Corsairs of the Celestial Sea is... the setup for a private D&D game I want to run for some of my friends and family. The premise is to take the modern, single-sphere approach to Spelljammer and aggressively ramp up the implied Chinese fantasy elements of Realmspace. I'm an old school guy, and my initial plan was to run this in Old School Essentials with the martial arts rules from Flying Swordsmen; that proved to be... a little more difficult than I estimated, and reworking some elements of PF1 and D&D5 is moving a lot smoother. (Hence why the thread is here.)
The Setting: An enormous, sprawling "binary"-- two primary stars, but numerous secondaries-- star system with dozens of Inner Worlds orbiting each star individually, and dozens of Outer Worlds orbiting them as a pair. The Inner Worlds orbiting each primary (mostly) revolve in opposite directions, and their orbital paths intersect every year, though which planets actually make "close" approaches varies from year to year. The Outer Worlds contain many secondary fire bodies that serve as miniature suns for their habitable moons. There are a handful of large, environmentally and culturally diverse planets-- Torils, Golarions, Eberrons-- between the two primaries, with the vast majority of planets being more typical space fantasy fare.
Culturally and technologically, the Sphere is largely late medieval/early Renaissance with gunpowder weapons and the printing press, but early in the process of mercantilism devouring and replacing feudalism, hereditary monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. I'm drawing deep from the same well of anachronism stew as most D&D-- this isn't explicitly an "Oriental Adventures" (ugh) setting, it's a setting in which OA had been part of the core rules all along-- with a lot of extra emphasis on Chinese sources, and a little extra emphasis on Japanese, Korean, and Indian sources and with European sourced cultures being more about the 16th/17th centuries than the 12th/13th. Cosmologically, a lot of the design of the setting is based on the idea that CJK and Hindu folklore and literature are a more significant part of the spiritual truth of the setting than TSR's original classical and pulp fantasy roots.
Minor note on cosmology-- mortals have a lot of theories about the cosmology of the universe, and no way of verifying them. In the maybe two or three centuries since the discovery of space flight, a lot of cultures compared notes and syncretized their folk religions into fantasyloaf... and there's a handful of powerful minority high religion organizations, but the only thing people actually know in-universe is that dead people go somewhere before they come back, the angels and the demons and the genies et al exist somewhere before they're summoned here, and trying to learn more about it does not work well and does not end well. The Astral and the Ethereal exist as liminal spaces and there's nothing interesting there except shortcuts between interesting things in the Real World.
Aliens... I am drawing from traditional D&D fantasy races and humanoid monsters, Spelljammer and Star Frontiers, Alternity's Star•Drive aliens, and Paizo's Pathfinder and Starfinder alien races.
The System: I'm ripping out the majority of 5e's class system to use it as a delivery vehicle for a smattering of mostly 3PP PF1 and 5e content. The martial arts rules are inspired by and adapted from Dreamscarred Press' Path of War systems, the psionics rules are something I found on DM's Guild, and I'm just beating the whole thing with the houserules stick to get all the gears turning in the same direction. Martial maneuvers and spells go up to 7th level. Part of my goal in replacing all of the classes in 5th is that there's no "default" Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard.
The Power Sources are broken down thus:
The Setting: An enormous, sprawling "binary"-- two primary stars, but numerous secondaries-- star system with dozens of Inner Worlds orbiting each star individually, and dozens of Outer Worlds orbiting them as a pair. The Inner Worlds orbiting each primary (mostly) revolve in opposite directions, and their orbital paths intersect every year, though which planets actually make "close" approaches varies from year to year. The Outer Worlds contain many secondary fire bodies that serve as miniature suns for their habitable moons. There are a handful of large, environmentally and culturally diverse planets-- Torils, Golarions, Eberrons-- between the two primaries, with the vast majority of planets being more typical space fantasy fare.
Culturally and technologically, the Sphere is largely late medieval/early Renaissance with gunpowder weapons and the printing press, but early in the process of mercantilism devouring and replacing feudalism, hereditary monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. I'm drawing deep from the same well of anachronism stew as most D&D-- this isn't explicitly an "Oriental Adventures" (ugh) setting, it's a setting in which OA had been part of the core rules all along-- with a lot of extra emphasis on Chinese sources, and a little extra emphasis on Japanese, Korean, and Indian sources and with European sourced cultures being more about the 16th/17th centuries than the 12th/13th. Cosmologically, a lot of the design of the setting is based on the idea that CJK and Hindu folklore and literature are a more significant part of the spiritual truth of the setting than TSR's original classical and pulp fantasy roots.
Minor note on cosmology-- mortals have a lot of theories about the cosmology of the universe, and no way of verifying them. In the maybe two or three centuries since the discovery of space flight, a lot of cultures compared notes and syncretized their folk religions into fantasyloaf... and there's a handful of powerful minority high religion organizations, but the only thing people actually know in-universe is that dead people go somewhere before they come back, the angels and the demons and the genies et al exist somewhere before they're summoned here, and trying to learn more about it does not work well and does not end well. The Astral and the Ethereal exist as liminal spaces and there's nothing interesting there except shortcuts between interesting things in the Real World.
Aliens... I am drawing from traditional D&D fantasy races and humanoid monsters, Spelljammer and Star Frontiers, Alternity's Star•Drive aliens, and Paizo's Pathfinder and Starfinder alien races.
The System: I'm ripping out the majority of 5e's class system to use it as a delivery vehicle for a smattering of mostly 3PP PF1 and 5e content. The martial arts rules are inspired by and adapted from Dreamscarred Press' Path of War systems, the psionics rules are something I found on DM's Guild, and I'm just beating the whole thing with the houserules stick to get all the gears turning in the same direction. Martial maneuvers and spells go up to 7th level. Part of my goal in replacing all of the classes in 5th is that there's no "default" Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard.
The Power Sources are broken down thus:
- Martial and Psychic are two sides of the same coin. Every living thing has some capacity for them and "pure" martial characters have enhanced psionic capacity and vice versa.
- Divine is the magic of the Celestial Bureaucracy, the turning of the wheel. It's the magic of dragons, celestials and fiends, and shamans and sorcerers and warlocks.
- Arcane magic is the magic of fey creatures (including elves and goblins) and genies and beings of shadow; not outside of the Celestial Bureaucracy, but largely indifferent to it. Bards and magi are arcane.
- The undead are a special case of combining arcane and divine in a way that blasphemes both.
- Eldritch is the magic of things that are definitely outside of the Celestial Bureaucracy, but not against it. If divine magic is about natural life, eldritch isn't so picky. It's the magic of aberrations, of druids and witches.
