Toying with an idea, input wanted…. Underwater Frostgrave scenarios?

[BZ]

I did link that in my original post mate, it is what inspired the post, but thanks for the thought.

Sorry, it seems that I run trough Your post too fast.

[Grumpy Gnome]

No stress mate. My posts are often more easily managed by skimming. I know I am long winded.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Well we ended up adding the underwater expansion to our Bones V pledge through the Bones 5.5 extended pledge manager…. So underwater adventures are in our future.

I suppose I will need to stat up all those watery critters.

[fastolfrus]

Another option would be to just amend the basic campaign setting.

Frostrgrave is set in a frozen abandoned city.
But if you set it in an abandoned desert city, swallowed by dunes, you can use the rules (pretty much unaltered) as Sandgrave and go for Prince of Persia meets Ali-Babar/Aladdin/Sinbad.

I don't see it as completely ground-breaking to just set it in an underwater city, Atlantisgrave? and possibly stat your wizard & team as Atlantean exiles/fishmen/deep ones/mermen.

[SotF]

Another option would be to just amend the basic campaign setting.

Frostrgrave is set in a frozen abandoned city.
But if you set it in an abandoned desert city, swallowed by dunes, you can use the rules (pretty much unaltered) as Sandgrave and go for Prince of Persia meets Ali-Babar/Aladdin/Sinbad.

I don't see it as completely ground-breaking to just set it in an underwater city, Atlantisgrave? and possibly stat your wizard & team as Atlantean exiles/fishmen/deep ones/mermen.

With an Atlantisgrave scenario, it might work more to start from Ghost Archipelago rather than the basic frostgrave

[Grumpy Gnome]

Atlantisgrave is an interesting idea.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

With an Atlantisgrave scenario, it might work more to start from Ghost Archipelago rather than the basic frostgrave

GA scenarios are quite a bit less urban-focused, though.  I'd just lift the swimming/boating rules from it and run using Frostgrave wizard-led crews and campaign mechanics myself, and add more deep water to the default terrain mix rather than going completely submerged or mostly dry.  Maybe treat the city as about 50% submerged so you get a Venetian feel to the table.

It is an interesting idea for a variant, though.  No-longer-lost-legendary cities can crop up in all sorts of places, after all.

[Bloggard]

Atlantisgrave - really evocative idea.

Really the way GA should have gone instead of all that Tribal stuff.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Atlantisgrave - really evocative idea.

Really the way GA should have gone instead of all that Tribal stuff.

I look at GA as being the country cousin of Frostgrave myself.  Most scenarios use few or no buildings and far more vegetation, which makes for a very different table than FG (or Atlantisgrave - boy, that's awkward - how about Watergrave?).  Also McCullough likes to focus on the storytelling aspects in his rules, and GA is clearly trying for the kind of pulp "lost land" adventure feel Burroughs and Howard were so good at, mashed up with a bit of a Spanish conquistador/European explorer flavor.  If he'd done another urban setting (even a largely sunken one) for his second rule set he'd likely have faced the same (largely undeserved, IMO) grousing Stargrave got about him just doing a minimal-effort re-skin of the rule set.

[Grumpy Gnome]

I am liking the ideas coming out of this.

Atlantis imagery ties in nicely with how I see Dricheans.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Atlantis imagery ties in nicely with how I see Dricheans.

Considering they're pseudo-Greeks and it was a Greek who invented Atlantis in the first place, that seems a good fit.  They'd certainly make for a good pulp-style  "Atlantean remnant population" grown from a surviving colony or refugees that survived the Sinking.

Of course Plato's Atlantis bears little resemblance to later interpretations that turned it into a myth rather than an intellectual exercise.  You can blame most of that on Iggy Donnelly, who really kicked off the Victorian era obsession with the place, with a slew of cranks, kooks, and imitators following in his footsteps all the way to the modern day.  The things Hollywood has done to the place are bad enough, but the involvement of Blavatsky and her fellow theosophists, literal Nazis, Edgar Cayce and later con men would likely have had Plato asking Socrates if he could borrow some hemlock if he'd known what was coming.

One of the worst cases of parable taken as fact in all of history IMO.

[Bloggard]

given the, ahem, history-lite nature of romanticism that the more fantasy inclined denizens of this board tend towards, not sure this is the most receptive environment for such strictures Rich old chap    (don't doubt you're right tho' ... although you'll be saying they really did go to the moon next  [oops, cross-board posting])

But there is something about the setting of (partially) submerged ruins and adventure etc. ... Kind of realise now it's being focussed on that it's the lodestone of my attraction to the genre/s, atmospherically speaking (even tho' I've actually had next to no gaming in the like!).
I guess the various 'Graves are kind of there if you take the bits you like, and season to flavour.

Do feel GA could have been more successfully pitched in that way - although saying that I didn't get the last expansion or two, so am not entirely clear where it's finished up.
Just seemed to be turning into a bit of an opportunistic tie-in with the likes of Darkest Africa etc, which wasn't what I hoped for it.

Anyhow, interested to see where GG takes the idea.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Whilst a ruined Venicegrave has its own appeal (Mrs. GG and I love the TT Combat Venice terrain) my thinking for this would be more underwater, with the board being the sea floor, so that the underwater denizens become the stars of the show rather than something to be avoided in isolated pockets of deep water.

[Bloggard]

that would be fantastic - just from an aesthetic point of view, difficult to simulate in an immersive (forgive pun) way?

but I have seen good boards in that vein (VSF in general) ... as I say, looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

[Major_Gilbear]

@ Bloggard:

Whilst I sympathise with your thoughts, I did actually find CLR's post good reading. One of the things I quite like about LAF in fact...

Back on topic, I have often thought about making/playing games set underwater myself. I think the main issues I found were:

1) Moving through water is generally slow for any creatures not adapted to it, whilst you can't jump like you do on dry land, potentially you can swim up/down over any obstacles given the time to do so. This feels like it would either limit or slow down the game more than anything, and I'm not sure the extra dimension of movement would really add enough to be worth the hassle of representing.

2) Assuming the game involves humans or other air-breathing creatures, this makes the environment essentially dangerous to them - they must have an air supply, and even minor damage to equipment or dispelling of a survival spell is likely to be much more deleterious to activity than a minor wound/graze suffered on land.

3) There are a whole slew of weapons that don't work or which would be utterly uncontrollable if used underwater. I can't think of much that would be the opposite though; i.e., weapons that work underwater but which wouldn't be very effective on land. That said, given #2 above, combat is also likely to be much riskier and more lethal.

If you ignore some/any of these issues, what makes the game feel like you're underwater? Many of these considerations also apply to other hostile environments like space too, and I have found it very tricky to get right.

That said, the X-Grave games are pretty permissive in terms of what the rules/setting can accommodate, and in the case of the two fantasy settings they both share the idea of a previously-inaccessible location suddenly become available again for an unknown period of time - exploring these areas to take their secrets/riches before they disappear again is what makes the setting for each. In this respect, the "Atlantis" that many think of (regardless of accuracy/anything else) fits the bill quite nicely.

What I have found more successful is having a setting that is not environmentally hostile, and instead using rules/restrictions that represent such environments for specific scenarios rather than applying them all the time. So in the case of an Atlantean setting, many of the scenarios would be set in areas where the tabletop would be considered "dry", but some could be set in submerged or partially submerged caverns/city sections. This way you still get to use the core rules and weapons as they are, but there is now also a reason for taking a wider variety of other crew/weapons/equipment, to ensure that you have enough suited to those underwater scenarios. I also quite like the idea of a scenario where the table area starts dry and then begins to fill up every turn after the first (or vice-versa), as I think this could provide some interesting (and perilous!) choices for the crews to make.

Anyway, just a few thoughts I had.