It's been ten years since I released Franklin's Sea into the wild. I always meant to revisit it. Originally designed for a contest on theminiaturespage.com, the deadline meant I couldn't do everything that needed doing. I've also learned a bit in the last decade. It's time to make goals for 2017, and high time I fixed up this game, so here we go…
I'm thinking:
#1 Improve the models. Bowsprits, fore and aft sales, basic and advanced versions, flags, tumblehome, paint jobs.
#2 Drop the fantasy theme, make it historical. It was a gimmick based on the magnetic bases. I don't have time to explore it, though I kinda feel it has potential. Actual history has tons of stuff to play with.
#3 Forts. Ship-to-shore combat, landings.
#4 A new name, obviously.
#5 Fireships, torpedoes (what we would call naval mines).
#6 More simple modeling – not just the forts and fireships, but coasts.
#7 National differences, as discussed in the first edition.
#8 Fantasy supplement? Sea monsters, dwarfish ironclads, weather mages, dragons, could be fun.
The other question is the time period. These rules could work from the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1650s to the end of the Napoleonic period, but should they? All the above could be several books to keep things neat.
Let me know what you think!
is a big fan of the Age of Sail, and these ships really speak to him - he loves transitional eras, and the Anglo-Dutch Wars was one of those.
