Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

[Michael Hopcroft]

Pirtacy in a fantasy setting is usually associated with the high seas, but wouldn;t it be interesting if there were priates/raiders in your fantasy game who traveled by air.

 

Whether by magically-powered dirgibles, "fiftwood" ships, or on the backs of a group of dragons, airborne raiders could do a lot of damage to civilized settlements and become very rich. This makes them a perfect target (or occupation) for PCs.

 

One could also do fantasy campaigns where the air was a battleground whenever kingdoms or principalities went to war. Maybe the king has an 'air fleet" to fight in sky battles or transport troops to areas they can't reach on foot or horseback.

 

How would you manage a Mass Combat battle involviing airships, and what happens to the characters aboard when an airship is "shot down" but doesn;t explode or do something otherwise obviously fatal to all aboard?

[Victor]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft

How would you manage a Mass Combat battle involviing airships, and what happens to the characters aboard when an airship is "shot down" but doesn;t explode or do something otherwise obviously fatal to all aboard?

 

Well, Units consisting of of Ships are pretty straightforward. If the ships are carrying Units that are actually doing the fighting, as well as fighting against eachother, I would think that the ships would be treated as a Unit of (one) large creature (even though the Mass Combat rules say that individuals should not be able to attack Units. They're big enough to be "prominant", I guess.). That makes them pretty darn fragile, though, unless you arbitrate that only ships fight ships, and only crews/troops fight crews/troops.

 

As far as crashing... I guess figure out the damage from the impact, and give the crew/troops half the DEF of the ship plus their own unit DEF against that. Prominent characters aboard should probably take damage as per the press of battle rules, although you might want to go a couple DC's above the maximum on that chart.

 

Maybe someone needs to invent parachutes/minigliders. "Man the lifeboats, lads, she's goin' down!"

[Damon_Dusk]

Air-ships were a prominent part of the fantasy world in the game EarthDawn (which was the ancient fantasy counterpart to Shadowrun) by FASA. If I remember correctly, these airships were designed just like ships at sea, but each was a unique magical artifact, and the knowledge of creating them was lost during the "time of horrors". I don't remember the specifics of the airships, but they had "classes" (called adepts in that game system) that were built around the whole concept of the airship (Sky Raider was one...can't remember the other).

 

EarthDawn was always an interesting setting for fantasy to me, but the system (I only played 1st Edition) had some issues. I'd be curious to see someone convert it to Hero.

[Old Man]

Converting Earthdawn to Hero would at least make it playable. Earthdawn is the only RPG I've encountered so far whose rule system was so incomprehensible that I gave up on it.

 

The setting is really nice though.

 

Moving away from Earthdawn, I'll just throw out some ideas that spring to mind for this kind of campaign. First of all, why are airships prevalent in the campaign? Is it because much of the planet is impossible to travel by foot or boat, or just a matter of economics? Air pirates would definitely lair in unreachable areas like mountaintops or in clearings in deep jungle. Many natural creatures could be used to fly as well--giant eagles, giant dragonfiles, wyverns. Of course these have no endurance or carrying capacity, which is why they do not replace airships. Pirate campaigns usually suggest the presence of guns, but in this case gasbags are just too easy of a target for guns... limit the campaign to bows and such.

 

Without explosives it would actually be hard to really mess up a gasbag. Assuming the bag is 'soft', arrows and ballistas would just poke holes, so the falling rate would just be proportional to the BODY damage done to the bag, making soft crash landings possible. I envision squads of gnomish engineers scrambling over the gasbag netting frantically trying to patch the holes... perhaps the source of the gas should be some kind of magical 'furnace' within the gondola; it might explode catastrophically if hit...

 

I'd treat each airship as a separate unit and define the crew, archers, and whatever as just an RKA coming from the airship, then write up a hit location table so as to enable targeting of different parts of the ship--bag, deck, 'waterline', crew, etc.

 

Damn, this is a pretty cool campaign idea.

[Markdoc]

In my gameworld, flying ships come in two types.

 

The first is just magically levitated ships (or castles, which are pretty much the same, but made of stone and much larger). These can either be independant items (in which case they are ususally made by a whole cabal of wizards, since they require a fairish amount of experience to build) or simply the focus for a fly spell. In either case, damage will not normally have that much effect until the flying vehicle is destroyed at which it falls out of the sky - figuring what happens tothe passengers at that point is pretty easy....

 

The benefits of a flying castle are pretty easy to work out, but at the same time, you don't want to put it too close to the front line where someone could get at it with a big dispel. In my game the major world powers have multiple flying castles and a few wizards have orbital castles (cuts down on trouble with those pesky adventurers, and my dear, the view!!)

 

Flying ships are used by major merchant houses - faster, safer and much more prestigious than going land or seaborne.

 

The second are what are called dragonships, because they are filled with a magical gas called Dragonbreath (because of what happens if you stick a flame into it...) These have the advantage that you don't need a mage to make them fly (although a minor weather mage is usually part of the crew, so you can steer them). You blow up a big bag of doped silk and he mage casts the Dragonbreath spell (transform air to hydrogen) - and awaaaay you go.

 

These are mostly used as scouting/trading vessels due to their well known vulnerability. In one game the players had to find and kill an airborne highway man who had tamed a dragon. He used to extort tolls from dragonships, by threatening to blow flame on their flightbags. In another game the players had to come to grips with the infamous airpirate Captain Blood. And in another the players had to rescue a precious cargo from a crashed dragonship in the mountains before the competition got to it...

 

In other words, the sky's the limit!

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

I'd thought of doing something like this myself (assuming I had people to game with). My idea was that a wizard hires the party as a crew for a new ship he was building. He has some undertaking that requires the party's skills to complete. It's only after they arrive at the location he gives them as the ship's berth that they realize that they ain't going to sea.

 

A similar idea was that the wizard had a submarine...20,000 Leagues fantasy-style.

 

These ideas being thrown around are all pretty good. My "campaign" never really progressed past the planning stage, so I don't have much to add. Space:1889 might have some interesting material to work with....

[AnotherSkip]

the other ED adept/class was the Sky Sailor.

Old Man You couldn't comprehend ED??????

 

Wow.

 

Guess it helps having a very experienced GM

(as of a matter of a fact ED just got a new GM in the form of one of our players just a month ago.....)

 

Hmm defending as well as attacking these provide all osrts of opportunities.

 

for ED the choice was simple: either move along the ground and deal with whatever Horrors camped/got in your way or take to the air and avoid ground combat.

with the benefit of being faster/more direct.

 

also Skyriaders have basically a Superleap ability and a Gliding ability.

 

Early paratroopers, veddy veddy frightning.....

[Old Man]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

Old Man You couldn't comprehend ED??????

 

Specifically I couldn't comprehend the magic system. There was some terminology I couldn't get, the levels and circles and pools and stuff. Admittedly I didn't try real hard since I was just going to play a sky pirate anyway, but still.

 

ED was basically Shadowrun, only more complex. And I hated the Shadowrun system. I never played with magic there either.

[ShadowRaptor]

Originally posted by Old Man

Converting Earthdawn to Hero would at least make it playable. Earthdawn is the only RPG I've encountered so far whose rule system was so incomprehensible that I gave up on it.

 

The setting is really nice though.

 

I always found the Earthdawn system to be one of the better systems out there, along with its magic system and class design for gaining levels. Superior to most other games in the last fifteen years, IMO of course.

 

As for Air Ships and Pirates, play Skies of Arcadia for Gamecube if possible. That game is perfect to mine for ideas if this is the route you want to go. It does a good job showing how Air Pirates live, the kinds of adventures they go on, and so on.

[Toadmaster]

Thats actually a pretty good idea, I love dirigibles but never thought about using one in fantasy. I don't think there is any technological reason they would not be possible, just need the knowledge that its possible and combine the right materials, wizardry makes this easier, magic fire would probably do a nice job of keeping a hot air balloon up and harnessing some sort of flying beasty to pull it would be reasonable. If you allowed a cult of technology (perhaps opposed to wizardry) with some low tech firearms, steam engines etc, might make an interesting group. There was a series of books that featured modern earthlings that were pulled into a fantasy dimension along with some modern weaponry, GURPS Fantasy assumed humans had been drawn into Yerth, a mideval like fantasy land based around western europe, the roman empire, the middle east etc, it mentioned the occasional arrival of modern people who were quickly hunted down by the wizards guilds. Might make a good possibility for an airborne culture.

[AnotherSkip]

Earthdawn gets ludicrous really really fast (example from the books: Versatiliting a talent before you have access to it circle wise....

Spirit Dodge

etc.... I could go on and on....)

 

the math for circle/talent advancement is slightly weird, it uses a fibonachi advancemt rather than linear or geometric.

 

no pools, but threads and weaving and matrices oh my!!!!

but hey as long as you make the rolls you can cast infinitively just like 0 end FH spells.

[Citizen Keen]

Originally posted by Toadmaster

...GURPS Fantasy assumed humans had been drawn into Yerth, a medieval like fantasy land...

 

CURSES!

 

I hate when you think of something (I decided to call the home of my new campaign Yerth, independently), and it turns out someone else already thought of it.

 

GAAHH!

 

-cK

[Spence]

For a really great idea for airships that are non-magical and not zepplins find a copy of Lin Carters book "Sky Pirates of Callisto". It was an adventure pulp like ERB's "John Carter of Mars" I first read in the late '70's. Really really GREAT idea for lowtech airships.

[Old Man]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen

I hate when you think of something (I decided to call the home of my new campaign Yerth, independently), and it turns out someone else already thought of it.

 

I thought SJGLand was spelled 'Yrth'. No?

[Toadmaster]

You are correct, its Yrth. I liked the world in Gurps Fantasy, but I've noticed quite a few games recently have been making their worlds "Earthlike", the first couple were interesting now I'm starting to get turned off when I see these, Riddle of Steel is the latest with Weyrth, I like the game but when I saw the worlds name I heard my brain groan. Oddly I have no problem with worlds using very obvious inspiration from our history and geography, its just the fancy spelling of Earth that makes my eyes no offense meant to anyone with a Rth, Yrth, Weyrth, Arthe etc, just an observation.

 

As for airships you also might look into Space 1899 (GDW), a bit late tech (Victorian) for most fantasy but it might offer some ideas. I've never read John Carter Warlord of Mars but I'm pretty sure Space 1899 was influenced by it.

[Killer Shrike]

Vrylakos has a similar world partially detailed, though primarily for d20: http://members.tripod.com/vrylakos/

[AnotherSkip]

Ehhh try reading all of ERB stuff.....

something like 12 books detailing Mars, several detailing venus, etc nothing but nothing beats ERB when it comes to Air pirates.

 

oh yeah just as a note you need to have Air Shipping before you can have Air Pirates.

 

Where is Michael jordan when you need him?

[The Weapon]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

Specifically I couldn't comprehend the magic system. There was some terminology I couldn't get, the levels and circles and pools and stuff. Admittedly I didn't try real hard since I was just going to play a sky pirate anyway, but still.

 

ED was basically Shadowrun, only more complex. And I hated the Shadowrun system. I never played with magic there either.

OK, from memory Circle was the characters "level" a Talent had a Circle rating that indicated what circle you had to be to use it, Rank was the "level" a particular ability was. So my 3rd Circle character could have a Rank of 3 in the 2nd Circle ability "Durability". Spells also had Circle ratings telling you what circle you had to be to cast them. Magicians had at least one "Matrix" they used to cast spells safely. The Rank of the matrix told you how big a spell you could put in it. Some Matrices were pooled and you could put several spells in them provided the total wasn't more than your Rank in that matrix. If you didn't have the spell you wanted there was too choices, cast it without a matrix and risk attracting horrors or restring your Matrix on the fly.

 

I think they deliberately avoided using the word "level" because D&D used it for about 4 different things.

[tkdguy]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

If you can find a copy, grab the long out-of-print D&D boxed set Voyage of the Princess Ark. It has different types of flying vehicles from magic carpets to gnomish dirigibles. Also, it details creating a flying ship using magic.

[Tom Carman]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

As for airships you also might look into Space 1899 (GDW)' date=' a bit late tech (Victorian) for most fantasy but it might offer some ideas. I've never read John Carter Warlord of Mars but I'm pretty sure Space 1899 was influenced by it.[/quote']

 

Ah yes, Sky Galleons of Mars! The liftwood might as well have been pure magic. And it's best not to think too deeply about exactly how it is possible to sail a flying ship without anything like a keel.

[DusterBoy]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

I mind the war eagles in Milan and Vardemann's War of Powers series. And for air pirates in a planetary romance/S&S vein, try Paragaea by Chris Roberson. It's not my favourite book, but it does feature dirigibles and pirates riding pterosaurs. And then there's always the possibility of flying castles, if the magic level in the campaign is high enough (also because they're just so cool).

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

How about magical planes? Stretch this thing out a little, give it an open deck and firestone-burning engines. It probably doesn't fly much faster than a man can run, but it soars over the flooded jungles from mountain-top city to city.

Just watch out for pirates flying these. (If you squint, you can see the crossbow mounted in front of the pilot.)

[tkdguy]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

Magical planes would work. I remember the opening scene from the Arcanum video game, Those planes weren't magical, but the look should fit well in your campaign.

[Alibear]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

I remember War of Powers too. Big flying city which randomly flew between several points. Slaine (2oooAD) had Skyblades IIRC too, basically Viking raiders in magical flying longships called Skyblades.

 

In my current campaign I've used an airborne oar-powered submarine (basically the submarine hung from a massive balloon) and have planned to add a flying city at some point.

[Burrito Boy]

Re: Air Pirates in a Fantasy Setting

 

The War in the Waste by Felicity Savage (the first book in a trilogy) has some stuff about airplanes powered by captive demons. I personally liked it and think it's good for a bit of inspiration.