I am an old school Final Fantasy inspired RPGer, which means I have never run a campaign that did not include an epic airship to airship battle. Thus, there’s always a bit of excitement when someone attempts to toss their head into the rules of 3D combat with massive flying vessels involved.

LPJ Designs attempts the feat this time around with Skyships of Nova Avalon, the first solid supplement for their upcoming Pirates of the Bronze Sky Campaign setting. Skyships comes as close to making a good rule supplement as products have come, but still falls a tad bit off of one of the underlying problems with this type of vessel to vessel combat.

Skyships reads like a thought out set of instructions for everything you want to know about air combat. The 20-page supplement goes into great detail about ship creation and how a crew functions on a ship. The first few pages explains the mechanics of a ship. Ships have stats much like a PC, though slimmed down to strict combat and maneuvers info. The combat system for ships feels fluid. LPJ Design is smart enough to know that great RPG ship battles take place off a grid. Though they include some grid info, the bulk of the combat rules movement is explained for abstract. Skyship succeeds in understanding that there is indeed a crew on the ship and that these crews need meaningful things to do in combat. The writers have obviously watched their share of Star Trek. If there is one thing that must happen in a vessel to vessel combat, it is relaying the ships functions to crew members.

Skyships does this nicely by having certain weapons and ship equipment require a particular number of crew members. It even allows for multiple attacks per rounds by players who are manning multiple weapons. However, it does not go far enough. I have 2 “fighter” types in my current group. That leaves 4 people with nothing to do during ship combats. It would have been great to have the different equipment require certain skill checks and figure out a way to utilize arcane and divine magic users more. For the Dungeon Master The rules in Skyships are skillfully light. There is a lot of information packed in the PDF. But most of it is add-ons to the additional rules. There is one example Skyship, and you can easily take this ship and build the various enhancements on top of it. A nice aspect of the PDF is that the ruleset is broad enough to incorporate in any setting that uses Airships. Various material and weapon accessories are provided that can help you utilize these rules in a traditional fantasy setting or a strong steampunk environment.

The Iron Word Skyships of Nova Avalon is the most complete airship supplement for a d20 game in almost 10 years. Though I still lone for a system that incorporates an entire party, Skyships sets enough of a foundation with the inclusion of crew needed ship functions, that an additional supplement could easily physically utilize that crew. Small gripe aside, the usual amazing artwork and careful editing you expect form LPJ makes this a worthy product to add to the collection.