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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2011120" data-attributes="member: 924">Aether & Flux is a d20 supplement from DarkFuries, who are mostly known for maps (if they are known for anything). It's basically a supplement for fantasy ships in space.I was very interested when it first came out, but never really found out much about it, or a review. A few months later, some info did trickle in, including a few reviews, but by that time, I had mostly lost interest. Until I saw it on ebay with a fairly reasonable price.From the name, I had thought it was more weird science than fantasy. But it's not - it's almost pure fantasy - if you liked Spelljammer, then chances are very good you'll like this. It's very much like the old Spelljammer for AD&D, with the things that drove most people crazy removed ,i.e., the space hamsters, the weird physics, the shaved ewoks (wait, that's Dragonlance).Aether, or ether, was a concept popular in the late 1800s. Basically, scientists of the time knew that light was a wave, but they thought that waves had to have a medium to propagate through. That is, ocean waves need an ocean. Seismic waves propagate through the soil. Sound waves propagate through the air. But light could go though even a vacuum. What did it propagate in? This baffled scientists, and so the concept of "Ether" was born.The traditional ether ship would fly by swimming through it, turning an ether propeller or screw much like a ocean going ship goes through the water.But the aether in this, and the aether ships are somewhat different. Basically, instead of being like water, it's more like an electromagnetic field. When it interacts with magical sails or something called "flux", it pushes it, just like it would push a magnet or electromagnet. In fact, "flux" is basically like an electromagnet - it uses "flux" energy to lace the sails which then gets pushed by the aether.It's not without some flaws, but for the most part, it almost sounds plausible. The main trouble I have with it, is actually it's not Spelljammer enough. In Spelljammer, while there were sailing ships in space, they were relatively rare - special ships were designed for space. While Spelljamming ships didn't use sails for power, unlike A&F ships, it's not terribly plausible (IMHO) that exact duplicates of sailing ships would be in space. I mean, think about it - you'd probably want sails distributed more evenly, since you don't have gravity holding you down or a keel in the water - just one mast full of sails would actually just spin you around.  Similarly, I don't understand why keel length in this determines the speed of a ship. In ocean sailing, it's important because the keel is the part in the water, which largely counterbalances the sails, and so a bigger keel allows more sails. And it's mentioned that large ships (above 20 tons) cannot take off from a planet, so the vast majority of ships in the book would have to be built in space (unless there is a giant space elevator ala A.C.Clarke). So I would think ships more suitable for space would be designed, rather than just using actual sailing ship designs. (Again, like Spelljammer). Actually, the book even says this, that sailing ship designs were only common in the very early ages of space travel. So why the book is mostly full of those designs, I don't get.That's pretty much the subject of the book. How does it cover this? Pretty comprehensively, actually. There are a lot of ships statted out, 35 by my count, most of which are sailing ships (the majority of those that aren't are special, racial ships, for the elves or Ravin).  There's a pretty comprehensive combat system (with a whole bunch of weapons), tables for generating star systems, a fascinating glossary of sailor slang. There are combat rules, which are basically fairly close to d20, with hit points, armor class, etc. But it's a bit unlike water-borne combat - because unlike in space, you cannot really "sink" an aethership, you either have to reduce the ship to splinters, or kill everyone on board. Ships in this have a whole lot of hit points - thousands of them, so it's generally easier to board.  There are new abstract rules for boarding actions. There is something of a setting, too. It is somewhat Spelljammer-ish, divided up into 3 eras or ages, which mostly affects the available ships and equipment, but also the style of play, somewhat. The elves have ships that are grown - early on, they only have tiny ships. There are no Beholders or Scro, but there is something a lot like the Neogi. Only instead of being like spiders, as the Neogi were, the new villains, the Ravin, are like ticks (both ticks & spiders are arachnids, though. Lawyers, too). They are actually fairly mindless killing machines, not unlike the Magog of Andromeda, the TV show, and like the Magog, are a growing threat. Other bits also seem inspired by Andromeda, at least there is a "High Guard", though they seem more like the Rangers of Babylon 5. Most of the setting is general, but there is also a sample star system given (basically, just a description of each planet) as well as a space station (which gets a map and keyed entries for it). The map for the latter seems awfully small, though.While it's an interesting book, I think I would have preferred something closer to Bastion Press's Airships, a book that lets you design your own ships, as opposed to using a bunch of premade ships (mostly based on real world sailing ships). Spelljammer did the same thing, just had a bunch of premade ships. But many of them were aimed at PCs. I'm not sure any of the ships in the book are aimed at PCs. I also can't seem to find prices for any of the ships, which also makes it hard for them to buy them.While I'm not counting it in my review score, much of the content of this book regarding the ships is also closed, which has little bearing for most people, but I am one of those people vain enough to put their campaign world on the web (or in the process of), and so I find this book unusable for my purposes.The only real problem with the book, is the structure of it is a bit odd. It gives a very brief bit on background, and then rushes into stats for the villain race (the Ravin), then into the info on the space station. This left me confused and a bit cold.  It probably should have been put in the back or a more relevant section. Kinda reminded me of the old Character/Campaign Law for Rolemaster - I remember a friend of mine bought it, and we tried to play it, but what was the first section on? Not making characters, but plants and their properties. (Okay, that might be appropriate for a hippie RPG, but not a generic fantasy game). This isn't that bad, but it's in the same vein. Also, the deck plans (of 8 ships) are about 25 pages into the book - very weird placement. The back would have been the best, thankfully, that is where they put cardstock sheet of counters.All in all, I would give it a B, though it's not really to my taste. I did really enjoy the glossary of sailor's slang - I now know why Left & Right are called Starboard and Port on a ship.</blockquote>

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