Aquaman and the RPG Aquatic

Just watched the movie Aquaman and was very underwhelmed. As you, my dear seated reader might know, I happen to be quite the underwater fantasy fan. Really. While you might chuckle at "He can talk to fish" and I am the dork that thinks 'OMG THAT IS AWESOME!' The flick is full of what the creators thought would be cool imagery they did not have any understanding of what it is like to be in water let alone any understanding of the flora and fauna of our seas and oceans. Even as a superhero movie, it comes off as more geared towards toddlers during bath time than the more intellectual crowd of 11 year-old boys earning their first of many Life Guard qualifications but with alcohol and gaudy red-heads and asshole half brothers-- in short the movie was made for semi-employed 50 y/os in Floridian trailer parks.

Now why am I wasting your time with my thoughts on this movie in a blog meant for roleplaying games? Well, because underwater roleplaying is like THE place to be. Take any high leveled PCs from whatever setting or game you have, they're sitting around cleaning their fingernails with like 16" long daggers and casting fireballs at dust bunnies in their Motel 6 room. The pizza of resurrection has been eaten and the Bard/Ships Engineer has been resurrected as a were-Woodchuck. Asmodi-Gorgon is awaiting in Hong Kong, but the group just isn't ready for that boss battle just yet. Where do you go? Put everyone in their bathing suits and storm the wading pool, kicking those 9 y/os out of your beer belly's way.  Extra points to the players that slap ice cream cones out of hands and get threats from phone-watching parents about calling the cops. Negative points for speedos, unless you're the GM.

So you're underwater, where sea-elves and mermaids frolic or dealing with heavy pressure mechanics versus the void of outer space. Now what?

You don't sit on sharks
Sky-flying sharks are made for selfie-taking mounts as any reader of Arduin works knows. Still, water dwelling sharks are the bears or tiger of any saltwater local flora or fauna. One does not just gallop across a bucolic seascape of anglefish and guppies on an obedient great white to go find Nemo. When one mounts a shark, there had better be a real ride involved. The average hammerhead comes from a lineage of predator that has survived three extinction events, while you and your chimp cousin have dealt with the  measly drought that formed the Sahara and created Egypt a mere six thousand years ago. An undersea Druid would get this. If you as a GM do not get this, I suggest sticking to Tiny Toon dungeon crawls or some such.

Lava is ground
It's heavy ground at that. Unless you see better in sulfuric acid and like clouds of carbon monoxide, perhaps finding a way of lighting the PC's environment that isn't lava is a good idea. There are often RPG creatures that would like the spots where lava and water meet. They're totally alien to our comfort zone and often called demons. If your not playing in a system that doesn't have say something like "dark vision," perhaps something like sonar and pressure sensitivity might be helpful. If this is a little beyond the GM's grasp, there is always the Pixar Underwater Park fairies that will provide very nice looking sets for the uninspired RPGer.

Up is where the light is
 No one is standing or sitting while submerged. Failing a light source swimmers tend to turn into the current and seek heat. Creatures with surface-dwelling lungs will always have a good idea where "up" is as their feet will drift downwards just not quite. If one is not careful their lungs will face them upwards away from the stuff they should paying attention to. No one is floating in static formations with straight lines all orientated in a certain horizontal direction. While upside-down is uncomfortable almost every other position isn't.
This is perhaps on of the simplest ways to make things trippy for a group of PCs without having to go into gravity salad, one of my other favorite RPG mixer-uppers.

Getting places can be hard
Ask anybody that has navigated their way through an outward bound tide back to shore, whether swimming or in a dingy, moving from point to point might be very trying. The distances traveled can be ironically to the traveler much greater than expected and not very straight line at all. This is why even mechanically-driven surface ships might wait for high tide to set sail on their more or less straight-lined, at least for a mile to eight at a time, voyages. Now be a PC trying to navigate about a continent with currents going this way or that based on seasonal temperature changes and rapid fluctuation of moon-based tides.
This a nod to the episodic nature of tabletop sessions, especially for major level Characters needing to complete their quests, but not able to just yet do so. "The currents just aren't going that way." The GM can say. "You want to follow them? Or wait things out?" The GM can then craft other adventures to enrich the campaign and the PCs before the final boss battle.

Now these days, my perfect aquatic campaign would be play sessions held in a hot tub, but an atmospheric campaign that flexed the PC's imaginations and moved with the flow of an universe just a bit beyond the ken of them is totally worth the try. They'd be a "fish out of water" or better put "a chicken crossing the road" to speak symbolically.