Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Sailing the Sunscorched Marshes

I'm working on writing a hexcrawl through the Sunscorched Marshes, which are a fantastical analogue to the Florida Everglades.

The slow-moving river that flows towards the northeast throughout the entirety of the Sunscorched Marshes is navigable by foot, but it’s a slow, arduous, and muddy endeavor. A boat can help. Any boat has four stats:
  • Crew, the number of people who must be actively engaged in propelling the boat and keeping it functional in order for it to move. If the boat is not sufficiently crewed, it may travel only one hex per day.
  • Float, the measure of a boat’s maneuverability, stealth, and speed. The number of hexes a boat can travel per day (assuming nothing goes wrong) is equal to its Float stat. When the boat makes a tricky maneuver, roll a d20 and add its Float stat to find out how well it does.
  • Bulk, the structural integrity and sturdiness of the boat. When the boat must defend against damage, ram into something, or otherwise utilize its strength, roll a d20 and add its Bulk stat.
  • Cargo, the amount of stuff a boat can hold before it gets too heavy, given as a number of abstracted inventory slots. When a boat has too much Cargo on it, it will begin to sink. Only significantly heavy things are Cargo- a single ration doesn’t weigh the boat down but a crate containing enough to feed the party for a week counts.
The Marshes’ river is slow and placid enough that sailing against its current is actually just as easy as sailing along with the current when the weather is alright. During a storm the boat can only move northeast or it’ll have to roll on the storm table twice per hour.

Boats get damaged by all the things you’d expect. When that happens, add a point of Damage. When the Damage total is higher than its Bulk stat, the boat begins to sink.

To stop a ship from sinking, it must be fully crewed with an acceptable amount of Damage and Cargo. Each crew member must devote 1d4 turns to rescuing the boat.

When a boat must face one of the vicious storms of the Marshes, roll on this table once per hour and whenever the boat does anything risky:

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