Tuesday's dinner with the padre went fine...nothing big to report. He's just a normal dude...a big kid in a lot of ways (he's in his early 30s)...as so many folks are. Age and geographic origin are far more a determining factor of personality than what a person does (or doesn't do) for a vocation...I've found it much the same even regardless of whether a person is a rock star or active military, politicians or drug dealers. Some folks alienate themselves from "normal humans," surrounding themselves by a bubble of subculture and/or sycophancy that fills their world view. But sit them down for a meal, crack a bottle, and act nonchalant and everyone becomes just another house guest. I don't know why I ever expect it to be different.
So...shipping.
It's only in the last few years that I've grown to understand and appreciate the importance of maritime trade...both to our present society and the length and breadth of human history/development. Which is pretty ridiculous given my life spent in Seattle, my father's time in the navy, my paternal grandfather's career as a merchant marine, my almost-career in stevedore shipping (thanks to the father of my college best friend), and the amount of time I've spent staring out to sea from coastlines all around the Pacific Northwest.
Ships and shipping. They are the lifeblood of human society, and have been for thousands of years.
Ha! Here's an anecdote: I don't remember the year that I first found (and purchased) a (used) copy of Original D&D...it was probably around the age of 14 or so...long after my friends and I had moved full-time into AD&D. I found it incredibly interesting: it's scale, it's scope, it's focus...as well as the primitiveness (is that a word? spellcheck says yes!) of the artifact. The first thing I did with it was sit in my room and create a character...something like a 7th level magic-user...and draw up blueprints of a ship, so that I could run the naval combat rules and see how they worked. You see, I'd always found the B/X rules to be a rather poor system, and the AD&D rules to be overly complex given the other crunch of the DMG.
| Small sailing ship |
But the sea isn't just an "interesting location" (or unique environment) to have an adventure or stage a battle. The fact is that the sea...and deep water in general...is a RESOURCE that humans have long exploited for good use. It is (and has been) the best way to transport large amounts of material from one place to another. Ready access to the sea is what allowed great civilizations to grow and flourish into world spanning empires. Without the ability to move freight (and specifically food) over water, the world's largest cities would never have reached the immense levels of population that they did...and those immense populations enabled all the technological and societal advances that have created the world in which we live.
For a game like Dungeons & Dragons...a game that ostensibly takes place in a world lacking commercial air travel, super highways, and railroads...maritime trade and shipping should be an incredibly important part of the world building which (I've been harping on a lot the last few months) is integral to solid campaign play. Rules for naval battles become imperative when trade routes...and the shipment of goods by sea...become the "way things get done." It can't be taken for granted!
And, yet, it kinda' is. Reviewing the various rules for ships across the various old editions, my main concern is "how much can these ships carry?" What's their cargo capacity? How much lumber, how much grain, how much quarried stone and marble? How much treasure, for goodness sake?! And this, sadly, is the information I find explicitly lacking from MOST of the instructional texts.
Except for B/X, that is, which (instead) is woefully, woefully inaccurate. Check out these numbers:
Small Sailing Ship: 100,000cns cargo capacity
Large Sailing Ship: 300,000cns cargo capacity
Longship: 40,000cns cargo capacity
The "small sailing ship" is compared to a medieval cog, and given roughly the same rough specs (as far as length, beam, etc.). But 100K "coins" is only 5 tons of cargo space, whereas the actual range of such vessels was 30-200 tons burthen. "Great cogs" (the comp for a "large sailing ship") had cargo capacities of 300+ tons, not 15 and some as high as 1,000. Even the snekkja (the most common Viking longship) had a cargo capacity of some 10 tons, the D&D equivalent of 200,000cns weight...five times the listed amount in the Cook/Marsh Expert set.
Even though the DMG fails to list carrying capacity for ships, it's a simple matter to calculate the actual cargo capacity of a pre-steam ship using the vessel's length and width (i.e. its "beam"). The DMG states that "it is up to the DM or the players buying or constructing" a ship to determine its exact dimensions but, for example, gives a range of 50'-80' length and 15'-25' beam for a "large merchant" ship...well within the spec of a 12th century cog. Given an average of 65' length and 20' width we can thus determine such a ship's carrying capacity as roughly 113 tons burthen.
For the price of 15,000 g.p. (the standard cost for a "large merchant ship" per the PHB) perspective merchants gain themselves an excellent means of earning a living. 100 tons of "bulky treasure" (bags of grain, for example) has a rough value of 10,000 g.p. but the markup might be significant given the the supply at the point of embarkation, the demand at the given destination, and the length of the journey in between. For cargo of a "precious" variety (say spices or gold ingots) such a treasure ship has the capacity to make fortunes for all its investors with but a single voyage.
Assuming it's not attacked by pirates, sunk by a storm, or destroyed by a sea monster.
Going over the potential opportunities for D&D adventures that such lines of thought produce, I am somewhat saddened by my choice of setting for my world...after all, my fantasy Washington State has only one coastline to ply with ships. Yes, yes...it does have miles of rivers to explore, but river travel isn't the same as the open sea...it doesn't hold the same romance in my imagination, all apologies to Sam Clemens. Still, small watercraft trading with the various communities around the Olympic Peninsula seems like a pretty awesome campaign idea for players in the low-to-mid level range (as my 3rd level PCs are)...and a "small merchant" ship (5,000 g.p. cost; average 20.7 tons burthen) would be a great way to start.
Now I just have to get them out of friggin' Idaho.