Worlds of Design: How Would You Design For Spelljammer?

delericho · Mar 28, 2018

lewpuls said:
I think you misunderstand. Almost all of my standalone games are models of some (possibly fictional) situation, whereas a great many modern board games (such as many Euros) are abstract (model of nothing) even if a story is tacked on. Modeling is essential. But if you only have story, you don't have a game. A story without mechanisms is not a game. When much of the discussion has been how to connect various realms (and which realms), you're not doing much (if anything) to specify mechanisms to model that.

You're right. There was context, expressed here, that I missed.

3D: No, it's a matter of practicality. It's too fiddly, too complex, to model 3D space. 3D dominates tabletop games where it's done. Even computer space games, which can model 3D much better than tabletop, are sometimes 2D.

That explains RPGs and board games, but it doesn't explain Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Babylon 5, "Space: Above and Beyond", or the like. Which was the point I was making in the paragraph above the one you quoted. Sci-fi, for all that it deals in a 3d environment, still extensively uses ships best suited to a 2d environment. There's no reason, then, that space fantasy such as Spelljammer should be any different.

Michael Silverbane · Mar 28, 2018

SMHWorlds said:
* Make the Elven High Fleet ...villains.. kind of like the Peace Keepers. Maybe not that bad, but close. Almost like the Vulcan High Command in Enterprise. That may be a better analogy.

This is very much the way that I treated the IEN in my most recent Spelljammer game. They weren't bad per say, but they were very much of the opinion that they were right, and that their policies would bear out as such over time, no matter what anyone else said. My players' characters hated them, but still felt compelled to (mostly) defer to their authority, because oftentimes, the alternatives were much, much worse (i.e. allowing Illithid, Neogi, Mercane, or Beholder authority to gain ascendancy).

Also, I portrayed (baslically) all planetbound elves as sort of backwater rednecks. It was great fun.

Von Ether · Mar 28, 2018

delericho said:
... if you work purely from setting first you'll get something that may look nice but is unfocused and useless.

If you are world building for sake of world building, yes. And it's a classic trap many novice game designers and genre writers fall into, letting the world get away from them as they get lost in the weeds creating detail after detail.

Many designers and authors do worlds in iteration, reigning things in and refocusing as they keep in mind that future mechanics or plot have an impact.

It's one of the reasons I think that genre writer don't get the credit they deserve. They have to make a fun plot, engaging characters, great prose AND a new world.

delericho · Mar 28, 2018

Von Ether said:
If you are world building for sake of world building, yes. And it's a classic trap many novice game designers and genre writers fall into, letting the world get away from them as they get lost in the weeds creating detail after detail.

Many designers and authors do worlds in iteration, reigning things in and refocusing as they keep in mind that future mechanics or plot have an impact.

It's one of the reasons I think that genre writer don't get the credit they deserve. They have to make a fun plot, engaging characters, great prose AND a new world.

Yep. Agreed on all points.

Jacob Lewis · Mar 29, 2018

Spelljammer should be more pulp-fiction than science-fiction. How do ships fly? Spell power! How does it work? Who cares! Fly the damn ship towards adventure and get on with it!

But how will they breathe? You never cared how monsters could survive in a single cavern within an unnatural and unexplained ecosystem that exists miles beneath the earth, why is this suddenly a concern?!

Why do we never see Giff outside of a space-traveling setting within the supposed multiverse of D&D cosmos? Good question! The answer is at the end of that space-plank. Hurry, or you might miss it!

lewpuls · Mar 29, 2018

Andor said:
If you have a low magic setting, and a fleet of Spell Jammers show up, then what you have done is exactly replicated Admiral Perry sailing into Edo harbor to tell the Tokugawa Shogunate that the time of isolation is over, and your players get to play through the Meiji restoration and the modernization (ramping up of magic level) of their setting. It would probably be a hell of a fun game, but it's not the standard assumption of Spelljammer.

Nice analogy.

Like the "magic" of great ocean going sailing ships (e.g. galleons), I can see Spelljammers meeting a low-magic campaign, where even the 'jammer people are generally in a low-magic state, they've just figured out 'jammers for some reason.

lewpuls · Mar 29, 2018

delericho said:
That explains RPGs and board games, but it doesn't explain Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Babylon 5, "Space: Above and Beyond", or the like. Which was the point I was making in the paragraph above the one you quoted. Sci-fi, for all that it deals in a 3d environment, still extensively uses ships best suited to a 2d environment. There's no reason, then, that space fantasy such as Spelljammer should be any different.

I watched a short vid on the maker's ideal Star Wars ship and laughed. The military side of Star Wars, from a practical point of view, is ludicrous. Spherical ships are boring, but far more practical than anything he suggested. I still remember complaining, after watching the first movie the first time, about the sound effects in outer space. But SW isn't even science fiction, it's science fantasy.

From a game design point of view, if I can make sense, and make a good game, that's preferable to making a game (good or not) that doesn't make sense.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 29, 2018

Also, smooth is better than craggy. Just like with armor, protrusions and indentations on a hull are spots where impacts get worsened.

At the very least, borrow design decisions from naval ships, and smooth out what you can.

Michael Silverbane · Mar 29, 2018

I think one important mechanism to a Spelljammer Campaign supplement would be some way to generate content.

Tables by which to generate spheres, planets, civilizations, fantasy aliens, ships, cargoes, commodities, and so on. These tables would likely look a bit similar to those found in Traveller, GURPS: Space, and Stars Without Number.

smiteworks · Mar 29, 2018

I liked the idea of magic powering a ship via the helm, but not at the expense of spell slots. You already lose a wizard because they are focused on flying the ship. Don't make the wizard useless when they finally step away from the helm too.

I liked the idea of the phlogiston connecting multiple crystal spheres. When I ran my campaign for a few years, I had players start out in a homebrew world and enter a phlogiston that constantly shifted. With that houserule, I was able to bring them to new homebrew worlds if I wanted or back into the standard worlds of D&D. The unpredictability of it opened up lots of great adventuring arcs.

I would have liked ship-to-ship combat to be a bit more cinematic until the boarding phase. Not every one of the players was interested in a tactical wargame simulation and how some games assign multiple roles to players is a good way to make it fun and exciting for everyone. Ship chases and escapes can also be boring if both ships have the same speed. A system that incorporates everyone in the party working together to either pull away, close the gap, etc. is more exciting.

Trading became a big part of the campaign for my players. They wanted to buy cheap and sell high from one planet to another. The problem was with how to manage this. Tracking tons of lumber, ore, food, etc was boring and required a spreadsheet. This should be abstracted as well and rely upon some combination of skill checks and randomness based on the distance traveled and other modifiers.

Salvage was another area where players wanted to exploit. They ended up collecting ships of defeated foes and hauling them back to port to sell. I mostly was able to keep this in check by inventing a bunch of salvage laws and fees. Instead of getting the full purchase price or trade-in price of salvaged helms and ships, they received a bounty. They had a license that allowed them to operate like this without being branded a pirate and hunted by the authorities - often ships of elves in powerful Man o' Wars or small fleets of humans in Hammerheads.

When making landfall, most landbound communities knew nothing of Spelljamming. I presented it mostly like Vampire the Masquerade where if the news leaked out, the players were likely to be assaulted by other powerful empires, orc clans, etc. who wanted the powerful ships and technology for themselves.