3.xth Edition: Construction

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 9:53 pm

I want to have ships, airships, and land ships of various sorts and sizes in my game. I also want players and GMs to be able to build their own ship.Now while I've got a lot of the mechanics to do this in mind I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around how ship weight and carrying capacity can be codified in such a way as to make building the ship itself and getting those numbers easy (this is without the weight of optional equipment). Now here's the thing: I want the numbers to "feel" right for most players so anyone know a system or reference I could look at for something that fits?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 10:14 pm

you dont want real ships like a frigate or longboat, or something else, but want to make a design your own crazy ship design and have a weight~capacity table, so that they match no matter what the ship design?

how about a hold that is plug and play. the volume of the hold of course has some sort of capacity, and the hold itself has a certain weight for its construction, then add that to the rest of the ships weight?

so hold-size A is used 3 times and is a small hold and can carry Y amount.

have a few bows, sterns, and such that have predefined weights.

stern+holds+bow = ship weight
holds = carrying capacity

break the ship down into components and have the required components for your complete ship, and just add them up based ont he components used.

aesthetically, the design of Bow Model F doesnt matter, but its size and shape are roughly the same for all of its kind, the optional bits are just added on. so a normal looking one would weigh the same as a dragon shaped one, etc.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 10:32 pm

What is your opinion of the It's Wet Outside supplement?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:22 am

I've looked at it but all it gives me is stats on the final product. I'd need something that allowed players to "build up" to a final product. A little while ago I thought about maybe making a list of "frames" with base weights/carrying capacities depending on that. Then just add adjustments for types of materials used and go from there.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 4:07 am

shadzar wrote:you dont want real ships like a frigate or longboat, or something else, but want to make a design your own crazy ship design and have a weight~capacity table, so that they match no matter what the ship design?

how about a hold that is plug and play. the volume of the hold of course has some sort of capacity, and the hold itself has a certain weight for its construction, then add that to the rest of the ships weight?

so hold-size A is used 3 times and is a small hold and can carry Y amount.

have a few bows, sterns, and such that have predefined weights.

stern+holds+bow = ship weight
holds = carrying capacity

break the ship down into components and have the required components for your complete ship, and just add them up based ont he components used.

aesthetically, the design of Bow Model F doesnt matter, but its size and shape are roughly the same for all of its kind, the optional bits are just added on. so a normal looking one would weigh the same as a dragon shaped one, etc.

Missed this post but basically this. Unless there is a better way I can find to do it this will be what I run with.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 2:12 pm

Your best option is to cannibalize Spelljammer ships (which is a surprisingly good option).

Is there a reason you care about carrying capacity? Water's pretty dense; there aren't a lot of exploits from saying that you can carry anything that fits in the hold.

Purple · Post by **Purple** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 4:48 pm

The third party supplement Airships has an astonishing amount of information about them. Even if you want more, it's very easy to build on what they present, and they do an excellent job of integrating airships into the current rules.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:05 am

fectin wrote:Your best option is to cannibalize Spelljammer ships (which is a surprisingly good option).

except that you might not want a Mindspider as part of the ship. i was going to dig out Legend of Spelljammer to look at the presentation of the info before suggesting it. if they conform to the shape of the space critters, it might not be as helpful, as well the size of some jamming ships can be massive, probably not something you would see on land, while others would work for their crew compliment....

the mini-jammer would be too big for a rowboat.

was also looking in the Viking campaign guide and "of ships and seas" to see what info was in it, and was thinking about making a piece-meal ship thiing myself that MGuy could tweak.

thinking of Athas and Pirates: World's Edge, where Sparrow sails on the crabs, well there should be sailing vessels for sands, and i think i read it on SOMETHING, but dont have access to my Dark Sun right now. maybe they slapped wheel's on ships to ride on land, for a fit of extra cost, and the oarsmen worked as a living crankshaft?

either way the ship is needed, then air- and land-mods can be easily tweaked once you have the vessel...sort of like Franky does in One Piece.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 5:18 am

Purple wrote:The third party supplement Airships has an astonishing amount of information about them. Even if you want more, it's very easy to build on what they present, and they do an excellent job of integrating airships into the current rules.

Not familiar with it and the google search has been less then helpful. Can I get a link?

@fectin: I care about carrying capacity because that's just a bit easier to wrap my head around than volume.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 6:30 am

http://www.trollandtoad.com/p109604.html i think this is the 3PP Airships in question.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 7:10 am

If you want people to care about ships and forts, you have to remove gold and silver from wealth by level considerations. The bag of flour has a relative value against a sword to an adventurer. The bag of flour is a classic piece of adventuring equipment precisely because it is so useful. Throw it at a square with an invisible enemy in it, spread it on the ground where you think there's a trap door, hell you can eat it in a pinch. How much you value the one pound bag of flour compared to the sword is certainly debatable, but it clearly lives on the same cost/benefit spreadsheet.

But here's the problem: the tonne of flour isn't an adventuring tool at all. It's just 2205 pounds of flour. And that is enough flour to fill a single 5' square about two and a half feet high. It's not even a single impassable square, that much flour is just difficult ground. But it's still over two thousand times the literal value of a single pound of flour, because it's literally over two thousand pounds of flour.

According to 3e's price list, a regular sword goes for a bit over two thousand times less than a +6 stat item. Meaning that the comparison of the Headband of Perfect Intellect to the sword is pretty close to the tonne of flour to the bag of flour. This is a problem: because a cargo hold full of flour is a fuck lot more than one tonne of flour. This means that if you attempt to use the WBL costs from 3rd edition, that even a modest sized ship full of even the most basic cargo is easily worth more than all the equipment of a high level party. And i the ship is full of spices or silver or something, the price comparisons get even more stupid.

The very moment you even consider letting people have actual boats full of actual cargo, you must take the entire WBL system as envisioned in 3e or 4e and scrap it. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: because 3e WBL was a terribad idea and 4e's take on it was even worse.

-Username17

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 11:37 am

I was thinking more, what are they going to take on that you even care about? You're going to have to handwave any trading anyway, and if they try to load in a hojillion tiny men, you're going to say something like "one tiny man per two five foot squares".

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 3:58 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:If you want people to care about ships and forts, you have to remove gold and silver from wealth by level considerations. The bag of flour has a relative value against a sword to an adventurer. The bag of flour is a classic piece of adventuring equipment precisely because it is so useful. Throw it at a square with an invisible enemy in it, spread it on the ground where you think there's a trap door, hell you can eat it in a pinch. How much you value the one pound bag of flour compared to the sword is certainly debatable, but it clearly lives on the same cost/benefit spreadsheet.

But here's the problem: the tonne of flour isn't an adventuring tool at all. It's just 2205 pounds of flour. And that is enough flour to fill a single 5' square about two and a half feet high. It's not even a single impassable square, that much flour is just difficult ground. But it's still over two thousand times the literal value of a single pound of flour, because it's literally over two thousand pounds of flour.

According to 3e's price list, a regular sword goes for a bit over two thousand times less than a +6 stat item. Meaning that the comparison of the Headband of Perfect Intellect to the sword is pretty close to the tonne of flour to the bag of flour. This is a problem: because a cargo hold full of flour is a fuck lot more than one tonne of flour. This means that if you attempt to use the WBL costs from 3rd edition, that even a modest sized ship full of even the most basic cargo is easily worth more than all the equipment of a high level party. And i the ship is full of spices or silver or something, the price comparisons get even more stupid.

The very moment you even consider letting people have actual boats full of actual cargo, you must take the entire WBL system as envisioned in 3e or 4e and scrap it. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: because 3e WBL was a terribad idea and 4e's take on it was even worse.

-Username17

Already did it. There, for the time being, is no wealth by level. That was the third thing I worked on after making "Magic for everybody" and "Skills = Superpowers".

You don't buy your abilities with gold. Gold doesn't even get put down on your character sheet. Instead you get generic "units" which represent your wealth instead. Magic items aren't necessary for the game as most of your abilities come from you, they don't give you a bonus to a stat, and it takes an extra character ability to even use Magic items in the first place. More over, in the end, most magic items can't even be purchased.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 4:02 pm

fectin wrote:I was thinking more, what are they going to take on that you even care about? You're going to have to handwave any trading anyway, and if they try to load in a hojillion tiny men, you're going to say something like "one tiny man per two five foot squares".

That's the thing, I may handwave trading, but I want to have a solid idea of how much shit people can reasonably put on a ship. Its easier for me to wrap my mind around how weight than volume. Even if this wasn't the case what value is there to ignoring it?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:45 am

i cant find crap for how much a ship weighs. anywhere i have called has told me to take my boat somewhere and weigh it....

i was trying to work out a knarr, but it seems even though these have been shipped all around the world, nobody know how much the boat itself weighs, because no fucking body ever weighed one or will add the parts together cause boat weight doesnt matter, only its buoyancy of the amount of weight it can carry.

if you can find a weight for a boat and type of boat, i can make the basic bow, holds, etc piecemeal stuff, or you can guess the weight based on dimensions....

too frustrated to work more right now cause nobody ever had a reason to weigh an empty boat out of the water for some damn reason just for comparison.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 5:41 am

It is an odd thing to want to know (even I admit that) but I'd like to know for when giant creatures attack or some other odd happenstance. This is also important for airships as they might need to land on something, dock on another ship or something similar. Landcraft would be the same but its easier to find weights on something like a tank.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 6:21 am

well they have to ship the things form one museum to another, and as it becomes cargo itself, the boat has to have a weight, but nobody knows.

i instinctively thought of airships needing it as well, for if you slap magical wings on it, the wings can either:
a) carry cargo equal to their weight and are already figured for the sip weight
b) they carry X weight, so that means the wrong size wings and the ship cant carry cargo or crew if the wings arent the right size

with land ships, the weigh of the parts could help determine number of axles (wheels) in order to function. enough wheels taken out and the landship cant move because it is too heavy for the remaining wheels to support and turn to move it.

only weights i could find is relative to modern fiberglass boats, but that doesnt help much in a world where fiberglass doesnt exist.

i even assumed weight distribution for the knarr on wikipedia to get the bow and stern, and took the middle as 6, 3, 2, and 1 holds to get the 24 tons for 54 feet (16 meters) long one.

4 meters long bow @ 30% ship weight
3 meters long stern @ 30% ship weight

1 hold
9 meters long large hold @ 24 tons carry capacity @ 40% ships weight

2 holds
9 meters long medium holds (side-by-side) @ 12 tons carry capacity each @ 22% ships weight each (extra weight of holds for separating one big into 2)

3 holds
3 meters long small holds (3 in line) @ 8 tons carry capacity each @ 16% ships weight each

6 holds
3 meters long tiny holds (3 rows, 2 columns) @ 4 tons carry capacity each @ 10% ships weight each

i just dont have a weight to plug in for those %'s

if those calculations help, then by all means use them and make up a total weight for the original single hold seen and just factor those %'s.

rigging, sail, oars, wheels, wings, etc would be extra weight, but i guess that would come from whatever you use and how you exchange parts to make a ship sea, land, or air....

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:40 pm

Well you can find weights for boats, but it really depends on things like model, what kind of wood used and a shitload of different things.

But here is a nice one:
Look at chapter 10 of this pdf

http://www.maritiemmuseum.nl/pix/tentoo ... online.pdf

bosssmiley · Post by **bosssmiley** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:58 pm

The old Dawn of the Empires and Champions of Mystara box sets for BECMI had rules for building things like flying ships and floating islands chunk-by-chunk. The latter set included some simple equations for surface area and weight calculation of hulls.