- Not knowing about where you're going despite living in the world, whilst still allowing you to give meaningful rumours/information for players to plan their next moves around.
- Immediate cultural driver for players to go out there and get involved for glory & gold.
- Have hirelings (boat crew) and replacement characters from the word go
- Discrete adventures/delves as each individual raid - keep going until you fill your longship.
- Allowing for logical downtime & investment & carousing with your ill-gotten-gains.
- Actively engaging with different cultures for trade/raiding, weapons and "unlocking" new race/class options.
- Want a good sword? Damascus steel is hard to get, but you could sail down there and take it...
- Make religion and language an active component
- Converting to Christianity allows access to more ports to sell your booty, but causes disfavor back home
- Hiring/capturing translators becomes really important, especially for some of the longer-range trips you might take
- Give different regions a living mythology - go and kill all the different flavours of dragon
- Each region can have it's own unique magic system so it always feels different
- Fallen Empire archetype fulfilled by the Western Roman Empire
- Expedition planning, if you're into that sort of shit
- Finally use all those sick water monsters
Look at this shit they built a boat and sailed it around
*So basically Swyvers
