An Airship as the center of a campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

The ship looks cool so far- sort of retro-future, Flash Gordon-esque.

With that in mind, if you're planning on doing any ship-to-ship combats or some kind of representation of their journey, you might consider looking into Rocketmen CSG, and the Cloudships of Mars & Sky Galleons of Mars games for small-scale mockups.

 

[weem]

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

You have a link to that by chance? I did a quick search and didn't find it

The ship looks cool so far- sort of retro-future, Flash Gordon-esque.

Thanks, I'll be doing a new one though so it will be a bit different - I will probably do another step by step thing though to show it in process.

With that in mind, if you're planning on doing any ship-to-ship combats or some kind of representation of their journey, you might consider looking into Rocketmen CSG, and the Cloudships of Mars & Sky Galleons of Mars games for small-scale mockups.

Cool, I will look into those as well

 

[ruemere]

Depending on certain aspects of d20 systems, you may want to allow for certain protection from astral travel, divinations and AOE spells when aboard the ship.
Otherwise, the first villain with resources and a grudge will send it burning toward the ground.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Hussar]

Something I ran into when trying to do naval campaigns in D&D is that D&D rules suck when you do what I call platoon sized combat. 30-50 combatants or the size of two ship crews. The numbers are way too big to run as straight combat - unless you feel like rolling dice for the next several days. But, the numbers are too small for the mass combat rules out there which typically assume army sized conflicts of hundreds of combatants.

My advice, if you don't mind doing a bit of system kludging, is to run mass combats in Savage Worlds. Convert your PC's and NPC's to the SW system, just for the mass combat and use those rules. They are simple and yet tactical enough to be interesting.

I've yet to find a good system for D&D for these sized combats.

Very, very cool idea though. One question though. If this is an airship, where is the balloon? Or is it kind of like a big rocket ship shape?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've yet to find a good system for D&D for these sized combats.

Back in the days when I owned an Apple IIe (yes, a long time ago), there was a game that involved ship-to-ship combat in the age of 3-masted ships. It included boarding parties. Ships could hold hundreds of crewmen.

Boarding party combats were decided by which of 3 maneuvers you chose when your representative boarders came together- essentially a Rock/Scissors/Paper game- with a wildcard of sniper shots (with accuracy %ages) from the riggings. Each R/S/P loss cost you a certain number of crewmen, as did each successful sniper shot.

It was simple, efficient and quick. It could work here, at least for "mook" fights.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Cool! I like your terrain (i.e. ship). Good stuff as the centerpiece.

I would recommend not attacking the ship other than once or twice. (Consider it like a PCs home base or fortress - the more you attack them there, the less comfortable they get.)

I suggest that the airship has a legitimate "mission" or at least purpose. You'll have to tailor adventures to ports of call to some extent, but if there isn't a significant raison d'etre for it, the feel won't be right.

With that in mind, I have a few visuals that I would personally enjoy if I were in such a game:

a cloud castle
a mountaintop or two
the Top of the World (whatever that is)
dragons in the skies - perhaps where the PCs can get involved
a "sargasso sea" of the skies
sky jungles

 

[weem]

Depending on certain aspects of d20 systems, you may want to allow for certain protection from astral travel, divinations and AOE spells when aboard the ship.
Otherwise, the first villain with resources and a grudge will send it burning toward the ground.

Regards,
Ruemere

Thanks, something to keep in mind for sure.

Something I ran into when trying to do naval campaigns in D&D is that D&D rules suck when you do what I call platoon sized combat. 30-50 combatants or the size of two ship crews. The numbers are way too big to run as straight combat - unless you feel like rolling dice for the next several days. But, the numbers are too small for the mass combat rules out there which typically assume army sized conflicts of hundreds of combatants.

My advice, if you don't mind doing a bit of system kludging, is to run mass combats in Savage Worlds. Convert your PC's and NPC's to the SW system, just for the mass combat and use those rules. They are simple and yet tactical enough to be interesting.

I've yet to find a good system for D&D for these sized combats.

I'm not too worried combat of that size. It might happen, maybe once - who knows I guess, but I have handled them in my own way in the past and will use similar methods.

I did get the SW book though, so I will go check it out for that purpose now

Very, very cool idea though. One question though. If this is an airship, where is the balloon? Or is it kind of like a big rocket ship shape?

Magic will be used to keep it aloft and propel it as well. I am not sure on the specifics and I have a few options. There is a book in the Princess Ark box set all about ship design which has some options. Plus, I am reading a trilogy by Terry Brooks at the moment that has some details on how theirs work which I like... I may mix and match, hehe.

Back in the days when I owned an Apple IIe (yes, a long time ago), there was a game that involved ship-to-ship combat in the age of 3-masted ships. It included boarding parties. Ships could hold hundreds of crewmen.

Boarding party combats were decided by which of 3 maneuvers you chose when your representative boarders came together- essentially a Rock/Scissors/Paper game- with a wildcard of sniper shots (with accuracy %ages) from the riggings. Each R/S/P loss cost you a certain number of crewmen, as did each successful sniper shot.

It was simple, efficient and quick. It could work here, at least for "mook" fights.

One of the reasons the 'mass' combat stuff doesn't worry me too much (as well as ship to ship combat) is that in my setting, there are not many airships (there MIGHT be 10). This will change as we go through Paragon Tier and really pick up steam during the Epic Tier (if we get there) but the chances for ship to ship combat in the air are almost nil. Ship to monster combat? that's likely, as is various violent activities that could break out between different factions on the ship.

Cool! I like your terrain (i.e. ship). Good stuff as the centerpiece.

I would recommend not attacking the ship other than once or twice. (Consider it like a PCs home base or fortress - the more you attack them there, the less comfortable they get.)

I suggest that the airship has a legitimate "mission" or at least purpose. You'll have to tailor adventures to ports of call to some extent, but if there isn't a significant raison d'etre for it, the feel won't be right.

Oh, it will have a very specific purpose, but the details will not be shared with the PC's, hence the mystery of them.For the most part, the PC's will simply be aboard for the ride, getting off when they want to where the ship happens to be stopping - of course, they can request specific stops, but that will all be part of various conversations and skill challenges, etc.

With that in mind, I have a few visuals that I would personally enjoy if I were in such a game:

a cloud castle
a mountaintop or two
the Top of the World (whatever that is)
dragons in the skies - perhaps where the PCs can get involved
a "sargasso sea" of the skies
sky jungles

Very cool ideas, and great inspiration. I can definitely see working in at least a few of those, thanks!

 

[weem]

Just to add another visual, this is a ship from the anime "Last Exile" and though it is more technologically advanced than I am looking for, I like the dimensions as far as it being pretty tall and I'm thinking mine will have similar dimensions...

 

[Aeolius]

I am reminded of Master of the World

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I actually own these, and also got inspiration from them

I heartily also recommend the anime movie "Castle in the Sky", lots of skyship goodness around a plotpoint of a lost ancient civilization that fled to the skys via floating cities. The civilization disappeared, almost reverse-Atlantis-like. The contemporary-skyships are closer to dirigibles than flying boats.

In the contemporary-movie-era of Castle in the Sky there is a last search for the remaining floating city lost in the clouds.

An alternate idea I had used in a long dormant homebrew setting involved planar layers, that across the entire material plane was something of a convergent zone exactly about 7,000 feet above sea level where one plane intersected with the material plane. Anyway, along this "line" vessels could be built/crafted to "float" in the air, the knowledge of the process was not widely public, only a few states knew. At 7,000 feet across the planet could be found port cities and towns catering to the vessels. Dwarves were dominant among nations who used such vessels. Pretty much every mountain and mountain range became islands and archipelagos for the sky fleets. This arbitrary convention also allowed me to keep aerial combat fairly well limited to 2-dimensional engagements, 3-dimensional vehicle combat is teh suck.