Much to do about Airships [Archive] - Wizards Community

Much to do about Airships [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Kalthandrix
12-04-07, 12:19 PM I was kicking around in some of my Eberron books to look for the material they have on airships, but have not really found that much. I was wondering if you all could help me find what ever they have written on this subject - if you can tell me which books and such that airship material shows up in.

Thanks!
Cuaglar
12-04-07, 02:33 PM Most of the material I know about is on page 267 of the Eberron Campaign Source; beyond that, I don't know. Might be something in Dragonmarked or Magic of Eberron, though.
Revvecor
12-04-07, 08:09 PM Most of the information on airships is covered in Explorers Handbook to Eberron.
Exposed_Wires
12-04-07, 11:57 PM I love the explorers handbook! It tells you everything you need to know about the upkeep of an Airship, plus it has all these neato diary entries.

I'm starting a campaign in 2 weeks where all the PCs are crew members of an airship. I thought it would be a great idea to let the PCs pilot their own airship have some naval-style battles with a 3rd dimension, but I discovered helming an elemental vessel is actually a series of charisma checks as you force the elemental to do your bidding, so I made the captain an NPC.
Revvecor
12-05-07, 06:37 AM I love the explorers handbook! It tells you everything you need to know about the upkeep of an Airship, plus it has all these neato diary entries.

I'm starting a campaign in 2 weeks where all the PCs are crew members of an airship. I thought it would be a great idea to let the PCs pilot their own airship have some naval-style battles with a 3rd dimension, but I discovered helming an elemental vessel is actually a series of charisma checks as you force the elemental to do your bidding, so I made the captain an NPC.

Actually that is exactly what my group did for our first Eberron game.:D
Exposed_Wires
12-05-07, 08:57 PM Actually that is exactly what my group did for our first Eberron game.:D

Great minds?

How did yours turn out? Wanna give me a synopsis? I'm planning on making my people just running a charter ship for lyrandar. I'm going to make them transport other groups of adventurers to different places, because I think it's funny.

My first arc has them dropping off a group of 4 people in Xen'drik. Some lower level adventurers from the upper tiers of Sharn. You know, rich kids. Then I'm going to make my group bail out said rich kids when they get in over their heads. Then start a battle over a giant Khyber shard that turns up in Xen'drik all Blood Diamond status!
Arryn
12-05-07, 09:42 PM If you want to adapt a smaller vessel to an airship, the Stormwrack supplement has a magical ship called the Theurgeme that can be easily adapted. It's the perfect sized vessel for a small party running Firefly type scenarios. I photoshopped the high-res image you can download from the gallery here to make it look more like an airship. I also combined the statblocks between that ship and the airship from Explorer's Handbook using whichever stat made more sense. I'd be happy to post what I came up with... but I am unsure if it violates any types of rules. I know I can modify stuff for my own personal use, but I'm not sure if it's alright to post it for public consumption. Anyway it wasn't brain surgery and if you wanted to do something like that for your campaign, it's pretty easy to figure out...
Revvecor
12-05-07, 10:15 PM Great minds?

How did yours turn out? Wanna give me a synopsis? I'm planning on making my people just running a charter ship for lyrandar. I'm going to make them transport other groups of adventurers to different places, because I think it's funny.

Here is a breakdown of what we did with a PC airship in our game.

In my gaming group we had very extreme differences in how we played and ran role-playing games, so we decided it would be best if we took turns running the game so we could share the creativity and fun of playing. Because of this unique way of running a RPG we agreed that it would be easier to let our group(of PCs) barrow an airship from their collective patrons called the “Black Label Society”. The Black Label Society which is an open secret division of the Aurum that specializes in mercenary jobs in and around Khorvaire that are not the most legal/ethical jobs out there. The PCs are expected to pay the Black Label Society 10% of their gathered treasure/rewards as payment for the use of their airship.

The crew is made up of goblin indentured servants that the PCs can expect to keep the ship in working order.
The first mate is kind/gentle Goblin that keeps the ship operating at its full potential. He is accustomed to being called be insulting names by the PCs, mainly because we(the real people) were drinking when our PCs were first introduced to the character and the insults became an in-house ritual.
The Captain is in charge of flying the ship is a reclusive marked half-elf that was banned from the house for his past actions. He almost never leaves the bridge unless he is going to this adjacent cabin.

The armament includes

A rotating Ballista
A unique grappling mechanism(Eldritch Machine) that once activated will attach the PCs airship to an adjacent airship(<50ft away) and hold it there until it is released.
A magic sphere located in the main room of the airship gives a complete view around the whole ship. Although it cannot see anything outside the ship a person could not normally see if they were looking at it from the outside.

Each of the (6)PCs had their own room within the bowls of the ship so they could store there loot/equipment.

These posts contain some of the characters and locations used in my portion of the game.

Characters1
Characters2
Locations

The only other stuff I have left from my game are some session summaries from the beginning of my part of the game.
Exposed_Wires
12-06-07, 01:21 AM Thats interesting. So you just flew around doing freelance work? How did that work out? Did you develop a overarching campaign? If so how did you deal with the fact that your PCs could get anywhere in less than week.
Revvecor
12-06-07, 11:24 AM Thats interesting. So you just flew around doing freelance work? How did that work out? Did you develop a overarching campaign? If so how did you deal with the fact that your PCs could get anywhere in less than week.

Not quite, we did not just fly around and working for those people who could pay. We also adventured somewhat unsuccessfully to Frostfell's frozen islands as part of my campaign to discover the secret behind the parties employer from my game.

The reason that I mentioned the fact that our group was a band of mercenaries is that it was far easier to switch between various GMs with wildly different ways of running games. We ranged from researching and going on expeditions to frostfell(my game) to traveling randomly from place to place preforming small unconnected storylines to rescuing enslaved people in Droaam. And with this very different styles of games happening it was just easier to say that we were mercenaries.

In terms of traveling time from one location to another we let time be fluid. By this I me that if the storyline called for faster or slower traveling time we would increase or decrease the time it would take normally to reach our destination.

Their was not an over arching storyline that each of the GMs had to abide too. We felt it would be far ore fun and interesting to have many different storylines taking place at once. The results were mixed, sometimes everything worked out great. Other times there was a great deal of time wasted transitioning PCs in game from one storyline to another.

The best part about having an airship that we could take anywhere was that traveling expenses/supplies were fixed and we could go anywhere when ever we wanted. The downside is that you had to climb off the airship a safe distance(we used a 1/2 mile) from our destination if we wanted to sneak up on someone.
Exposed_Wires
12-13-07, 02:20 PM I plan to roll the same way. (sorry it took so long to respond. Finals.)

Although, I have the benefit of being the one and only DM, so I can lead them through longer campaigns.

My first plan is for them to find a khyber dragonshard and have it stolen from them. I'm going to do everything in my power to have the bad guys get away with it so the PCs have to do more than just chase it in their incredibly fast ship. I'm going make them follow leads so that even tho they can get to other continents in only three days, if they picked the wrong one, thats 6 days the other people have to move this massive dragonshard. Only when they pick the right leads and follow the right clues, will they get to further the storyline.

Anyway, I don't plan to let them actually get this super valuable thing back until they're like 9th level. The level the wizard and artificer have to be to bind their own elemental.

I'm going to crash their ship.
Revvecor
12-13-07, 09:23 PM I hope it'll go well:cool:!

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kalthandrix 12-04-07, 12:19 PM	I was kicking around in some of my Eberron books to look for the material they have on airships, but have not really found that much. I was wondering if you all could help me find what ever they have written on this subject - if you can tell me which books and such that airship material shows up in. Thanks!
Cuaglar 12-04-07, 02:33 PM	Most of the material I know about is on page 267 of the Eberron Campaign Source; beyond that, I don't know. Might be something in Dragonmarked or Magic of Eberron, though.
Revvecor 12-04-07, 08:09 PM	Most of the information on airships is covered in Explorers Handbook to Eberron.
Exposed_Wires 12-04-07, 11:57 PM	I love the explorers handbook! It tells you everything you need to know about the upkeep of an Airship, plus it has all these neato diary entries. I'm starting a campaign in 2 weeks where all the PCs are crew members of an airship. I thought it would be a great idea to let the PCs pilot their own airship have some naval-style battles with a 3rd dimension, but I discovered helming an elemental vessel is actually a series of charisma checks as you force the elemental to do your bidding, so I made the captain an NPC.
Revvecor 12-05-07, 06:37 AM	I love the explorers handbook! It tells you everything you need to know about the upkeep of an Airship, plus it has all these neato diary entries. I'm starting a campaign in 2 weeks where all the PCs are crew members of an airship. I thought it would be a great idea to let the PCs pilot their own airship have some naval-style battles with a 3rd dimension, but I discovered helming an elemental vessel is actually a series of charisma checks as you force the elemental to do your bidding, so I made the captain an NPC. Actually that is exactly what my group did for our first Eberron game.:D
Exposed_Wires 12-05-07, 08:57 PM	Actually that is exactly what my group did for our first Eberron game.:D Great minds? How did yours turn out? Wanna give me a synopsis? I'm planning on making my people just running a charter ship for lyrandar. I'm going to make them transport other groups of adventurers to different places, because I think it's funny. My first arc has them dropping off a group of 4 people in Xen'drik. Some lower level adventurers from the upper tiers of Sharn. You know, rich kids. Then I'm going to make my group bail out said rich kids when they get in over their heads. Then start a battle over a giant Khyber shard that turns up in Xen'drik all Blood Diamond status!
Arryn 12-05-07, 09:42 PM	If you want to adapt a smaller vessel to an airship, the Stormwrack supplement has a magical ship called the Theurgeme that can be easily adapted. It's the perfect sized vessel for a small party running Firefly type scenarios. I photoshopped the high-res image you can download from the gallery here to make it look more like an airship. I also combined the statblocks between that ship and the airship from Explorer's Handbook using whichever stat made more sense. I'd be happy to post what I came up with... but I am unsure if it violates any types of rules. I know I can modify stuff for my own personal use, but I'm not sure if it's alright to post it for public consumption. Anyway it wasn't brain surgery and if you wanted to do something like that for your campaign, it's pretty easy to figure out...
Revvecor 12-05-07, 10:15 PM	Great minds? How did yours turn out? Wanna give me a synopsis? I'm planning on making my people just running a charter ship for lyrandar. I'm going to make them transport other groups of adventurers to different places, because I think it's funny. Here is a breakdown of what we did with a PC airship in our game. In my gaming group we had very extreme differences in how we played and ran role-playing games, so we decided it would be best if we took turns running the game so we could share the creativity and fun of playing. Because of this unique way of running a RPG we agreed that it would be easier to let our group(of PCs) barrow an airship from their collective patrons called the “Black Label Society”. The Black Label Society which is an open secret division of the Aurum that specializes in mercenary jobs in and around Khorvaire that are not the most legal/ethical jobs out there. The PCs are expected to pay the Black Label Society 10% of their gathered treasure/rewards as payment for the use of their airship. The crew is made up of goblin indentured servants that the PCs can expect to keep the ship in working order. The first mate is kind/gentle Goblin that keeps the ship operating at its full potential. He is accustomed to being called be insulting names by the PCs, mainly because we(the real people) were drinking when our PCs were first introduced to the character and the insults became an in-house ritual. The Captain is in charge of flying the ship is a reclusive marked half-elf that was banned from the house for his past actions. He almost never leaves the bridge unless he is going to this adjacent cabin. The armament includes A rotating Ballista A unique grappling mechanism(Eldritch Machine) that once activated will attach the PCs airship to an adjacent airship(<50ft away) and hold it there until it is released. A magic sphere located in the main room of the airship gives a complete view around the whole ship. Although it cannot see anything outside the ship a person could not normally see if they were looking at it from the outside. Each of the (6)PCs had their own room within the bowls of the ship so they could store there loot/equipment. These posts contain some of the characters and locations used in my portion of the game. Characters1 Characters2 Locations The only other stuff I have left from my game are some session summaries from the beginning of my part of the game.
Exposed_Wires 12-06-07, 01:21 AM	Thats interesting. So you just flew around doing freelance work? How did that work out? Did you develop a overarching campaign? If so how did you deal with the fact that your PCs could get anywhere in less than week.
Revvecor 12-06-07, 11:24 AM	Thats interesting. So you just flew around doing freelance work? How did that work out? Did you develop a overarching campaign? If so how did you deal with the fact that your PCs could get anywhere in less than week. Not quite, we did not just fly around and working for those people who could pay. We also adventured somewhat unsuccessfully to Frostfell's frozen islands as part of my campaign to discover the secret behind the parties employer from my game. The reason that I mentioned the fact that our group was a band of mercenaries is that it was far easier to switch between various GMs with wildly different ways of running games. We ranged from researching and going on expeditions to frostfell(my game) to traveling randomly from place to place preforming small unconnected storylines to rescuing enslaved people in Droaam. And with this very different styles of games happening it was just easier to say that we were mercenaries. In terms of traveling time from one location to another we let time be fluid. By this I me that if the storyline called for faster or slower traveling time we would increase or decrease the time it would take normally to reach our destination. Their was not an over arching storyline that each of the GMs had to abide too. We felt it would be far ore fun and interesting to have many different storylines taking place at once. The results were mixed, sometimes everything worked out great. Other times there was a great deal of time wasted transitioning PCs in game from one storyline to another. The best part about having an airship that we could take anywhere was that traveling expenses/supplies were fixed and we could go anywhere when ever we wanted. The downside is that you had to climb off the airship a safe distance(we used a 1/2 mile) from our destination if we wanted to sneak up on someone.
Exposed_Wires 12-13-07, 02:20 PM	I plan to roll the same way. (sorry it took so long to respond. Finals.) Although, I have the benefit of being the one and only DM, so I can lead them through longer campaigns. My first plan is for them to find a khyber dragonshard and have it stolen from them. I'm going to do everything in my power to have the bad guys get away with it so the PCs have to do more than just chase it in their incredibly fast ship. I'm going make them follow leads so that even tho they can get to other continents in only three days, if they picked the wrong one, thats 6 days the other people have to move this massive dragonshard. Only when they pick the right leads and follow the right clues, will they get to further the storyline. Anyway, I don't plan to let them actually get this super valuable thing back until they're like 9th level. The level the wizard and artificer have to be to bind their own elemental. I'm going to crash their ship.
Revvecor 12-13-07, 09:23 PM	I hope it'll go well:cool:!