D&D Mechanics Inspired by Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

I'm about 9 years late to the party, but I am absolutely loving Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. I've realized in the past couple years that pirates is one of my all-time favorite genres, and this game doesn't disappoint in the least. Aside from the epic ship battles and the stealth mechanics, I've noticed that some of the controls and mechanics in the game are really inspiring for use in making certain aspects of Dungeons & Dragons more effective and manageable for DMs and players alike.

Open World Exploration

Black Flag absolutely nails the feeling of exploring the seven seas on a ship. The Caribbean is obviously smaller than in real life, and rarely are there completely blank horizons, but there is enough space and variety in the different areas of the map that it's always fun to go exploring into the unknown, and fast traveling to places you've spent time at before. The game follows a good method of revealing areas: if you "synchronize" at certain areas on islands, you gain knowledge of the surrounding areas, which are revealed. Similarly, if you conquer a sea fort, that region of the sea is revealed, and the fort becomes a base of operations for you and your fellow pirates. There is a main quest line in Black Flag, but there's plenty of side things to do when you just want to make money to upgrade your assets and just explore.

Exploration is one of the "three pillars" of D&D, but it's kind of hard to make it work in a world that everyone is only seeing inside their own head. It's also hard to avoid "railroading" the players too much or too little. I think I need to do more analysis of exactly what makes Black Flag so fun to explore, but it definitely has to do with leading the players through quest lines to interesting areas that have a lot to do beyond just that one quest. It also always pays to know what motivates the players. If it's wealth, drop a rumor, map, or discovery of a cache of riches in an interesting location, like Black Flag does in underwater shipwrecks, smuggler's caves, or jungle temples. It's just as easy to offer rewards like lore, power, and roleplaying opportunities with that same sort of luring technique.

Black Flag also makes sure that there's always plenty to do. You can do the next step of the main questline, or you can work on upgrading one of your many assets, reveal areas you haven't explored yet, or just go pirating because it's fun and rewarding. And along the way, there are random events that can grab your attention for a little more risk and reward, like pirate hostages who need freed, an abandoned ship full of goods that might sink at any moment, or a courier carrying valuable equipment who realizes who you are and runs away screaming. Oh yeah, and there are the four "legendary ships," which drop a ton of loot but are extremely difficult to beat. They're never going to wander into your path, since they're only at the four farthest corners of the world map—You have to seek them out yourself, if you dare to risk it.

It might be hard to give the same level of scope and exploration as Black Flag does with showing sprawling vistas whenever you synchronize atop a giant tower, but with some practice in the above techniques and a focus on interesting area descriptions, I think this could be a valuable skill to learn for keeping players engaged.

Simple Crafting

From the moment I hunted my first iguana and ocelot in Black Flag, my mind was opened to how fun crafting can be if you set aside some realism and find the happy medium between overly complex and overly abstract. From the very beginning of the game, you have a list of items you can craft to upgrade your character, along with the resources needed to craft them. The reagents are all items taken from wild animals you can hunt and sea creatures you can harpoon on a whaling boat. Bigger upgrades require reagents from more dangerous areas of the world. Each item only takes two or three reagents, and very few of the craftables have any crossover between the reagents. I like this concept, because it gives you an idea of what to be on the lookout for in order to craft what you want, and only requiring two of the same reagent makes crafting an item doable without being too easy. And you can buy ingredients if you don't want to find them (though they are pricey). The ship in the game, the Jackdaw, can be upgraded as well, and the highest upgrades to each component have "plans" that need to be found first, whether in sunken shipwrecks or at the end of treasure maps, before they can be purchased.

Crafting has been a complex issue in D&D, one I've looked at in previous posts. The rules-as-written way has some inconsistencies in it that make crafting not really worth the trouble, and 5e's streamlined style demands a fine line between a system that is just not fun or just not viable. I'm really tempted to try out Black Flag's crafting system in my next homebrew campaign, at least for non-consumable items—the players could have a somewhat common knowledge of simple magic items (such as +1 and +2 weapons, adamantine and mithril armor, and gauntlets of ogre power), along with the reagents required to craft them. I like the idea of requiring exactly two of them, so that have the option of having a mix of hunting, pillaging, trading, and purchasing in order to get the ones you want and need; and so that you may stumble on a reagent without realizing what it was for, and saving it for others later once it was identified. I also like the idea of upgrading an existing magic item with reagents.

Rarer and more complex items could just be drops found in dungeons, or they could require formulas in order to craft. Finding a formula could be a really fun adventure in itself, following a treasure map purchased from a pawn shop, seeking out the formula in a scroll case in a dragon's hoard, or learning the formula from an ancient wise man.

Fun Ship Battles

There is nothing more fun in Black Flag than chasing down a ship, slowing it with chain shots, blasting it with heavy shot from your broadside, lighting up its weak points with swivels, and then throwing grappling hooks onto the ship and boarding it until all its officers are destroyed and the crew surrenders. It never gets old, and the exciting explosions, the cheers of the crew, and the awesome soundtrack all contribute to that. But what makes it the most fun is the amount of choices there are. You can ram a ship if you don't mind taking some damage yourself. You can drop fire barrels behind your ship if there's an enemy tailing you. You can use your limited ammunition mortars and heavy shot, or you can stick to your weaker broadside cannons that have no limit. It's a great addition to the game and really evokes the fun and excitement of a real pirate battle.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a fun addition to the D&D sourcebook collection, but the action economy for ship vehicles is somewhat lacking. I don't want to go over the mechanics here, but they have a basic "crew morale" or "quality" bonus to certain actions, actions that the officers like the bosun and carpenter and cook can do, and some basic pre-pirate age weaponry like ballistas and mangonels. But it's just kind of boring. If you're going to have a ship that fights another ship while the players are still available to use their own actions, why does it have to be so boring? Descent into Avernus hit a little closer to the mark with their Infernal War Machines, but the lack of a crew made for some weird decisions and a lack of focus on some of the participating players.

Black Flag inspired me to make this stat block for ships. I haven't tested it yet, but the idea of having multiple options for attacking and a simple, abstract "crew" resource that you had to manage, theoretically would make ship battles more interesting, and shift tactics in certain ways that just sitting on two adjacent islands wouldn't. Black Flag literally uses crew members as a resource. You can hire crew mates at taverns, or find shipwreck survivors as commonly as floating flotsam. With the demands of running separate creatures in combat that D&D has, having a crew "stat" would theoretically accomplish the same thing to great effect.

If I end up testing this system and it is as fun as it sounds, I'll make more stat blocks for the other vehicle types, from a whaling boat (rowboat) to a gunboat (keelboat) to a man o'war (war galley). But we'll see.