Aether & Flux: Sailing the Traverse
Aether
& Flux is a d20 supplement from DarkFuries, who are mostly
known for maps (if they are known for anything). It's basically a
supplement for fantasy ships in space.
I was very interested when it first came out, but never really
found out much about it, or a review. A few months later, some
info did trickle in, including a few reviews, but by that time, I
had mostly lost interest. Until I saw it on ebay with a fairly
reasonable price.
From the name, I had thought it was more weird science than
fantasy. But it's not - it's almost pure fantasy - if you liked
Spelljammer, then chances are very good you'll like this. It's
very much like the old Spelljammer for AD&D, with the things
that drove most people crazy removed ,i.e., the space hamsters,
the weird physics, the shaved ewoks (wait, that's Dragonlance).
Aether, or ether, was a concept popular in the late 1800s.
Basically, scientists of the time knew that light was a wave, but
they thought that waves had to have a medium to propagate
through. That is, ocean waves need an ocean. Seismic waves
propagate through the soil. Sound waves propagate through the
air. But light could go though even a vacuum. What did it
propagate in? This baffled scientists, and so the concept of
"Ether" was born.
The traditional ether ship would fly by swimming through it,
turning an ether propeller or screw much like a ocean going ship
goes through the water.
But the aether in this, and the aether ships are somewhat
different. Basically, instead of being like water, it's more like
an electromagnetic field. When it interacts with magical sails or
something called "flux", it pushes it, just like it
would push a magnet or electromagnet. In fact, "flux"
is basically like an electromagnet - it uses "flux"
energy to lace the sails which then gets pushed by the aether.
It's not without some flaws, but for the most part, it almost
sounds plausible. The main trouble I have with it, is actually
it's not Spelljammer enough. In Spelljammer, while there were
sailing ships in space, they were relatively rare - special ships
were designed for space. While Spelljamming ships didn't use
sails for power, unlike A&F ships, it's not terribly
plausible (IMHO) that exact duplicates of sailing ships would be
in space. I mean, think about it - you'd probably want sails
distributed more evenly, since you don't have gravity holding you
down or a keel in the water - just one mast full of sails would
actually just spin you around. Similarly, I don't understand why
keel length in this determines the speed of a ship. In ocean
sailing, it's important because the keel is the part in the
water, which largely counterbalances the sails, and so a bigger
keel allows more sails.
And it's mentioned that large ships (above 20 tons) cannot take
off from a planet, so the vast majority of ships in the book
would have to be built in space (unless there is a giant space
elevator ala A.C.Clarke). So I would think ships more suitable
for space would be designed, rather than just using actual
sailing ship designs. (Again, like Spelljammer). Actually, the
book even says this, that sailing ship designs were only common
in the very early ages of space travel. So why the book is mostly
full of those designs, I don't get.
That's pretty much the subject of the book. How does it cover
this? Pretty comprehensively, actually. There are a lot of ships
statted out, 35 by my count, most of which are sailing ships (the
majority of those that aren't are special, racial ships, for the
elves or Ravin). There's a pretty comprehensive combat system
(with a whole bunch of weapons), tables for generating star
systems, a fascinating glossary of sailor slang.
There are combat rules, which are basically fairly close to d20,
with hit points, armor class, etc. But it's a bit unlike
water-borne combat - because unlike in space, you cannot really
"sink" an aethership, you either have to reduce the
ship to splinters, or kill everyone on board. Ships in this have
a whole lot of hit points - thousands of them, so it's generally
easier to board. There are new abstract rules for boarding
actions.
There is something of a setting, too. It is somewhat
Spelljammer-ish, divided up into 3 eras or ages, which mostly
affects the available ships and equipment, but also the style of
play, somewhat. The elves have ships that are grown - early on,
they only have tiny ships. There are no Beholders or Scro, but
there is something a lot like the Neogi. Only instead of being
like spiders, as the Neogi were, the new villains, the Ravin, are
like ticks (both ticks & spiders are arachnids, though.
Lawyers, too). They are actually fairly mindless killing
machines, not unlike the Magog of Andromeda, the TV show, and
like the Magog, are a growing threat. Other bits also seem
inspired by Andromeda, at least there is a "High
Guard", though they seem more like the Rangers of Babylon 5.
Most of the setting is general, but there is also a sample star
system given (basically, just a description of each planet) as
well as a space station (which gets a map and keyed entries for
it). The map for the latter seems awfully small, though.
While it's an interesting book, I think I would have preferred
something closer to Bastion Press's Airships,
a book that lets you design your own ships, as opposed to using a
bunch of premade ships (mostly based on real world sailing
ships). Spelljammer did the same thing, just had a bunch of
premade ships. But many of them were aimed at PCs. I'm not sure
any of the ships in the book are aimed at PCs. I also can't seem
to find prices for any of the ships, which also makes it hard for
players to buy them.
While I'm not counting it in my review score, much of the content
of this book regarding the ships is also closed, which has little
bearing for most people, but I am one of those people vain enough
to put their campaign world on the web (or in the process of),
and so I find this book unusable for my purposes.
The only real problem with the book, is the structure of it is a
bit odd. It gives a very brief bit on background, and then rushes
into stats for the villain race (the Ravin), then into the info
on the space station. This left me confused and a bit cold. It
probably should have been put in the back or a more relevant
section. Kinda reminded me of the old Character/Campaign Law for
Rolemaster - I remember a friend of mine bought it, and we tried
to play it, but what was the first section on? Not making
characters, but plants and their properties. (Okay, that might be
appropriate for a hippie RPG, but not a generic fantasy game).
This isn't that bad, but it's in the same vein. Also, the deck
plans (of 8 ships) are about 25 pages into the book - very weird
placement. The back would have been the best, thankfully, that is
where they put cardstock sheet of counters.
All in all, I would give it a B, though it's not
really to my taste. I did really enjoy the glossary of sailor's
slang - I now know why Left & Right are called Starboard and
Port on a ship.
Review Summary