How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

[martinl]

One thing I tend to do as standard in "magic and explosives" settings is have a few spells, items, and abilities that are some variant of "summon a swarm of small hyper fire elementals that love to hug explosives."

This does not outright prevent the use of explosives, and of course there are mundane and magical counters, but:

1. It is fun. Chaos, tiny critters, explosions! (I recommend making the tiny elementals look like fire kittens or golden lion tamarins.)
2. It reduces the dominance of guns over other strategies seen in RL.
3. It reduces the players' tendency to apply high explosives to every problem, which in my experience gets tedious after a while.
4. It encourages creativity on the players' part.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Ah, but the spell tells you how far down it makes the water clear for you, which implies that horizontal distance is unlimited. If this isn't how you understand it, then mages will have to pay more and extend the 'depth' the spell reaches.

(blinks) I don't see any such implication at all, nor any ground for imagining it. That's pretty obviously the range of the spell. Since at maximum it ranges 200 yards (and at a prohibitively expensive maintenance cost of 20 per minute), well. Given the issues with a big ship of the time maneuvering, Water Vision doesn't do it much good if it's moving much faster than steerage way, except in so far as giving the officers a few moments' warning of the impending disaster is useful. For that to work, you'd have to put that wizard on a screw sloop or suchlike, with attendant risks.

Originally Posted by martinl

One thing I tend to do as standard in "magic and explosives" settings is have a few spells, items, and abilities that are some variant of "summon a swarm of small hyper fire elementals that love to hug explosives."

Good heavens. Thank you. That's a pretty spiffy idea. Create a teensy fire elemental (no need to invent a new spell for it, other than to Be Cool), arrange the stats to make it pretty smart, and order it to zip across enemy lines to have a play date with the powder dump. That's a very valid anti-firearm tactic from any point from the introduction of culverin and arquebuses on forward. Food for thought!

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Friedman mentions 50% at 6,000 yards being possible in 1906 (for battleships - small ships would do much worse), and in 1916 5% at 16,000 yards was considered good shooting - and that's most likely when in training, not actual combat shooting.

IIRC there were 10 heavy guns at Santiago in 1898. (4 x 11" guns on the Spanish cruisers, 2 x 12" on USS Texas, and 4 x 13" on USS Oregon.) None scored any hits. The major Spanish vessels were, IIRC, disabled by numerous 4, 5, and 8 inch shells which started numerous fires. The Spanish vessels had wooden decks and interior fixtures (bulkheads, furniture, etc.) that easily burned.

Not sure about the Yalu River.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by seasalt

. . . I think I like the idea of monstrous beasts being carried around on a "carrier" ship, and how they have to be clever and subtle to pose a threat to ships.

IIRC dragons need lots of beeves to consume. So while the weight of the dragons themselves may be minor, the cattle and THEIR food supply would take up a lot of space on a warship & pose a fire hazard (the food supply, not the cattle. . . )

With mounted machine guns, it seems clear that getting close to a warship would be extremely dangerous, so I imagine that flying beasts would probably have a harness allowing them to carry bombs. Because of their low airspeed and high responsiveness compared to real early airplanes, they might be pretty damn accurate. . .

Overoptimistic in my view. They still would have to stay at some distance. Machine guns would have an effective range of several hundred yards at this time. See Gatling and Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt guns.

. . . as there was no effective anti-air artillery at this era. . .

Remember all the weapons noted above had 1" projectiles available. The Hotchkiss rotary cannon fired the same 37 mm shell as the early Pom-poms. (See Anthony Williams, Rapid Fire) You should be able to have rotary gun mounts that could elevate to c. 75 degrees. Lots of incentive for such if there dragons around. And you can hype up the rate of fire by using an electric motor to rotate the barrels. (Ammunition supply would of course then be a problem -- but a fast burst might well discourage said dragons . . .)

. . . A couple hundred men's worth of extra meat and drink is not too difficult to arrange considering how much a supply ship can carry. . .

Again, see above. Let's assume eight dragons eating 4 steers a day. {You tell the dragon he's on a diet.} Stay at sea for a month and you've got 120 cattle aboard -- much more than a couple of hundred mens' rations. (Figure a pound of fresh meat a day per man @ 660 lbs accessible meat per steer (I forget the exact number), two pounds per man per day for the other chow, and you've got 10 cattle and six tons of other victuals for the men, vs. perhaps 80-100 tons just for the beeves in the dragon chow -- and the 15 lbs. per steer per day (450 lbs. month x 60 -- (remember the steers are being consumed on a regular basis) so 13500 lbs or six more tons, and then the water for the cattle). Can you count on the supply ship always being there when the dragons (assumed intelligent) get hungry? And what happens when they do -- and there are no beeves for chow, but there are all those tasty sailors around?

Uh-oh.

[seasalt]

Originally Posted by martinl

One thing I tend to do as standard in "magic and explosives" settings is have a few spells, items, and abilities that are some variant of "summon a swarm of small hyper fire elementals that love to hug explosives."

This does not outright prevent the use of explosives, and of course there are mundane and magical counters, but:

1. It is fun. Chaos, tiny critters, explosions! (I recommend making the tiny elementals look like fire kittens or golden lion tamarins.)
2. It reduces the dominance of guns over other strategies seen in RL.
3. It reduces the players' tendency to apply high explosives to every problem, which in my experience gets tedious after a while.
4. It encourages creativity on the players' part.

I like the "powder-seeking fire kittens" idea in general, but this strikes me as more something you'd do in an 18th or 17th century setting rather than something at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th like I'm going for. At that point, bolt-action rifles, early machine guns, and breech-loading cannons are taking over. I feel like a natural theme for something in that era is how the era of magic and fantastical beasts is coming to an end, as modern weapons are so deadly that common conscripts can bring down an ogre or a dragon.

In the case of warships specifically, they're rarely going to get any closer than 500 yards to each other, separated by water. Hmm... maybe the "fire kittens" could be dropped from above. I like the idea of sailors on deck having to fight such things using buckets of water before they can reach the magazine.

[dcarson]

Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson has a Ww II equivalent in the first part with magic. The two main characters are a werewolf special ops officer and a witch from special projects.

[seasalt]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

IIRC dragons need lots of beeves to consume. So while the weight of the dragons themselves may be minor, the cattle and THEIR food supply would take up a lot of space on a warship & pose a fire hazard (the food supply, not the cattle. . . ) Overoptimistic in my view. They still would have to stay at some distance. Machine guns would have an effective range of several hundred yards at this time. See Gatling and Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt guns.

I think you might be underestimating just how much carrying capacity ships of this era have. Just removing half the armament of a capital warship of the era,
you're talking about tens of thousands of tons. Yes, the grain would be a fire hazard.

I was actually going to allow players to, when selecting what kinds of specialists they can be/have in their service, one coveted option is a user of food magic, because of how much logistics capacity they add to a task force. I was also going to say that this may be one of the reasons why the naval crews they start with have low morale: because the enlisted sailors are often fed "food" made from offal, kitchen trash and leftovers using the "create food" spell, which is the most efficient way to turn magic (FP) into food.

Anyway, this could also be used to turn grain directly into fresh meat to feed carnivorous beasts like dragons and gryphons. Though of course, a powerful enough wizard is not always available and often you would need to go to the trouble of shipping livestock and their feed over water.

Remember all the weapons noted above had 1" projectiles available. The Hotchkiss rotary cannon fired the same 37 mm shell as the early Pom-poms. (See Anthony Williams, Rapid Fire) You should be able to have rotary gun mounts that could elevate to c. 75 degrees. Lots of incentive for such if there dragons around. And you can hype up the rate of fire by using an electric motor to rotate the barrels. (Ammunition supply would of course then be a problem -- but a fast burst might well discourage said dragons . . .)

Again, see above. Let's assume eight dragons eating 4 steers a day. {You tell the dragon he's on a diet.} Stay at sea for a month and you've got 120 cattle aboard -- much more than a couple of hundred mens' rations. (Figure a pound of fresh meat a day per man @ 660 lbs accessible meat per steer (I forget the exact number), two pounds per man per day for the other chow, and you've got 10 cattle and six tons of other victuals for the men, vs. perhaps 80-100 tons just for the beeves in the dragon chow -- and the 15 lbs. per steer per day (450 lbs. month x 60 -- (remember the steers are being consumed on a regular basis) so 13500 lbs or six more tons, and then the water for the cattle). Can you count on the supply ship always being there when the dragons (assumed intelligent) get hungry? And what happens when they do -- and there are no beeves for chow, but there are all those tasty sailors around?

Uh-oh.

Hmm, good points here. But I think the military value of airpower is so great that maintaining such a ship would be worth both the logistical headache (to the point that each such ship would probably need a couple of dedicated tenders to constantly be making "burger runs" to the nearest base) and the inevitable danger of hungry predatory monsters going on a rampage. Yes, likely some men will get eaten by a dragon. That's no different from getting blown up by your own ammunition cooking off.

In game terms in mass combat, if you have airpower and your opponent has none, during the daytime, the benefit is MORE significant than going from outnumbering your opponent 2:1 to outnumbering them 3:1; the former is a +3 bonus, and the latter is a +2. That's easily worth a few grain silo explosions and fatal dragon maulings.

You do make a good point that anti-aircraft artillery would be possible. But it would be very crude. You'd basically have to be firing a box of shells fused to burst at a pre-manufactured distance, and to change ranges, you would need to switch to a whole different box of shells. Their sights would be lousy, training would be primitive. Remember, they don't have airplanes in this setting. The only way to train anti-aircraft gunners would be to have one of your own beasts be pulling a decoy glider behind it! Talk about dangerous!

That being said, I was thinking different creatures might serve in different roles. Probably the most common flying cavalry mount (assumin generic DnD and fantasy creatures are the options) would be a pegasus which is basically just a super-strong flying horse. Those would be the scout aircraft, probably only carrying pistols to save on weight (and because reloading a rifle while mounted on a horse-equivalent is very hard, and you have to shoot past your own mount's wings). They can fight, and possibly threaten even larger creatures, but mostly they are there to spot the enemy and mark them using flare guns. They could even use colored flares (or, in good visibility, flags) to perform artillery observation!

The "fighter" equivalents would be dragons, kings of the sky. Tough enough that air-bursting shells do little damage to them, and only multiple direct hits from a machine gun or rifle is enough to bring them down. The rider is more vulnerable, but they will be heavily armored, too, in a cast-iron suit. Capable of breathing fire, which is much more accurate and dangerous than firing a pistol wildly. But only capable of carrying small bombs and not good at using them. But if there's no machine gun fire to stop them from landing on an enemy ship, they will utterly terrorize the crew. And their flame breath can quickly destroy wooden ships (then again, anything that hits them destroys wooden ships).

The "bomber" equivalents would be gryphons. Unlike dragons, they are built for diving, and don't require much extra training to drop bombs, as they already pick up and drop prey while in a power dive as a hunting method. They can carry a 150 pound bomb in their talons. These bombs are inaccurate and unreliable, failing to detonate about one in five times, but when they hit and go off, they're devastating. Over short distances, strong gryphons can even carry two of those bombs, one in each claw. Unlike pegasi they are strong fighters and will literally eat them alive if they can catch them (which they can, if they have an altitude advantage). Gryphons are weaker than dragons in a close-in fight, but they can bring a dragon down if they get lucky, or inflict mortal wounds on one before being killed by it.They are much more vulnerable to air-bursting shells than dragons. Although no one's tried it yet, it could be possible for dragons to swoop in and suppress the fast-firing anti-flyer cannons, followed by the gryphons dropping bombs.

This is the kind of stuff that is ripe for a clever player to refine in-game as well, as hinted.

This seems especially apt, because one of the main themes in a war-oriented game focusing on this era might be something like "careful preparation for a battle is more important than courage and elan", which could allow them to contrast to pompous rivals on the same side, or overconfident enemies. So IQ-based skill rolls to research and develop new tactics, and social rolls to convince (often hidebound/uncooperative) officers or crew to adopt them, could be a significant part of play.

One of the ways to convince players to get into the "boring" stuff like training , planning logistics and so forth (granted this is an RPG so this stuff will be highly abstracted and more serve as a roleplaying opportunity than actual bookkeeping) is to have boorish, obviously naive NPC crewmen or visiting politicians going around saying things like "Balderdash to the facts and figures, the important thing is pride in your flag and willingness to lay down your life for it! A true patriot/subject of her majesty/etc. doesn't need to slink away from a fair fight or attack his enemy's baggage train! If supplies get low, by jove we can do without for a few days! You should just take them head on in an honorable clash!"

...as a none-too-subtle hint to the players that they should be doing the opposite.

edit: In fact, I think a good way to handle this (and since it's a bit OP rules as written) is to expand "risk modifiers" as per mass combat. Basically, instead of what's written, you divide the bonus of your risk modifier in to two (because realistically, even if you're a mage, there is a limit to how much you can personally affect a battle at such a scale by putting yourself close to the action). Basically, you take whatever risk modifier is listed, and break it up into a bonus to the strategy roll in the battle, and a "post-combat" bonus. After the battle, you add the sum total of your learning bonus from risking yourself to your next skill roll to refine tactics, notice something works or doesn't ("the flying cavalry that tried to charge an enemy cruiser at the start got torn to pieces, but when the second wave came in while they were suppressed by our gunnery, they hit the target and only took minor losses...") or use the result for political purposes.

Anyway thanks for the idea.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by seasalt

I think you might be underestimating just how much carrying capacity ships of this era have. Just removing half the armament of a capital warship of the era,
you're talking about tens of thousands of tons.

The battleships at the Battle of Tsushima, pretty much the end of this era, averaged about 15,000 tons, and the Austrian Karl Max ironclads at the Battle of Lissa only displaced 3,500 tons. So no, removing half the armament only frees up dozens of tons.

Originally Posted by seasalt

The only way to train anti-aircraft gunners would be to have one of your own beasts be pulling a decoy glider behind it! Talk about dangerous!

You could just cast Missile Shield on the towing beast. Or use a Summoned/Conjured animal that you don't care about.

Originally Posted by seasalt

edit: In fact, I think a good way to handle this (and since it's a bit OP rules as written) is to expand "risk modifiers" as per mass combat. Basically, instead of what's written, you divide the bonus of your risk modifier in to two (because realistically, even if you're a mage, there is a limit to how much you can personally affect a battle at such a scale by putting yourself close to the action).

What I did in my Fantasy Mass Combat game was to just remove the Risk modifier to Battle Strategy for the commander entirely and let the commander perform Significant Actions like anyone else. That worked fine and was simple to explain and understand. A PC taking maximum risk could generally achieve a Significant Action about one time every 3 battle rounds, and most battles lasted 3-4 rounds, so everyone got a chance to shine in every battle.

I should probably link to the campaign write-ups on my old blog: http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...bel/New%20Dawn. There's a fair bit of commentary about what worked and why, and as far as I know it's the largest archive of session reports from a GURPS Mass Battle campaign.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by seasalt

I like the "powder-seeking fire kittens" idea in general, but this strikes me as more something you'd do in an 18th or 17th century setting rather than something at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th like I'm going for. At that point, bolt-action rifles, early machine guns, and breech-loading cannons are taking over.

Small magical summoned critters can still be very disruptive here. Sure, you pay extra to have fire-resistant cartridges, but then the enemy sends little earth elementals over to play bongos on the percussion caps. The problem of ammo dumps being an explosion hazard is a big deal on non-magic earth.

To put it another way: Modern weapons have a tendency to explode. Magic tends to make things explode.

I feel like a natural theme for something in that era is how the era of magic and fantastical beasts is coming to an end, as modern weapons are so deadly that common conscripts can bring down an ogre or a dragon.

If you want a theme of magic being outclassed by tech of course don't have magic adapt effectively.

In the case of warships specifically, they're rarely going to get any closer than 500 yards to each other, separated by water. Hmm... maybe the "fire kittens" could be dropped from above. I like the idea of sailors on deck having to fight such things using buckets of water before they can reach the magazine.

Seems like you might be able to put small elementals in shells as a kind of shrapnel, just to be terrible.

[martinl]

I don't know if necromancy in on theme here, but there was a bunch of cheezy weapon design back in GURPS 3e where tools to build power plants that ran on necromantic sacrifices were combined with custom weapon rules and enchantment to make stuff like the infamous laser rifle powered by belt-fed hamsters that ejected zombified hamsters like shell casings.

You could certainly power boilers with necromantic sacrifice, and ship cannons that loaded in humans and fired their screaming life-hating spectral souls at the enemy are not an unreasonable development of the baseline GURPS magitek baseline.

Don't pass on the classic evil DM scenario of having your PCs capture a critical artillery emplacement that could destroy the enemy if turned on them, but unfortunately it is using the former inhabitants of the local orphanage as ammo.