Airships

[Lawgiver]

Several fantasy games (Final Fantasy and Warcraft come to mind) use airships. Has anyone ever used or thought of using such devices in a D&D campaign? Are there already rules fo such items?

[PCyric]

The only thing that comes to my mind right now, was the inventions of the Ansalonian gnomes (the gnomes of Dragonlance). These gnomes were known to be great inventors and have reportedly built flying machines (with varying degrees of success unfortunately). They even managed to raise a whole city in the air, building a kind of a flying mountain if I am not mistaken. I have not heard about flying machines in BR, even though that would change the scope of war in the continent (hmm, good idea!!!).
If there were flying machines in the BR campaign setting, a lot of things would not be the same.;)

[Lord Eldred]

In other campaigns outside of Birthright we have used flying ships. I have had ships that move through land in my campaign. You can see the concept in the last chapter of the Ships of Cerilia Manual posted on this site. Even these ships greatly changed the concept of war except I put in some weaknesses that allowed the PCs to overcome them in battle once they figure it out.

[morgramen]

I've thought about giving some "Sail Barges" (ala Jabba the Hutt) to the ancient and wicked sorceror Adurian realms (as yet unnamed IMC) but haven't gotten past the concept yet.

I like the idea, but am hesitant to so quickly use them in the campaign. Floating ships just doesn't seem overly Birthright to me personally. I definitely wouldn't add an actual "Flying ship" though - that just seems to fantasical for such a magic rare world IMO.

[Lawgiver]

I agree that they aren't exactly Birthright material. I've always thought that airships were a little cheesy. But the thought reoccurred to me the other day and I was curious if anyone actually used them.

[blitzmacher]

I think I would allow them in my game with some restrictions like, they first would need to build a workshop at 5GB per level each level would give a +5% chance of success. Then they would have to Research technology domain action spending 2d4GB to research it and any extra RP or GB's spent add 1% to the success role. If they would succeed at that then they would have a flying machine very similar to a hotair balloon, which would cost as much as knights to create and maintain, and it would have the abilities of a scout unit except that it would have a melee of 0, missile of 1, defense of 1 , and a move of 1. Special defense can only be hit by missile type weapons, and is affected by weather like in the Naval Warfare rules.

[Abbess Allessandra]

Just as Lord Eldred pointed out they were very intriguing to figure out. Of course the bad guys had the ships against us and that made us use our noodles to defeat them. They are quite usable in Birthright once you read the background on them. With all the other wonderful things that were created in BR then why not a ship that moves on land and sea. As I recall they didn't fly, they just hove so to speak.

[Lawgiver]

creating a nonmagical airship is quite a difficult task indeed. On like a hotair balloon of modern technology you do not have the ease of adjusting the air content of the balloon or the altitude. Hot air ballons work by controlling the content of air in their 'ballon'. Most airships as seen in fantasy games function with a ship tied to a sack filled with air held by ropes, powered by a propeller. Much more like a blimp than a hotair ballon.

I actually start rules on them once quite some time ago and planned to have a dwarven engineer/inventor (with a quirky personality--extremely quirky for a dwarf). I may dig them up and actually look into the idea. Though it would be more of a novelty for a few campaign years before becoming a war machine.

[Riegan Swordwraith]

Lawgiver,the term for the machine you are refering to is called a derigible.

But a non-magical airship I would have to say is next to impossible in a BR setting unless you allow a few other things,in particular the steam engine.Without the steam power I would have to say that your machine wouldn't be possible without some magical assistance.

But that is just my opinion......

[Lawgiver]

Orginally posted by Riegan Swordwraith Lawgiver,the term for the machine you are refering to is called a derigible.

According to Webster:

blimp - (n.) a nonrigid or semirigid airship

dirigible (n.) an airship; esp., a zeppelin

zeppelin - (n.) any rigid airship: commonly used from 1900 to 1937


blimp = Synonyms: airship, dirigible,


six of one, a half dozen of another. Call it what you like there all virtually the same.

I fully agree that a nonmagical airship would be virtually unfeasible (depending on the technology time period). But as I'm learning--this is fantasy.