dimension, but had a really neat way of handling Newtonian mechanics in space. Each ship had three counters - one for its current position, one for its past position and one for its future position. On each turn the future position is taken by looking at the vector between past and current, and putting ‘future’ in the appropriate new place. Then you can move ‘future’ by one hex for each point of thrust you have (which varies from 1 to 6 - few things have more than 1 to 3 though). Missiles are treated the same, and there is a chill when you can see that a missiles future position is mapping onto your future position! Gravity wells cause a 1 hex drift in the direction of the gravity well, which cleverly allowed you to use gravity slingshots around planet to change direction and alter your velocity.
I believe that Triplanetary in the 70’s might have had a vector based model, but I only ever heard rumours of that.
Anyhow, perhaps an interesting subject for a future examination?
Pirates Constructible Strategy game! Excellent fun, good rules, very unique! Check out https://pirateswithben.com/ to find rules and details. Highly recommend for a great example of a sailing ship game