“We’re the only Airship Pirates…”

Goth is sooo over.

Has been for decades; if you listen to my old buddy Matt, it was toast before it ever started reaching resurgence in the mid-90s. I don’t know; I was never a “Goth.” I went through my dark and angsty period quietly listening to metal music and writing tortured poetry and then I went to college and had a very happy life. So there.

By the time I started hitting some of the “dark and gothic” industrial dance clubs (private clubs only, please), I was old enough to be there legally and mainly Matt and I were there to dance and get our drunk on. And that was long AFTER I’d stopped running Vampire sagas (circa late 1996; about two to three years after my final VTM saga).

And hitting those places was a short run anyway. Matt went back to Austin, I carried my carousing to other venues, and eventually I cleaned up and grew up. Now, I’m no longer "just happy" but also "fairly well adjusted."

So, yeah…Abney Park.

A week ago I picked up a copy of a new RPG called Airship Pirates. Or rather, Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. This was last Friday, right after I’d written the bulk of my rant series on lazy RPG design and lack of objectives. Seeing this big, beautiful, high-concept book I had a pretty good idea this was exactly the kind of objective-less game that I had recently vilified…but I bought in anyway.

I have an airship fetish.

“Pirates” of course, are also gravy. I grew up in this little waterfront town called Seattle and we tend to like our nautical and pirate-themed stuff. Heck, that’s one of the draws of the Baranof for me. But just having “pirates” in an RPG isn’t enough for me to buy it; I’ve never purchased 7th Sea or Furry Pirates, for example.

But airships? I break for zeppelins. I nearly threw down a handful of hundreds for a 40 minute zeppelin tour when Airship Ventures brought their bird up to Sea-Town (I followed it on the ground with my car though)…and in Germany I was extremely close to booking a trip on one of their neuvo-zeps. I know I’ve written before that being an NFL coach would be my “dream job” (not that I have any ability to coach; I said “dream”), but actually it’s #3 on my list of fantasy careers:

#3 NFL Coach (assistant okay, but please be the Seahawks)
#2 Tony Stark, Iron Man
#1 Independent Airship Owner/Captain

I’m being perfectly serious. Have you seen the film Life Aquatic with Bill Murray? I want to be Steve Zissou in a zeppelin. If I ever win a lottery jackpot, I will pay off my house, my mom’s house, and set aside money for my kid’s college. If I ever win a multi-state mega-Lotto, I will invest in zeppelin flying lessons and try to purchase a small blimp.

So I dropped $50 on the RPG.

Airship Pirates is one of the most…well, shit, I don’t know what word to describe it. “Interesting” or “weird” or even “thought-provoking” are some of the phrases that come to mind…but NOT because of the setting, premise, or game system. The BOOK itself…the fact that it was even published…is tres bizarre.

Here’s why: the game…a neo-Victorian, post-apocalyptic, steampunk fantasy RPG with prehistoric animals…is based on the music and lyrics of the band Abney Park.

Who the hell is Abney Park? Well, apparently they are a local (Seattle) band that started up in 1997, around the same time that I was getting out of the music biz myself. Not that I was ever “in the biz;” singing a few one-offs with random bands can hardly even be called “dabbling,” though I had a moment or two. But I was never a huge supporter of the local live music scene (sorry) and anyway, and I stopped going to shows right around the time Abney appears to have been getting going. And even had I been a big show-goer (like my buddy, Steve-O) I’m not sure I would have ever seen Abney Park play, since they were originally a Goth band.

And one with a fairly strong endurance: I mean, they’re still going, almost 15 years later, and have put out nearly a dozen albums. And I’m sure that “marching technology progress” thing only makes it easier to stay in the music game, so long as you have some chops and a bit of a following. Hell, I’VE got a following and I’m just a hack blogger!

However (here’s the interesting part), a couple-few years back, Abney Park reinvented itself as a “steampunk concept band;” apparently, THE premier steampunk band if you buy the hype on the interweb stuff (I’m not really in a position to judge that kind of thing). What do I mean by that? Well, their songs have taken a turn to singing of their adventures as a band of airship pirates, time-travelling and screwing up historical continuity and creating a neo-Victorian, post-apocalyptic, fantasy world filled with prehistoric animals.

And then the band, fronted by Captain Robert Brown, worked in conjunction with the Cubicle 7 brits to put out a beautiful, slickly produced RPG book, giving folks the stuff to adventure in the imagination of this reinvented, premier steampunk, airship flying band called Abney Park.

Bizarre. I don’t know if Mark Rein-Hagen ever fronted a vampire-themed band (in the early days of White Wolf, the vampire musical group was a major suggestion for why PCs of different clans would hang together as a coterie), but I wouldn’t be too surprised based on the early themes and concepts in VTM. On the other hand, Rein-Hagen isn’t the first person to suggest the vampire music group…what about The Vampire Lestat? Or The Drac Pack for that matter?

However, if the band had come FIRST and then created an RPG based on the intellectual property of their own lyrics and stage show…well, then you’d have something similar to Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. And because the band is still going, it creates a new form of self-promotion: the band promotes the RPG, the RPG promotes the band…all at the same time!

That’s wild! I have never seen something like that before. Yes, I’ve seen D&D-inspired bands (Three Inches of Blood comes to mind)…but none that have a direct tie-in between their own unique music and their own unique RPG/setting. Is it genius? Or just crazy?

No doubt these folks are a little nuts…it takes a little crazy to do what they’re doing. But I believe, in a world where both independent RPG publishers and small-niche music acts have little potential to make a decent living, these folks have found a way to increase the income coming into the coffers without working as coffee baristas during the day. And that’s both unique (in my experience) and pretty cool.

[not totally unique, of course: Kiss promoted themselves through THEIR own fantasies by making movies, selling toys and comic books, etc. Abney Park has taken a page from that book]

As for the GAME itself: well, it’s not all that great in design terms. It bears a lot of similarities to White Wolf (as one might guess), using a Stat+Skill resolution, though rather than roll D10s and try to hit 7s, you’re rolling D6s and trying to hit 1s and 6s (and 6s “explode”). Most of the book is setting material…way, waaaay too much for my purposes. The thing reminds me of a Television Bible for the setting material. If I was tasking a group of authors with writing short stories based on the setting, I would give them each a copy of the RPG for reference and inspiration. As an RPG? It lacks focus and, yes, objectives.

On the other hand, it has a great premise for party creation: all characters are a crew aboard an airship. In all honesty, I was trying to brainstorm a very similar concept about 5 years ago, but couldn’t figure out how to make a dramatic enough RPG. Airship Pirates succeeds because it blows up the world and re-writes an alternative history in which airship pirates actually makes sense in the setting (a tyrannical government on the ground, heroic free cities in the air, neobedouins and dinosaurs wandering the wastelands). It’s neat and psychedelic and reads a bit like the backstory for certain editions of Magic the Gathering (without the magic)…but the game would require some serious editing on the part of the GM to make it work effectively, and a LOT of reading to get sufficiently steeped in the specifics of the setting.

AND…that’s all I want to say about the game for right now. Though I was initially tempted to return it to the game shop as “mostly unplayable” (due to my non-desire to put in the effort needed to make it work), I’ve decided to hang onto the thing and part with the cash. It is definitely one of the nicest looking RPGs I own, and it has a lot of interesting ideas setting-wise (as well as a totally kick-ass version of time travel). Plus, I feel that by buying it I’m doing my part to help support the local music scene. More bands should have kooky concepts.

: )

Up, Up, and Awaaaay....

I am now officially an aeronaut...or so says my official Certificat D'Ascension en Machine Aerostatique that I received after a near hour balloon ride (the "certificat" is en Francais, so I'm just taking the word of our pilot, really).

Let me tell you, folks...it is the ONLY way to fly.

Personally, I have an extreme fear of heights, especially the "unprotected" kind.  Not that I let my fear get in the way of doing what I want to do...hell, I fly for travel at least once or twice a year (though back in the 90s, it was always with a bit of "liquid fortification" if you catch my drift). But things like ski lifts or those damn mountain gondolas...I can barely stand to be on 'em, and I'm near paralyzed until they touch ground.  The thought of the cable breaking and that metal death box/chair plummeting 100'+ to the ground just f'ing terrifies me (no, I don't ski but I was on BOTH as recently as last weekend when we took the in-laws to Grouse Mountain outside Vancouver, BC).

The hot air balloon is nothing like it.

First off, there was less motion in the ascension than going up in an elevator.  The landing (expertly done by our pilot) was less bumpy than most plane landings I've had. The flight itself was smooth as silk and breathtaking, and the basket with its wicker and leather was solid, sturdy, and comfortable.

Even though we were suspended over 1300' in the air at some point there was (for lack of a better term) the illusion that if something were to happen, the balloon would deflate and come into land...well, at a survivable rate. Now I realize that plummeting from a thousand feet there's very little chance of surviving a balloon catastrophe...but our pilot exuded such confidence and competence that I never doubted our safety once.

Well, until we hit the tree at 25 miles per hour.  

But even THAT was planned and controlled in order to break our momentum so that we could land safely and comfortably in the field beyond. The tree bent and bounced back, waving like a palm in the wind as we looked behind us.  Simply amazing.

And the view...one never gets to see the world like this. We stayed 500'-1200' most of the journey, sometimes as low as 200'-300'. Unlike a fixed wing aircraft you glide low enough and slow enough that all the world is revealed in detail but from an elevated view.  The only thing I imagine it compares to would be a zeppelin or  a hang glider.  The latter, of course, would have a descent over time issue compared to the balloon (at least, as long as the balloon has propane left in its tanks).

As for the zeppelins, well...I know I've mentioned before that one of my favorite movies of all time is The Life Aquatic, and mainly because I envy the life portrayed by the title character Steve Zissou.  Being captain of one's own boat? The freedom of the open sea? A crew that will follow you regardless of several (glaring) personal defects?  I have often said that my dream job would be Steve Zissou...in a zeppelin. My dream vacation would be to see the Great Pyramid of Giza from a zeppelin.  I get regular updates from the San Francisco based Airship Adventures company, and greatly desire to pilot one of these majestic crafts some day. Whether such will ever happen in my lifetime...well, a guy can dream, can't he?

Anyway, some folks may be wondering what the hell THIS post has to do with RPGs in general. Actually, two things. One: because a sunrise balloon voyage requires getting up at 5:30am (both to check the weather and to travel out of the city to BFE) I got even less sleep than usual and crashed hard after our return (adrenaline drop as much as lack of sleep). As such I slept till like 4 in the afternoon before getting up and doing some household errands; I offer this as an explanation of my lack of Sunday blogging.

Second: a year or so ago, a friend in Oregon mailed me a copy of his own "adventure module," called Blackrock Island. My buddy ("the Doctor," I like to call him) created a fairly cool and whimsical kind of adventure that would be FANTASTIC for B/X in my opinion (he wrote it for AD&D 1e...see, we didn't even know we were already part of the OSR at that point!).  Part of it involves a flying whale and an airship. It needs polish (and some non-copyrighted artwork), but I was already consider publishing a re-work of it, perhaps for Labyrinth Lord, perhaps through BHP (this was before BHP stopped doing LL stuff, of course). 

NOW, I am even more interested in re-working Blackrock Island for B/X and LL, but quite possibly emphasizing some of the airship sections. They are just so cool! And while not "medieval" in the slightest (the first balloon was piloted in the 1700s) they are fantastical, whimsical, and pulpy in nature...even in reality!

Now, of course, the Companion set is the priority writing work I'm completing. But Blackrock needs so little for use (a little clip art, some state re-writes, a plot overhaul), that maybe I can bang the two out simultaneously. I don't know...tomorrow's my day off and I'm feeling ambitious.

Damn, that balloon was cool....