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High seas novels suggestion?

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Grimfox
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High seas novels suggestion?

So, I'm bending the rules a bit as this isn't directly related to COT or super hero culture. But it's still in genre/phylum/class. Thankfully I'm friends with the forum police so they will let me get away with this egregious breach of etiquette. (that word has more Ts and Es than I thought)

Anyway I've been reading more and more LitRPG novels lately. Basically it's what a DND DM writes when he can't find a group. It's a novel, usually a fantasy setting but with RPG stats thrown in. So, every once in awhile the main character (they are mostly first person focusing on a single POV) looks at their character sheet and you get a little table that shows how they are growing. This inspired a fanfic, set in the same world as one of these RPGs. It's set in this fantasy world where players come from earth and are adventurers in this new world, but for them it's like playing a highend MMO. One of the things is that they can bring whatever they remember from the real world. Which includes technology. So, my spin is that this group of players decides to take all their engineering skill and build a ship and take to the oceans to see what adventures can be found by not following the path of kill ten rats.

Trouble is that I have limited exposure to sailing ships. I went to sailing camp as a kid and gave myself a concussion on the boom of a laser. If the boat had capsized 2 seconds sooner I probably would have gone into the water unconscious. Back on topic. Has anyone read a good book, either novel or historical, featuring sailing ships, that they would like to suggest? Particularly interested in something featuring a bit of naval combat, swashbuckling, pirates, navies etc. Something to inspire some problems and difficulties for the characters in my story and also to give me a better context. I don't plan to publish my writing it's just for fun, I don't think the original author would be interested in me leeching off his work. If your suggestion is available on Audible or in the Kindle store that would be good. I'm short on books at the moment. And the local library is A) quite small B) closed due to the pandemic.

Thank you!

Cyclops
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you don't kneed to know about

you don't kneed to know about sailing to write a high seas adventure. Just watch a few pirate moves...its the people who make the story not the mechanics of a wooden ship.
look on Youtube. there was a history channel documentary about battle with cannons on wooden ships. it's been a few years but it was fun and gave a few details about old timey battle.

Lothic
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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

Thankfully I'm friends with the forum police so they will let me get away with this egregious breach of etiquette.

One could easily argue that elevating prior "Forum Users" into "Forum Mods" means that those people carry all of their original biases for or against other forum users into their new positions of authority. Not exactly how I'd run a railroad but I suppose that ultimately reflects MWM's inability to hire neutral, third party professionals to moderate their forums.

Grimfox wrote:

Trouble is that I have limited exposure to sailing ships.

I've lived roughly 5 of the last 20-ish years at sea, but all of that time has been on modern, non-sailing ships so my personal experience probably wouldn't be of much help to you.

Why not start with the classics like Moby Dick? There are of course many historical stories such as Mutiny on the Bounty, Blackbeard and the history of Port Royal you could use as well. Setting a LitRPG story in a setting like Port Royal actually does sound like a fun idea.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Grimfox
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Cyclops, I'm an engineer. I

Cyclops, I'm an engineer. I strive for accuracy. Writing is 90% research and 10% writing. Do you have some movies you would recommend? I've seen "Pirates" and "Master and Commander." Nothing else comes to mind.

Lothic we're all friends here. Forumites and Forum police. It was meant to be a little tongue in cheek. :)

I had considered Moby Dick. But that is a monster of a book. I'm scared of it. Mutiny, Blackbeard and Port Royal are good suggestions. I'll see what I can find.

Lothic will you be writing your own LitRPG? Sounds like you've been inspired.

Cyclops
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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

Cyclops, I'm an engineer. I strive for accuracy. Writing is 90% research and 10% writing. Do you have some movies you would recommend? I've seen "Pirates" and "Master and Commander."

~~That looks like enough research right there, start writing. and I disagree about writing. It is 90% sitting down and forcing yourself to type, and 10% inspiration.
Mutiny Blackbeard and Port Royal likely all have entries on Youtube. Watch the history and get some good visuals.

If you insist on applying engineering, use it to plot out the story beforehand. also find a friend with a sailboat - even a tiny one and invite yourself along. You'll learn more with ding that with stuffy research.

Lothic
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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

Lothic we're all friends here. Forumites and Forum police. It was meant to be a little tongue in cheek. :)

Sure... didn't exactly mean to be harsh here. I simply have a sore spot when it comes to freshly-elevated forum mods who come with built-in biases that they've formed back during their days of starting out as "little people". In a perfect world forum mods would never be hired/recruited from the ranks of the average forum poster.

For what it's worth I would never ask to be a mod here precisely because I'm self-aware enough to know that it would be hard to set aside the biases I've formed over the years with the various people who I like or dislike. It's basically almost impossible for such mods to be "100% fair" about their job.

Grimfox wrote:

I had considered Moby Dick. But that is a monster of a book. I'm scared of it. Mutiny, Blackbeard and Port Royal are good suggestions. I'll see what I can find.

Lothic will you be writing your own LitRPG? Sounds like you've been inspired.

I might eventually try my hand at LitRPG but I still occasionally manage to get actual RPG campaigns going. I've GM'd a couple of dozen groups through multiple games over the years (D&D, Champs, GURPS, Traveller, Gamma World, etc.) so basically I might just file the "make a campaign based on the historical Port Royal" idea for use at a later date.

Good luck with your own adventures. ;)

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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"Master and Commander" by

"Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian is part of the very-very popular 'Aubry & Maturin' series and I heartily recommend reading All of it. It's got slice-of-life, politics, Napoleonic-era spycraft, History, and sailing ships all over the world. Also plenty of authentic nautical slang. If this proves 'not enough' for you, then David Drake's 'RCN Series' is much the same, but In Space.

C.S. Forester's Hornblower series is another classic of nautical/naval demi-fiction. Regularly paraphrased in science fiction - see Weber's 'Honor Harrington' series.

As a Series, each of those is HUGE, but the individual books are neat enough to slip into a pocket, so you won't need a hand truck to cart the thing around. David Drake, experienced in military intelligence, almost always adds notes about the Real-Life events that he gets his plots from. That is, if you crave real stories about real sailors - just another avenue of research.

I agree that Going Sailing is not just more fun, but more educational than research.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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@Grimfox,

@Grimfox,
When it comes to sailing, nothing has been written about more than the Whitbread race, except maybe the America's Cup, but where the America's Cup is a pure racing event , the Whitbread Race is a round-the-world endurance event that really tries the boats and the sailors to their limits, often fatally. You can start with some articles like this one: The Ocean Race
Or this one: Drastic early days of broken boats and high drama in Whitbread Round the World Race

You might find this book called Chessie to be just what you're looking for. It is about the construction, crew selection and journey of one of the the first Whitbread boat from Maryland, named Chessie. Most helpful may be the sections about the Living Classrooms Foundation that include the crew's interactions with school children back in Maryland via e-mail during the race, so it has a lot of experiences captured with more of an educational bent to them.

I hope this helps.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry, that looks good.

Huckleberry, that looks good. Shame it's only in hard cover. It's been a minute since I've done fully analog reading.