Recources for the Age of Sail?

[Gezahs]

Hello there,

I am gamemastering a campaign set in the age of sail. I am very fond of GURPS, which offers lots of concepts - from combat to shipbuilding. Unfortunately I can´t find much "ready to use" material.

For example: I can not find a good set of data-sheets for the dozens of different types of ships, which colored the age of sail. What i could find, was little information in Gurps 4th Low-Tech and GURPS 4th Low Tech Companion 2. Also the GURPS 3rd Swashbuckling gives only a general idea and GURPS 3rd
Voodo reders mostly to Swashbuckling about this.

My problem is, that i do not want to invest hours and hours to create a fancy set of data-sheets with deck-plans and images of ships. I simply do not have the time if not paid for. Gurps material offers good concepts to create such on your own. But right now I realy would prefer some sort of time-saving "out of the box" solution.

Beside starting an interesting discussion, following things would realy help me:

- do you know any other GURPS supplements which offer further information which could be used for a fancy Caribbean-Pirate setting?

- are there any fan-recources covering this gap?

- are other forum threads deeper into this?


Thanks in advance, i am very looking forward to any replys!

Gezahs

[Blind Mapmaker]

Did you have a look at GURPS Supporting Cast - Age of Sail Pirate Crew (link). I don't have it and the preview doesn't indicate the presence of actual ship stats, but it certainly looks like something you could use.

[ClayDowling]

How much do you actually need? Unless tactical naval battles are going to be a major portion of your game, full ship stats for every conceivable ship probably aren't necessary. Likewise, deck plans aren't going to be necessary unless you expect to have a lot of boarding actions.

If you will be doing tactical naval battles, I would create ship stats as needed. You're more likely to be involved in single-ship actions than the battle of Trafalgar.

While there are plenty of variations on deck plans, they all hew to a basic pattern with relatively minor variations. If detailed historical simulation is your goal, then you'll need to grab naval designs and convert them to deck plans (which is actually pretty easy with tools like Inkscape or Gimp that let you overlay grids and images). Otherwise, declare it a spherical cow and just use a few basic deck plans for your boarding actions.

[pyratejohn]

There are a ton of discussions about pirates here. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page and click the tag links you'll open a veritable treasure chest of information.

(And now, back to reorganizing my library, were I have approximately 11 linear feet worth of books on piracy, the Age of Sail, and 17th/18thC history.) 8^)

[Phaelen Bleux]

Do a Tag search for Age of Sail. . .I have designed a few ships for my Pyrates campaign and posted them here.

Osprey Books is a good source for general historical info, as well.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Books:

Howard Chapelle's stuff --

American Fishing Schooners 1825 -- 1935
American Sailing Craft
American Small Sailing Craft
The History of American Sailing Ships
The National Watercraft Collection

http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/shipplan.htm has information on how to access the Smithsonian's collection of ship plans -- more from the late eighteenth century, as most ships built previously weren't built from plans.

For the British side see the National Maritime Museum:
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/exp...category/90352

"Seamanship in the Age of Sail" -- John Harland. Gives details on how sailing vessels actually worked -- how the dutiful GM can avoid "keelhauling the yardarm" and other errors.

[hari]

I would heartily recommend "The World that Trade Created". Technically, it's not only about the age of sail, and it's also pretty global in scope. But it's an incredible book. It's mostly made up of little sections arranged in larger chapters. Each little section might be maybe 3 to 10 pages in length. One touches on potatoes and how they came to Europe, another on sugar and the slave trade, another on the characteristic dye used by the British Redcoats. Each section is incredibly informative. The bit that I learned in literally 4 to 6 pages about potatoes (and retained) was probably roughly as much (and only partly overlapping content) with what a professor I had once lectured on the topic. There's a lot packed in there and it's really easy to read. More than anything though, the reason I'm suggesting it is because that particular book, more than anything else, helped me understand the links between natural resources, the commodities and products made with them, war, violence, exploitation of people, basically, international trade and it's ramifications. It made me really really want to play an age of sail game anyways...

[hari]

I also enjoyed that book, The Invisible Hook, about the economics of piracy. Or, more precisely, what kind of economic sense it made for them to behave as they did. Not as accessible for a game, but still pretty damned good. I'm pretty sure I've seen in referenced here on the forums, maybe by Bill? I'm not sure.

[Gezahs]

Thank you all for posting into this thread! I am very happy about the information you wrote.

@Blind Mapmaker: I aquired the GURPS "Supporting Cast - Age of Sail Pirate Crew". It really gives

some very usefull information for every Pirate-Campaign. I wish i had had this earlier.

@ClayDowling: No, I actually do not intend to run a historical replay. I would wish to have just a set - lets say - of about a dozen different detailed "common" ships on which I can refer to for different purposes during the campaign. E.G. random encounters, general information for players to get them more into it, handouts for boarding actions and so on.

@pyratejohn: Amazing :) good luck with your website!

@Phaelen Bleux, fredtheobviouspseudonym, hari: Thanks alot for the recommendations

[Gezahs]

I am looking for a detailed map of the 15th century carribbean on the internet but cannot find an adequate one. Either the quality lacks or the time period is different.

I know that carthography was not ease those times. It does not has to be a "real" one but one which is fancy to use for an RPG.

- Do you know good archives for maps?

- Is there any easy and free online tool on the internet, which allows to create maps from geological data?

- Which one do you use?