After a poisoned pillow fight, Slave apes and a librarian warrior chainmail bikini fetish, I promised my players that I’d write the last part of our 1st D&D 4e campaign and bring it to an apex of coolness.
Since our next session is next week and the adventure is actually going to be a homebrewed thing, I’m starting to plan it now.
As things stand, the PCs are to try to rescue their patron, the Halfling robber baron Brandobaris the Fat. He was kidnapped by the crew of the Pirate Airship of the Crimson Fleet and is being held for a ludicrous ransom. The PCs have located the Airship’s Mooring base, situated 6 days away from Hobble’s Point (the Campaign’s main city) by boat.
We were supposed to play last Friday, but Halloween got in the way. In order to keep the game fresh in the minds of my players since we could only play on November 14th, I sent them a little e-mail assignment:
I want you to create setting elements that can help you reach Brandobaris in time. I’ll weave your ideas into the story.
Math chimed in with a proposal that some sort of favors could be cashed in to have Metallic Dragons help out and fly the party to the Airship. (Yeah! Math flying a dragon, I can see the supercoolness from here!)
Yan chimed back that having metallic dragons around could take away a bit of the spotlight away from the PCs. (If we have Large/Huge dragons around, who needs us?). He instead proposed that maybe some sort of Eladrin/Fey Airship could pop out of the Feywild and help the party get to their destination.
(I’ll still try to work Math’s proposal in)
Stef, our budding storyteller, added that his father (an influential Halfling merchant) could cash in a favor with the Fey and summon the airship for the party.
Franky playing the Eladrin Fey-pact warlock said he very much wanted to explore some more aspects of the Fey in the campaign.
That was awesome. My players had provided me with all the elements I needed to plan the 1st part of the game… I just needed to learn more about airships.
I’m not an Eberon fan (yet) so my techno-dungeon-punk material was rather limited. Wizards’ Adventurer’s Vault has stats but little in the way of fluff to help me build an adventure around Airships.
What are they made of, why do they fly?
That’s when I started perusing issue #7 of Kobold Quarterly (you know, the gaming magazine that’s been heralded as being the spiritual successor to Paizo’s Dragon mag?). You see, I got a copy to participate into a little Blog Carnival built around promoting it (see links below).
I accepted because Wolfgang Baur is a good friend (yeah, from nemesis to buddy, who knew?) and because he’s been kind enough to advertise my Kobold Love project.This post is my contribution.
It just so happens that my good friend Ben McFarland wrote a piece in it about… Wait for it…
Airships!
The piece is about dwarven made airships. It covers thier history, the nature of Liftgas mineral, new airship-themed 3.5 spells (Greater Feather fall anyone?), feats, gear and full gaming stats for a Dragon ship!
Bingo! I found my bad guys’ ship!
I’ll tweak the fluff behind it, maybe have it filled with actual Helium that the Pirates ‘mined’ in the volcanic Islands of the South Sea, or better yet, through a Pulver Bi-Elemental WF-2000 engine (Bacon prize to those who get the reference).
As for the Fey airship, I needed something totally alien to make getting on it and traveling a pair of scenes in themselves. I’m a big fan of the playing up the difficulties people have dealing with the Fey. So I tried to dream up something weird and yet cool and accessible to my players.
So I ended up taking one of the Monster Manual’s most sedentary creatures, gave it mad wanderlust and merged it into a flying ship? I added some sort of dark secret and I was primed!
I’ve been running with that ever since, complete with surrealist introduction scene, Skill Challenge and an aerial combat I hope my players will remember for a long time!
If you thought pillows were cool, wait till you hear about the Wyldeship!
Up next, I’ll discuss about making the pirate hideout without getting bogged down with stating everything!
Have a great weekend!
Want to learn more about Kobold Quarterly Issue 7? Read on…
- KQ7 Editorial: Fair Games or Fun Ones?
- Dungeon Mastering.com: What everybody ought to know about rogues
- Jonathan Drain’s d20 Source: Powder Burn: Firearms in Dungeons & Dragons
- Gnome Stew: Troy’s Crock Pot: At Full Gallop at the KQ Carnival
- Ogre Cave: Interview: Stan!
- Atomic Array: Episode 009: Kobold Quarterly 007
Drop by Kobold Quarterly.com to pick up your copy today!
Credits: My Airship, by ShAwNKun
Have you checked out the stuff from Earthdawn? They have a lot of airships in the world; some wooden, some stone. They explain how the airships work (basically) and how combat is done from the air in a fantasy world. Well, near fantasy world, as Earthdawn is set in the same world as Shadowrun; Earth with some magic sprinkled in.
My anti-spam word was bacon, as in “cake ‘n’ bacon”.
Pulver Bi-Elemental WF-2000 engine? Hmm… are you perhaps referring to David Pulver here? The author of such great works as GURPGS Vehicles? That reminds me that also this book is pretty great I just can’t get my head around that dreadful imperial system. Cubic feet *shudders* …
@Gun Nut: Yeah, I added Bacon in the list… Just Because! I should look up Earthdawn (its probably available as a PDF now)… thanks!
@Stargazer: You won the Bacon prize. David Pulver has long been one of my favorite pre D&D 3.x RPG writers. While his Gurps systems became too complex for me in the later 90s, I used to love his work and spent hours upon hours designing Vehicles for Gurps.
I was going to recommend Earthdawn as well but someone vamoosed with my copy of it at some point so I only have memory to go off of. I know it took them until the Earthdawn Companion to bother with rules for maneuvering air ships and that never seemed to be a problem in games I ran or played in. Most of the action players would want to be involved in takes place during boarding actions anyway. It’d be difficult to describe the sorts of cannon volleys and tension you see in naval movies anyway and you’d still have to tweak it a bit for use in an airship battle.
The fun part about boarding actions is you often have this gulf between the ships and a few different ways of getting across. During the course of combat some of those can disappear or new ones can pop up. Watching a few henchminions (aka red shirts) vanish screaming into the void along with the boarding plank they were crossing can bring the point home pretty swiftly.
Side note: GURPS Vehicles was initially quite confusing. After I got into it though I had more fun playing with that than I did anything else in GURPS. I still have more fun with BESM though… Less “you get shot… it blows through all the leg armor on your power suit… it does enough damage to destroy your leg… uh, you just got your leg blown off, armor and all” action going on.
Glad you enjoyed the article! 🙂
-Ben.
Bens last blog post..My Spawn of Dajobas
Earthdawn might be in a PDF somewhere, but last I checked it wouldn’t be a legal one as the game pretty much went out of print a few years back. Not even the third parties that had picked it up to do stuff with it have done stuff with it…
That all said… hmm, how much to explain… basically each element had a “true form” (true air, true earth, etc.) which basically represent a finite quantity of pure elemental energy of the specific type. Each true element would confer certain aspects to the items they were woven in to, and elements could be combined in differing amounts to provide effects as well.
Airships where basically ships… they had galleys, barges, viking style longboats, all sorts of boats. These ships would be infused with large amounts of the True Air to make them fly… the specific mechanics of these were a bit, um, vague. They pretty much sailed like a normal ship, only on air, so you could have sails or rowers. The big nasty/decadent magic empire to the south had many stone ships, even a few city sized “Behemoths” that they flew around oppressing everyone in. These ships tended to be fuels by both elemental stuff and Blood Magic, where they would use slaves life force to help keep the huge bulk in the air. Again, specifics were sketchy.
As a side note to the ships themselves, True Air and True Fire were explosive when mixed. So they had “Fire Canons” which were basically magically reinforced canons that combines motes of fire and air to cause fiery explosions. They tended to be quiet devastating in the system… especially since most airships were wooden.
justaguys last blog post..Is this thing on?
@Lanir and Justaguy: Yeah, Earthdawn looks like it was a great setting. The mix the element is something I’m going for. I imagine the Gasbag on the Pirate ship being made of 3 chambers. Two very small ones in which a fire and Air elementals are housed and a large chamber in the middle where they mix to create the Hot Air needed to achieve lift.
But I really don’t need to go at this level of detail… I mean we’re going to have combat in flying airships… what more do you need?
@Ben: Thanks for writing this and kudos on getting it published Ben.
The airship could be entirely mechanical too. Just a little animate object applied to some giant flywheels, you got yourself a magical engine. Just add rotor blades.
Regarding Eberron’s airships: They’re made from a type of wood called Soarwood, which is either incredibly light or even slightly buoyant. As a result, even if an airship had all the magical enchantments and what not ripped from it, the ship wouldn’t plummet so much as fall with style. Still not great being on one that’s falling, but not as invariably lethal as if you suddenly find yourself falling from a mile high.
The airships have elementals bound to them, either fire or air, which are the blue and/or red rings you’ll see in depictions of airships from Eberron. The elementals provide propulsion and also, I believe, are what actually keeps the ship aloft.
This is all from memory, so I may have gotten the details wrong but that’s the gist of it.
Pretty sweet stuff (again?). Love (love love) your idea of polling the players before hand.
It all builds towards the experience of playing DnD as a group of people (players and DMs alike) building a story together.
You mentionned the fey a few times in there… I haven’t found much material about them. I’m also playing a fey warlock and in dire need of background material… so if you feel like writing about that or pointing towards existing material, I’d be much obliged 😛
Eric Maziades last blog post..Goldrake aka Grendizer aka Goldorak Stickfas custom
Our best inspiration work for the fey is, the novel, jonathan strange & mr. norrell by Susanna Clarke. It influence a lot how the fey psychology works and the danger they represents.
Otherwise we largely invent as we go based on the allusion here en their about the feywild.
Earthdawn at lulu.com: http://stores.lulu.com/redbrick . Only physical books available, though.
The Earthdawn website seems to have links to places of commerce for purchasing a PDF: http://www.earthdawn.com/index.php?categoryid=10
So, not quite out-of-print.
@Yan: Thanks for the tip – I’ll most likely check it out.
Are you the one playing the warlock? Did you come up with curses to shout at enemies? I find that I have a hard time writing potent curses that don’t feel like they belong in school yards…
Eric Maziades last blog post..Stories of yore…
No, it’s Franky that plays the Warlock.
But here is a little trick for flavorful curses, which can be use for all kind of thing… Use an other language then your own they will sound more excentric.
We often revert to other langugage such as english, spanish, germain, japanese instead of French just so it sounds original, removing the schoolyard effect… 😉
@Yan. That’s pretty good advice… we’re already a bilingual group (we somehow decided that French was common and English was elven). I guess I could dig in my old books and find curses in german or arabic… none of which feels really “fey” to me… maybe I should look into spanish.
I had found a PDF book with people who went through the trouble of actually creating an elven dialect… pretty cool stuff.
Ah, found them! Looks like they’ve been hacked 🙁 Managed to find a working link anyways: http://www.grey-company.org/Circle/).
Eric Maziades last blog post..Stories of yore…
An *excellent* depiction of the Fey can be found in Jim Butcher’s _Summer Knight_, part of the Dresden Files.
I also recommend: White Wolf’s old Changeling game, Exalted’s Fair Folk, a nose through various Ars Magica supplements (Guardians of the Forest and the upcoming _Realms of Power: Faerie_ or the 4th Edition Fairies, perhaps a bit on the Merinita in Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults)– where the Fey are a complete realm integrated with the regular world.
There is also Wolfgang Baur’s upcoming _Wrath of the River King_, over at http://www.koboldquarterly.com in the store and forums. This is a whole 4E adventure arc, for characters 4-6, set in the Feywild. I’ve been onboard this project from the beginning — it is going to set the standard for what a 4E supplement should be, mark my words and watch for it when the Ennies roll around next year.
The big thing about fey is that they *emulate* emotion without actually having it. They desire that emotion as a driving force, wanting memories and feelings and those little tidbits that make us human– because they are not, and they want that best part of us. They can be beautiful or hideous, but almost always they are amoral and in some degree callous. Their fascination with people could be considered very like our affection for pets– sure, you *love* your dog, but the neighbor’s barking mutt? Not so much… And you know how some people *hate* cats?…
There is also a good look at some parts of the comic Fables, or, of course, the Brothers Grimm. (Can’t forget the authority. 😉 )
D&D often dresses it’s fae up in a very Disney fashion, all smiles and woodland song. The folklore was often a different tone.
-Ben.
Earthdawn is most certainly not “out of print” as Living Room Games produced a second edition and RedBrick produced what most fans are calling “Earthdawn Classic” edition. RB got the license because the original copyright owners (those folks from FASA, yeah they still have it active) felt that LRG was going in a direction they weren’t ready for.
RedBrick took the original rules and retooled them to make them leaner and meaner. The Player’s Compendium and Gamemaster’s Compendium (available in both PDF and hardcopy formats, purchase only) are 500+ pages each and have EVERYTHING one could want to play in the world of Earthdawn.
Also, RB is making a D&D 4E version of Earthdawn. When you read the original rules, you will note TONS of ideas that WotC “appropriated” for 4E (such as defenses, healing surges, points of light, etc.). Earthdawn took all the old fantasy tropes and made a world where they were not only plausible, but it made absolute SENSE that these things existed. Dungeons? Cities breached by Terrors From Beyond (Horrors in ED). Treasure in dungeons? That’s the loot folks took with them when they went into hiding from the Horrors (and of course the Horrors keep it there to lure more victims I MEAN adventurers).
Earthdawn is alive and well. Check out http://www.earthdawn.com and see.
@Ben : I certainly try to use the Fey as they are portrayed in non-Disney settings 🙂 I especially like the lack of emotion and the longing for it.
@The Gun Nut: Thanks for the tips!
Yes… I own both of those and they were published… 3? 5? I dunno years ago… At some point both companies stopped putting out much of anything and I stopped bothering to go out of my way to track their non-production. If one or both of them are producing again, good for them.
Oh and…
I will say 4E’s default “points of light” setting fits well with ED. Old civilizations fallen into ruin, centers of population struggling against the darkness between them. Class wise, 4es power/level structure isn’t a bad model but I do question it’s ability to adapt the flexibility of the magic system… but rituals might do it. *shrug*
I really have no knowledge of Earthdawn, but I will rip off any good ideas I can get wherever I can get them.
Earthdawn is to Shadowrun as Exalted is to the World of Darkness. A sort of pre-history of the earth during a time when magic was prevalent. But with people and events that make sense as opposed to the default WoD assumption that people with power don’t use it but instead winge about being all cool and potent and angsty.