I’m new at DMing and am writing a campaign, but I’m not sure how I want everything to blend with each other? My campaign is set in a place of floating islands. There is no ocean, it’s all in the air in open space. No one knows what happens to you if you fall off the islands. I have aeroships that you can fly to get around, but I don’t have anything to explain how the aeroships work or why. Some of my creatures are not smart enough to build aeroships, so I don’t know how to have them get around? Does anyone have suggestions?
That sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe the floating islands are filled with some sort of ore or mineral that keeps them aloft? Mining it could lead to the production of aeroships, or maybe even personal aerocrafts to navigate around?
I just thought of this... What if that's kind of a agreed-upon secret between the leaders of each island... They're slowly sinking now, after excavating too much of this material. That might be a cool element to add later in the game, in case there's aggression between the different islands.
I hope you make it come together, this is a really neat concept!
If there's flying ships, why hasn't someone gotten into one and just descended to see what's beneath these flying islands?
And while its cool to say "no one knows" what's down there, you should know. Because sooner or later, a player is going to try and find out. Personally, I'd be doing that in session 1, or at least the first time I got my hands on one of the ships.
And I'd agree with jl8e. The ships work because they work. There's a magical thingamabob that lets them fly, better hope it doesn't get damaged, or you'll have to crash land on Tatooine and meet a young Anakin. And dumber and/or less magical civilizations stole some ships from the people who invented them. or just go with swarms of those war bats, because that is fantastic.
That sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe the floating islands are filled with some sort of ore or mineral that keeps them aloft? Mining it could lead to the production of aeroships, or maybe even personal aerocrafts to navigate around?
I think the floating ore idea is pretty good. Some book series like skyward or five kingdoms use this to explain why they are able to create hovercraft. This would explain why the islands float, which means that if An island loses enough of this stone, it could fall.
edit: I just realized manxtea posted pretty much the exact same thing I did
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
If there's flying ships, why hasn't someone gotten into one and just descended to see what's beneath these flying islands?
And while its cool to say "no one knows" what's down there, you should know. Because sooner or later, a player is going to try and find out. Personally, I'd be doing that in session 1, or at least the first time I got my hands on one of the ships.
The usual answers are probably "nobody who's got out of sight of the islands has ever returned" or "As far as people have gone, they've found nothing" (or "more clusters of islands")
There doesn't have to be a ground at all. Air forever is legit. Physics is for the weak.
we could say that your world is something like a gas giant with a breathable atmosphere. Or at least, it has a breathable atmosphere in a certain strata, at a certain altitude. If humans (or other races) could only live in at a certain altitude, then it could explain why nobody who sailed to far away ever returned: they were poisoned if they went too low or they went too high, arrived in open space, and were asphyxiated.
The island may float due to peculiar (magical) minerals. However, they still are inside the gravity well of a planet, at whichever altitude they find a balance between the mineral-induced floating and gravity pull. According with their richness in the floating mineral, the islands can be found at different altitudes. Even too high or too low to allow human (or similar) life.
If such mineral were to be mined, the island would find itself pulled by gravity ever lower. On the other hand, if the quantity of ore should increase (for example due to the presence of mineral storage deposits awaiting processing), the island would float higher.
Skyships could be a new thing, introduced after the local Industrial Revolution when the people started collecting the mineral and using it. Then they found out the effects mining had on the islands. Thus ships remain a rare commodity (status symbol) while more peripheral islands still use balloons and trained flying beasts. Also, the risks and precautions necessary to mine and refine the floating mineral mean that building very big skyship is difficult/forbidden because they would need to sacrify whole islands. Also, the presence of monsters bigger than the avarage skyship could be the reason why nobody goes too far from the islands while remaining on the same level/altitude.
I’m new at DMing and am writing a campaign, but I’m not sure how I want everything to blend with each other? My campaign is set in a place of floating islands. There is no ocean, it’s all in the air in open space. No one knows what happens to you if you fall off the islands. I have aeroships that you can fly to get around, but I don’t have anything to explain how the aeroships work or why. Some of my creatures are not smart enough to build aeroships, so I don’t know how to have them get around? Does anyone have suggestions?
That sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe the floating islands are filled with some sort of ore or mineral that keeps them aloft? Mining it could lead to the production of aeroships, or maybe even personal aerocrafts to navigate around?
I just thought of this... What if that's kind of a agreed-upon secret between the leaders of each island... They're slowly sinking now, after excavating too much of this material. That might be a cool element to add later in the game, in case there's aggression between the different islands.
I hope you make it come together, this is a really neat concept!
- Manx (she/her)
Why do you need to explain how or why the ships work? "Magic" is sufficient.
(If you think you're going to need rules for handling them, the new Spelljammer books are coming soon, and you can probably lift mechanics from that.
As for how critters get around without making ships:
If there's flying ships, why hasn't someone gotten into one and just descended to see what's beneath these flying islands?
And while its cool to say "no one knows" what's down there, you should know. Because sooner or later, a player is going to try and find out. Personally, I'd be doing that in session 1, or at least the first time I got my hands on one of the ships.
And I'd agree with jl8e. The ships work because they work. There's a magical thingamabob that lets them fly, better hope it doesn't get damaged, or you'll have to crash land on Tatooine and meet a young Anakin. And dumber and/or less magical civilizations stole some ships from the people who invented them. or just go with swarms of those war bats, because that is fantastic.
I think the floating ore idea is pretty good. Some book series like skyward or five kingdoms use this to explain why they are able to create hovercraft. This would explain why the islands float, which means that if An island loses enough of this stone, it could fall.
edit: I just realized manxtea posted pretty much the exact same thing I did
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
The usual answers are probably "nobody who's got out of sight of the islands has ever returned" or "As far as people have gone, they've found nothing" (or "more clusters of islands")
There doesn't have to be a ground at all. Air forever is legit. Physics is for the weak.
The ground could also be up.
we could say that your world is something like a gas giant with a breathable atmosphere. Or at least, it has a breathable atmosphere in a certain strata, at a certain altitude. If humans (or other races) could only live in at a certain altitude, then it could explain why nobody who sailed to far away ever returned: they were poisoned if they went too low or they went too high, arrived in open space, and were asphyxiated.
The island may float due to peculiar (magical) minerals. However, they still are inside the gravity well of a planet, at whichever altitude they find a balance between the mineral-induced floating and gravity pull. According with their richness in the floating mineral, the islands can be found at different altitudes. Even too high or too low to allow human (or similar) life.
If such mineral were to be mined, the island would find itself pulled by gravity ever lower. On the other hand, if the quantity of ore should increase (for example due to the presence of mineral storage deposits awaiting processing), the island would float higher.
Skyships could be a new thing, introduced after the local Industrial Revolution when the people started collecting the mineral and using it. Then they found out the effects mining had on the islands. Thus ships remain a rare commodity (status symbol) while more peripheral islands still use balloons and trained flying beasts. Also, the risks and precautions necessary to mine and refine the floating mineral mean that building very big skyship is difficult/forbidden because they would need to sacrify whole islands. Also, the presence of monsters bigger than the avarage skyship could be the reason why nobody goes too far from the islands while remaining on the same level/altitude.
Thank you so much everyone, all of these ideas are great, I will definitely look into all of them! ❤️