this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
22 points (95.8% liked)
Dungeons and Dragons
11126 readers
32 users here now
A community for discussion of all things Dungeons and Dragons! This is the catch all community for anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, though we encourage you to see out our Networked Communities listed below!
/c/DnD Network Communities
- Dungeons and Dragons - Art
- DM Academy
- Dungeons and Dragons - Homebrew
- Dungeons and Dragons - Memes and Comics
- Dungeons and Dragons - AI
- Dungeons and Dragons - Looking for Group
Other DnD and related Communities to follow*
- Tabletop Miniatures
- RPG @lemmy.ml
- TTRPGs @lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Battlemaps
- Map Making
- Fantasy e.g. books stories, etc.
- Worldbuilding @ lemmy.world
- Worldbuilding @ lemmy.ml
- OSR
- OSR @lemm.ee
- Clacksmith
- RPG greentext
- Tyranny of Dragons
- DnD @lemmy.ca
- DnD [email protected]
DnD/RPG Podcasts
*Please Follow the rules of these individual communities, not all of them are strictly DnD related, but may be of interest to DnD Fans
Rules (Subject to Change)
- Be a Decent Human Being
- Credit OC content (self or otherwise)
- Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article
Format: [Source Name] Article Title
- Posts must have something to do with Dungeons and Dragons
- No Piracy, this includes links to torrent sites, hosted content, streaming content, etc. Please see this post for details
- Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
- No NSFW content
- Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How do pirate captains manage the health of their crew, particularly in the areas of nutrition and disease?
On a more granular level:
[Are we talking ship’s biscuit and salt beef with regular landfalls to get fruit and vegetables? Is there magical cold storage so they can have frozen whatever? Do they take vitamin supplements? Do none of these things happen, so long voyages always result in nutritional deficiencies, including scurvy?]
[Are they even at the level where they know and acknowledge that scurvy is caused by poor diet? Is healing all magic and four-humors pseudo-medicine? Is it difficult to get a competent physician to join a pirate crew, leading to bullet wounds being treated by barbers or dentists?]
[Is quarantine a thing? …in a confined space? Do they have the germ theory of disease at all, or is the focus on “bad air” and ventilation, or demons, or divine disfavor…? Are they looking at flu, plague, body lice, intestinal parasites, syphilis, all of the above…? Do crew members generally comply with the orders of the captain and/or surgeon, or are you likely to have half the crew sick, and the other half mutinying?]
[Related to 2, but you’ll want specific protocols for different kinds of injuries, removal of bullets, shrapnel, or arrows as relevant, suturing techniques or lack thereof, bandage material, disinfectant or lack thereof, pain management—other than liquor—if any, ways of dealing with infection, if you want to go there, and, of course, prosthetics, because, IMO, you can’t have a pirate setting without the option of peg legs and hook hands, and anything else bad you think might happen to characters in battle].
[Fun fact: the British navy—and other Western navies—used to deliberately overcrowd ships at the start of the voyage because they knew a large portion of the crew would die, and they wanted to retain enough sailors to make it home. Quite possibly the death rate would have been lower without the initial overcrowding, and it definitely would have been lower if they had invested in medical care rather than extra recruits. I suspect pirates were, historically, as bad or worse in this respect. The extent to which captains in your world see crew members as replaceable vs repairable will be demonstrated by your answers to the preceding questions, or, if you’d rather go the other way, might help you decide on the answers].
…all of which probably makes it sound like I hate maritime dramas, which is totally false, lol, I love them, I just have a really morbid imagination.
Ooh you're challenging me here!
We're talking ship's biscuit/hard tack and salted meat for the most part. If they want to up morale they might buy spices or other dried ingredients. And yes, savvy quartermaster would also buy fresh fruit/veg regularly to supplement this. You've made me realise that the party hasn't done this yet, so unless they stock up on fruit at the next port, they'll start getting scurvy amongst the crew. Magical refrigeration would be possible, but expensive and rare.
Yes it would be tricky to find a competent ship's doctor who was willing to join a pirate crew. Magical healing may be more realistic, most would not help with scurvy. Experienced sailors would know about the need for regular fruit/veg.
Contagious disease is definitely a thing that could happen, and the cause could be natural infections or germs, or just as easily a curse, demons, divine intervention. I don't think there would he much knowledge of germ theory per se, but even during the plague people know to quarantine the sick. It would be hard aboard a ship and the crew may resist it though, yes.
Battle wounds could be treated either wit mh magic or the use of surgery or regular medicine. Infections are a problem and they are most likely to simply lop off the offending limb, resulting in wooden legs and hooks for hands, etc. Because I agree those are absolutely necessary.
Interesting question. I'd say it largely depends on tge Captain. Generally conditions aboard a pirate ship are much better than sailing in a navy, or for the Southern Islands Company (and i think this is largely historically accurate). They are better paid and more highly valued. And they have a say in how the ship is run. There had to be some incentive to join tgenoirates rather than the navy). That said, there are some more ruthless pirate captains who treat their crews worse and see them as more expendable. Its up to the party how they run their ship, but if they mistreat the crew too badly, they may have to deal with a mutiny.
Very thorough! I like your framework of needing to provide an incentive to join the pirates rather than the navy. That’s exactly the kind of organizing principle I find useful with world building.
Fresh vegetables have vitamin C, too, so you could give them credit for that. If the actual party gets scurvy, and you want to make it a plot point, I recommend you make their most recent battle wounds reopen. That’s a real potential symptom of scurvy, and is likely to confuse them. Technically, it wouldn’t be the first symptom, iirc, but it’s easy to communicate in the context of a campaign, and scarier than bleeding gums, though I think the root cause is the same. (Something about connective tissue breaking down).
I mean, depending how vicious you want to be, lol, I am the kind of person who weaponizes realism in fiction or games. I think a little unexpected horror helps people focus on the story.