Airships; impact on a world?

[Gilladian]

I am considering whether to make a fairly major change in my campaign world and add the presence of a number of airships.

I'm not thinking of making them common and ubiquitous, but just wide-spread enough that they'd have some economic and social impact.

For example, there's a group of gypsy-like travelers in my campaign world known as the Shalani. Across one swath of the campaign world there are probably five or six thousand members of their tribe. If that group owned 10-12 airships and could use them to travel back and forth from (essentially north-east, central and south america), what impact would that be likely to have on the kingdoms that they travel among?

What social changes would easy but infrequent travel be likely to create? What economic changes? What points am I NOT thinking of that could cause me trouble?

What have airships done for your campaign world that you really liked or disliked? Fill me in!

 

[Knightfall]

Have you looked at Airships? It's a really good book, but it's mainly crunch. Still, it's good for inspiration.

I'll take a shot at answering your question once I think about it more.

 

[Sigurd]

What sort of flying ship?

Economic Impact will depend on how they are different from coventional transport.

Cheaper? - Unlikely, because they are probably rare. This potentially makes the operators rich. If they are cheaper per kg of cargo there will be steady pressure to have more and more air ships.

Colder? - Perishable goods might be carried.

Safer? - Can they float above the weather? Are there air pirates? Flying monsters?

Asherakes (OGL Bastion Press, Complete Minions 3.5, p.8) are brutal flying tiger\men that operate floating slave ships.
Earthdawn (not D20) and Eberon have developed flying ship economics.
Dragons might object to sharing their air space, want a quick meal or want to defend their privacy.

Faster? - They will swiftly be monopolized by defenders or attackers, politicians or 'Important People'. This reduces official interest in maintaining inns, road safety, etc...

Offensive? - Information is always useful. Just reports from a floating ship gives you a possible tactical advantage. Dropping Bombs? Paratroopers? Poison? Area Spells?

Defensive? - See information. They might be part of patrols over cities and important sites. Magical spells for seeing distance and targeting will enhance their usefulness. Making your line of site several km long changes things.

Can they make long journeys? - Vessels that cross land and sea are really convenient.

Can they be followed, found or tracked?

Are they a guarded secret belonging to one faction?
Do you have to worship\serve a particular entity to power\use them? Are they powered by conventional fuel, elementals, demons, devine\arcane\explosive etc... Limits on their use will, of course, affect everything.


If they are powered by the agony of tortured elephants and eject a spent elephant every 50' that's going to change a lot! Don't want to be under their flight path. Where will they store the extra elephants? Fuel efficiency and self sufficiency of their design is a huge consideration.

Do the ships naturally\magically float? This reduces the power\aerodynamic requirement tremendously.

Ebberon uses imprisoned elementals for thrust and magically floating ships. Spell Jammer, not D20, consumed magic items. Whatever motive force you choose will change everything. Steampunk settings have their own solutions\flavours.


It can be a great concept, but you are right to consider its implications.


Also check out youtube for some inspirational viewing. Make sure to check out [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORsKyopHyM]YouTube - The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello[/ame]. It is long and dark but it is so cool.


Sigurd

 

[frankthedm]

What points am I NOT thinking of that could cause me trouble?

The military impact. Any nation that does not have those ships will seek them to take those ships, or failing that, destroy them. As long as flying monsters are not so common that defensive walls have been abandoned, airships represent a severe threat to tactical defenses. Any military commander who ignores the danger and value of airships needs to be drawn and quartered for dereliction of duty.

How high can the airship fly?
How fast can the airship ascend / descend?
How much can the airship Carry?
How much abuse can the airship take?

 

[Cyronax]

Kind of out of left field, but I highly encourage you to research the Airship experience that many real world nations had during the first half of the twentieth century.

My current campaign involves airships (as stated in the Adventurer's Vault) and one of the things that's been interesting was to think about modifications that could be made to airships.

One important thing I gleaned from the research was that many airships used aluminum-based alloys as part of their hulls. That started me thinking that in my D&D world, aluminum (ala bauxite) would be a valuable commodity for military-designed airships, and by using aluminum-reinforced plating, some airships could have a high AC.

Anyway it was a very minor thing, but it opened up a whole new sector of the D&D fantasy economy ... aluminum mining. Would there be aluminum pieces? And if there were, would they be more valuable than other metals? I made the determination that they would in fact be on par or greater than platinum, since that had been the value/rarity of aluminum in the late 19th and early 20th century.

C.I.D.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Frank beat me to it. Airships = power.

Terry Brooks' High Druid of Shannara books show the impact of airships in a fantasy world quite well. Michael Moorcock's Warlord of the Air and Jules Verne's Master of the World (essentially an aerial re-imagining of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) also might be educational. The big air-combat fight scene in Warlord is particularly nice.

Another source you might find useful is Space:1899- an RPG set in a Vernian/Wellsian world where the colonial powers have expanded to Venus, Mars and the Moon.

 

[frankthedm]

Heck, if you want a reason to justify why so many abandoned underground fortifications {dungeons] exist, simply add in an age of airships when you had to build downward to have any defense.

 

[Eric Tolle]

Airships will also have a huge economic and social impact, assuming there is nothing like steam rail or telegraph.

For a start, compared to overland travel, airship travel is FAST. Primitive airships can go something like 10 kilometers in under 30 minutes; more advanced ones can do the equivalent of a run from Europe to America in three days or so. This means that you can transfer important messages, cargo and people from say, the capital to the border in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

Also, airships are not bothered by standard obstacles. They go over water as easy as land, and can dock anywhere there is room for them. They are vulnerable to weather conditions, but other than that, there's few places they can't go. This will make it much easier to explore the world- if airships have been around even for only a couple fo decades, there really shouldn't be many hidden areas of the world left, and those that are should be in very hostile areas.

In short, the world will shrink, and feel more modern, even if the airships are magical, not technological in origin.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Depending upon the type of airship and who owns it, it could also revolutionize construction...big balloons, blimps and dirigibles have a lot of lifting power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You can have something resembling geopolitics.

Before the era of fast communication and travel, news took months or years to get around, and ambassadors often didn't see their homelands for very long times. As a result, it was only really possible to maintain real diplomatic interaction with one's direct neighbors.

But introduce airships - and with this, a means of fast travel and communication - and suddenly the whole world opens up for political intrigue and diplomatic skulduggery. It becomes much easier to coordinate multi-nation alliances, wars, surprise attacks, and so forth.

In other words, the setting is likely to become a lot more fun.