Customer Reviews

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons of Ships and the Sea (Dungeon Master Guide Rules Supplement)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I refrained on reviewing this book until after attempting to use its material in my campaign. While the descriptions and information covering the various ships, the enclosed floor plans, and some of the rules regarding capsizing, ramming, and magic are indeed useful, my entire group found the ship vs. ship combat overly cumbersome, confusing, and bogged down by too many charts, tables and rules.

Still, I think I would recommend this book to those DMs planning to run adventures or campaigns involving lots of sea travel. Sometimes it's fun to roll on the various tables, or use them for inspiration for new adventures. It has lots of good gems to get the DM's mind rolling.

This book holds an abundance of information that can be used in nautical adventures. Also it descrives what problems the PC's will have underwater, what spells work underwater, what weapons work underwater and how magical items react underwater. It even includes new spels and new proficiences. I recomend it to any DM who's campaign is even partialy in an aquatic environment.

This book does an excellent job of decribing in detail all the different ways of traveling over the sea. Every kind of boat you can imagine, including rules on how long, how far, and how well they will survive both in calm waters, the open sea, adrift, or in battle! If you need that extra push to spice up your campaign, get this book and let your party set sail with the next tide.

This AD&D (2nd edition) book is an expansion of the rules for use in aquatic adventures, and is actually two books in one. The first part of the book covers nautical adventuring and covers ships, nautical travel, encounters and finally nautical combat (including spells and their effects). Admittedly, the rules are detailed, and can become quite cumbersome, so the Dungeon Master may wish to do some judicial pruning. However, I did find the rules for fleet actions to be quite useful.

The second part of the book covers aquatic (underwater) adventures, and covers everything from underwater survival (for non-aquatic adventurers), combat (including spells and magical items, and their effects), topology, and underwater encounters. This section contains 18 new spells (if I counted properly), one new wizard kit, seven new magic items, and four new aquatic animals (not monsters).

Overall I think that this is a great book. I have used it extensively, and have found it to be a very useful reference book. If you are not going to be doing much in the way of nautical or aquatic adventuring, then you can no doubt skip this book. But, if you are going to be doing a lot in the way of nautical or aquatic adventuring, then I think that you would greatly benefit from getting this book.

This book does a very good job of explaining one saspect of the shadiest part of AD&D - travel. Although I sincerely hope that a book about overland travel will be released sometime in the future ( or that the Wilderness Survival Guide will become more available - possibly a reprint?), I will have to contend myself with this true gem. Sea travel is comfortably explained and all the random information that is seemingly always necessary and within demand is all in there up for grabs. Give this book a try if you want dependable data.

I personally more interesting in the 'ship' part. It really discribe various kind of ships that could be used in the game. However, it miss out something important:

- What is the life aboard? No discription at all. All up to us DMs to find the much needed informations.

- For most of the ships, it leak the complete floor plan. Only the main deck area is available.

By the way, if you and your player wants to have a live on the ocean wave, this is the one that you can't afford to miss.