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In an unrelated issue, does anyone know what kind of ship was the inspiration for the windcatchers Their sail plan is a bit baffling so I’m not immediately able to identify any real world counterpart.
A historical longship was similar in shape to a trireme, but it was only one row of oars (one deck), like a large canoe with a mast and deck. The pcsg longships (of two or more masts) has a fore and aftercastle deck which longships don’t have. Galleys don’t really have them either, but their height would have been common on carracks.
That’s the thing, they don’t look like anything historically. Longships only really ever had one deck and even the largest only ever had 1 mast, which was square rigged. The 1 masted longships look like Cogs with oars (which would maybe make them karvis?) but the two and three masted longships don’t resemble actual longships (Knarrs, Snekkjas, Drakkars, etc.), they look like an odd hybrid between galley and carrack with viking themes.
I as never able to collect anything beyond Davy Jones Curse sadly (my local stores stopped carrying the game), so I never got to experience the Mysterious Islands, or the Frozen North etc. But I’m kind of glad for some reasons because now looking at the Viking ships I’m irritated. They look cool, but they are NOT longships and do not deserve such titles.
Is it possible they are cutters?
Dumb follow up question, but what would the average crew size have been for your typical 3 or 4 masted schooner
Additional Update Post on Carracks: I feel their ability is rather clunky and restrictive, so I have changed it to be more simplified.
Once per turn, when this ship is rammed, roll a d6: on a result of 5 or 6 eliminate one mast from the ramming ship. Boarding ships may not use boarding bonuses.
For clarification, the mast elimination occurs before boarding rolls as a result of Carracks “High Castle Guns”. Ships that attempt a boarding party against a Carrack may not use boarding bonuses against that carrack.
Another dumb question: Obviously all the game pieces (except for the poke’ships and sea monsters) are based on real world ship models (i.e. 1 Mast Galley = Barbary Fusta, 4 Mast = Galleon, etc.). I’m assuming the two-masted square rigged ship is a Brig and the two-masted “Blockade Runner” is a Ketch?
Dumb question, but is it just assumed that all generic crew from the Cursed faction are automatically undead? I mean aside from the obvious crew game pieces, lore wise. It makes a lot of sense for the crew of someone like El Fantasma to be ghosts, and the crew of Stephen “Sargasso Nightmare” Kalhoun are obviously Trogs. But I’m specifically referring to the crew of lesser cursed. I can’t image the Master Scribe having a crew of zombies when he himself is not one. The same for Tabitha McWarren, who while being a ghost is not explicitly known to employ undead of fiendish creatures.
Then for even lesser cursed captains who don’t have pieces, like Captain Zanna of the Loa’s Justice whose crew are described as being escaped slaves, and Aleida Newport of the Fiddler’s Green who doesn’t seem outright cursed, but simply made a deal with someone or something for outlandish luck.
Thanks for answering that, now I have an unrelated follow up question.
Where does the art for much of the series come from. I’ve been trying to find images of a few crews for a while. Namely Fitzgerald, Headhunter, and a few more of the Cursed crews like Master Scribe. Is there a good place to find like an Pirates CSG art dump?
I wanted to try posting an updated version of the Drua Keyword I intend to work on.
Druas are voyaging canoes used by the polynesians and have 1-3 crab-claw sailed masts. In the spirit of their voyaging prowess the Drue Keyword will work as follows:
Drua: This ship ignores terrain, except Trade Currents, when she is given a move action. This ship treats all Trade currents as friendly.
Dumb Question. Comparatively what are the rarity scales between Black (SR), Orange (LE,PR,ETC), and Green (PR, Special). Which are higher in terms of value by order of magnitude (i.e. Crew/Treasure/White -> Common -> Uncommon -> Rare -> X -> X ->X.
Goncalo Nunes’s last ability is in fact meant to be used off-island
The Ships were arranged by quantity of masts primarily so I could decide how many ships of each mast they would get.
I did take a small number of liberties. The creation of the San Martinho occurred very shortly before King Philip II became king of Portugal so the ship was built for the Portuguese navy in 1580 but was commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia (then Alonso Perez de Guzman) as part of the Spanish/Portuguese “Invincible” Armada. As a significant Portuguese vessel I felt it made sense to make it’s commander Portuguese rather than Spanish.
If you find my ships interesting enough to playtest I’d be honored to have a tab in the custom database. I intend to create more after this (I kind of want to dabble with druas and a Tonga/Srivijaya/Majapahit faction)
Do you feel any of the ships/crew are under/overpowered?
woops! sorry about that I got it changed.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kb-5v9-agJ-VjZCELlppxdWeRo6Xig3s/edit#gid=1249952571
Any criticism is fine.
If I had to pick a favorite I don’t think I could, but I like Joao Vaz, it’s fast and it has S-Explore.
Pardon my impertinence, but this is the current state of my first ship manifest (I haven’t added the other factions yet, but this is the Portuguese faction atm.
Friendly reminders: Cog: Once per turn, a friendly ship within S can explore this ship as a free action (this occurs on the cogs turn), Caravel: This ship may perform a stern turn, this ship benefits from opposing trade currents as though they were friendly. Carrack: This ship cannot be rammed or pinned by 1 or 2 masted ships. This ship gets +1 to cannon rolls against 1 and 2 masted ships within S.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kb-5v9-agJ-VjZCELlppxdWeRo6Xig3s/edit#gid=1249952571
Ah that makes sense, I’ll take more consideration for a ships cargo/speed categories in pricing ships in the future.
Okay, thank you for the criticism, what I meant by “model bonus” was a generic increase in point cost based on a ship model type (i.e. Turtle Ship, Long Ship, etc). I was finding that “ship type” abilities were increasing the base 1 master cost by 2-3 or more but that sloops with negative effects would have an overall point cost of 2. Which led me to believe that a basic 1 masted ship with no ability text or ship type would cost roughly 3 points. So I started there, added the +1 for the Cog ability and then added additional points for the value of abilities I granted the ships.
Also thank you for letting me know to repost ability text later with future custom ships.
I’m just going on a formula I’ve seen a pattern for in which most basal 1 masted ships are roughly 3pts, +X for their model bonus, +/-X for their abilities. If you feel these ships should be priced higher what point cost would you put them at?
The first three cogs are finished (just without flavor text), take a look.
Madre de Deus
Type: Ship
Faction: Portuguese
Point Cost: 6
Masts: 1
Cargo: 6
Base Move: S
Cannons: 5S
Ability: Cog. Secret Hold.
Santa Catarina
Type: Ship
Faction: Portuguese
Point Cost: 6
Masts: 1
Cargo: 5
Base Move: S+S
Cannons: 4S
Ability: Cog. Parley.
Sao Jao y Felix
Type: Ship
Faction: Portuguese
Point Cost: 6
Masts: 1
Cargo: 4
Base Move: L
Cannons: 3S
Ability: Cog. After looking at treasure on a wild island, you may trade any one treasure from that island for a random treasure on any other wild island. This ship must load the traded treasure.
Are there any other concerns or criticisms on the ship types I presented in post #11796. Any issues to discuss with the Cog, Caravel, Carrack, or Drua.
If not I’d like to know their possible point costs before I start working on the ship manifest.
@ Ocho, that’s a fun looking ship, I like it’s speed. Even if it can’t shoot or carry cargo.
@ Woelf, yes, and that has been rectified.
After doing some ship research I’ve finalized the ideas with the following (barring additional criticism)
Cog: Once per turn, one friendly ship within S of this ship may explore this ship as a free action. (This occurs on the cogs turn)
Caravel: When given a move action, this ship can rotate on her stern (the rear of the ship) in any direction as an additional, final movement segment. This ship benefits from opposing Trade Currents as though they were friendly.
Carrack: This ship cannot be rammed or pinned by a 1 or 2 masted ship. This ship has +1 to it’s cannon rolls against 1 and 2 masted ships within S of her.
Drua [Tongan double-hulled canoe]: This ship benefits from opposing Trade currents as though they were friendly.
Would’t that incentivize them to be used as loot-n-scoot gold runners. The draw of a carrack is it’s larger cargo capacity in comparison to other 3 masted ships, so I was trying to create a ship ability that capitalized on the ships history of cargo hauling without making an entire archetype of gold runners.I understand the comment better after thinking about it. Sorry about that.
I’ve rethought the Carrack ability, seeing as Carracks weren’t inherently faster than other ships I feel that the following preserves their nature as cargo and exploration ships.
Carrack: If this ship loads the last treasure from an island, she may move S as a free action.
Addendum: Your most recent idea for the cog ability mirrors ben’s and the more I think about it I like it far more than unlimited access to the cog.
I feel maybe the cog ability is perhaps a bit powerful, and I understand you can explore derelict ships, which I assume means you need to have a ship touching the derelict ship first. What if instead of a friendly ship within S being able to explore it’s a friendly ship touching the cog.
I feel that the Cog, Carrack, Caravel would likely be defining features of the Portuguese who used them most often but that a small number would find their way into other factions, kind of like how the draw of the Mercenaries was the Submarines, and the Jade Rebellion had the Junks but over time other factions had small quantities of those ship types.
cool, given the cog ability as discussed what would it’s point cost be if applied to a ship do you think, the same goes for Caravel and Carrack.
I had actually initially meant the former. which was for the sake of the following formula:
Ship A: moves within range of the cog on it’s turn and then uses a free action to unload cargo onto the cog.
Ship B (the Cog): moves it’s speed away from Ship A towards Ship C.
Ship C: uses it’s free action to load cargo from the cog (Ship B) and then uses it’s action to move away from the cog.
This was my initial idea behind the Cog ability, though I’m open to criticism and discussion over whether or not this is a good idea. You suggestion of making it be the cogs action instead only really hinders it by forcing the cog to sit for 1 turn with whatever cargo it gathered, making it fairly vulnerable for a 1 masted ship with no inherent defensive qualities, but I see that unhindered access to this ability could make them significantly valuable if the proper set up was achieved.
