Airships
Airships is a sourcebook from Bastion Press that introduces
magical Airships to the d20 system. It's a 96 page book, priced
at $24.95 (though Bastion Press is now selling it for $16.95),
and is in full color.
At first glance, adding Airships in a fantasy campaign might seem
a bit silly. But they frequently appear in fantasy, most notably
in console role playing games (various Final Fantasy games for
instance), and in novels like James Blaylock's "The Elfin
Ship". And airships have been in D&D/AD&D since the
late 80s at least.
The Mystara/Known World setting had numerous airships, from the
Princess Ark (whose voyages were chronicled for years in Dragon
magazine) to the Air-Ship of Love (I'm not making it up, it was
in the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set, there were even Love-Boat
style adventure seeds given ).
AD&D had that whole Spelljammer thing, which were more like
starships*, but also could fly around a planet (though for
mysterious reasons never explained, were never used to do so).
Airships introduces them to the d20 system/D&D 3E. These
airships are a bit more limited in scope than the sort of
airships in products put out by TSR, more akin to those ships
that appear in video games. That is, they're fairly slow, don't
travel very high (usually only about 500', though special ones
can go higher), and actually use sails and such (though
Dirigibles and Flash Gordon style types are also an option). They're also relatively small.
Designing Airships is pretty simple. Pick a size, pick an engine,
pick "templates", pick weapons and extras. There are
only a few simple calculations to do, mostly revolving around the
engine.
Size goes up to 100 "Airship Tons". The Airship Ton is
basically 1000 cubic feet, that is 10x10x10. The traditional ship
'ton' is 100 cubic feet, but that's hard to map. (Also as a
comparison, the ton used in the Science Fiction RPG Traveller is
about 500 cubic feet, or half this size.). It's very nice that
the "ton" was defined clearly, as it allows you to
adapt things from other ship building books (or even books that
feature info on building buildings, like the Stronghold Builder's
Guide or the tower section of FFG's Path of Magic, or even RPG Objects' Blood
& Space, if you want high-tech Airships)
Numerous materials are given: Iron, mithril, diamond, wood, etc.
Most are pretty low tech, suitable for dark ages technology
magical civilizations. I would have liked to see more high tech
ones. Or just different types of wood. Balsa vs. Teak vs. Bamboo.
Still, it's fairly easy to extrapolate new materials, as they
follow the basic d20 rules for materials hardness and such.
The biggest choice is engine. They're all magical, but some use
spell slots of Arcane or Divine spell users, some use oil or
wood, some use elementals, and a couple are a bit evil, and use
people or living critters or flesh.
Each engine type has various benefits and drawbacks. Most have a
lot of drawbacks. I also have a problem believing oil and wood
burning engines. I know it's supposed to be magical, but there is
no way you could get enough energy to lift a ship by burning
wood.
It's good, but I would have liked to have seen a wider variety of
possible ships. Also more materials to make ships out of, higher
tech ones, like say, aluminum, titanium, or even just steel.
Still, because it's based on the standard d20 rules for
materials, you can fairly easily adapt other rulebooks that have
hardness and AC for high tech materials.
Similarly, the amount of extra add-ons to the ship is pretty
small. While I'm not looking for things like hot tubs or hair
salons, info on adding something like a brig or armory or alchemy
lab would have been nice.
The combat rules seem pretty true to the d20 system. Each ship
has hull points and an armor class, which are like characters hit
points and armor class. There's something of a dearth of weapons,
only 9 different types. But there's a fairly good maneuver
system, and it accounts for 3 dimensions.
There's a handful of new prestige classes, nothing remarkable,
spells (these are more useful) and feats (mostly for NPCs).
Nothing that really stands out as exciting, otherwise I'd give
examples. A nice touch is that is goes over most of the spells
from the PHB and how they can be used or are affected by aerial
combat or on airships.
Only about 5 sample airships are provided, one elven, one
dwarven, one pirates, one undead, and one Asherake, which is a
race from Bastions Oathbound setting. (Which also happens to
feature Airships). I think they have these (and maybe more) on
their website, or at least they did. They also had some more
supplemental material.
Anyway, while airships are pretty expensive, they're definitely
in the price range of a groups of PCs - a smaller airship is
around 150,000 gp. And there are trade tables in the book, so
it's definitely possible to run a free trader campaign.
It's from when they still printed books in color, so it's
generally a nice looking book, but it still features the artwork
where people look like they don't have any skin, just muscles.
Though that's thankfully pretty rare in the book. Some of the art
is quite good, I especially liked a picture of a woman on page
68, which is an unusually modestly dressed woman.
This is a pretty good book. I think it could have been longer, at
least 128 pages, maybe even 144 pages, but it does what it
claims, and does it pretty well. B+
* (There is a spaceship sort of flying ships supplement for the
d20 system, "Aether
& Flux: Sailing the Traverse" from Dark Furies publishing ,
but when I first got Airships and started writing this review, I
hadn't seen it. But now I have it, and it's not really
comparable, though it is somewhat compatible. That is, you can
probably borrow weapons and such from one and use them on the
other)
Review Summary