trancejeremy
Adventurer
Airships is a sourcebook from Bastion Press that introduces magical Airships to the d20 system.
It's a 96 page book, priced at $24.95 (though Bastion Press is now selling it for $16.95), and is in full color.
At first glance, adding Airships in a fantasy campaign might seem a bit silly. But they frequently appear in fantasy, most notably in console role playing games (various Final Fantasy games for instance), and in novels like James Blaylock's "The Elfin Ship". And airships have been in D&D/AD&D since the late 80s at least.
The Mystara/Known World setting had numerous airships, from the Princess Ark (whose voyages were chronicled for years in Dragon magazine) to the Air-Ship of Love (I'm not making it up, it was in the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set, there were even Love-Boat style adventure seeds given ).
AD&D had that whole Spelljammer thing, which were more like starships*, but also could fly around a planet (though for mysterious reasons never explained, were never used to do so).
Airships introduces them to the d20 system/D&D 3E. These airships are a bit more limited in scope than the sort of airships in products put out by TSR, more akin to those ships that appear in video games. That is, they're fairly slow, don't travel very high, and actually use sails and such. They're also relatively small.
Designing Airships is pretty simple. Pick a size, pick an engine, pick "templates", pick weapons and extras. There are only a few simple calculations to do, mostly revolving the engine.
Size goes up to 100 "Airship Tons". The Airship Ton is basically 1000 cubic feet, that is 10x10x10. The traditional ship 'ton' is 100 cubic feet, but that's hard to map. (Also as a comparison, the ton used in the Science Fiction RPG Traveller is about 500 cubic feet, or half this size.). It's very nice that the "ton" was defined clearly, as it allows you to adapt things from other ship building books (or even books that feature info on building buildings, like the Stronghold Builder's Guide or the tower section of FFG's Path of Magic, or even RPG Objects' Blood & Space, if you want high-tech Airships)
Numerous materials are given: Iron, mithril, diamond, wood, etc. Most are pretty low tech, suitable for dark ages technology magical civilizations. I would have liked to see more high tech ones. Or just different types of wood. Balsa vs. Teak vs. Bamboo. It's fairly easy to extrapolate new materials, as they follow the basic d20 rules for materials hardness and such.
The biggest choice is engine. They're all magical, but some use spell slots of Arcane or Divine spell users, some use oil or wood, some use elementals, and a couple are a bit evil, and use people or living critters or flesh.
Each engine type has various benefits and drawbacks. Most have a lot of drawbacks. I also have a problem believing oil and wood burning engines. I know it's supposed to be magical, but there is no way you could get enough energy to lift a ship by burning wood.
It's good, but I would have liked to have seen a wider variety of possible ships. Also more materials to make ships out of, higher tech ones, like say, aluminum, titanium, or even just steel. Still, because it's based on the standard d20 rules for materials, you can fairly easily adapt other rulebooks that have hardness and AC for high tech materials.
Similarly, the amount of extra add-ons to the ship is pretty small. While I'm not looking for things like hot tubs or hair salons, info on adding something like a brig or armory or alchemy lab would have been nice.
The combat rules seem pretty true to the d20 system. Each ship has hull points and an armor class, which are like characters hit points and armor class. There's something of a dearth of weapons, only 9 different types. But there's a fairly good maneuver system, and it accounts for 3 dimensions.
There's a handful of new prestige classes, nothing remarkable, spells (these are more useful) and feats (mostly for NPCs). A nice touch is that is goes over most of the spells from the PHB and how they can be used or are affected by aerial combat or on airships.
Only about 5 sample airships are provided, one elven, one dwarven, one pirates, one undead, and one Asherake, which is a race from Bastions Oathbound setting. (Which also happens to feature Airships). I think they have these (and maybe more) on their website, or at least they did. They also had some more supplemental material.
Anyway, while airships are pretty expensive, they're definitely in the price range of a groups of PCs - a smaller airship is around 150,000 gp. And there are trade tables in the book, so it's definitely possible to run a free trader campaign.
It's from when they still printed books in color, so it's generally a nice looking book, but it still features the artwork where people look like they don't have any skin, just muscles. Though that's thankfully pretty rare in the book. Some of the art is quite good, I especially liked a picture of a woman on page 68, which is an unusually modestly dressed woman.
This is a pretty good book. I think it could have been longer, at least 128 pages, maybe even 144 pages, but it does what it claims, and does it pretty well. B+
* (There is a spaceship sort of flying ships supplement for the d20 system, "Aether & Flux: Sailing the Traverse" from Dark Furies publishing , but when I first got Airships and started writing this review, I hadn't seen it. But now I have it, and it's not really comparable, though it is somewhat compatible. That is, you can probably borrow weapons and such from one and use them on the other)
It's a 96 page book, priced at $24.95 (though Bastion Press is now selling it for $16.95), and is in full color.
At first glance, adding Airships in a fantasy campaign might seem a bit silly. But they frequently appear in fantasy, most notably in console role playing games (various Final Fantasy games for instance), and in novels like James Blaylock's "The Elfin Ship". And airships have been in D&D/AD&D since the late 80s at least.
The Mystara/Known World setting had numerous airships, from the Princess Ark (whose voyages were chronicled for years in Dragon magazine) to the Air-Ship of Love (I'm not making it up, it was in the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set, there were even Love-Boat style adventure seeds given ).
AD&D had that whole Spelljammer thing, which were more like starships*, but also could fly around a planet (though for mysterious reasons never explained, were never used to do so).
Airships introduces them to the d20 system/D&D 3E. These airships are a bit more limited in scope than the sort of airships in products put out by TSR, more akin to those ships that appear in video games. That is, they're fairly slow, don't travel very high, and actually use sails and such. They're also relatively small.
Designing Airships is pretty simple. Pick a size, pick an engine, pick "templates", pick weapons and extras. There are only a few simple calculations to do, mostly revolving the engine.
Size goes up to 100 "Airship Tons". The Airship Ton is basically 1000 cubic feet, that is 10x10x10. The traditional ship 'ton' is 100 cubic feet, but that's hard to map. (Also as a comparison, the ton used in the Science Fiction RPG Traveller is about 500 cubic feet, or half this size.). It's very nice that the "ton" was defined clearly, as it allows you to adapt things from other ship building books (or even books that feature info on building buildings, like the Stronghold Builder's Guide or the tower section of FFG's Path of Magic, or even RPG Objects' Blood & Space, if you want high-tech Airships)
Numerous materials are given: Iron, mithril, diamond, wood, etc. Most are pretty low tech, suitable for dark ages technology magical civilizations. I would have liked to see more high tech ones. Or just different types of wood. Balsa vs. Teak vs. Bamboo. It's fairly easy to extrapolate new materials, as they follow the basic d20 rules for materials hardness and such.
The biggest choice is engine. They're all magical, but some use spell slots of Arcane or Divine spell users, some use oil or wood, some use elementals, and a couple are a bit evil, and use people or living critters or flesh.
Each engine type has various benefits and drawbacks. Most have a lot of drawbacks. I also have a problem believing oil and wood burning engines. I know it's supposed to be magical, but there is no way you could get enough energy to lift a ship by burning wood.
It's good, but I would have liked to have seen a wider variety of possible ships. Also more materials to make ships out of, higher tech ones, like say, aluminum, titanium, or even just steel. Still, because it's based on the standard d20 rules for materials, you can fairly easily adapt other rulebooks that have hardness and AC for high tech materials.
Similarly, the amount of extra add-ons to the ship is pretty small. While I'm not looking for things like hot tubs or hair salons, info on adding something like a brig or armory or alchemy lab would have been nice.
The combat rules seem pretty true to the d20 system. Each ship has hull points and an armor class, which are like characters hit points and armor class. There's something of a dearth of weapons, only 9 different types. But there's a fairly good maneuver system, and it accounts for 3 dimensions.
There's a handful of new prestige classes, nothing remarkable, spells (these are more useful) and feats (mostly for NPCs). A nice touch is that is goes over most of the spells from the PHB and how they can be used or are affected by aerial combat or on airships.
Only about 5 sample airships are provided, one elven, one dwarven, one pirates, one undead, and one Asherake, which is a race from Bastions Oathbound setting. (Which also happens to feature Airships). I think they have these (and maybe more) on their website, or at least they did. They also had some more supplemental material.
Anyway, while airships are pretty expensive, they're definitely in the price range of a groups of PCs - a smaller airship is around 150,000 gp. And there are trade tables in the book, so it's definitely possible to run a free trader campaign.
It's from when they still printed books in color, so it's generally a nice looking book, but it still features the artwork where people look like they don't have any skin, just muscles. Though that's thankfully pretty rare in the book. Some of the art is quite good, I especially liked a picture of a woman on page 68, which is an unusually modestly dressed woman.
This is a pretty good book. I think it could have been longer, at least 128 pages, maybe even 144 pages, but it does what it claims, and does it pretty well. B+
* (There is a spaceship sort of flying ships supplement for the d20 system, "Aether & Flux: Sailing the Traverse" from Dark Furies publishing , but when I first got Airships and started writing this review, I hadn't seen it. But now I have it, and it's not really comparable, though it is somewhat compatible. That is, you can probably borrow weapons and such from one and use them on the other)
