Re: SPELLJAMMER Ship sizes

Sorry for the delay, was busy working on my site/art :)

"Best of all, your work is glorious to look upon and does I think a
spectacular job of capturing the feeling of the setting."

Ah, making an artist feel glad! ;)

Yup wasp/mosquito has a huge area in the "tail"

Officer's cabins seem larger, well captain's anyway ;)
Biggest areas would be the galley and captains cabins, apart from the hold?
I fell the inclusion of a "head" is silly, since folk would be using chamber
pots etc, apart from on a few ships (like elves) ;)


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I'd rather be a Fool who believes in Dragons,
Than a King who believes in Nothing.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Spelljammer Setting Discussion
[mailto:SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com] On Behalf Of Charles Sykora
Sent: 06 January 2007 01:01
To: SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] SPELLJAMMER Ship sizes

>
> Yup that's me ;)
>
> Well, deck railings have to be 3'--4' high, I usually work off 3'.  
> Most
> sailing vessels of 14000-1700s seem to have 3 to 4' high railings,  
> as =
> they
> were also to save you from attack and be defensive.
>
I think your railings are very functional and wouldn't change them a  
bit.
> I look at the exterior and then interior plans, and the interior  
> plans =
> often
> simply don't match up. And there's no way you could have giff or  
> other =
> such
> races onboard most of the original designs.
>
Well, as I said, the original materials' descriptions are far from  
perfect, but I think we should strive to keep things as close as  
possible.  For the most part, I think you've tried to do that, but I  
do disagree with a couple of your compromises.  As someone else  
observed, you'll never make everyone happy, and at least you've made  
the effort to do something (better than some of us!).  Best of all,  
your work is glorious to look upon and does I think a spectacular job  
of capturing the feeling of the setting.
> Look at a clipper ship and actual cargo ships from say 1500-1600,  
> those =
> were
> big.
> I get yer point about submarines but that doesn't apply because...very
> different. Few crews so well trained, facilities and weapon systems  
> very
> different etc etc :) A racing yacht definitely doesn't apply, totally
> "false" design compared to a trading/warship.
> Real life merchant vessels did have crew crammed in, but, they didn't
> require helm rooms, rooms occupied by weird spell casters and so on.
>
Well, I don't think it's as different as you might believe.  We keep  
90 days of food on board (only about 2-3 wks of fresh food, after  
which you simply don't have fresh food) for 120 men, and all of us  
live in a compartment that is thirty six feet in diameter and about  
80 ft fore-aft (the non-displaced air volume is approx 3x10e9 cubic  
mm).  That includes a lot of machinery and electronics that would  
obviously not be required on a SJ ship (this does not include the  
reactor compartment and engineroom, which are roughly twice as  
large).  However, this space could be used for cargo.  As for someone  
else's question about relative sizes, our decks are about 6.5', but,  
being metal, they are more compact than would exist on a wooden  
warship.  Of course, we don't have to worry about air, as we purify  
what we have.  Also, we make water from seawater, another thing SJ  
ships would need to store.
> The ram and tail flukes on the squidship are enormous, the "snail  
> shell" =
> of
> the nautiloid would make the gravity plane much higher than it's =
> supposed to
> be...thus making gravity plane same height as the catapult deck,  
> making =
> the
> ballista deck totally unusable. But I let them be, though I reduced  
> the
> thickness of the ram on the squidship as it was grossly unbalanced.
>
I think the whole idea of SJ is that a ship itself, together with its  
helm, is a magical thing.  Who can explain why certain words, motions  
and material components can be combined to perform a spell, so a ship  
is similar.  The gravity plane exists where it is because that's just  
where it is.  That's why only certain designs are successful, just as  
why you can't take bubble gum, perform the electric slide and chant  
like a gregorian munk and turn your pet frog into a girlfriend for  
the night.  I don't think we should waste too much effort  
rationalizing where the gravity plane is.  It is wherever it needs to  
be for the design to work.  If it wasn't there, the design would have  
been abandoned in favor of something else.

Having said that, I'm certainly an advocate of the smart use of  
volume.  When I did an analysis of a dragonfly, I concluded that  
there was a heck of a lot of useful space in the long tail, so I  
ruled the players could store light cargo in there as a kind of  
smuggler's compartment.  As for missing decks, one explanation could  
be that the space, while present is not useful due to gravity plane  
contortions.  Or, you can simply use the space (my personal  
preference) and realize that the canon material only shows the more  
significant spaces in the deck plans.
> When I build I use a program that builds in exact sizes, I use  
> imperial
> since it's easy for scaling. I import a human model to check sizes  
> and =
> so on
> if I need but, as said, it's all built in/on a grid to foot scale.  
> Then =
> I
> have to think about giff etc. I know sailing vessels had to build as =
> tight
> as possible, but they didn't have 8' tall crew and they weren't as  
> small =
> as
> many folk think (depends entirely on what ships were talking  
> about). The =
> oft
> said Santa Maria was a ~small~ ship for her era.
>
> I rebuilt ballistas to exact real-life sizes as well.
>
> So should I decide to make ships unusable by giffs, umber hulks and =
> other
> such big races? If so, then how do they fit into the entire setting?
>
I'd say, as someone else offered, that the dimensions are based upon  
the 'built by' field.  After all, why would humans buy a ship sized  
for giff?  It would be inefficient for them.  If a larger (or  
smaller) race adapt a craft for their use, it would either be a  
bastardized arrangement, or they would make some compromises in  
lifestyle.
> Classic one is the mind flayer nautiloid, as the internal deckplan =
> doesn=92t
> make sense for the size of illustration.
> http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/sj/nautiloid/ 
> nautiloid_cutaway2.jpg
> that shot shows the problem clearly.=20
> Then add in problem of: slaves, food for slaves and mind flayers  
> require
> brains to survive...the Nautiloid is said to be 35' tons, no way in  
> hell =
> can
> it be 35' tons even going by original deckplans it's much bigger  
> than =
> the
> Hammership!
>
The CO's cabin on a submarine is about the size of an average home  
restroom.  The bunk folds out of the bulkhead.  About half the crew  
'hot-rack' (3 men to 2 racks), and the racks are so close together  
that a man of wide shoulder build cannot roll over once he's in the  
bunk on our newest submarines.  They are actually plenty long for  
most at about 7' long.  Each man has storage below his matress that  
is about three inches thick, together with a shoe compartment hanging  
from the rack above.
On sailing men-of-war, as well as most merchants of the day, the crew  
slept in hammocks, which themselves were used as protective netting  
to control splinter fragmentation on the deck.
> Another point is the neogi Deathspider, it is indeed, enormous, the
> originals give it an INTERNAL deckplan of 210' long, but the front  
> of =
> the
> illustration says it has a 175' long keel! That's the deck , not =
> including
> the legs. And since you've got umber hulks it absolutely requires  
> 10' =
> doors.
>
> So I'm stuck, if I stick to the originals, they don't work it's
> non-sensical. Sigh.
>
Again, I'm sorry to have mentioned it, because at least you've done  
the work, and I think you have, for the most part, made reasonable  
compromises.  Personally, I'd stay with the constraints as published  
as much as possible, and limit deck heights as noted above.  I'd  
offer the following prioritization to handle any conflicts that might  
exist:
1) Stick to overall dimensions as much as possible where given.
2) Try to stay with any deck plans provided, except that you might  
have to add deck space or missing 'decks'.  Alternatively, you could  
rationalize that unaccounted-for spaces are simply 'dead' volume that  
contains only air and that any attempt to utilize the space would  
disrupt the fragile magic that makes the ship viable as a space craft  
(remember, we are talking about wooden hulls that somehow retain an  
air volume, are powered by mystical forces, and steered by some  
arcane relationship between rigging and crew activity).
>
> I could re-do the Tradesman, but it would still need much larger deck
> entrances than original design shows as as said, large races would  
> find =
> them
> utterly unusable. Should I stick with 6' ceilings, or 10' as I did  
> to =
> allow
> giff the ability to actually use that ship?
>
> My re-designed ship sizes:
> Nautiloid 219' (original 180')
> Deathspider 254' (original 175', and original size is smaller than the
> deckplan shows which is a glaring obvious error and leaves out the =
> length of
> the legs of the grapple ram)
> Tradesman 159' (original 120')
> Squidship 201' (original 250')
>
> Notice that I made the squidship shorter than actual. Now have a  
> good =
> look
> at the squidships illustration, then it's deckplan...both are
> irreconcilable! And you have the ship's living/storage space utterly =
> dwarfed
> by the flukes and ram.
> http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/sj/squidship_2006_1.jpg
> to me, that's exactly how a squidship should be sized, about equal  
> to =
> real
> life merchantman/small manowar of the 1600s. The man on deck shows =
> scale.
>
> So I'm screwed either way, all I can do is *interpret* the originals =
> because
> they are so glaringly wrong in many cases :(
>
> But at least you like them :)
>
I love them!  Thanks for the contributions.  From your description,  
it sounds like you've tried to stay as true as possible, and that's  
all that I was trying to advocate, as I thought you had simply  
concluded that the volumes were unusable and published and had to be  
scaled by 150% or some such.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> I'd rather be a Fool who believes in Dragons,
> Than a King who believes in Nothing.
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> www.silverblades-suitcase.com

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