SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
When I looked at RPGnet’s list of items available for reviewing ‘Broadsides! Naval Adventuring’ (BNA) caught my attention for two reasons: there was no many people interested in it; the title. Since I’m writing a game where naval action plays an important role, I’m always willing to look at products that cover this field. Ence I received BNA from RPGnet for reviewing.
BNA is a d20 product. My knowledge of d20 is based on a single book: the D&D3 Players Book, or Core Rulebook I. Good to me – I thought – since BNA mentions that it requires the Players Book in order to be used. Helas, this mention is misleading. BNA includes prestige classes, something that only finds coverage in the DM Book, and the rules for weather also call for the rules present in the Core Rulebook II.
Furthermore, BNA is part of a line of books produced by Living Imagination Inc. (LII) dealing with naval adventuring. BNA presents most of the rules for that purpose while other books detail LII’s setting. Yet, BNA includes references to another book – Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration Fantasy – and some of the content of BNA requires the rules present in this second book – the case of rituals, a new magic system.
So, if you want to fully use BNA, you have to buy it (USD $19.95), and own the D&D3 Players Book, the D&D3 DM Book and Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration Fantasy.
FORM
BNA is a soft-bound, 128 pages, B&W book. The cover art is the only piece in colour and is a not very inspiring depiction of a monster attacking a sailing ship. Most of the interior drawings vary between the good (the depiction of boats) and the average (most human representations). Most of the drawings are relevant to the text they accompany but there are some that should have no place in this book (like the 20th century sailor present in page 111). Furthermore, there’s a strong 17th/18th centuries, pirates age flavour, most probably connected with the LII setting depicted in the other books of the game line.
The text is organized in two columns and is easy to read. The margins are kept to a comfortable size and are occupied with some art at the top of the odd pages and at the bottom of the even pages.
The external margin has a vertical box with the number and name of the section. I liked this a lot since it facilitates referencing when trying to locate something in the book.
The book includes an one-page table of contents, an one-page index and a two-page glossary of nautical terms. The data is not very well organized since several rule domains are spread through the book, forcing the player to look at different sections to get an unified view of the issue he is trying to play.
All in all, BNA is neither a ground-braking or a disgusting product to read and use. I give it a 4 for form.
CONTENT
a) Aims of the book and review
Let me quote: “Broadsides is not a campaign setting, but a rules supplement. The naval rules are intended to be usable in a broad range of campaigns, from ancient and technologically primitive civilizations, to medieval monarchies, all the way to the age of exploration and beyond. Ships from all eras are described, including comprehensive rules for gunpowder and cannon” (BNA p. 3).
This is the stated purpose of the book, so what we have to see is whether it lives up to it. This means that this review has to address how good are the rules, how well do they model everything naval from “ancient and technologically primitive civilizations” up to “the age of exploration and beyond”. This means that I must look at:
· How balanced/correct is treatment of the different historical/fantasy paradigms and of the different aspects of naval adventuring covered by the rules.
· How good are the rules, especially on what concerns using those rules as a tool for roleplaying.
b) Overview of the content
The book covers in succession:
1. Navigation and piloting – 11 pages.
2. Ships – 17 p.
3. The voyage – 3 p. This should actually be part of the first section, navigation and piloting.
4. Naval combat – 12 p.
5. Underwater adventuring – 7 p.
6. Nautical equipment – 7 p.
7. Feats – 3 p.
8. Prestige classes – 14 p.
9. Spells and rituals – 15 p. The rituals conform to a set of rules developed by LII and presented in Twin Crowns: Age of Exploration Fantasy.
10. Nautical magical items – 5 p. An assortment of disparate magical or wondrous items related to the seas. Interesting and serviceable, no more, no less. It concentrates on the functional (what the items do) and lacks the context (from where they come and how did they come to be).
11. Sea creatures – 6 p. A small, lacklustre list of 6 sea creatures (Orctopus?!).
12. Nautical organizations – 2 p. A short description of 4 nautical organizations, without any general principles on what these entities are and how they operate. The 4 provided are rather lame.
13. Adventuring – 17 p. It includes 9 encounters (each described in more or less half page), one 3-page adventure, 3 famous pirates, 3 ships (that actually are not described since what we get is data on the crew) and the complete record of a ship. Most of this is uninteresting, uninspired and incoherent at times.
There are some useless subsections like one on random encounters that basically comes down to “GMs may choose to determine random encounters” (p. 34) with no random encounters included.
I’ll not go back to the last 4 sections – the ones that are more setting related. Let me just say that I did not like most of it. Judging by what I get in BNA, I don’t feel compelled to look at the other books in the LII game line.
c) Treatment of historical/fantasy paradigms and coverage of naval adventuring
I know: D&D3 is a fantasy genre game. Why look at the historical correctness of something produced for it? For the simple reason that BNA draws heavily from an historical inspiration. If it does this, it should be true to its sources.
The least we can say about BNA is that it is very unbalanced in its approach to naval adventuring. Let me just point to some issues:
It presents a fairly good list of western ships and boats (chapter 2), both sail and row propelled. Yet, there’s not a single non-western ship. I would expect at least (and I’m talking here at the bare minimum) the presence of the dhow of the Indian Ocean and the East Asian junk. None, nada. Neither are there representatives of “technologically primitive civilizations”. On the other hand it presents several fantasy ships but these are just variants of historical ships with some special flavour (like the Dwarven knorr) or fantasy tech (like the flying Golden Eagle).
It does not cover or is inadequate in the coverage of some naval archetypical situations. For instance, the book provides no specific coverage for shipwrecks (a major issue in any naval setting), while naval warfare overlooks boarding (the centre of any roleplaying naval action). I could go on with other examples.
It is strongly directed to a given setting type: the Atlantic, 17th century piratical activity. This must result from the fact that the LII setting attached to BNA is centred in such a genre. The fact is that we get no elements to adjust the rules to other types of naval settings.
There are some mistakes that can be either minor (like some details of the ships; for instance, a caravel can be sailed – in good weather – by as few as 2 persons; the fusta is much smaller than what BNA presents) or major (the book completely confuses the function and skills of the pilot and the navigator: it presents the pilot as the person that commands the sailing and the navigator as the person that knows how to define the path through the seas; it’s the other way around).
d) The rules (highlights)
The first aspect to the rules is the introduction of a series of skills, Artillerist, Navigation, Pilot, Sailor and Sea Legs:
· Artillerist is a required skill in naval combat. It is well conceived.
· Navigation means the ability to decide on a course for the ship while Pilot is the skill of commanding the crew to operate the ship. As I said before, the name for these two skills has been wrongly interchanged.
· Sailor, another professional skill, is the ability to operate a ship, either alone – in the case of small vessels – or as part of the crew.
· Sea Legs is the ability to “maintain balance while on the deck”.
The first four skills are, needed, correct and do what they are supposed to do. I don’t like the Sea Legs skill, though. I think it is unneeded and overlaps other skills (sailor, balance) to which it is connected in the rules. Furthermore, it makes more sense to use a penalty to Dex-based skill rolls by non-sailors in the situations covered by this skill.
The effect of weather is critical in naval action. BNA covers it by providing a random weather at sea table and rules for the effect of weather in navigation. These last consist on the adverse affects of a failed crew sailor roll. Weather is complimented with rules for wind direction determination and the velocity of the ship according to the direction and strength of the wind. Most of these rules are fairly simple in concept but require several dice rolls.
Since navigation depends on both uncontrollable events (weather) and human action (the arts of piloting, navigation and the sailor), BNA rules this by combining the DM control of weather (usually rolled in the tables provided for the effect) with PC/NPC skill rolls to which are applied situational modifiers (based on the nature of the rout and instrument usage in the case of the Pilot and Navigation skills).
These rules are straightforward and cover the issues related to sea travel.
The ships are described in terms of size, crew (optimal, adequate and skeleton), sails and/or oars, speed and acceleration/deceleration, maneuverability, seaworthiness, aerodynamics (for flying vessels), cargo (for goods) and transport (for creatures), hull and deck design and strength, and armament. There are 30 historical ships (as I said, all of them are of European designs) and 9 fantasy ships (that are variants on historical designs), plus several underwater vessels (in a separate section). Building a ship is done through the core rules Craft skill with an adjustment between the technical level of the crafter(s) and the design of the ship.
All in all, this is a comprehensive treatment of the subject – if we forget for the limited selection of ship designs. The description of the ships can be a little over detailed, though. But it will please the more technically oriented players.
Naval combat is both overdone and underdone. Let me explain:
It is overdone in the way it takes into account naval movement. Nothing wrong with naval movement, of course, if it wasn’t for the reason that it is taken care at three different scales with detailed tracking of movement in an hex grid. This is wargaming, not roleplaying. In a roleplaying game one needs a simple, fast and consistent way to put the boats in the combat situation. It is also overdone in the way it places too much emphasis in missile combat, especially on what concerns cannons and other gun powder weapons.
It is underdone in not providing, as I said before, enough guidelines to boarding and melee combat. I am sure that this is the focus of any roleplaying naval combat (actually it was the focus of pre-modern naval combat).
In any case, the rules presented for naval movement and missile combat seem to be Ok (I say “seem” because I didn’t playtest it) – as long as you welcome inserting into your roleplay a good deal of wargaming.
I am strongly against feats and similar devices. I consider it to be an inherently poor way to design game entities. A well thought-out and well playtested system of feats may work. The problem is that this is not the norm. The 21 feats present in BNA demonstrate just this. Most of them are simply disguised modifiers to skills and other abilities. It’s the case of Graceful Diver (“you can fall into water with minimal risk”), Water Combat (“you are able to function effectively in combat underwater”).
Some of them could be converted into skills or incorporated into existing skills as in Flyer (“you are skilled in sailing and piloting a flying ship”) or Handler (you can act as a handler for the mounts of a flying ship”).
All in all, a forgettable section.
Since I don’t own the DM Book, I don’t know much about Prestige Classes. As far as I know, they are variants on the basic classes that can only be accessed if the character fulfils some basic requirements. BNA includes seven (harpooner, marine, oceanic sentinel – a spell casting class –, privateer, surgeon, sea captain and sea scout). Most of these just seem opportunities for power gaming by providing dubious powerful abilities with minimal justification.
The oddest thing about BNA is that it does not include provision to the most obvious of the classes in a book dedicated to naval activities: the sailor. I would expect to find a good coverage of sea activities and professions. Helas, this is not the case.
Further to these, there are rules for other things like nautical instruments (the list is incomplete since it lacks two essential instruments used to measure the depth of the sea and the velocity of the sailing – sorry, I don’t know their English names), maps and charts (but not rout books), terrain (in fact meaning ice), seasickness, flying vessels, underwater activities, nautical equipment, surgery and its tools.
The rest – spells, magic items, creatures, etc. – I covered briefly above, so I’ll not go back to it.
e) So, for Content we have…
According with the Tragic History of the Sea (a collection of narrations of shipwrecks that happened in the 16th and 17th centuries) there are five principal dangers in the seas, the ones that the mariners fear the most: tempests, fire, leaking of water through the hull, underwater reefs and enemies. Among these, tempests are the higher danger. Unfortunately BNA gives a poor treatment to these dangers. Some are not even mentioned. Others are undertreated.
What can I say, 3 for content.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
I cannot say that I was deceived since I had no expectations about BNA. No, this is not a book I would consider to play naval adventures, not even if I was playing D&D. And yes, neither am I interested in exploring the following books in LII’s naval game line.
On the other hand, despite the flaws BNA is still an useful book. There is data you can use or adapt for your game and the rules may be useful, specially if you like a more cerebral approach that crosses the frontier between roleplaying and board/wargames.
So, if tastes vary from mine, I think you should consider giving it a look before making your purchasing decision.
Sérgio
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