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My son and I were talking this past weekend, and by a strange process, we started musing on the idea of combining gaming and scuba diving. At first, it seemed this was an idea that was much too fraught with problems to work, but the more I've considered it, the more sense it makes. Bear with me on this - it might just have you ready to head to the local dive shop for Open Water lessons yourself, by the time I'm done.
The first difficulty that came to mind was communication. You can talk through scuba gear, but your enunciation is going to be lousy at best, and while sound carries exceptionally well through the water, so will all the garbling that occurs when you talk with a regulator in your mouth. As such, all communication during the game would have to be done with either a slate (a white plastic tablet that can be written on with pencil or a special pen, and erased), or through sign language.
On the positive side of this, it nullifies the guy in your gaming party that has to elucidate in excruciating detail everything he is going to do. He doesn't just say, "I attack the orc with my sword." He describes the sword, including the strength required to use it, the attack and parrying bonuses it has, what kind of metal alloy it is made of, the name of the blacksmith that crafted it, the name of the blacksmith's coal supplier, the name of the coal supplier's favorite ale and barwenches, and what color dress the wenches were wearing the last time they were seen in public. He tells you which hand the sword is in, and what particular attack style he is using. He'll even tell you how the sun or torchlight is glinting off the jewels in the hilt, and how the special oil on the blade keeps orc blood from sticking to the metal. In an underwater game, even if he COULD speak all this, by the time he was done making one attack, he'd be out of air. Underwater gaming would force brevity, and hence speed up the game, despite the communications problems.
An additional benefit of inhibited conversation is that it greatly truncates debating with the game master over the results of a turn. No more long, drawn-arguments on whether the outcome was truly correct or not. The limitation of trying to write out the point/counterpoint exchange would quickly get tiresome, and if the disputing player tried to keep dragging it out too long, one of the other players could simply reach over and start shutting off his air at the primary regulator (for those unfamiliar with scuba gear, the primary regulator is the one on the tank, which cannot be reached by a diver wearing the tank). Trust me on this, folks. When that regulator in your mouth isn't delivering air as smoothly as it should, you won't continue to worry about whether your level 600 Mace Fighter/Bard merely wounded the orc, or crushed his skull like an overripe tangerine. The only thing that will matter is getting that next breath of air, and wondering if it's forty feet away at the surface. Admit it - hasn't there been times in your gaming sessions that you wished it was that simple to break a player's train of thought?
My son commented that dice could present a problem. Floating dice would certainly be inconvenient, as the moment you threw them, you'd have to chase them to the surface. Sinking dice could easily vanish in the sand of the ocean bottom, or be snagged by a nearby octopus as a pretty bauble. Yes, it really is true that octopi love pretty baubles, and since an octopus can exert a pull of ten times its body weight, it doesn't take a very big octopus to win a tug-of-war against a diver - IF you can manage to get your hand on the die once it's been drawn into the octopus' hidey-hole.
The solution to this would be for the game master to bring a sealed jar with the dice needed for the game, and when a die roll is needed, the player gives the jar a good shake, and the die is read through the glass. This prevents the problem of dice sorting. You know the drill - "Let's see, for this I need a LOW roll, so let me use my lucky 'low-roll' dice, instead of my lucky 'high-roll' dice that I use for everything else." Everybody uses the same dice, so if the dice suck on a given type of rolls for one player, it will accordingly suck for everyone else.
Unless your gaming group is diving on a hookah set-up, which involves long hoses attached to an unlimited air source at the surface, your gaming time is going to be limited by the amount of air you're carrying on your back. Good divers can stretch an 80 cubic foot tank well over an hour at moderate depths such as forty feet, while inexperienced divers can burn through the same amount of air in a half-hour to fifty minutes. The fact that you're sitting still will help reduce air consumption, but no matter how conservative your breathing is, you're still looking at a definite stop-time. No more of those, "just a few minutes more," that turn into about seven hours and leave you having to go to work without managing to even make it to bed. Once again, no matter how involved the game is, you WILL call it quits and head for the surface before the air runs out. Trust me, you CAN swim forty feet to the surface with an empty tank safely and easily, but you won't want to.
Another benefit is that none of us will have a refrigerator or pantry on the ocean or lake bottom. If you're tired of gamers that are more ravenous than half-starved ogres, leaving your fridge and cupboards as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's, then underwater gaming is for you. You will actually GAME, instead of noshing away an entire month's grocery budget. No more "Cheetos fingers," either. You won't end up with orange cheese smears on your furniture or your cat, and you won't end up with a drunk gamer deciding that your mid-level party is capable of a head-on assault on five elder beholders, three dragons, an ancient wyrm, and a Chuck Norris doppelganger. At once.
Oh, and that "Rules Lawyer" in your group? The one that hauls in a garden-wagon full of books and doesn't mind at all taking the time to research the most obscure, not-even-brought-up-as-a-question point, while the rest of you wait, twiddling your thumbs? Forget him. If he can tear himself away from his library to come to the game without them, he won't be submerging his books for the game, and if he does, they aren't going to remain in readable condition anyway. Imagine a game where you just PLAY, without someone constantly reminding the whole group about the most nit-noid rule that no one else has ever even heard of, but which Gary Gygax himself declared was essential to proper gameplay.
Oh, and if a shark happens to wander into your gaming session? Don't worry about it, and don't let your group's version of Igor (from the comic Dork Tower) decide to attack it with his +6 Spear Gun of Awesome Sharkslaying. Sharks are cool, and besides, gaming geeks are not their normal diet.
Although, if you're really tired of that one annoying player, a strategically placed fishhead can do wonders (but you didn't hear that from me . . . ).
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