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Allow me to introduce myself. My name is RJ Grady. My first freelance project was Unorthodox Barbarians d20. I started my own product line, Tripod Machine, with the five-starred Adventuring Classes: A Fistful of Denarii. Since then, I have run a successful Kickstarter for Conquest of the Universe, a space opera setting for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game, currently under development. Now, I am happy to announce that I am writing a book for Dreamscarred Press, Airships.
Airships builds on some of the best OGL content from the third edition era, bringing it up to date for Pathfinder. Airships integrates smoothly with the vehicles rules in Ultimate Combat, but builds upon them, to capture the spirit of daring balloon races in the air or ship-to-ship combat between dwarven Waraxe-type craft. The bulk of the book concerns aerial combat and movement and airship construction. It also includes new material for player characters in aerial campaigns, including feats, class archetypes, and new spells.
Today, we open a month-long playtest of the material. Because of the breadth and length of the material, your feedback is absolutely important. Based on the criticism and input you offer, we will thrash this thing into its final form. Feel free to drop comments or questions into this discussion thread. You may also email me at pawsplay@yahoo.com.
If you agree to take part in our playtest, just click on the link below where you can view the playtest document and make comments.
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Just send this to my GM. I dont have time to look at it now but will later. Keep it up.:)
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Sounds great RJ Grady! My group is currently playing in Bruce Heard's fantasy world Calidar, which is full of flying ships and I have been looking for rules such as these.
I had actually set my heart on making a conversion of Fire As She Bears from Razor Coast into 3D vessels and combat, but I will absolutely give your product a thorough examination as well.
Looking forward to playtesting it! :-)
Congrats, RJ! You're a talented designer and I'm looking forward to seeing the final airship-book!
EDIT: If the final system is FaSB-compatible, I'll start cackling with glee...
Read through, made a bunch of anonymous typo corrections.
Hefty read; seems to cover just about everything you could want with airships - possibly a little dry?
Reggie.
I had actually set my heart on making a conversion of Fire As She Bears from Razor Coast into 3D vessels and combat, but I will absolutely give your product a thorough examination as well.
We took a different direction, but I would love to see that, too.
Thank you for your detailed comments!
I saw some text about crashes, I did not see much on actually landing/docking one of these things. I would imagine it falls under the heading of a maneuver that is made more difficult by weather and combat effects (i.e. damage).
The section on Altitude touches on this briefly.
Under geography, you mentioned fluff about aircrews not liking sailing over water and that airships are not very seaworthy, but I saw a section about aquatic airships under construction. It seems as if you are trying to gloss over sea landings in order to avoid the rules for it, but I anticipate it will be necessary to at least have them. OPCs have a habit of finding the one thing not expressly laid out to ruin a DM's day.
The relative mechanic is located, perhaps less usefully, under the Aquatic template itself: "Non-aquatic airships take in water at a rate of eight
tons per minute per size category. Each ton of water taken in reduces the power factors of the enginesby 1. If the ship fills up completely, it sinks"
I did not see anything about emergency repairs in the combat section. Maybe they are not supposed to be involved, but it is a cinematic norm to have the engineer pull of the impossible under impossible conditions just in time.
Those are not a part of the core rules, but I like the idea of a character whose schtick includes this. I will look at this some more.
Under combat I saw a section about characters attacking an airship, but not one about them defending one. I also feel there should be some expansion on combats involving aerial creatures (specifically how size matters).
Can you elaborate? The rules already spell out how to handle speeds, combat squares, and landing on a vessel. What do you see that is lacking?
I find the use of the Mage ability Safe Landing at will to be excessive. How many times would an airship have to make a "safe landing" (I actually alluded to this earlier when I talked about landing an airship). How many times would one expect these ships to make an emergency landing in a single day anyway? I would suggest making it available earlier at one per day or possibly making it by ship category and level...
It may not see much use, but I don't see much use in limiting it. Probably the chiefest use of this ability is to set down a ship that has lost engine.
Although there are other ways of getting thrust, such as propellers and turbines, all of the airship engines are based on using some kind of magical or alchemical process to turn a kind of energy into motive power. Some of the feedback I've heard is that some folks are interested in mechanical engines, magical spouts, and so forth. What would you think of the idea of offering different types of engines, including the reactor types already described, but also mechanical engines, levitationals, mechanical, anti-grav, and so forth? What about airships pulled by creatures?
Dirigibles, including gasbags, are an option. They are listed under airship templates.
Gas bags were not left out. An airship with the semi-dirigible template for full compensation is a gas bag.
RJ, is this almost a Pathfinderized version of the old Airships book by Bastion Press?
Also, can't wait till Conquest of the Universe is done. Patiently waiting for that one.
RJ, is this almost a Pathfinderized version of the old Airships book by Bastion Press?
Yes, almost. :) DSP asked Bastion Press if they had plans for updating their book, and they said no. When I was given the project, I started by updating the SRD 3.0-style rules, then looked at harmonizing the rules with Ultimate Combat. Particularly, object hit points, siege weapons, and vehicle costs are notably different in the Pathfinder baseline. I made some further adjustments in development, and now we are in the playtest phase.
I can tell you right now, I am planning on implementing some changes based on the feedback so far. In many areas, the discussion has tipped me over on some changes I was reluctant or uncertain about implementing before. In other areas, there are some wants that haven't been as addressed as fully as we like. As Edna Mode would say, "I never look back, darling! It distracts from the now."
Wow! The feedback we have received has been tremendous. Thank you for taking the time to read the material. We will be using your valuable comments as a guide as we revise the rules. Perhaps more importantly, we have a better idea of where we want to go with expanding campaign options.
This concludes this phase of the open playtest. If you want to offer any final additional comments, please do so. We now enter another round of development. I'll pop up later in the year with more news.
Thank you all so much! Salud,
- RJ
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(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
What awesomeness will DSP try updating next? As a steam and diesel junkie, this one will of course be entering my collection, especially since Airships is one of the Bastion Press books I never got my hands on.
Your book is a bit restrictive for a work on fantasy airships, the only type you allow is what is essentially a conventional ship powered up by a single engine.
You seem to leave out the classic windship which is the Lighter Than Air type, achieved with any of the following.
1. Gasbag providing lift. Usually a separate item is used for propulsion.
2. Magic Wood. Wood from rare trees when treated will float on it's own.. propelled as per 1. above.
3. Levitationals an arcane alchemical device that provides levitation, may or may not need regular renewal of a supply of alchemical fluids.
Airships of the LTA variety frequently use sail power for forward locomotion. although it doesn't work in physics, they'll frequently have a keel sail projecting from the bottom of the ship working along the same purpose as a conventional keel, which follows Rule of Neat Looking Stuff. I would strongly suggest you do a Google Image Search on the subject.
I would second the idea that it would be cool to have options 2 and 3 built into the system.
Duly noted!
Sorry for necroposting, but I can't find any update on this book, was it cancelled or is it still "in the pipeline"?
I am also interested in the status of this.
Make that three! Particularly as I am chugging along on a cross hatch of Airships, the 3 from Goodman Games, Space 1889, and various homebrews. As much as I hate some of the mechanics, 1889 works quite well.
I suggest a section on how to integrate such into campaigns (How, why, $, elevations, etc.). Those are just the worst offenders in my experience. The original GURPS: Space had an entire section on how to do this with space travel that could prove a good source. Some GMs are going to freak when the game turns into disposable biplanes, others will constrain travel with monster ships on 'regular schedules' that cost bizillions each. They will need advice on a dozen details most have no inkling of.
The campaign I play in with airships has several types of lift, propulsion and fuel. Fuel puts constraints on the mischief players can find and is easy to 'calibrate' as in Traveler. The 'commercial airships' our party deals with are grotesquely expensive in time, materials and maintenance, keeping our disruptions to a manageable level. By keeping them as the 'go to' of air travel, they are well protected from flying monsters with various toys, have a flight duration of a day maximum (10 hour day at 30 to 50mph) to keep the GM ahead of the players and so expensive that the most disruptive players delay ownership. Yes, better, bouncier and smaller airships are available with more fuel, less maintenance, etc., but that costs loads of gold.
The stock airship has a crew of 20+ (more if they expect trouble), carries about 100 tons of cargo and passengers (250 lbs each, more weight counts as cargo),day schedule (more along the coastal city state runs), take over a year to build and will set you back about 1.5 million GP. More Dune than Star Wars.
Will keep an eye out!
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Not to steal any thunder from Dreamscarred Press (I love your stuff, seriously) there is an interesting supplement from Drop Dead Studios, (Ships of Skybourne) that might interest you.
I haven't worked with Dreamscarred Press for awhile, but back when I was still with them my understanding was that this project was dropped.
Thanks for the info. IMO then they should officially announce they have dropped it (unless they plan to snatch the title of longest delayed vaporware from Duke Nukem Forever) and release an art-free free pdf.
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My Granny frowns on RPGs, she's strictly into SPI monster games and rugby.
Speaking as the freelancer who was working on this but not in any capacity representing Dreamscarred Press, this project was dropped. The last beta document is the furthest this project got in development. One of the developmental hurdles was trying to figure out how to respond to Ships of Skybourne, which is an excellent book.