Re: Pirates - Was: Places: Dragon Rock Map

From: "Dreamer" <dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk>
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Pirates - Was: Places: Dragon Rock Map
> In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Sun 06 Mar, David Shepheard wrote:
> > From: "Dreamer" <dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk>
> > > In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Wed 02 Mar, David Shepheard wrote:
> > >
> > > If I recall the references properly, real world pirate ships
> > > often had far more people on board than was required to crew the
> > > ship, generally at least twice, maybe even three times or more.
> > >
> > > If you used this in SJ, boarding actions would be their ideal
> > > tactic, and they could just murder and recrew a couple of
> > > merchant ships, before needing to return to port. Ignoring any
> > > possible recruits from among the merchant crews.
> > >
> > > If this is the case, then pirate ships might be far more likely
> > > that most to have a way of renewing their air, because they are
> > > so over-crewed. I quite liked the Horn of Fog, though having a
> > > permanent magic item like that would mean rich pirates. Alchemy
> > > which could renew air, might be far more likely. I'm assuming
> > > food and water are compact enough that their not a major issue on
> > > short pirate raids.
> >
> > Look up the disease scurvey to see one of the problems associated
> > with longer sea voyages. The British found that the disease could
> > be prevented by taking along a supply of limes (that is why we
> > got the nickname "Limeys").
>
> If you look, you will notice that "Dreamer" has a "co.uk"
> address. [grin]
>
> Better (if I can use that term about them) pirates should know
> how to deal with these problems.

Don't forget that it took a lot of time for people to understand scurvey and find a cure.
There would be some people in SJ culture that could deal with things like this and some
that couldn't.

> > One thing not covered much in Spelljammer stuff, probably because
> > it is stuff that is irrelevant to gameplay, is food and cooking.
> > Real ships used to carry livestock and also had cooking fires
> > (these were in ovens rather than open fires). Neither is the sort
> > of thing that gets mentioned in fiction. Livestock could cause
> > problems on a spelljammer by carrying disease especially as
> > sailors and animals used to share the same deck. Cooking fires
> > could spread to the ship if knocked over (and in SJ use up your
> > air). Nobody seems to mention that in The Flow, you can only eat
> > dry rations and uncooked food. Travel between the spheres
> > probably takes a *lot* out of people that do it.
>
> I would agree with all of this, and this is another reason that
> alchemy, which could provide flame-less heat, or magic, which
> could provide hot food, one way or another, could be very popular
> in the phlogiston. I don't think fishing, to get a change of
> diet, will be very practical, either!

I think that crew members could drag lines to try to fish for scavvers in their spare
time.

> I didn't think you got too much human-animal disease problems,
> with a little care, except with pigs?

The problem with the care thing on a real ship is that water used to wash in through the
gun ports and spread over the deck. This would mean that any animal excrement would get
moved around. I'm sure everybody did their best to keep things clean, but accidents would
happen every now and then. A SJ ship wouldn't have that sort of problem, although if
animals were taken on a spelljammer, you *would* have to factor in air intakes for them.
Maybe you could softwood a few sheep and drag them behind the ships air envelope! ;-)

> > >On that subject, where would I look for articles on all the
> > >different ways that you might use to renew air? I would have
> > >thought some new ideas would have come out over the years.
> >
> > Firstly don't forget that additional crew only reduce the time
> > that an atmosphere remains fresh. It is normally 4 months. Method
> > 1 in the CoAS states that every 25% of excess crew reduces that
> > time by one month, so if you wanted to use the easy rule you
> > could still stay in space for a month with a 75% excess. However,
> > if you can be bothered to go to the trouble of using method 2,
> > you can run ships with even higher crew levels.
> >
> > If you work out the time for air to remain fresh, your pirates
> > can use half of that time to travel away from their base, before
> > they have to retreat to a world and top up their air. Don't
> > forget that air gets fouled before it gets deadly, so pirates
> > would not definitely die if the got delayed on the way to a
> > planet.
>
> I would be more inclined to calculate the man-days rating of the
> air, and divide that by the crew, plus cooking fires, and any
> other air-consuming activity, which I'd give a man-equivalent
> rating. Method 2, I think.
>
> Does anyone know of tables suggesting air consumption in man-
> equivalent ratings for things like lighting and cooking on a SJ
> ship? Or, do we just ignore these for simplicity?

Cooking fires might have been factored in to those method one estimates. Altertatively the
creators of SJ might have failed to think about cooking fires and lighting.

It all depends on how realistic you want to make this. Another thing that bugs me is the
continual light spell. In 3e it is called continual flame. The new name implies it would
explode in The Flow, but the spell is identical to the original and neither gives off heat
or burns up air.

If I was on a ship I would pay for continual flame spells to be cast on a lot of items, so
that I didn't have to burn any torches. In the long run the flames would pay back the cost
(50gp ruby + whatever the spellcaster wants) as you would keep your air fresh for longer
than a ship with conventional torches. Pirates of course would pick up continual flame
items when they raded ships.

> > Before you do research away from the Spelljammer setting itself,
> > don't forget that pirates already have access to the following:
<snip>
>
> Thanks for the above list!

> I knew of some of these, but, they might suggest a few new magic
> items, like the Air Lantern, which while it burns provides fresh
> air, good for two man-equivalents, in a 10' radius (there is a
> non-magical alchemical equivalent).

An Air Lantern that *burns* sounds counter intuitive. If you are going this way, perhaps
it should be like an incence burner and give of sweet smelling white smoke.

If you want to go for an alchemical solution then I suggest you look up space suit life
support systems to see what sort of things NASA and the Russians used to clean up their
air. It might give you a bit of inspiration.

The really low tech solution is to use plants! You could perhaps cover the underside of a
ship with plants, but that might attract some sort of wildspace plant eaters.

Something you might want to try to do is create a container that keeps in an infinity vine
but allows stale air to get in and clean air to get out. Of course if it was broken the
vine would coat the ship.

> Maybe some sort of larger unintelligent lizard creature which can
> create a bigger flog cloud exists?

Swamp Wiggles and Salt Wiggles both have the same ability as the Hurwaeti. Do you fancy
catching some Salt Wiggles and giving it a try? LOL

> I can see the great popularity of Hurwaeti (C.S. Lewis 'Narnia'
> marsh wiggles?), to the extent that some pirates or other evil
> spelljammers might keep them as slaves.

Some pirates would keep Hurwaeti as slaves, but I'm sure pirates could find Hurwaeti that
were willing to serve on a pirate ship if you paid them well.

> Also, it seems to strongly push for any crew, pirate or
> otherwise, having two spellcasters, one who normally runs the
> helm, and a second with some spell capability free.

Any ship that doesn't have a back up helmsman is asking for trouble. If you divide a ship
into three 8 hour watches you need at least 3 magic users just to run the helm.

As all the people that run the helm loose their spells for the day, you need to have a 4th
spellcaster if you want a crew to be able to cast any spells at the end of the day.

> Scrolls with the above spells would seem very attractive, as I
> would have thought you could use these without interfering with
> your ability to spelljam, though maybe not after you start
> spelljamming for the day?

That is a great question. I can't rember reading a rule about it.

> Would it be only naval vessels who have three helmsmen, and at
> least one, preferably two, understudies, to have three eight-hour
> shifts at the helm, with spare spellcasters?

I think all ships would carry as many helmsmen as they could afford to. You could even get
really low level wizards or clerics to come and be trained as apprentices by your main
spellcasters.

Don't forget that on top of all the spellcasters we have both mentioned, pirates also need
enough helmsmen to man the helm of a ship they hijack. I'd say that 6 helmsmen (including
apprentices) would be a minimum number for pirates to have.

> > > Arr, my hearties! [grin]
> >
> > Avast ye land-lubbers!
>
> So, you'd make fun of ... The Captain, would you!  [grin]

Shiver me timbers!

> (Must stop channeling pirate Captain 'Billy Red'...)

Is that psychic channeling?

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/