Creating Ship Combat for Draw Steel

In the Skies of Mor-ladron, a world of floating islands and sky pirates, ship combat is pretty important, so I have been noodling on how to add it to the game. Nothing has clicked (luckily, both my groups are deep inside dungeons and I still have time to figure it out).

I'm not here today to share what I've created. Instead, I want to share my ideas and show how I am thinking about this element of play.

First, what is the most fun about ship combat? Well, it's the fighting part, obviously—no one wants to play out seeing another ship floating in the distance and slowly gaining on it. Sure, things might heat up once it's close enough to be an interesting chase, but catching the ship needs to involve engaging elements and clever maneuvers (or, if the players are the ones being chased, getting away) (the Millennium Falcon hiding in the asteroid field comes to mind).

For fighting, it's the thrill of shooting a full broadside at the other ship and hoping to avoid their return fire. Then, once you are close enough, or their ship is damaged enough, you swing on over, board their ship, and... well, at that point, it's just normal combat.

So, we want to start off with a thrilling chase or ambush, then some cannon fire, and end with either the destruction of the ship or—probably more common—boarding the other ship for hand-to-hand combat. Am I missing other fun aspects of ship combat? Please let me know in the comments!

Different Elements of Ship Combat in Draw Steel

The next big question I have to answer is: How do we handle these aspects of combat? Off the top of my head, there are two different paths I could take: a new combat subsystem or montages.

Combat Subsystem

I could simply create a new combat subsystem for ships. This would follow the same basic rules and flows of normal combat, but instead of controlling your characters, you control the ship, or your character controls a piece of the ship like steering, sails, or guns.

The obvious drawback is that in this case, players would spend a decent amount of time in a combat scenario where most, if not all, of their characters' abilities are moot. This doesn't seem like the best way to run a game like Draw Steel, which has a lot of dynamic character combat abilities.

What else could I do?

Montages

Draw Steel's montages (yep, like in Rocky) are a subsystem similar to skill challenges in other games. Montages tend to last two rounds, and each character gets a chance to perform a test or action to overcome obstacles.

In short, the players need to get a number of successes (say, six) before they get a certain number of failures (in this example, four). Those numbers depend on the difficulty of the montage. Players can also get a partial success based on their mix of successes and failures at the end of two rounds.

I like this idea, at least as a framework for ship combat. A montage would allow player characters to use their skills and abilities and get them to the boarding action where normal combat can resume.

It's easy enough to come up with end results: if you are trying to board a ship, then a total success gets you that. A partial success means you board but still need to fight, and a failure means the ship gets away. If you are trying to escape a pirate hunter, then you flee, flee but with a damaged ship, or, if you fail, you get boarded and must fight.

But how do we get there in an interesting way? What twists and obstacles can we throw in to make the series of events feel compelling?

Without them, we risk having rote movement and shooting actions. Sure, things like weather, sky debris, and ships with enhanced abilities can spice things up, but combat could also happen during a nice calm day in the middle of nowhere. As of yet, I haven't been able to devise any staples that seem to click and feel like they'd be useful to pull from a grab bag if I can't think of anything on the spot.

Another issue with using the montage model is that the other ship doesn't have a lot of opportunities to do things. A montage kind of works like Blades in the Dark, where the enemy only acts because a player failed a roll. The Draw Steel rulebook includes an example montage where a group is infiltrating a palace and the alarm level starts at zero. Each time they fail, the alarm goes up a level. If the alarm reaches level two and they fail again, they encounter guards and have to fight. But if the group never fails, then they don't encounter guards.

This setup works for an infiltration and many other types of montages, but I would want a little bit more interactivity with the enemy ship, even if the players are succeeding on their rolls. I'd love to hear in the comments if you think I'm way off track here.

My thinking right now involves giving the enemy a chance to do something each time a player fails or rolls with a consequence. Something about that still doesn't quite feel right, but this is all on paper at the moment. I need to develop the idea more!

The Ship

I also want the type of ship to matter—among other things, ship type could easily help determine the difficulty of a montage test. However, I want the ships to have more differences than a difficulty number. I've even thought about allowing players to create upgrades for their ships. I know I have players who would love that.

Ship types introduce even more complexity, though. Does the ship need stats? If so, does that even work with montages? Would stats give bonuses to some of the tests the players make? I need to strike a balance between the effectiveness of the ships' bonuses and the characters. I don't want to fall into the issue of players simply controlling a part of the ship.

If I use stats, I'll keep it simple: Hull = Stamina, Sails = Speed, Cannons = Damage. Depending on the ship or upgrades, I might create some Special Actions. As I think through this, however, I have to wonder: If a ship has stamina and does damage, are we just getting back into normal combat territory? Can I work damage into a montage test without going into combat? There are times when players will just want to destroy a ship!

Well, there you have it—right now, I have as many, if not more, questions than answers. I'll keep working on it, and we will see what comes out of this mess.

If you have any ideas or suggestions about how you'd run ship combat, feel free to leave them in the comments!