The Briarthorn Needle, Gnomish Airship
At 8h30 last night, I sat down to draw the battlemaps for tonight’s Gears of Ruin game.
The game’s action will occur entirely on board a Feywild grown, Clockwork-powered gnome airship called The Briarthorn Needle owned by ‘neutral’ gnome privateers. The last warring factions of Sikkara (our Clockowork D&D gameworld) have agreed to meet on it to negotiate a peace accord and put an end to 8 years of global war.
Today’s adventure is to be the introduction to a new Gears of Ruin Mini-campaign:
Reunited for the first time in many years, our heroes are summoned to provide security for crucial peace talks that could end the Great War. Through undertones of intrigue amidst fragile attempts at negotiations and open sabotage to push the world back into war, our heroes are caught in a plot piloted by new players of this conflict, one that targets them directly and that could plunge the world back into a storm of Chaos…
I can’t wait to start and tell you all about it, but I have to keep some surprises for my players. In the meantime, have a look at the Needle’s floorplans, I managed to fit all 3 decks of the airship’s nacelle on maps that can all sit on our gaming table. I love multiple level maps!
Lower Deck (Click to embiggen)
Middle Deck (Click to enlarge)
The Open-Air Upper Deck
Man, I think I suffer from Chris Perkins syndrome.
The airship’s map is based on one of the One Page Dungeon Codex entries: The Great Cloud Caper by Jonathan Lee, with more details added to make the whole airship into one large battlemap.
Not that I expect to have a ship-wide combat. I would never DARE do that after a 2 month hiatus.
(Whistles innocently)
Have a great weekend.
The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been GMing various versions of D&D and other RPGs for nearly 30 years. A renowned RPG blogger, game designer and published author, he squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)
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I’ve played Champions and M&M (and the DC...
What!? You actually prep something for tonight. I though it would be a reading session of the rule, to get how to play that game again… :p
Ha ha ha, you a funny man big guy. It was either that or start Reading Burning Wheel to make PCs for a new campaign.
I am puzzled by the area labelled ‘secret’ on the lower deck. Are these your private DM’s maps, or do you cover up unseen areas with paper, or what?
@karin: In that particular case, the Gnomes will tell the PCs that they can’t go in there.
And you know how some players react to that…
Not bad. Not bad at all.
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Cool maps. But Chris Perkins is a machine. You’re not a machine are you?
An entire mini-campaign on board an airship? Are you channeling some Joss Whedon here?
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@Ron: Thank you, thank you very much!
@Chris: No, I’m not a machine. I don’t kill PCs just because it’s Wednesday either.
I am Crazy though.
@Andy: Not an entire mini-campaign, just the first adventure or two. Then it gets really interesting!
I have one of my groups raiding a ridiculously massive pirate ship this week (think curise liner of the pirate world!) and this has just given me some nasty ideas. Thanks for brining out the evil DM in me Chatty, i’ll make sure to let my players know it was your fault for sharing this
. Looking forward to the play report from this session
Scott
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Awesome adventure idea! I really like gnomish tech/magic crossover stuff, and tense diplomatic negotiations are always an excellent backdrop for an adventure.
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