(with apologies to Deep Purple)

Canis Publishing's ACW Naval Rules

Naval combat is one of the few arenas in which the actions of a few individuals have a disproportionate influence on the course of events. These people are the captains of the vessels involved in battle. In land warfare, the individual members of the platoon may skulk away or "seek cover" during a firefight. The platoon commander may realize it, but he (or even she now) can only do so much to rectify the situation. Things are different on the high seas. At sea, the ship goes where the Captain orders. If the ship does not go where the Captain wants, everyone on board knows it. Also, the cook -- for one example -- doesn't have much choice as to whether to run away or not. The ship goes where the Captain wants -- period. The flip side of this is that the Captain is fully responsible for what happens to the ship.

In your typical tabletop wargame, the players take the role of the Captain. Most naval games (but not Smoke on the Water!) omit morale rules because the ship's behavior is typically tied to the perceptions of the players serving in the role as Captain. As we well know, gamers tend to be much more cavalier with the well being of their ships than their real life counterparts, hence the morale check.

But most naval games omit the other abilities of the Captain -- as sailors, gunners, engineers, or as leaders. The goal of Fire in the Sky (FITS) is to model the skills of ship captains and their crew that can influence the tasks in Smoke on the Water.

The inspiration for FITS came from a number of experiences in my gaming past. Foremost was the "legendary officers" rule from Task Force Games' "Star Fleet Battles." Basically, these were an attempt to capture the way that Jim Kirk and the boys and girls of the USS Enterprise always got away with things that exceeded the standard rules in SFB. The legendary officer rules detailed a host of ways that really exceptional leaders could influence events and tasks. The old Game Designers' Workshop role playing game "Traveller" also included ways for "character" skills to influence combat situations.

From a more historical source, Avalon Hill's classic "Squad Leader" was a game system built around the idea that leaders -- both good and bad -- were the key to the outcome on the battlefield. Everyone that has played the game remembers that idiot 6+1 leader from Squad Leader as well as the 10-3 Oberst Gruppe and their effect on the squads they commanded. Lastly, Mindgames' "Age of Iron" and Avalon Hill's "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" include rules for crew quality, both good and bad.

Ship crews were skilled in the various shipboard departments -- gunnery, deck or engineering. The quality of your crew can make or break you, and should be reflected in the game. Some ships had superb crew while other ships seemed cursed by bad luck and the general inability to have things go their way. I wanted to capture this flavor and assimilate it into Smoke on the Water.

To bring these skills into the game, we need to define two sets of variables -- the captain's skills and the crew quality. Defining these variables is a three-step process. First, we need to determine the special skills of the officer. Second, identify if there are any skills that would influence the crew quality. And lastly, determine the ships crew quality.

Now the vast majority of ships out there have perfectly ordinary, average and capable officers commanding them, so exceptional officers should be rare. Normally, the really bad officers are weeded out through years of experience, but the tremendous growth of both navies in the Civil War resulted in a varied group of leaders commanding ships on both sides. I've devised the following table to determine the leaders quality, skills and crew quality.

Table 1. Captain's Quality (1d10)

Roll Result
1 : Village idiot! Roll twice for skills on Table 2, both skills are negative.
2 : Bad officer! Roll once for skill on Table 2, skill is negative.
3-6 : Average officer. No skill rolls on Table 2.
7 : Middling officer. Roll on Table 2 twice. First skill is positive, second is negative.
8-9 : Exceptional officer - roll once for skill on Table 2, skill is positive.
10 : Superior officer. Roll twice for skills on Table 2, both skills are positive.

Next, we roll on Table 2 to determine what are the exact skills the officer possesses. If required to roll twice, duplicate skills are possible, as some officers are truly exceptional in certain areas.

Table 2. Officer Skills (1d6)

Roll : Result
1 : Leadership
2 : Piloting
3 : Lucky
4 : Gunnery
5 : Engineer
6 : Boarding
7 : Fleet Tactics
8 : Piloting
9 : Gunnery
10 : Politically Connected

Description of Captain's Skills

Leadership - modifies the crew quality roll on Table 3 by +/- 1 for each level. Also modifies morale checks by +/-1 per skill level during the game.

Piloting - modifies ramming, locking and grounding and spar torpedo attacks by +/-1 per skill level.

Lucky - modifies all crew quality rolls and modifies ALL tasks done under direction of the officer by +/-1 per skill level. May be combined with other relevant skills. Some officers are just lucky. Conversely, some officers acquire a reputation as being unlucky.

Gunnery - the officer influences the firing of one gun of the player's choice by +/-1 per skill level in a single game turn.

Engineering - the officer must modify a single repair die roll by +/-1 per skill level.

Boarding - officer influences all boarding combat rolls by +/-1 per skill level. Note that the modifier is reversed depending on whether they are boarding or being boarded.

Fleet Tactics - the officer is skilled or unskilled at handling a group of ships. Apply +1/-1 morale to all ships in the squadron if this officer commands the flagship.

Politician - Totally worthless on the battlefield, yet there are always officers who are more skilled at working the system than their ships. If positive, officer pulled strings to get assignment, if negative they've been assigned a ship to get them out of the way. This could have benefits in a campaign game as the referee allows.

Lastly, we need to determine the quality of the crew of a given ship. I've devised two methods. One is a quick and dirty -- use one modifier for crew quality for all tasks. The second is to roll quality separately for each division: gunnery, damage control and morale. The second option is more detailed and provides much more flavor, but adds more complexity to the game. Roll once on Table 3 for each crew skill and use all applicable modifiers. There are four possible results: Poor (-1); Average (+0); Crack (+1); Elite (+2).

Table 3. Crew Quality levels

Roll : Result
-1 to +1 : Poor
2-7 : Average
8-11 : Crack
12 + : Elite

The three specific crew quality attributes are similar to those for officers. These skills are broken down along the lines of the various shipboard departments:

Morale - modifies all morale checks.
Gunnery - modifies the hit number of each gun fired from this ship.
Damage control - modifies all repair rolls and fire checks onboard.

Experience Points

Though I don't want to move this too far into the role-playing sphere, we need a mechanism to recognize the value of experience. Unless you are playing a campaign with recurring ships and officers, this won't do you much good. Use the following process. Each 10 times an officer uses a skill successfully (i.e. used 10 times to fire a gun, make 10 repair rolls pass 10 morale checks, etc.) roll a D10. If the result is greater than 6, the officers skill increases by 1 to a maximum value of positive two (+2). This allows bad officers to overcome deficiencies through practical experience.

For crew quality roll 1d10. On a roll of 9 or 10, the crew quality increases. If a ship takes greater than 25% damage in a battle, re-roll crew quality for the next battle as replacements and losses will change the composition of the crew.

The above rules will add degree of complexity to your games, but will hopefully add enough flavor and character to the game to overcome the lost speed of play. So, warm up those dice and raise steam -- its time to make history! (Illustration of a Midshipman, U.S. Navy, 1852 Dover Publications, Inc.)