Ship

Basic Information

A Ship is a manned watercraft which carries its own tender(s)¹. This defintion is about as close to substantive as you can get but is not foolproof as tradition denies "ship" status to various other vessels as well - and not everything classed as a ship will necessarily have an onboard tender when in commission. In general, however, a ship is larger than a boat.

To complicate things further, in the age of sail a ship was specifically a vessel with three square-rigged masts and a bowsprit, anything else that floated being classified by its sail plan.

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• If PCs are going to go any distance by water, they will probably need a ship. If they need to take a lot of luggage with them, they definitely will.
• A ship is also quite capable of being a location (or even a setting) in its own right.
• And, of course, a base - there's plenty of scope for a campaign based around a ship sailing from one adventure to another.
  • And, if in the tramp cargo business, there is plenty of scope for Fedex quests

Footnotes

1. Which is a boat that is used to service the mothership, transporting passnegers, stores and the like between ship and shore.
This is the main reason that a submarine is a boat, not a ship.