The ship deck plan generator draws the weather deck of a wooden sailing ship from above, at sea, on five-foot squares. Each roll is a single-masted sloop, a two-masted brigantine or a three-masted frigate, and the length, beam and fittings follow from that. A raised quarterdeck holds the helm at the stern, a forecastle rises at the bow with the anchors catted on either side, and the masts stand along the centreline with their yards braced across the deck. Cargo hatches sit between the masts, a capstan stands aft of the mainmast, and an armed ship carries a row of guns along each rail. Every feature is numbered and keyed under the map, and the ship gets a name.
How the ship is laid out
The rig sets the size. A sloop is seventy feet on deck, a brigantine ninety and a frigate a hundred and ten, each about a third as wide as it is long, the proportions of real ships of the age of sail. The hull has a rounded transom at the stern, full sides through the middle and a fine bow running out to the bowsprit.
The deck follows how ships were actually worked. The quarterdeck is raised over the great cabin, and the helm and the binnacle stand on it where the officer of the watch can see the whole ship. Ladders lead down to the waist, the open main deck between the quarterdeck and the forecastle, where the hatches lead below and the capstan is used to haul up the anchor. Shrouds run from each mast out to the rails, which is where boarders and lookouts climb.
Guns, boats and stores
Every frigate is armed, and most brigantines and some sloops are too, with guns run out through ports on both sides of the waist. The count is in the key, so you know what a broadside looks like before the fight starts. Bigger ships carry their boat on deck between the masts; a sloop tows hers astern on a line. Barrels and crates are lashed down by the forecastle, where the cook and the bosun can get at them.
Using it at the table
Ships are where a lot of campaigns end up, sooner or later, and a deck plan turns "you're attacked at sea" into a fight players can plan. Boarders come over the rails, archers take the forecastle, someone has to hold the helm and someone else has to cut the grappling lines. The squares are five feet, which suits D&D 5e, Pathfinder and most d20 games, so you can drop the plan onto a virtual tabletop and run the fight directly.
It's just as useful between fights. Put the stowaway in the ship's boat, the smuggled cargo under the fore hatch and the mutineers around the capstan, and the voyage is half planned. Roll two ships for a battle between them.
Free SVG and PNG downloads
Both formats are free for your games, streams and published adventures. The PNG is a 1920-pixel render for a VTT or a second screen, and the Print button saves a black-and-white version for a home printer. The SVG is the original vector file: open it in Inkscape, Affinity or Figma to rename the ship, add a cabin or draw in the lower decks. Everything on the plan is drawn by our own code, so there's no attribution to carry and no asset licence to read.
What it won't do
It draws the weather deck of one sailing ship. It doesn't draw the decks below, galleys with oars, or modern and steam ships, and it doesn't give the ship game statistics. For a starship, roll a starship deck plan instead.
Name it, then crew it
The ship name generator writes the ship's history and draws this same plan beside its result, with the generated name in the title. The pirate captain name generator gives you the person at the helm, the pirate name generator the crew, and the starship deck plan generator does the same job for ships that sail between stars.