Could you possibly make a game about whalefishing that worked on the practise?

Could you possibly make a game about whalefishing that worked on the practise?

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If whale hunting would be the only thing you do, not really. But there are lots of other things a party of whale hunters could do and encounter besides just whale hunting. You could also throw some magic or an alternative more interesting setting in there to spice things up.

You know, OP did not specify it as an RPG.

A boardgame where you are japanese whalers and doing ridiculously over the top "evil whaler" stuff could be kinda funny.

Anything is possible if you throw enough mechs into it.

We did a game where whales (and other sealife) hunted land animals and humans.

We're whalers one the moon,
We carry our harpoons.

But there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing our whaling tune.

Matt Kish did a drawing for every single page of Moby Dick. Its got some insane shit you could use as inspiration.

also read moby dick if you haven't

...

>whales as dungeons
>have to capture and cut them open to enter their alien bowels
>monsters as immune system, parasite infections, sailors who have been swallowed and driven mad
>whaler, specialist, arcane biologist as core classes

i'd play it

try checking the dishonored setting, I think whales (their equivalent in that world anyway) are hunted for their magical bones and fat.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

>whalefishing

How big are these whales?

p.big i guess

>also read moby dick if you haven't
>800 pages of someone reflecting on an autistic man's obsession with a whale

Nah.

Call me a pleb but I have fairly little patience for most literature written before the 50s.

(you) a pleb

And now that will be in my head all day, thanks user.

Damn, so would I. That sounds pretty cool. Any idea how it'd actually run, though?

I'd probably mash together an OSR that would suit. Base it on Lamentations of The Flame Princess if I wanted more classic, the Black Hack if I was feeling more storygame narrative stuff. 3 or 4 Classes, high fatalities, dungeon crawls with difficult entrances, probably save time and procedurally generate the dungeons and then refluff them or steal 1page dungeons and make them more organic and fucked up. Could look at different mythological stuff for whales to theme each dungeon. I'd probably want to put together some rules for ports of call, maybe getting into ship construction, captains, pirates and the like as diversions from murdering whales.

Make some sort of whale's tale side game where players make up a story about the beast and how they defeated/plundered its guts.

Main problem is it would be too easy to accidentally go steampunk/gaslight fantasy with it.

Why would the gaslight/steampunk thing be a problem? Too overused?

What kind of things would you find in the whales, anyhow? Mystic ambergris, or some such?

It just feels too easy? I worry about my ability to keep that fresh/interesting rather than just falling back on tropes. Probably just an overexposure to Veeky Forums than anything my players would even notice.

Probably steal a bit from Mordheim/Deadlands, have magical mutation crystalized things that have become valued for powering industrialization. Over exposure to the Ambergris causes mutations, obsession, madness.

Treasure could easily be loot swallowed ages ago by the beast, so ancient armours, artifacts, barnacle encrusted chests of antediluvian coins, idols of a squidheaded god made from unearthly bone, items you would otherwise find in a dungeon.

Would using tropes be entirely bad though? What was the saying, "a poison in small doses can be a cure"? It all really depends on what would be fun in the end, I think.

Regular steampunk doesn't generally cast the players as the poor bastards who keep the machines running. Making them dig through whale guts for a living is enough to stay out of that trap.

You're literally hunting giant monsters in the vast, inhospitable oceans, with nothing but harpoons and teamwork.

You have to worry about the crew's status to keep them from mutinying, pirates, navies taking tarrifs, rival whalers, the whales, the weather...

If you haven't watched the 2015 movie "Heart of the Sea", go watch it now. A big part of "Master and Commander" includes disguising their ship as a whaling ship to lure a French frigate that has been capturing English whalers, so that might help to.

Then go watch "The Misadventures of Flapjack", because I love that mindfucky cartoon.

How about replacing steam and gears with bioengineering and not-occultism, like Leviathan meets Sunless Sea. Imagine whaling ships powered by fleshy giant-squid tentacles fed from an 'engine room' which is just a fleshy blob with beaks, or being stalked by a ye-olde diving suit with unnatural green light pouring from their cracked faceplate.

>haunted diving suits
yep

It could also work with the mobey dick theme to have the whale be a megadungeon that the players have to return to, the beast escaping several times.

I think you're all right. Its not a bad thing, and easy to avoid. Just spending too much time worrying about shit that's not important.

The game "Dishonored" is literally magic whale oil dieselpunk. They are so dependent on the whale oil to run their world, they have devised ways to keep the whales alive for days while harvesting their oil on an industrial scale before canning the meat, and using the bones and teeth to make magic talismans.

Granted, their whales are giant, monsterous psychic sea-beasts the size of the prehistoric Livyatan melvillei....

...

...

This looks really cool but video games are boring to me.

Same. I love the setting, but I hated the games. The main character is lifeless, and the story is shallow.

The DLC was good, and the second game was pretty good, but I would rather the setting in writing.

I was kind of pitching for a more weird fantasy vibe than Dishonoured's brand of diesel and clockwork london, but its a nice comparison. Would still say Sunless Sea has a better setting.

Neat, seems like a good place to plunder ideas from. I was thinking of the whale dungeons being sort of like Shadow Of The Colossus style, but you have to harpoon, cut open, and get in them.

Whales might get switched out to just terms for really big sea monsters like Behemoths, Leviathans, etc. Their biology not particularly consistent other than having deposits of Ambergris and Crimson Oil scattered through their bowels.

On the videogame horror rout, a psychic leviathan that talked to you as you marauded though its body could be messed up.

>look at you whaler, a pathetic creature of land and meat, panting and sweating as you crawl through my gullet.
>how can you challenge a perfect, immortal behemoth?

>Oi, Moby Dickenson, you ain't the one crawlin around my guts with a sawtooth spear, so shut it or we'll see who ends up 'challenged'.

Oh. Looks like someone beat me too it.

Not to shill, but it looks dank.

This isn't a clown thread, what are you doing here? Go back to being awesome in clown threads.

The New Bedford boardgame is pretty cool. It's like 40% about whaling.

Gropey knows tons of stuff. He works as a legit museum historian irl.

Also, seconding heart of the sea. My only gripe is that Chris Hemsworth is the sexiest scurvy victim ever.