Out of Control Airship (Combat Challenge)

[weem]

Ok, im sharing this encounter idea here for two reason... one is to get some feedback... the other is to help me get it laid out and organized!

The Challenge

The players had a partial combat encounter as they boarded an airship to leave the (huge) city they are in. I say partial because, it is still ongoing as they get on the ship.

The ship is damaged, many of the crew are injured and dead and as we begin, the ship lunges forward and down low along a street that is about to turn (there are many streets, none of them straight for long). The players must help manage the ships movement in order to escape a chasing airship.

Basically, imagine a helicopter chase through New York (this city has some tall buildings).

There are two "parse tubes" (im using the airship mechanics from a Terry Brooks trilogy I read) that are currently unmanned - a PC will need to "control" each one or else the ship can not turn, or rise from just above street level. These are damaged preventing the captain from controlling them from the control box. One or two other players can try to fix these so the PC's controlling them can be free to defend themselves... yes, they must control the ship AND fight off flying creatures sent from the tailing ship.

Controlling the ship works as follows...

On the players turn, the two controlling the parse tubes (1 on the left, 1 on the right) must choose an amount of power to feed to the tube. More power on the right means you move left. More power on the left means you move right. As the power varies, the ending hex moved to varies. These tubes have 4 levels of power (0, 1, 2, 3) - to see where the ship ends up based on those setting, see the diagram below (left tube power / right tube power)...

Notice also (above) the color of the hexes. Those indicate elevation changes... the more power you give, the higher they can make ship rise as well


So, the players choose power... an ending square is determined as well as elevation increase - both of which happens on the SHIPS turn (which goes last). But how to choose where to go? Well, wherever there arent buildings at your elevation or higher of course! At the start, the ship will be at elevation "2"... these numbers don't represent floor levels, but rather abstract heights for buildings. On a hex mat, I will draw out an abstract layout of the local city area they are flying in, complete with elevation numbers for buildings. I have made a visual example here...

So getting the ship to elevation 8 would clear all buildings... but to do that quickly would require large forward movements, which will be hard to do in this crowded city (if not in the easy example i gave above, hehe)


Some Wrinkles...

1) The captain will colapse on the controls not too long into the flight, initiating a drop in elevation by 1. Someone needs to maintain the control for power (as much as they can get) at the control box just to keep it level while the "parse tube" controllers get it to rise.

2) The flying creatures are intelligent and can try and change the amount of power used on a parse tube, thus altering the course form what a PC had intended


To get away (win), they need to either...

1) Get the ship up and above the city (they are faster than the trailing ship when there are no obsticles)

or

2) Repair both tubes at which point the captain can EASILY get away from the trailing ship (he has mad piloting skills)



Crashing?

Hitting buildings will be like failures in a skill challenge. I'm thinking you can only sustain X amount per ship location (if you hit a building moving left, the left side is damaged, etc. Maybe you can only take a fer per side, etc).




Things I still need (I'm open to suggestions)...

1) I need to setup the challenge involved in fixing a parse tube

2) I need something for 4th and 5th players to do during this. I was thinking they could have the option to aid in repairs, fight off attackers, or a little of both... and maybe that's enough.

3) I need to settle on what it takes for a player to choose a power for their tube on their turn - aka what kind of action (I'm thinking movement action) and if there should be any roll involved - or if taking away an action to control it is hard enough.




Thoughts? Suggestions? Problems? Ideas? Lemme have em (if you are still with me after all of this, hehe)

 

[Starfox]

Wow, seems very hard - and plenty complex too. Basically a minigame in itself. Are your players and their characters up to this?

if they are, it looks very, very cool but a bit complex to give off-the-cuff comments on here.

 

[Nytmare]

Yay, 5:30 in the morning stream of consciousness posting!

Maybe make damaging a parse tube affect what it's maximum power can be set to?

Or maybe it freezes the parse tube at what it is currently set at?

Let the players target the chase ship's tubes? So they can attack the creatures, a section of the chase ship's hull, or the chase ship's parse tubes?

What are the ships armed with?

Do you want to give them the opportunity to pass over the top of the chase ship so that someone can jump off onto it? I'd kind of assume that someone's going to try it whether you want them to or not.

Are there other ships in the air around them? My brain is kinda stuck on boat and car chase scenes, but they tend to have a lot of near collisions and cutting narrowly between crossing larger ships.

I'm embarrassed by the fact that the only mid air chase scenes my brain is supplying at the moment are the second(?) Star Wars and whichever Mummy movie had the balloon chase scene... Did the 5th Element have a flying car chase scene? What have you been using as research material?

How much do the PCs like this city? Is collateral damage going to be a problem?

What about ramming the other ship and trying to board it? Anchoring it to buildings? Running it aground?

I'm all for 2D mapping, but something like this really shouts for props in my mind. What stackable stuff do you have at your disposal that you can use for the map?

 

[eriktheguy]

:O
I don't know whether to tell you how lucky your players are, or ask what is wrong with you.

 

[Kingreaper]

Am I right in assuming that you're ignoring the buildings they go past, and only looking at the square they end up in? If so, what is the justification for this?
It makes sense puzzle-wise, but not simulation-wise as far as I can see.

Also, to what extent can this airship turn?

 

[Nebulous]

Wow weem, you put a lot of thought into this. I'm also currently running an airship campaign, and while your grid and mechanics look cool, it also looks like it would give me a headache. That kind of minutae of detail i would gloss over and make it up most likely, or just do a simple skill challenge.

Having enemies fight them while they are trying to fix the parse tubes will be a lot of fun. I would definitely go that direction. I just had flying aboleths and kuo-toa attack my airship and it would have been fun to have a secondary skill challenge like yours going on at the same time, but we were inundated with combat (4 PCs, 15 NPCs, 14 monsters...)

 

[weem]

Wow weem, you put a lot of thought into this. I'm also currently running an airship campaign, and while your grid and mechanics look cool, it also looks like it would give me a headache. That kind of minutae of detail i would gloss over and make it up most likely, or just do a simple skill challenge.

Hehe, I'm not expecting it to be that bad. I will have numbers down on the hex mat (elevations 1-7) - the player will tell me a number between 0 and 3 for the power of their tube. I just compare the two to see where they go - after doing this once or twice, they will start to see how it's effecting the turning.

EX: \

'LEFT' PC: "Well, we need to turn right, so I open mine up all the way... so 3!"

'RIGHT' PC: "In that case, I cover mine and lower the power to... say... 1"

So that gives me a "3/1" - look at the movement chart there and I know where they go.

Having enemies fight them while they are trying to fix the parse tubes will be a lot of fun. I would definitely go that direction. I just had flying aboleths and kuo-toa attack my airship and it would have been fun to have a secondary skill challenge like yours going on at the same time, but we were inundated with combat (4 PCs, 15 NPCs, 14 monsters...)

Cool! Yea, I think it will really add to it. They will have had a partial encounter before, and I think it will be hard enough initially as it is so the combat portion of this won't be TOO hard I think (their level, or slightly below).

Am I right in assuming that you're ignoring the buildings they go past, and only looking at the square they end up in? If so, what is the justification for this?
It makes sense puzzle-wise, but not simulation-wise as far as I can see.

Also, to what extent can this airship turn?

Nope, not ignoring - hence "crashing". If there is a building blocking the path there (of their current elevation or higher), they hit it. Now this is not a fast paced chase, so it's more of a hard bump, but you can't have too many of those when it comes to Ship vs Building, hehe.

:O
I don't know whether to tell you how lucky your players are, or ask what is wrong with you.

Hehe, gotcha

Yay, 5:30 in the morning stream of consciousness posting!

Yes!

Maybe make damaging a parse tube affect what it's maximum power can be set to?

Or maybe it freezes the parse tube at what it is currently set at?

Yea, those are good, and I had thought about that - in fact, an image came to mind of one of the matrix squid things (sorry, haven't seen them in a while) gnawing away at some controls somewhere effectively locking a tube to it's setting until repaired etc, hehe.

Let the players target the chase ship's tubes? So they can attack the creatures, a section of the chase ship's hull, or the chase ship's parse tubes?

That's possible if the ship get's close enough (an adjacent hex), which it just might.

What are the ships armed with?

Nothing! In my campaign setting, there are 9 airships total - it's a new technology for the most part. So, weapons for them have not been perfected, etc. They exist on a few ships, but are very innacurate. I have been working with the Artificer of the group as an inventory type - he has been taking in this technology and working on improving it. He's already got a new system in the works to power an airship much more efficiently (that's kind of a mini game happening over the course of the campaign).

Do you want to give them the opportunity to pass over the top of the chase ship so that someone can jump off onto it? I'd kind of assume that someone's going to try it whether you want them to or not.

The ship is moving forward-ish only as it is damaged. They can guide it (strafing) left and right a bit, but manuevering is a bit... off right now. The ship following them is slowly gaining on them, but I don't see any opportunities for that kind of thing - BUT, if they work out a way of pulling that off (maybe when they hit a building, it can spin them about) I'm all for it!

Are there other ships in the air around them? My brain is kinda stuck on boat and car chase scenes, but they tend to have a lot of near collisions and cutting narrowly between crossing larger ships.

Na, like I said, there are 9 airships TOTAL in the world right now, 3 of which are in this city (theirs, the one chasing them, and one other who is not in the picture).

I'm embarrassed by the fact that the only mid air chase scenes my brain is supplying at the moment are the second(?) Star Wars and whichever Mummy movie had the balloon chase scene... Did the 5th Element have a flying car chase scene? What have you been using as research material?

My imagination, hehe - "Firefly" got me on the whole airship kick recently (though I have always loved airships).

How much do the PCs like this city? Is collateral damage going to be a problem?

They HATE this city, haha. It's been very unkind to them.

What about ramming the other ship and trying to board it? Anchoring it to buildings? Running it aground?

The ship they are on is pretty much like a wildly flying rocket (well, much slower than a rocket). They can kind of guide it forward, but manueverability beyond that doesn't exist... except perhas by bouncing off a building or two

I'm all for 2D mapping, but something like this really shouts for props in my mind. What stackable stuff do you have at your disposal that you can use for the map?

I don't really have anything - though I thought a lot about it.

Wow, seems very hard - and plenty complex too. Basically a minigame in itself. Are your players and their characters up to this?

if they are, it looks very, very cool but a bit complex to give off-the-cuff comments on here.

I think it looks more complex than it really is, but we'll see, hehe. And as far as my players go? They LOVE this kind of thing

 

[Rachel]

Can one of the ships be called the Big Whale?? Can I challenge another girl to a slapping contest on top of one?? Where did I put those old FF games, anyway?!

Playing!

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Interesting idea, but your map seems a bit off...

Looking at it and your power diagram, there is no way to avoid each and every turn until one exits the top half of the map. To me, that seems to be a "why even bother trying not to crash".

Now, assuming that you need to be height 3 to pass over a height 2, building...

On turn 1, you need to move 3 spaces to gain altitude - you need to crash through a 2 and a 3 to get to a 2 where you would be safe (as you would now be at height 3).

On turn 2, there is no safe square one can move to and gain altitude, and even maintaining your height requires you to crash through buildings.

Turn 3 is more of the same, and you likely reach the edge of the map.

So, you'll need to be very careful in planning your map so that it is actually doable - I don't think this one is...

 

[weem]

Interesting idea, but your map seems a bit off...

Looking at it and your power diagram, there is no way to avoid each and every turn until one exits the top half of the map. To me, that seems to be a "why even bother trying not to crash".

Now, assuming that you need to be height 3 to pass over a height 2, building...

On turn 1, you need to move 3 spaces to gain altitude - you need to crash through a 2 and a 3 to get to a 2 where you would be safe (as you would now be at height 3).

On turn 2, there is no safe square one can move to and gain altitude, and even maintaining your height requires you to crash through buildings.

Turn 3 is more of the same, and you likely reach the edge of the map.

So, you'll need to be very careful in planning your map so that it is actually doable - I don't think this one is...

That map was not the one I used - I quickly threw it together to give readers an idea of what I had in mind as far as numbering hexes - but not where the actual numbers would be located specifically. I just wanted to show there would be numbers and colors, that's all...

For example, I could have just put the "#" symbol in each hex for this post.