Naval Travel & Combat

[TheGhoulPriest]

Hey, all! New here, and new to running TFT.

I've finally tricked some friends into playing in a TFT campaign. Unless I have a really vivid idea of what kind of game I'd like to run going in, I like to informally poll my players as to the themes, gameplay styles, and so forth, they'd like to see in the upcoming campaign. I take their ideas and try to find organic ways to incorporate them, albeit while still surprising them when I can. This time around, pirates, sailing, and the like came up as an option.

Now, i can immediately see how the TFT/ITL ruleset could be pretty neatly adapted to ship-to-ship combat, but wondered if anyone had done anything like this in their TFT games already. Does anybody have any insight or tips for my attempts at implementing naval combat in TFT?

[timm meyers]

You need to look back at the "four corners" campaign posts by Eric Shih (check the TFT facebook group?). He has been running this game and making entertaining updates for a long time now. There is a lot of ships, water, octopi and stuff that I am sure would be inspirational for what you are investigating.

[Shostak]

Also check out Hexagram No. 1 for discussion of ships.

[TheGhoulPriest]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Also check out Hexagram No. 1 for discussion of ships.

Well heck, how did I miss that? I need to go back and re-read the older issues. Thanks for the pointer!

I'm still awaiting my approval for the TFT Facebook group, but as soon as I'm in I'll take a look for the Four Corners posts.

[JohnPaulB]

I've done a bit of internet searching and there are plenty of ship deck plans, but they all use square spacing.

My suggestion is that you find ungridded deck plans and then use Shamat hexmaker (https://shadekeep.com/shamat/shamat.html) to lay in the hex-grid.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by JohnPaulB

I've done a bit of internet searching and there are plenty of ship deck plans, but they all use square spacing.

My suggestion is that you find ungridded deck plans and then use Shamat hexmaker (https://shadekeep.com/shamat/shamat.html) to lay in the hex-grid.

In Shamat, haven't seen out how to take a layout like a round room or ship onto a hex background. Is that feature available?

I have been able to use Shamat to create a background of a main layout and colored hexes into the map layer of Roll20 but then have to bring in other items to fill it out in the map layer. It would have been nice to do much of that in Shamat before importing it into Roll20.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

In Shamat, haven't seen out how to take a layout like a round room or ship onto a hex background. Is that feature available?

I have been able to use Shamat to create a background of a main layout and colored hexes into the map layer of Roll20 but then have to bring in other items to fill it out in the map layer. It would have been nice to do much of that in Shamat before importing it into Roll20.

I have a video about using image overlays for Shamat here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxFUbiieefY

You may want some islands to go with those ships?

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by JohnPaulB

I've done a bit of internet searching and there are plenty of ship deck plans, but they all use square spacing.

My suggestion is that you find ungridded deck plans and then use Shamat hexmaker (https://shadekeep.com/shamat/shamat.html) to lay in the hex-grid.

If using Roll20, you can put the hexes on an ungridded ship (or any other battle map) in there.

[TheGhoulPriest]

Thanks everyone for the responses! I've re-read the Hexagram article, and found a thread about it here in the forums too.

[David Bofinger]

Late to the party, but there's been a long-running game of naval adventure played by e-mail, GMed by Rick Smith and more recently Thomas Fulmer.

While I've enjoyed the game I don't think the naval adventure aspect of it has been all that successful. Having a ship has tended to push us toward using it in a practical way, which limits our ability to follow adventure plots. And always moving about has made it impossible to build up long term relationships with places and NPCs. I'm not saying naval adventure has to have these features but they are something to keep a watch for.