Piracy is in the air this year. Open Design is now well underway with Journeys to the West – an anthology of adventurers set in the exotic unexplored western ocean – and Paizo is set fair on a course for the swashbuckling adventure path Skull and Shackles. But what good is a pirate (or, ahem, privateer) without a trusty ship?
Well, to resolve that particular problem, this month I’ve put together a pirate ship map that any peg legged terror of the ocean waves can be proud of. After some feedback on my previous ship map pack, this one comes in a number of formats. The pack contains 2 maps of the full ship, one with the ship underway with sails billowing and the other with the ship resting at the harbour quay. In addition, the pack contains fully detailed maps of all three interior deck levels, with captain’s table, storage and crew hammocks.
In addition to the fully rendered maps, the set includes pngs of the ship if you want to fight mobile ship battles in a vtt, or composite your own map with the ship moored on new and unexplored shores. This should allow you to use this ship map as the base for your players to explore any new and exotic places – or as the home of a recurring pirate threat. All the accoutrements of the ship come as separate objects too – from the ballista and gangplank down to the crates and barrels below decks, and right up to the full rigging of the ship as a separate object (to allow you to show/hide the sails for deck combat, or for high stakes sword fights a-top the mizen mast.
The map pack weighs in at a hefty 122Mb of art and contains:
- Three distinct maps – overall ship in sail, overall ship moored and the three levels of inner deck. Each map is provided with all bells and whistles (grid and objects), without grid, and without grid and without any objects (no ballista, tables, chairs, crates, doors and so on). The jpgs are sized at 100px per grid for poster printing or use in vtts.
- Multipage pdf packs for printing out for your home game table, both in light greyscale and full colour
A bare sea map (4000px by 4000px jpg) for use in any nautical encounter, or to use as a base for creating any ship based encounter- A large chunk of pngs with transparent backgrounds – crates, barrels, hammocks, doors, table, chairs, ballista, furled and open sails, full ship in sail and with furled sails, and a separate png for the ship’s wake.
- Maptool files for the three maps, with all objects placed separately (yes, you can rotate all the ballista to take aim at an escaping smuggler), with vision blocking implemented.
All of that comes in at $4.99 and should give your players, or your recurring pirate scourge, a comprehensive base of operations whatever strange seas they might explore.
You can check out the full pack on RPGNow and Paizo.
