Introduction

As you come to, you’re hauled sputtering from cold, briny water onto a foam-slicked floor of dull bronze. “Welcome aboard the HMS Tartarus, flotsam! You’re lucky to be alive, if you can call this living.” The ruddy-faced man chuckles at his own joke, then carries on. “It’s a rough lot you’ve been cast, being pulled aboard a ghost ship. You get five days by the grace of the stewards, then you sign on to the crew.”

HMS Tartarus will be a gritty old-schoolish mini-campaign run using the Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook 3.5, with the Epic 6 houserule, experience for gold, and a nonstandard XP chart. Additional player-facing material may be made available over the course of the campaign, including a mixture of official, third-party, and homebrew sources.

Game details

• Gritty means you’re not the big damn heroes saving the world. The player characters will be thrust into an unfamiliar environment, the vast interplanar liner HMS Tartarus, lost on its maiden voyage to the City of Brass. Character death is on the table, but mechanisms will be in place to allow starting above first level and catch up. Expect a struggle to survive in the early sessions, followed by increasing power and agency as the game progresses.
• Old-school in this case means we’ll be including hirelings, retainers, experience-for-gold, and an acceptance that Dungeons and Dragons hasn’t been balanced at any pont in its history. Negotiation with, and retreat from, dungeon encounters is encouraged. Expect tracking of mundane equipment, enumbrance, ammunition, and money to matter more than in typical games.
• To start, we’ll be using whatever mix of 3.0 and 3.5 core books haven’t fallen apart on me yet. Pathfinder 1e derives most of its rules from D&D 3.5, so some familiarity there may help. Everything in the 3.5 PHB is on the table, DMG and MM content will appear but please don’t build your characters with it. I’m willing to consider additional player-facing material from all kinds of sources, but prestige classes don’t really mesh with the E6 level cap, so they’ll mostly need to be chopped up and made into feat chains (which E6 will let you take eventually). The limit on rules is mostly about keeping the focus on exploration and in-game problem solving rather than character optimization, and I’m willing to relax things as long as that stays the case.
• Epic 6 is a houserule for 3e D&D capping character levels at 6 and allowing progression beyond that via additional feat choices every 10000 XP gained. This is more about giving an upper bound on raw character power that keeps things dangerous even in the nearer sections of the hull while allowing some divergence in character levels.
• Experience for Gold means that an experience point will be awarded to the group playing in a given session for each gold piece worth of treasure brought back to civilization. Aboard HMS Tartarus, that means bringing things from the hull at large into Sterntown and having the Pale Gates shut safely behind you. The goal here is to encourage noncombat solutions to problems - killing the frogmen and taking their stuff is one option, but so is stealing from them, bargaining with them, allying with them, or avoiding them entirely.
• Given the above, you’ll get XP a lot faster than usual, and the level-up chart will be adjusted to compensate. I haven’t nailed it down but the general target is about the same as core 3e (so three or four sessions per level up).

Character Creation

For the beach game, we’ll be starting at level 3, with some level 1 and 2 PC-classed retainers available. Retainers are generally brought on for the long term, and paid either a substantial wage or a half share of the party’s profits. Level 1 NPC-classed hirelings may be available should the party return to Sterntown successfully, but generally will only join a larger expeditions. Starting gold is 3000gp - spend as on PHB and DMG items, no more than 1500 gp on any single item.

Overheard on the Tartarus

• There’s strangers in the hull, all pale skin and black iron. Seen ’em on the Straight Road but never got close enough to shout
• It’s not just plague dead in the hull. They say there’s a walking skeleton in marine armor, clean as the day it was made, who stands guard at the aft chapel.

The Gatetown Notice Board

Among the tattered papers at the Notice Board

• In a mess of typefaces: “Harold’s Scavenger Supplies: The Finest in Arms, Ammunition, and Curiosities. Buying and Selling.”
• A large, fresh poster boldly stating that “Trade with the Frogmen is Strictly Forbidden by the Passenger Class.” A long series of definitions, subparagraphs, and pictograms fills the rest of the poster.
• In neat writing on a small card: “Cyrus of Ephebus, Priest of Pelor. Half share an expedition. Retainer as healer 10sp a week. Find at the”
• In sprawling, messy writing on handmade papyrus: “Scavenger-General (Acting) Ebeneezer Gerund offers a wide variety of MAPS and INFORMATION as to things of VALUE in the HULL. Act quickly! Our SHIP relies on it.”
• In simple block type: SEEKING HYDROPONIC RACKS. DELIVER TO STEWARD SECOND CLASS THEODORE SMITH. REWARD OFFERED. - A PASSENGER
• In neat writing on a small card: “Ulric Red-hand, Bersarkr for hire. Half share an expedition. Find him at the Shrine of the Kraken”
• A ragged poster: “KEEP THEM SCAVENGING”, a blacksmith hammering on glowing metal.
• A faded postcard of an elegant sunroom, scribbled with “Remember what They took from You”
• In simple block type, a price sheet listing dozens of common foodstuffs with prices in the tens and hundreds of gp. The date marked is 1524.05.01 LLS. A stack of slightly varied sheets is pinned beneath it.
• On a ragged scrap of paper: “Elsa and Vissen, scroungers for hire. 20gp each an expedition, or half share. Find us at the sign of the Red Lion”
• On creamy paper in a calligraphic hand: “Steward Third Class Jonathan Almsker was slain by frogmen who approached his expedition under a flag of truce. Jeremy Swinn, Steward Second Class, seeks brave members of the crew to recover his personal effects. 2000sp reward.”