An Airship as the center of a campaign

weem

First Post
A while back I made post about creating an airship on a big piece of cardboard for use in my new campaign. The PC's were going to be spending a lot of time there so I thought it would be nice to have it laid out etc.

The early games we have played have solidifed the background of the campaign, and the airship will represent the widening of the campaign allowing them more freedom. There is an overall story arc, and that will always be on their minds - the access to the airship will help with their goals regarding the overall arc but also provide them with a lot of side options along the way.

The setup...

The players will be asked to come aboard this particular airship by the captain. There will be a point in the campaign (after 1-2 more games) where they will meet him during a time when they need to disappear for a while - he knows this and is willing to help. So they will join, not as crew, but as guests - of which the ship has many (it's a big ship). Some are on for long periods of time, others come and go replaced by more who come and quickly go.

The ship's captain and crew belong to an organization that has mysterious goals, and as such they travel a lot to a wide variety of places. Sometimes the PC's may be involved in some of these missions, other times they won't (up to them). Sometimes an NPC on the ship might have an opportunity for them, or they may hear about something they want to explore - but there is also the larger story arc that will come up from time to time they may feel compelled to follow. Whetever it is that comes their way, they can choose to pass on or explore further. Wherever they go, the ship will have become like their home and for the most part they will be able to find their way back to it (some times will take longer than others) or it may find them ;)

The hooks (or reasons I like this idea)...

- Meeting many NPC's on the ship, some good some not - many opportunities for adventure off-ship will be instigated in one way or another by NPC's, their stories, their requests, etc.

- The ship will feel relatively safe, like a home, and provide some 'downtime', but also present opportunities for skill challenges, social encounters and yes, occasionally combat (ship to ship AND between players/NPC's etc) and other dangers. Specifically, for one example, there is an Artificer in the group who, over the course of the campaign, will come up with various ways to improve the ship.

- The crew as extended group members. I want to have various members of the crew have certain specialties. So, when the PC's discover some artifact (for example) instead of saying "we need to go the the library of X to study this" they can instead say, "we need to get back to the ship... Ormak could probably tell us more about this".

- An airship provides the means by which to explore the continent/world. This is all happening on a new setting I have been developing, so this is a good way to give the players a little bit of experience with a lot of different areas so they get an idea for what it is all about.

- There will be so much to interact with on the ship that an entire session or two could be played entirely on the ship without leaving it, which would be really cool during a particularly long (far off) expedition.


The inspiration...

While initially inspired by Mass Effect, I have more recently been inspired by Firefly - particularly that each crew member fits not only a mechanical role (pilot, captain, doctor, engineer, etc) but they also represent very different personality roles (the leader, tough guy, the intellectual, the wise one, etc) - which presents a cool dynmamic as far as which players get along with which crew members and to what degree, etc.

There was also a lot of exploration, a TON of adventure, but then everything always came back to the ship and it felt safe there, even though it wasn't always exactly "safe".

Finally, some loose ideas...

In the special features of the Firefly DVD, they go over the design of the ship - the concept and colors and how they represented various feelings etc, which was really interesting and gave me another idea...

fireflydeckplans.jpg


...the ship I do will be much larger, and have many more rooms including a large library, observatory, etc. I was thinking that each room could give a certain bonus for various activities. The library could give a "History" check bonus for example, the Dining Hall could give a one time bonus of some kind - perhaps the ability to auto succeed on the next Save made that day.

I also thought it might be interesting during travel to ask the PC's where they intend to spend the majority of their time for specific bonuses or temporary power that will work while they are away from the ship. They could be done as utility powers perhaps. So the fighter says, "I spend most of my time in the training room" and he can get a utility card with X number of uses that does something kind of cool, or perhaps some healing potions if you spend time in the Infirmary etc. I could come up with one or two for each of any number of the rooms. Also, based on those choices, I could instigate various side quests, or trigger rumors, conversations, skill challenges.


Anyway, sorry for the length, but I just wanted to dump this here and get some feedback.

Do you have any ideas to add? Maybe something I should consider?

These are just the things I have been thinking of, but I'm curious to hear about what you have done, or what you want to do, or what you think would be cool as a player etc.


Thanks
 

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I ran a 4e campaign that revolved around airships. I used the airship in the 4e Adventurer's Vault (AdV) as the default for most airships, and would modify that default to represent higher and lower end types of ships encountered.

My strong suggestion to you is to consider making the ship your PCs end up on as a MASSIVE vessel no where near as small as the AdV example. Also, make it able to withstand a lot of damage from possible attackers in-story.

My group ended up getting attacked on two occaisions by multiple airships. Both times the enemies and the PCs tried to push each other off the sides of ships.

A fall from several hundred feet is deadly, and 4e's proscribed single saving throw almost seems lacking in airship-centric situations.

To help with this, I created an order of Griffon Knights that had 'launching and rooking areas' in the bowels of some of the Republic Airships that the party used. I also created what amounted to magic items that funcitoned as limited Backpacks of Feather Fall.

Nonetheless, we had a TPK due in part to a PC getting pushed off the side of an enemy airship (and fell to his death after a failed save). The enemy airship then were able to bring down the PCs airship due to prolonged long range bombardment.

My point is: be careful how you implement naval ideas from our real world with airships. And also take into account falls from heights.

I built an extensive website for that airship campaign. I post it here, it'd be gratifying to know if it was useful for you: The Spire and the Abyss - home

cheers.

C.I.D.
 


Pictures! We need pictures!

If you mean of the airship I did before, here they are (found the old post but had to re-upload the photos). I will be doing a new one though - one a little more narrow, but much taller and without the side sections sticking out (among other things)...

Step 1

The Cardboard

First, I cut out the good section of one side of a big (LCD) screen TV box. I measured it in inches so I knew how many squares I had to work with...

step01.jpg




Step 2

The Grid

Next, I drew out the grid (1 inch squares)

step02.jpg




Step 3

First Curve

The first curve I ran into was at the Bow (front) of the ship. What I did was laid down a piece of paper, drew my curve, and then cut it out with a box knife. That way, I could trace it for one side, flip it around and do it for the other so that both sides (curves) were the same.

Oh, and you will also notice the standard graph sheet here with the layout drawn on it - I counted the squares available once I was done making the grid and then drew the basic outline on the graph pad so I knew how it would all fit on the cardboard...

step03.jpg


step04.jpg




Step 4

The Basic (Pencil) Outline

Once I had the Bow and Aft curves/ends done, I darkened the pencil lines (with the same pencil) so I had my basic outline of the main portion of the ship...

step05.jpg




Step 5

Outer Hulls

Now I needed to add the outer hulls, or wings to the sides of the ship. This involved more curves, so with some more drawing/cutting/tracing, I hammered that out...

step06.jpg


step07.jpg




Step 6

Darken Border

At this point, I was happy with the outline of the entire thing, so I went over it with a black sharpie...

step08.jpg




Step 7

Begin Details

With the outline darkened with the sharpie, I now drew in some details (mainly the decks and stairs for now)...

step09.jpg




Step 8

Time For Sleep

And finally (for now) I was ready for bed, but before I stopped, I started a side-view (or cutaway) of the Bow of the ship, so my players would have a basic idea of how the decks stacked (see the portion on the bottom left side of the cardboard)...

step09.jpg
 

I had a small airskiff in a game I ran. It was designed so that anyone within 10 ft. of the deck at the start of their turn gained the ability to fly until the end of his or her next turn. It allowed some off-ship maneuvering (though that was risky), and made the "push them to their deaths" trick much harder to pull off.
 

It seems like you could get some more inspiration from the Voyages of the Princess Ark series from Dragon Magazine, maybe even the Champions of Mystara boxed set. The maps of the Princess Ark are stunning.

Just putting that out there.
 

You cited Firefly as an (obvious) inspiration for this, and you could do a lot worse that stealing from that show.

Depending on your campaign, other sources to consider:

  1. Farscape
  2. Star Trek (any series)
  3. BSG (either series)
  4. Love Boat
  5. Moorcock's Sailor on the Seas of Fate & the Oswald Bastable books
  6. The Alien movies
  7. Any caravan story or RPG adventure
  8. The Poseidon Adventure, Leviathan, Deepstar Six, Deep Rising, etc.
  9. Any movie set in a mall: Mall Rats, Dawn of the Dead, Chopping Mall
  10. Logan's Run
  11. Flash Gordon
  12. David Wingrove's Chung Kuo novels

In addition, check out the Aquatic Database in my sig.
 
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It seems like you could get some more inspiration from the Voyages of the Princess Ark series from Dragon Magazine, maybe even the Champions of Mystara boxed set. The maps of the Princess Ark are stunning.

Just putting that out there.

I actually own these, and also got inspiration from them ;)

I considering using the foldout grid map of the ship, but in the end it's simply not large enough.

---edit---

In fact, you can see the box set in this image (bottom shelf, left side, to the right of the Planescape stuff...

dicenbooks.JPG
 
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I ran a 4e campaign that revolved around airships. I used the airship in the 4e Adventurer's Vault (AdV) as the default for most airships, and would modify that default to represent higher and lower end types of ships encountered.

A good resource indeed.


My strong suggestion to you is to consider making the ship your PCs end up on as a MASSIVE vessel no where near as small as the AdV example.

Yea, that's the plan - I recall someone saying my ship plans (as I posted pictures a while back, though I will do a new one now) were more like a zeppelin in size (it was pretty big). The idea is that this is a very large ship.


Also, make it able to withstand a lot of damage from possible attackers in-story.

Good note. My intention was that this would be really big, and sturdy - not good for attacking other ships, but it will have solid defenses.


I built an extensive website for that airship campaign. I post it here, it'd be gratifying to know if it was useful for you: The Spire and the Abyss - home

Thanks I will definitely look it over tonight ;)
 

The Dragons of Iomedra (or whatever it is called) campaign by Chris Perkins over at Wizards has a few ships up. Stangely, they seem to be marked as wizards' property, even though it seems like the project is a personal one by him. In any case, for personal use at least, I'm sure you could snag those for other ships in your campaign, if you wanted.

I like your ship. We did a d20 Modern/Future that was inspired by serenity, and we had just a small map of our ship that we used. Having a 'life sized' one to move minis around on seems like a super idea. Generally I prefer less symmetrical designs, but yours is good. You should keep this thread up, I'm sure many of us will get some enjoyment out of it (even though I'm sure you will put some of this on your site, right?).

Jay
 

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