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(Un)Inspired
2013-10-14, 06:08 PM
Hey everybody I'm running a campaign in which the playing are coming to a major port town which will soon be hosting an annual nautical race.

The contestants in the races can be boats or airships and basically anything goes are far a means of propulsion in the races. In this setting an epic spell was cast several decades ago that turned off all teleportation but other than that, anything that doesn't interfere with another racer is an acceptable means of winning the race.

Can you guys help me come up with any more cool names for boats and airships and unique means of travel they might use?

So far I've got:

The Geomancer. It's a soarwood ship captained by A Druid captain and crewed by several air elementals. The air elementals drag the airship around but for boosts of speed the druid uses control winds to give them an extreme tail wind.

The Heart of Darkness. Captained by a Wilder and his Psicrystal/Wizard cohort, the entire airship is animated via the animate object spell and has huge animated turbines built into it. What little crew it has are animate skeletons wrapped up in black cloth to hide the fact that they're not alive.

The Dragoon. The captain is a Ranger With two Wyvern compainions that pull what would otherwise be a fairly mundane Cutter at high speeds across the water. Crewed by a team of rangers with actual sailing skills and high Wild empathy rolls.

Il Mostro. Its a Dominated Dark, Quick Elsewhale with the Run feat that has a
captain's quarters build into its mouth. Its captained by a Sorcerer who focuses on enchantment and is the one who keeps the Elsewhale dominated. The "ship" has no crew but the sorcerer basically runs a constant party in the whale's mouth.

The Oni
2013-10-15, 12:57 AM
The School of Iron Will: A clamshell shaped into a formidable sailing craft, pulled by high-level merfolk monks with ropes around their waists. Occupying the clamshell are bards who sing inspiring songs, mostly about the eyes of enormous, predatory cats.

The Warblader: This fast but mostly ordinary sailing ship is captained by ordinary sailors with the assistance of a warblade. The warblade knows nothing about sailing; he's only there to use Iron Heart Surge to end the condition of "suboptimal sailing weather."

The Annihilatrix Mk. IV: The gigantic engine of this strangely shaped ship is powered by the explosive force of throwing Rods of Cancellation at Spheres of Annihilation inside a casing of magically-reinforced adamantine. The incredible wizard who captains this ship makes these artifacts in his spare time; this is the fourth time he's entered the competition, as his last three ships have been obliterated, and only his contingency spells have saved him at the last minute.

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 02:13 AM
I suppose the captain of The Warblader could just wait till the race was over and then Iron Heart Surge away the condition of not having won the race. Time rewrites itself and he gets a +2 to attack rolls.

I really like your third suggestion. I'm definitely going to use The Annihilatrix Mk. IV and I'm going to have it explode then rapidly implode in the harbor as soon as the starting whistle sounds.

The Oni
2013-10-15, 02:26 AM
I suppose the captain of The Warblader could just wait till the race was over and then Iron Heart Surge away the condition of not having won the race.

He would, but the Warblader is Lawful; that would be unsporting.

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 02:33 AM
He would, but the Warblader is Lawful; that would be unsporting.

Hahaha of course he is. How foolish of me. Oh IHS, is there any problem you can't solve?

TuggyNE
2013-10-15, 03:03 AM
Hahaha of course he is. How foolish of me. Oh IHS, is there any problem you can't solve?

Well, obviously the problem of being unwilling to use IHS to solve the problem. :smalltongue:

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 03:15 AM
Can you IHS away your own moral code if it's holding you back?

Man, Tome of Battle asks way more hard hitting questions about morality than BoED and BoVD combined

The Oni
2013-10-15, 03:29 AM
...and that's how every Warblade became Chaotic Neutral.

BWR
2013-10-15, 06:59 AM
Steal shamelessly.
Loot old sources for all they're worth.
The old Fifth Doctor episode Enlightenment is basically a Spelljammer race. Every ship there should be able to be used.
Steal the Princess Ark from the old Dragon articles.
Look through Spelljammer ships and nab anything that grabs your attention.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-15, 10:24 AM
I'd have these guys as competing brothers using similar craft and dressed in greeco-roman-esque clothes.

The Chariot of the Sky: I'd have this pulled by 6 flying phantom steeds as the spell with a speed of 240 ft.

The Chariot of the Sea: I'd have this one pulled by Giant Squids (with their jets they move 320ft feet a turn), I would say that they have to rest but they don't really because until the nonlethal damage gets to DC 31 they have skills covering it (16 skills, 4 endurance, take 10, total 30), so they can jet for 10 hours straight without any issues. This IMO makes them the best aquatic racing creature.

WeLoveFireballs
2013-10-15, 10:57 AM
St. Awesome's Parish: A small church carried on the back of a Cleric Giant who uses water walk and righteous might to dash over the waves as the priests in the church on his back offer prayers of support. Add druid and wizard worshippers for longstrider, haste, jump, enlarge person and whatever else!

Without the interference rule:
Tom and Bill's fishing boat: A perfectly normal fishing boat, with a massive antimagic field attached to it. It is crewed by two young men who don't know how to read. They like to go fishing right before the finish line and watch everyone else flail behind them as their flight magic/monster domination/hull integrity spells backfire hilariously.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-15, 10:59 AM
Without the interference rule:
Tom and Bill's fishing boat: A perfectly normal fishing boat, with a massive antimagic field attached to it. It is crewed by two young men who don't know how to read. They like to go fishing right before the finish line and watch everyone else flail behind them as their flight magic/monster domination/hull integrity spells backfire hilariously.

That's mean, really mean.

malmblad
2013-10-15, 11:04 AM
Gnomish Submarine.

BRC
2013-10-15, 11:21 AM
I had lots of fun with an experimental Goblin Airship (Hydrogen Balloons and bound Lightning Elementals running the engine) called the Notgonnasplode III.

Notgonnaslpode is a goblin word that means "Perserverence", or more accurately "Trial By Error". Captain Hinden served on/ survived the brief maiden voyages of the previous two Notgonnasplodes (The first one exploded then crashed, the second crashed then exploded), and exemplifies the principle of Notgonnasplode.

The first time the fire elementals broke out and ignited the Hydrogen.

The second time they didn't use Hydrogen. The Fire Elementals broke out once the ship crashed.

This time they've brought back the Hydrogen and replaced the fire elementals with LIGHTNING elementals. They are convinced this is a foolproof configuration.

JHShadon
2013-10-15, 11:33 AM
You could name an airship "The Flying Manatee", I have no idea what kind of airship it would be but I like the name.

Acatalepsy
2013-10-15, 12:06 PM
You could name an airship "The Flying Manatee", I have no idea what kind of airship it would be but I like the name.

The Pursuit of Crimson Autumn, a sealed vessel made from treated ironwood. Specially woven phase-spider silk creates linked portable holes at the front and rear of the ship, sucking in water and expelling it out the back. It is fully submersible; it's captain is an old naval veteran that prefers to outwit and outsneak his opponents.

Magesmiley
2013-10-15, 12:18 PM
You could always take a page from the Spelljammer setting and have a gnomish ship powered by giant hamsters...

The Fury
2013-10-15, 01:26 PM
Let's see, here's some ship names I've used in the past:

Defiance, Manticore, Sparrowhawk, Scheherazade and Vengeance

When these actually appeared in their respective stories nearly all of them were sailing ships. Though the Manticore was a steam-powered ironclad and Scheherazade was also steam-powered but used a magic furnace of some sort rather than conventional fuel.

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 02:34 PM
Oh, so many good replies.

I had thought about a chariot towed by phantom steeds but I was worried about overusing the towed-by-animals idea but now I just have to include it along with the super squid chariot.

BRC, if you don't mind I'm completely going to steal you idea for The Notgonnasplode III. It's brilliant and the exact kind of humor my group loves.

I also love The Pursuit of Crimson Autumn. It perfectly captures the submarine angle this races needs.

The competition in this race is fierce and while it's going on my players have been hired to prevent anyone from breaking the non interference rule. There's gonna be several saboteurs hidden in the crowd watching the race that have been hired by various captains to try and disjunction and fireball some of the racers.

Oh yeah, I've also gotta use that giant with a church on his back.

Zahhak
2013-10-15, 02:44 PM
I was half-working on a Teslapunk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teslapunk#Teslapunk) game in a universe based on the Electric Universe theory (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Electric_Universe). Basically, gravity works because of a magnetic charge, rather than gravity. So, I was going to say that the Earth has a positive magnetic charge, and build dreadnoughts whose engines went into magnetizing the ship with a positive magnetic charge, meaning it would fly.

Never came up with a name, and didn't really expand on the setting or make the game. Still, I think it's a pretty cool concept, I think.

Magesmiley
2013-10-15, 03:20 PM
And for those newer players who were completely lost on my earlier reference... Giant Space Hamsters (http://everything2.com/title/Giant+Space+Hamsters). Yes. They really did include ships powered by Giant Space Hamsters in the Spelljammer setting.

For your boat race though... The Kinetic Wheel Deluxe. A paddlewheel crewed by gnomes. The body of the ship is enclosed. Hidden inside are pens and food. Plus a number series of massive hamster wheels for the critters to run in that turn the paddlewheels.

Just imagine the fun when the gnomes complain that several members of their crew have disappeared and demand that the PCs investigate. The gnomes bring the PCs into the ship and take them into the hold and point at a series of brightly colored tubes where the crew members were last seen. The PCs move through the tubes and round a corner. Where a giant hamster promptly grapples one of the lead PCs and stuffs him/her in its mouth. Bonus points if you can do this with a straight face.

Other possibilities would be if their power source got loose. Or someone fed them something bad.

Other ideas... the gnomes could have some water bottles to put potions into (bear's endurance, haste, etc.).

Yes I'm demented to even suggest something like this.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-15, 03:32 PM
And for those newer players who were completely lost on my earlier reference... Giant Space Hamsters (http://everything2.com/title/Giant+Space+Hamsters). Yes. They really did include ships powered by Giant Space Hamsters in the Spelljammer setting.

For your boat race though... The Kinetic Wheel Deluxe. A paddlewheel crewed by gnomes. The body of the ship is enclosed. Hidden inside are pens and food. Plus a number series of massive hamster wheels for the critters to run in that turn the paddlewheels.

Just imagine the fun when the gnomes complain that several members of their crew have disappeared and demand that the PCs investigate. The gnomes bring the PCs into the ship and take them into the hold and point at a series of brightly colored tubes where the crew members were last seen. The PCs move through the tubes and round a corner. Where a giant hamster promptly grapples one of the lead PCs and stuffs him/her in its mouth. Bonus points if you can do this with a straight face.

Other possibilities would be if their power source got loose. Or someone fed them something bad.

Other ideas... the gnomes could have some water bottles to put potions into (bear's endurance, haste, etc.).

Yes I'm demented to even suggest something like this.
Yeah, I think that if the players can fight a giant hamster that escaped from its wheel, then the player must fight a giant hamster.

Deadline
2013-10-15, 03:40 PM
Well let's see, I've used a ship named The Vicious Rumor, it's motto was, "Because nothing travels quite as fast, or stings quite as hard." It was generally a fast ship manned by a normal crew, a painfully narcissistic captain who spent most of his booty on small scrolls that had a permanent silent image headshot of himself that he would give to his adoring "fans", and an old, senile as all get-out bard who does nothing but dance around the decks playing a Lyre of Building refluffed as a fiddle.

And similar to the Notgonnasplode, there's the goblin "ship" Huuuurrrrrlll, which is little more than a small sailboat with a crew of a dozen goblins that is held aloft at the starting line by a massive giant. When the race starts, the giant hurls the vessel of terrified and screaming goblins as far as it can. The plan is that when the vessel lands, the crew takes over and sails to victory with their ridiculous lead. In reality, the Huuuurrrrrlll has yet to finish a race. It crashes spectacularly when it impacts the water, killing all hands. The giant then fishes it out of the water and rebuilds it. To date, including practice runs, the Huuuurrrrrlll has killed almost 300 of her own crew.

And lastly, there's the poorly constructed ship, the Bloodfury. It's a vessel of orcish construction that is little more than a floating troop transport/battering ram. The orcish crew doesn't really understand the concept of a race, and instead attempts to ram any ship it can catch, board it, and plunder it. Captained by the dreaded Cruul, Twice Blessed of Gruumsh (he's a blind orc with two eyepatches and a mean streak).

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 03:44 PM
And for those newer players who were completely lost on my earlier reference... Giant Space Hamsters (http://everything2.com/title/Giant+Space+Hamsters). Yes. They really did include ships powered by Giant Space Hamsters in the Spelljammer setting.

For your boat race though... The Kinetic Wheel Deluxe. A paddlewheel crewed by gnomes. The body of the ship is enclosed. Hidden inside are pens and food. Plus a number series of massive hamster wheels for the critters to run in that turn the paddlewheels.

Just imagine the fun when the gnomes complain that several members of their crew have disappeared and demand that the PCs investigate. The gnomes bring the PCs into the ship and take them into the hold and point at a series of brightly colored tubes where the crew members were last seen. The PCs move through the tubes and round a corner. Where a giant hamster promptly grapples one of the lead PCs and stuffs him/her in its mouth. Bonus points if you can do this with a straight face.

Other possibilities would be if their power source got loose. Or someone fed them something bad.

Other ideas... the gnomes could have some water bottles to put potions into (bear's endurance, haste, etc.).

Yes I'm demented to even suggest something like this.

Ya know what's funny? A few years ago I ran a 4th ed. spelljammer game (it actually went really well even if it had to be rules light cause you know, 4th ed.). One of my players always used to make jokes about space hamsters and I said I would never include them because of the tone of that particular campaign.

Surprise ending! I'm totally gonna use them for this race.

Magesmiley
2013-10-15, 04:10 PM
Ya know what's funny? A few years ago I ran a 4th ed. spelljammer game (it actually went really well even if it had to be rules light cause you know, 4th ed.). One of my players always used to make jokes about space hamsters and I said I would never include them because of the tone of that particular campaign.

Surprise ending! I'm totally gonna use them for this race.

Not sure if you use miniatures, but if you do, even more bonus points for coming up with an appropriately scaled hamster figure to use. And setting out half of a colorful hamster tube to hold the battle in...

BRC
2013-10-15, 04:48 PM
BRC, if you don't mind I'm completely going to steal you idea for The Notgonnasplode III. It's brilliant and the exact kind of humor my group loves.

Don't forget that in addition to Captain Hinden there is Helmsmen Icky and Engineer Daedle (if you don't get it brush up on your greek mythology).
The rest of the crew had similarly auspicious names.

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 04:54 PM
I don't think it matters how close to the sun their ship is gonna fly. Its not gonna last long.

BRC
2013-10-15, 05:05 PM
I don't think it matters how close to the sun their ship is gonna fly. Its not gonna last long.

In my game it took subzero temperatures, one of the PC's experimenting with the elemental engines, and three Skydras (Hydras with Jetpacks, don't ask) to bring it down. And even then everybody survived (with the prudent use of feather fall and jetpacks).

Personally I wouldn't have the Notgonnaslplode blow up early. Everytime you mention it during the race something should be going wrong, with it looking like the ship is going to crash and/or explode any minute. The Elementals should have gotten out, or the crew is desparetly beating back fires, or the ghosts of the prior crews are swarming around the ship, or one of the balloons is leaking hydrogen. All the saboteurs/other racers ignore it because...well...it's the NotGonnaSplode, it's doomed anyway. Don't waste your time worrying about that deathtrap.

However, somehow it never seems to go down, until the finish line is in sight, and the Notgonnasplode, unharried throughout the race (Except by it's own troubles) swoops out of the clouds with a comfortable lead, looking somewhat battered, it's hydrogen balloons patched up and the tamed ghosts of the dead crews speeding it along.

And then Captain Hinden lights up a celebratory Cigar.

If the PC's speak to Captain Hinden after the explosion (Don't ask how he survived), he will be in good spirits. "I know what we did wrong" he'll say. "There was a critical design flaw. The Notgonnasplode IV will have a No-Smoking sign!"

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 05:09 PM
That would be pretty rad to actually have it win the race.

BRC
2013-10-15, 05:10 PM
That would be pretty rad to actually have it win the race.

Does it "Win" if a charred piece of the ship, with a terrified goblin clinging to it, gets flung past the finish line by the explosion?

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 05:52 PM
If that's not winning I don't know what is

The Oni
2013-10-15, 07:05 PM
Your campaign sounds awesome already.

Aramul
2013-10-15, 07:09 PM
I worry that too much awesome has been presented to be contained in just one adventure.

TuggyNE
2013-10-15, 07:49 PM
Does it "Win" if a charred piece of the ship, with a terrified goblin clinging to it, gets flung past the finish line by the explosion?

Yes. Yes it does. :smallamused:

(Un)Inspired
2013-10-15, 07:54 PM
Thanks guys. I couldn't run a great campaign without great ideas from people posting right here.

The campaign has been really fun so far. We started off at level 2 and have made it to 9 so far. The setting takes place far in the future from 4 other campaigns I ran (an Eberron campaign, a spelljammer campaign, a mask of red death campaign and a campaign set on present day earth only with magic and fantasy races and swords). Epic magic has basically jigsaw pieced the current world together and a lot of the npcs populating the world are memory modified npcs or even pcs from previous campaigns.

At first my players thought these inclusions were just homages to previous campaigns but they're starting to realize the true nature of the world.

TheThan
2013-10-15, 08:05 PM
I once had players in an Iron Kingdoms game take a steam powered barge and convert it into a war ship. They outfitted it with a Khadorian heavy warjack cortex, robotic cargo loading arms (the steam engine was self fueling thanks to these), and a swivel gun. They kept a bunch of warjacks in the hold and raised them onto the deck before battle. These were Khadorian Destroyer heavy jacks. They used a labor jack with a crane mounted on it’s back to raise them out of the hold. They were looking for more jacks to cannibalize.

their motto was "you wreck 'em, we Mech 'em"

They called it the Fat Neil.

Lucid
2013-10-15, 08:21 PM
The Bombardier
An orcish airship that has cannons mounted everywhere. It uses the blasts from the cannons for propulsion, steering and brakes. Most likely will be disqualified for (accidentally) destroying another ship.


Not sure if you use miniatures, but if you do, even more bonus points for coming up with an appropriately scaled hamster figure to use. And setting out half of a colorful hamster tube to hold the battle in...Now I'm wondering if they've invented these when a pet hamster was loose on the gaming table:smallbiggrin:

Malachi Lemont
2013-10-16, 11:15 PM
How about the Brutal Illusion? That might make a decent name for a ship. Or the Devilation (Devil + Revelation)