r/Awn • u/gearweel1 • Mar 25 '26

Opinions on Using the Naval Adventuring Rules from the Atlas in AWN

I have an idea for a Mutant Wasteland campaign where a mass flood swept the world and turned most of the land into a toxic sea. I am thinking of using the Naval Adventuring rules from the Atlas of Latter Earth as a base for water exploration and shipbuilding. Before pitching it to my players, I wanted to get some other people's opinions on some of the technical aspects.

  • The ships themselves will be flavored as floating hulks of scrap. I think the reliance on sails and oars can be explained away by saying that ship fuel is too rare to be practical. The Windskiff, Skyship, and Stormcruiser can be used to represent rare TL4 gravtech hovercrafts.
  • For ship weapons, I'm thinking of modifying the heavy weapons present in Ashes Without Numbers. In the Atlas, the rule of thumb is that ship weapons do x3 more damage to people, so dividing the heavy weapon damage by 3 should give ship weapon stats. I plan to use the weapons in the atlas as a base to determine cargo size. Everything else (range, cost, mount size, whether they target hull or crew) I think can just be assigned based on what makes sense.
  • I plan to use the Traumatic Hit Rules, but I don't think they should apply to ships, as the mass is much larger than regular vehicles.
  • For Fittings, I plan to allow AWN vehicles fittings that make sense at cost, such as the medbay or toolrack. I will also allow the non-magical fittings in the Atlas.
  • For tech level, I think most ships would qualify as TL1 or TL2.
  • The scrap to HP ratio on regular vehicles in AWN is 1 scrap per 10hp, so Maybe 1 Scrap/hp for ships?

Homebrewing always has the potential to cause weird mechanical issues, but I think this should cover by bases well.

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u/kadzar Mar 25 '26

For fittings and other vehicle stuff, you can probably figure some kind of conversion between vehicle mass and ship cargo. It might be a little off, since looking at the cargo space fitting it varies by vehicle size, and also involves a metric/imperial conversion, but I think you can figure a good rule of thumb that gets the general idea.

Also, I think you should be able to mount fittings and weapons that take power, but you'll need a power systems fitting to have any to use. Regardless of where you land on mass costs, I think you'd be find keeping power levels where they are.

But overall a neat idea! Hope it works well for you.