Anyone managing nautical encounters in RW?

[MNBlockHead]

DnD 5e doesn't have much crunch to help with nautical combat so I'm relying on older additions and various home-brew systems other GMs have posted on blogs and forums. If you have any simple systems you could recommend I would appreciate it.

But what I am really interested in, is how you enter such things in RW.

If it is a simple encounter, well, that is somewhat easier. I would create smart map snippets of the area and the boats. I would break up the stats section into multiple subsections, by faction, then by boat. There would be a snippet for the boat's stats and then a number of snippets for the stats of the various NPCs on the boat.

But what if you have an entire adventure path built on sea faring and sea battles? Some fairly random thoughts on this:

1. I would use place topics as normal (region:geographic for seas or parts of seas, as well as for island chains, coast lines, etc.; adventure area for specific larger locations where the party will be exploring in more detail, such as a cluster of islands with independent pirate settlements; locations for specific settlements; and so forth).

2. I would have separate topics for the party's ship(s) as well as important ships that may be encountered multiple times. I would use the Object:Name Vehicle topic for this.

3. I would use person:individual topics for important PCs as normal, but would tie some to a named vehicle topic rather than a place topic.

4. For sea routes, I would just mark on maps. I don't think they would deserve a region topic like some overland trade routes might.


One question I have is what do you do when you have undersea political regions and adventure areas that are completely independent of those above the sea? I would think that it would be handled the same way as underground vs. above ground regions, but I've not really set up that scenario either in my campaign. I'm thinking that I need to find some larger geographic areas to act as containers to help organize the various "layers".

I'd appreciate anyone who is using RW for nautical adventures to share who they manage it.

[Farling]

I have a topic for each of the regions of the sea that the islands are spread amongst, so any underwater regions would still belong as children of the region in which they exist.

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks Farling. Thing is that I'm thinking of having underwater political regions larger than any logical above-water regions. But I suppose I just make which ever region is larger to be the parent. Or I don't container one in the other other, let them stand as their own topics and connect with relationships.

[Vargr]

I would have them as separate and not contained.

I imagine it is two very different worlds and so I wouldn't bother whether they seemingly cover one another or not.

[JustinThomason]

Originally Posted by Vargr

I would have them as separate and not contained.

I imagine it is two very different worlds and so I wouldn't bother whether they seemingly cover one another or not.

I agree. I think connections instead of parent/child relationships would be the way to go.

Unless, perhaps, you use very large geographic regions as the parent, and have lots of children under that. Like "Atlantic Ocean" as the parent, and "The Canary Islands" as one child and "The Underwater Kingdom of Atlantis" as another child - something like that.

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks all. Currently I am treating them as separate and will link them as necessary. I don't know what I have a compulsion to "file" everything. :-)

[JustinThomason]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

I don't know what I have a compulsion to "file" everything. :-)

I fight that same impulse every time I enter content.

I have ended up using a system of "List" topics (including custom list categories) as my top level containers. That allows me to fulfill my desire for grouping like things, but without overly structuring the data.

[Cornelius]

Using the container/containing feature and thus group several topics under another topic is as I see it mainly a visual aid. If you set the topic list to hierarchy setting it helps you quickly find the topic in the list.

Thus as the lost kingdom of Atlantis is in the Atlantic ocean this helps finding the topic about the kingdom. All other links are made through relationships or simple links between the topics.

How it works for you is very personal and as such how you contain each topic is also a personal preference.
As JustinThomason says I also use 'list' topics to create a hierarchy that makes it easier to find the topic in the topic list