Weekly Update - 152 (Patreon)

What's this? A hint of background, perhaps? The very bane of my existence?

Yup.

Comic this week? Yes! My plan is to get it done at any cost. It's pretty far along so far but backgrounds for me are so painfully slow.

Drawing: Page 166 (End of Chapter 9!)

Playing: WoW and anything else to kill the time before AoW 4.

Reading: Mistborn

Ramble:

This will be the last time I ramble about this, probably. Our campaign is going well and I'm having fun so far, but I typed up a ton of thoughts initially and these are just the last of them with regards to flying in Tabletop RPGs.

If this is a topic that interests you, be sure to check out last week's update where I talked about times it's good to ALLOW flying in your campaigns. If this is a topic that doesn't interest you, you can just skip the rest of this post, no worries. These rambles, as always, are just a way for me to dump my most persistent and invasive thoughts into words so I can free up thinking space for more important things, like Chapter 10.

These are some ways to CONTROL flying if you're GMing and you have a good reason to want to prevent your players from flying in certain places. While I argued last week that flying should be allowed in general, there's absolutely times it could potentially break an encounter or a campaign, and there are perfectly reasonable limits to where a player can go and when they should be allowed to fly. Specifically, these are ways that a GM can control flying that doesn't feel like they're just imposing a restriction on the player for the sake of restricting them. These are ways you can control flying that seem perfectly reasonable regardless of what side of the table you're sitting on. This is me speaking from the perspective of both me, a player that wants to fly, and also me, a GM that wants their campaign to be both exciting and fun.

For a lot of these, I'm assuming the player can fly at low levels because they chose a race with some form of natural winged flight. I'm not worried so much about high level players that fly around with their minds just because they can. High-level players are broken in a lot of other ways, and I feel a lot less qualified to speak on running a high-level campaign.

Caves, Narrow Spaces, Indoors - Creatures with wings typically have large wingspans that need full range of movement to keep themselves aloft. If there's not enough room to fly, then there's not enough room to fly. Now, as I've stated, I play an anthro bat. Bats, it could be argued, are designed for perfect aerial navigation of tight cave systems in pure darkness. They are particularly amazing creatures. But anthro bats are quite a bit bigger than their tiny feral counterparts, so I estimate my character's wingspan as roughly twice his height for purpose of determining whether or not flying is viable.

Flying PCs might be smaller, weaker, more easily encumbered - Flying creatures, (unless magical I guess, I don’t have any experience playing those) need to stay relatively light and unhindered so their wings can keep them aloft. The larger a bird is, the more energy is required for them to fly, and that ratio gets out of control fairly quickly. A tiny bat probably isn’t going to be able to lift much additional weight and still take to the air, and a large bat is probably going to have an even narrower allowance since their own bodyweight is a factor in staying aloft. Even if the rules might technically allow it, as a GM I couldn’t see a tiny bat carrying a massive gem-encrusted zweihander or a chest of gold coins and somehow still flying around with it. Physics exist, even in a fantasy setting, and a nine-ounce bird can't carry a one-pound coconut, as everyone knows.

Fear - This goes back to the invisible tether that's always keeping the party together, but telling the players that there’s THINGS lurking in the dark or off in the distance is always a good way to make sure no one strays too far from the party. There's safety in numbers, after all, and no one wants to accidentally stumble alone upon an encounter that’s balanced for five players.

Ranged attacks, spells, AoEs, force the player to take cover - In combat, if a player is flying in the center of the room, every single enemy in that encounter potentially has clear line of sight to them. A few enemies with bows in each encounter is a great way to keep a player grounded or to force them to get behind cover during combat. Nets, bolas, lassos, arrows, webs and spells among others. Including at least 1 such threat in each combat encounter is a good idea, but again if we are smart about removing those threats, the reward should be tactical air support.

Webs/traps - Webs are the perfect anti-flying trap. They are naturally designed to be invisible and spread across wide open areas to catch flying prey. Likewise with plenty of other similar traps, sticky tendrils, gluey goo, tentacles, nets and snares, anything that tangles up the wings will prevent flying, and there's books full of such things. Plenty of real life creatures and plants have evolved to catch flying prey, use them as inspiration for your traps and monsters.

Flying Monsters - While they can be annoying for grounded PCs, flying monsters can also super dangerous for flying ones. Give these monsters melee attacks to force them to engage players on the ground, and give them wings so they can chase down the fliers if you need them to.

A bad storm or high winds - These are things that will obviously hinder flying or make it super dangerous for a flying player to take to the air outdoors. These are things that could even be threatening just because a character has wings, even if they stay grounded, forcing them to keep their wings tucked in tight lest they be swept away. Granted, weather effects don’t typically come out of nowhere, so if you do intend to use this, hint at it early on in the session by mentioning dark clouds, gusty winds, or light rain.

No Fly Zones - A lot of military forces, both friendly and unfriendly, both modern and fantasy, might take offense to someone flying near their airspace. It could be hard to identify the flying creature from a distance. They might not know if they're a spy or an enemy scout, and the guardsmen might seek to capture the flying creature in order to find out. Ballista with nets, catapults with bolas, snares… lots of things could come flying out of a well-defended zone if the flying player gets anywhere close to where they could see or perhaps report on troop positions, supplies or movements. Protected airspaces could include any important locations that the local lords don’t want scouted, castles, keeps, palaces, wizard towers, secret libraries…

And of course angering the local lords or their military carries its own set of consequences.

Swimming - Swimming is a great equalizer. Suddenly, when the party is underwater, everyone can “fly.” Wings provide no real benefit while swimming, because most wings weren't designed for swimming. Want to design a cave system that’s got plenty of wide open spaces but you don’t want anyone to fly there? Consider flooding it! At least partially. Don’t drown all your players just to impose control over a certain game mechanic, as a general rule.

Impose a form of flying Etiquette - This one is probably the most interesting to me out of this whole list. In a world where there are sentient flying creatures that regularly engage in civilized society, there are probably rules that govern certain behaviors, as with all things. It’s probably considered generally rude for someone to fly in circles overhead during a meeting with the King. Likewise might it be rude for a bat to dangle from the ceiling at the Royal Banquet or the Grand Ball. Depending on your setting, you could also make it so that it’s rude to walk in certain places, if flying is the norm there. Consider how your characters are designed or dressed as well. Is it customary for wings to be strapped shut or wrapped in cloth while in a certain city? Is it customary for those that have combination arms and wings to hover in place over a pit of spikes during a negotiation so they can't draw their weapons? There's a lot of interesting things you can do here, I think, playing with the culture and etiquette of flying in your campaigns.

So that's it, that's all I got on this topic. Next week I'll go back to rambling about, idk, socks or something dumb. Remember the GM and the players share responsibility in making sure the game is fun for everyone at the table. Working together to tell the greatest stories imaginable is the best part of tabletop gaming!