I agree Wyvern, the actual terrain symbols are those old rub off sheets, I was thinking more to spark an idea on how to improve on them or perhaps base something new off the concepts in the text of the mod. Just a thought as it is the only actual marine adventure I have ever seen. ?
Yeah, it is depressing to think how exciting Modron was when I first saw it in the late '70s, yet it's still one of just a tiny handful of fantasy RPG undersea adventures 40+ years on, for all the booklet doesn't really do as much with the marine environment as it might. That merfolk village layout is identical with what JG were doing for purely land villages at the time, for instance, albeit the seabed map is still the most detailed for any underwater fantasy setting, so far as I recall.
To be fair, most RPGs do not make it easy to breathe underwater. That limits things a bit. Probably the best you can have is a location filled with air that is under the water.
There are spells to breathe under water as well as potions. You could also create a magical bubble of air. These all have time limits. Also, people are usually wearing metal armor. That is very heavy and hard to swim in. It also rusts unless it is magical.
Dragonlance, however, does have sea elves. They can breathe underwater. However, I am not aware of any published adventure set below the sea for Dragonlance.
Of course you could have this as an ancient ruin in a steampunk adventure with people in 18th century looking underwater diving equipment. They would have tubes going up for air.
Or you could leave D&D and it's ilk behind and play Mythras. There is a sorcery spell Abjure (Substance). If you cast, Abjure (Air) on your party (easy enough to do with a decent skill score) breathing underwater is not an issue as you don't need air to survive...well, at least for the duration of the spell...
Considering this is a generic underwater style, and not made for a specific setting, I think it is safe to ignore things like breathing, just assume that any DM who is using an underwater style have a way in the system they are using to handle that issue.
In the (shudder) online version of D&D there are spells and rings that address the breathe under water issue. Also limited. They are primarily used as a means to swim to a location underwater that exists in a "air pocket." It also ignores the weight of armor, allowing characters in full plate to swim easily.
I think the biggest reason underwater scenarios are avoided somewhat is the melee-centric battle systems that games like D&D use. If someone were going for realism, they might make swinging weapons weaker and armor make you sink. At the same time, arrows are certainly a problem. Some spells can be assumed to operate differently, and for games where the caster is required to make specific vocal sounds, many spells could potentially be disabled altogether, along with easy team communication. Add in differences in speed (you probably swim slower than you run), and an extra dimension where any enemy can also attack from above or below, and you might accidentally end up creating a pretty bad experience even though it is cool in concept.
I would personally attempt to pass over as many of those realistic aspects to keep things fun as I could; maybe even inventing some enchantment everyone can use on their gear (and voices) to keep them operational. People have written entire alternate rule sets on it so you don't have to come up with all this on your own if you don't want to.
Of course, some parties might come up with clever solutions for some of those problems so I'd also see which things they prepare to handle before I decide if I need to solve some of the problems for them, especially if there is a caster who focuses only on fire in the past or a ranger who has put everything into his bow abilities.
The things that are COOL are how different the environment is (easier to feel like exploring) and the fact that some challenges will be unique to being underwater. There always feels like a greater sense of heading into the unknown when you start diving down.
The "problems" of water-breathing in RPGs here seem to be ignoring the fact there are numerous undersea-dwelling intelligent races across the fantasy RPGs overall, including D&D. It's only a "problem" if you use air-breathing characters without access to magic.
The 3D aspects and combat issues are much the greater deterrents, I suspect, as @DoubleDouble indicated.
It's a pity you can't do it the way I do it in dreams. The water exists as air. The only way I can tell I'm underwater is the light, the ripples in the sky, and the creatures swimming past. Think Mars gravity, thick air you can fly through if you flap your arms, coral and kelp instead of grass and trees, and 'flocks' of fish flying past instead of birds.
There are no "real" limitations from this being the case - only if the players don't like it.
Kinda like if everyone sat down to play checkers and you started playing chess. Maybe everyone would love to play chess for a short change or maybe there's a reason they would rather play checkers; depends on the people and the game everyone agreed on and sat down to play.
I think I accidenatlly derailed this thread by pointing out why there are not a lot of underwater adventures.
Doing this type of map may inspire people to do it. And, depending on the artwork, it may be possible to use this as a sort of alien world map as well.
@JulianDracos Don't worry - It's good to hear what people think around the general topic. The necessary plans and direction for a project like this usually come from a group of minds bouncing related ideas around.
While your direction is likely set, if you are looking for ideas, I almost ran an underwater adventure. It was steampunk. Some mad scientist had an underwater lair. He was sending out subs to sink ships. I think also kidnapping people to run experiments. There was also a set of under the water caverns. Water was at the bottom layer, however, the upper layers had air pockets.
Thinking this from a map point of view, I would have the floorplan for the lair with the underwater areas outside of that. For the cavern area, then underwater for the parts that are underwater. As you go up, it shifts from underwater to normal looking caverns in terms of design.
Julian makes an interesting point here about other undersea settings than fantasy. There are probably more options to set people thinking of underwater adventures in fiction for the alternative-Victorian to modern periods than the pseudo-medieval fantasy one overall. Quite a number of the Bond movies from the 1960s and 1970s involved some undersea elements, for instance. Personally, it was the 1965 Thunderball film that started me thinking about underwater games more generally, partly because that was coupled with a lot of cheap plastic toys around then that were (often rather loosely, for which read "copyright-avoiding") based on that movie. That influence has never entirely gone away. There was also the Gerry Anderson children's TV series Stingray around the same period (1964-65), which was set in a then-near-future-looking 2060s.
I'm not sure this moves things forward in this project however, since there are already CC3+ assets to cover much of these settings (admittedly, while needing to repurpose or adapt for some things), so the sea-bed setting is probably the key thing for this project, and by the looks of things so far, that seems to be getting some excellent coverage already!
I am not sure there is much in the way of assets for anything retro-futuristic in CC3. At least for dungeons. I think there are city maps and floorplans for Neo-Victorian era. You maybe could take some stuff from Cosmographer to use for some futuristic stuff.
For anything steampunk, you would need assets that have rivets/bolts. You would want things like diving helmets, jacob ladders, analytical engines, boilers, pipes, wheels to turn pipes, submarines (with lots of rivets and maybe looking like a fish), gears, etc.
If you are thinking about underwater, then you will want to have the ability to make round/curved walls that look metalic and have rivets on them.
In terms of color, you will want metallics of brass and copper. Some iron or steel could be added.
Of course even if certain things can be pulled from other things in CC3, the look might not be coherent. If I am putting a lab, will I be able to find books, book cases, lab equipment, and a workspace that all have the same artistic style? Will that artistic style match the rest of the drawing where I may have a tank full of sharks that eat international spies?
Well, I'm still on course for a basic style here. It's been a lot of work for not much apparent change, but none of the fills will cause transparency acne in any of the others. I've also done quite a lot of work on the bare rocks. I'll be using them as the base for other more elaborate rocks with weed and barnacles, etc.
You will also be able to use any symbol you want from any set you want at any apparent depth you like, which may solve a lot of the issues people might otherwise have had with there not being a 'this' or a 'that' in the style itself.
Looks interesting Sue, and it'll work nicely as other types of shallow-water sea vegetation, I think.
I'm not overly familiar with eelgrass, so am having to judge by online images only, but this looks a little large and robust for those types that have come up via Google so far (where there's anything to help judge size, at least, and I'm assuming "your" barrel's about 2-3 feet in diameter). Not sure how representative a sample that may be, however!
Thanks - and you are probably right, Wyvern. I hadn't really thought about size. Only about how to get it to look real-ish. There is a problem with making it less rampageous. It's difficult to get the symbols in the right order if you want a patch of it. So its far more luxurious than is normal - at least for the kind of eelgrass you get around the UK. I think some of the species you get in the US are more impressive. As for the size - I will leave that to the mapper to work out whether to reduce it or not.
About underwater stuff. There was a '50 or '60's era movie called Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) where Nemo had a submarine as well as, I think, an underwater lair. They would go out into the ocean with giant conch or snail shells as the container for oxygen so they could work outside the ship/lair.
Searching for it online has been fruitless. Maybe it was all a dream?
Maybe it was a dream. I'm a bit younger than you are, so I would only have seen repeats if it was shown again about 10-15 years later than that. I can't remember anything, but we didn't always get all the American shows on UK TV.
Yeah, that looks like what I remember, it wasn't a disney film as I recall, but the look of the Nautalis and the divers was like that. It was set after the civil war and some union and confederate soliders, a women, and a professor were swept away in a balloon and ended up on this island.
Comments
Thanks wyvern :)
I agree Wyvern, the actual terrain symbols are those old rub off sheets, I was thinking more to spark an idea on how to improve on them or perhaps base something new off the concepts in the text of the mod. Just a thought as it is the only actual marine adventure I have ever seen. ?
Yeah, it is depressing to think how exciting Modron was when I first saw it in the late '70s, yet it's still one of just a tiny handful of fantasy RPG undersea adventures 40+ years on, for all the booklet doesn't really do as much with the marine environment as it might. That merfolk village layout is identical with what JG were doing for purely land villages at the time, for instance, albeit the seabed map is still the most detailed for any underwater fantasy setting, so far as I recall.
To be fair, most RPGs do not make it easy to breathe underwater. That limits things a bit. Probably the best you can have is a location filled with air that is under the water.
What, no spells to give you gills, or change you into Aquaman?
That's a shame.
It's probably just as well, then, that this isn't deep water stuff ;)
There are spells to breathe under water as well as potions. You could also create a magical bubble of air. These all have time limits. Also, people are usually wearing metal armor. That is very heavy and hard to swim in. It also rusts unless it is magical.
Dragonlance, however, does have sea elves. They can breathe underwater. However, I am not aware of any published adventure set below the sea for Dragonlance.
Of course you could have this as an ancient ruin in a steampunk adventure with people in 18th century looking underwater diving equipment. They would have tubes going up for air.
Or you could leave D&D and it's ilk behind and play Mythras. There is a sorcery spell Abjure (Substance). If you cast, Abjure (Air) on your party (easy enough to do with a decent skill score) breathing underwater is not an issue as you don't need air to survive...well, at least for the duration of the spell...
Considering this is a generic underwater style, and not made for a specific setting, I think it is safe to ignore things like breathing, just assume that any DM who is using an underwater style have a way in the system they are using to handle that issue.
In the (shudder) online version of D&D there are spells and rings that address the breathe under water issue. Also limited. They are primarily used as a means to swim to a location underwater that exists in a "air pocket." It also ignores the weight of armor, allowing characters in full plate to swim easily.
I think the biggest reason underwater scenarios are avoided somewhat is the melee-centric battle systems that games like D&D use. If someone were going for realism, they might make swinging weapons weaker and armor make you sink. At the same time, arrows are certainly a problem. Some spells can be assumed to operate differently, and for games where the caster is required to make specific vocal sounds, many spells could potentially be disabled altogether, along with easy team communication. Add in differences in speed (you probably swim slower than you run), and an extra dimension where any enemy can also attack from above or below, and you might accidentally end up creating a pretty bad experience even though it is cool in concept.
I would personally attempt to pass over as many of those realistic aspects to keep things fun as I could; maybe even inventing some enchantment everyone can use on their gear (and voices) to keep them operational. People have written entire alternate rule sets on it so you don't have to come up with all this on your own if you don't want to.
Of course, some parties might come up with clever solutions for some of those problems so I'd also see which things they prepare to handle before I decide if I need to solve some of the problems for them, especially if there is a caster who focuses only on fire in the past or a ranger who has put everything into his bow abilities.
The things that are COOL are how different the environment is (easier to feel like exploring) and the fact that some challenges will be unique to being underwater. There always feels like a greater sense of heading into the unknown when you start diving down.
I can see folks that are running Call of Cthulhu campaigns making real use of this.
The "problems" of water-breathing in RPGs here seem to be ignoring the fact there are numerous undersea-dwelling intelligent races across the fantasy RPGs overall, including D&D. It's only a "problem" if you use air-breathing characters without access to magic.
The 3D aspects and combat issues are much the greater deterrents, I suspect, as @DoubleDouble indicated.
It's a pity you can't do it the way I do it in dreams. The water exists as air. The only way I can tell I'm underwater is the light, the ripples in the sky, and the creatures swimming past. Think Mars gravity, thick air you can fly through if you flap your arms, coral and kelp instead of grass and trees, and 'flocks' of fish flying past instead of birds.
There are no "real" limitations from this being the case - only if the players don't like it.
Kinda like if everyone sat down to play checkers and you started playing chess. Maybe everyone would love to play chess for a short change or maybe there's a reason they would rather play checkers; depends on the people and the game everyone agreed on and sat down to play.
I think I accidenatlly derailed this thread by pointing out why there are not a lot of underwater adventures.
Doing this type of map may inspire people to do it. And, depending on the artwork, it may be possible to use this as a sort of alien world map as well.
@JulianDracos Don't worry - It's good to hear what people think around the general topic. The necessary plans and direction for a project like this usually come from a group of minds bouncing related ideas around.
While your direction is likely set, if you are looking for ideas, I almost ran an underwater adventure. It was steampunk. Some mad scientist had an underwater lair. He was sending out subs to sink ships. I think also kidnapping people to run experiments. There was also a set of under the water caverns. Water was at the bottom layer, however, the upper layers had air pockets.
Thinking this from a map point of view, I would have the floorplan for the lair with the underwater areas outside of that. For the cavern area, then underwater for the parts that are underwater. As you go up, it shifts from underwater to normal looking caverns in terms of design.
Interesting idea. Thank you :)
Julian makes an interesting point here about other undersea settings than fantasy. There are probably more options to set people thinking of underwater adventures in fiction for the alternative-Victorian to modern periods than the pseudo-medieval fantasy one overall. Quite a number of the Bond movies from the 1960s and 1970s involved some undersea elements, for instance. Personally, it was the 1965 Thunderball film that started me thinking about underwater games more generally, partly because that was coupled with a lot of cheap plastic toys around then that were (often rather loosely, for which read "copyright-avoiding") based on that movie. That influence has never entirely gone away. There was also the Gerry Anderson children's TV series Stingray around the same period (1964-65), which was set in a then-near-future-looking 2060s.
I'm not sure this moves things forward in this project however, since there are already CC3+ assets to cover much of these settings (admittedly, while needing to repurpose or adapt for some things), so the sea-bed setting is probably the key thing for this project, and by the looks of things so far, that seems to be getting some excellent coverage already!
I am not sure there is much in the way of assets for anything retro-futuristic in CC3. At least for dungeons. I think there are city maps and floorplans for Neo-Victorian era. You maybe could take some stuff from Cosmographer to use for some futuristic stuff.
For anything steampunk, you would need assets that have rivets/bolts. You would want things like diving helmets, jacob ladders, analytical engines, boilers, pipes, wheels to turn pipes, submarines (with lots of rivets and maybe looking like a fish), gears, etc.
If you are thinking about underwater, then you will want to have the ability to make round/curved walls that look metalic and have rivets on them.
In terms of color, you will want metallics of brass and copper. Some iron or steel could be added.
Of course even if certain things can be pulled from other things in CC3, the look might not be coherent. If I am putting a lab, will I be able to find books, book cases, lab equipment, and a workspace that all have the same artistic style? Will that artistic style match the rest of the drawing where I may have a tank full of sharks that eat international spies?
Well, I'm still on course for a basic style here. It's been a lot of work for not much apparent change, but none of the fills will cause transparency acne in any of the others. I've also done quite a lot of work on the bare rocks. I'll be using them as the base for other more elaborate rocks with weed and barnacles, etc.
This makes me happy!
Thanks :)
You will also be able to use any symbol you want from any set you want at any apparent depth you like, which may solve a lot of the issues people might otherwise have had with there not being a 'this' or a 'that' in the style itself.
Took all day, but I've got a single bundle of eelgrass (sometimes known as seagrass). What do you think?
Looks interesting Sue, and it'll work nicely as other types of shallow-water sea vegetation, I think.
I'm not overly familiar with eelgrass, so am having to judge by online images only, but this looks a little large and robust for those types that have come up via Google so far (where there's anything to help judge size, at least, and I'm assuming "your" barrel's about 2-3 feet in diameter). Not sure how representative a sample that may be, however!
Everytime you start working on a new style I get excited. This looks great!
Thanks - and you are probably right, Wyvern. I hadn't really thought about size. Only about how to get it to look real-ish. There is a problem with making it less rampageous. It's difficult to get the symbols in the right order if you want a patch of it. So its far more luxurious than is normal - at least for the kind of eelgrass you get around the UK. I think some of the species you get in the US are more impressive. As for the size - I will leave that to the mapper to work out whether to reduce it or not.
Thanks Kevbeck :)
That looks good Sue.
About underwater stuff. There was a '50 or '60's era movie called Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) where Nemo had a submarine as well as, I think, an underwater lair. They would go out into the ocean with giant conch or snail shells as the container for oxygen so they could work outside the ship/lair.
Searching for it online has been fruitless. Maybe it was all a dream?
Thanks Mike :)
Maybe it was a dream. I'm a bit younger than you are, so I would only have seen repeats if it was shown again about 10-15 years later than that. I can't remember anything, but we didn't always get all the American shows on UK TV.
Do you mean this?
https://www.google.com/search?q=1950+Captain+Nemo+diver&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi9r5z-35zwAhVY0IUKHQe-CMgQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=1950+Captain+Nemo+diver&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1ChvAFYzckBYI7PAWgAcAB4AIABkQGIAZ4FkgEDMS41mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=miKHYL36MtiglwSH_KLADA&bih=1027&biw=2021#imgrc=_1xsk359Ehv-qM
Yeah, that looks like what I remember, it wasn't a disney film as I recall, but the look of the Nautalis and the divers was like that. It was set after the civil war and some union and confederate soliders, a women, and a professor were swept away in a balloon and ended up on this island.