Worlds of Design: How Would You Design For Spelljammer?

I enjoyed playing Spelljammer in conjunction with the 1e D&D rules back in the day - I'm a naval guy at heart. For those who don't remember, it's FRPG in outer space, with different physics and magical spaceships that often resemble creatures such as sharks or wasps, for 7th-13th level. (There was a brief version in Dungeon Magazine for 3e as well.) I read that we may see a new version for 5e, so I dug out some old notes in order to discuss the design of the original game.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Spelljammer included core rules, supplements, adventures. The rules and published adventures are chaotic, inconsistent, as though there was no editorial oversight. Sometimes they don't even enforce the major rule that the helmsman has lost all his spells for the day, or the major rule that the strategic (not tactical) speed of all ships is the same.

The former highlights the biggest problem for an adventuring party that controls a 'jammer, one of the characters (two, if the ship is under power 24 hours) must give up his spells to helm the ship, which means either:

• the players with spell-casters should have an extra character because one will be mostly-useless when out in wildspace, or
• NPCs take care of the helming, often a lowish-level type since the low level doesn't affect strategic speed even though it affects tactical speed. But in battle either the players sacrifice one of their high level spell-casters, or they are at a disadvantage in maneuver (another reason to board, if you can get close enough).

The weapons are ridiculously accurate. This is not unusual for fantasy games: most people don't realize how hard it is during combat to hit a target with anything, even with a pistol at a range of less than 10 feet. (That's why automatic weapons are so popular.) Yet rarely, in a battle, was a ship destroyed (I remember my 40 ton galleon disintegrating!); instead, boarding action was the order of the day. So Spelljammer battles often become the equivalent of encounters in buildings (castle, cathedral, etc.), two or three ships locked together with otherwise-fairly-typical D&D combat going on (with 3D action). I have deck plans found online that can be printed out at a size for actual play (square grids). One of my player's made a physical Hammership (for combat, not for looks) that I still have, about four feet long.

The tonnage of ships (which is supposed to be gross tonnage, that is, volume) is sometimes way out of proportion with the deck plans. Somewhere I have a list of the squares of the deck plans compared with the tonnage, and it varies wildly. Once again, no effective editorial oversight.

The biggest flaw was one of behavior. If you had a substantial sized flying vessel would you go out into (wild)space looking for trouble, or would you stay on the planet and use your nigh-invulnerable super bomber as a means for terrestrial combat? Even if you have nothing that would explode and can only drop rocks, you've got a stupendous advantage; but gunpowder and bombards are available in this game. The assumption of the Spelljammer rules was that no one would ever do this! I can't recall rules for conducting a battle in this context.

The game included many new monsters. The spiderlike Neogi are built up as major bad guys, but aren't dangerous compared with (insane) beholder-filled ships - Just Say No! Ships full of Illithids and their slaves are scary enough, thank you.

I drafted a set of standalone rules to solve these problems, but never finished them. More recently, I tested a game of fleet battles using some of Spelljammer's ideas. Maybe someday I'll finish one or the other, but first we'll see what Wizards of the Coast are going to do.

 

[Dalillama]

Soon. It's going to be one of the official settings for the retroclone I am designing. I was developing it as a separate game, but my artist quit on me, and in the interim I started working on a system that would be perfectly suited to two of my three settings.

If you can find a copy, you might want to take a look at Hackjammer; the authors were trying to fix a lotta the bugs in SJ. Among other things they added magical oars and sails that could replace helms, with some disadvantages. Lost Spheres has a version too.

I don't actually recall a super-whole lot about SJ. I only played in one campaign.

However, I like the idea of a "broken" crystal sphere, with asteroids etc. floating out in the phlogiston. Perfect setup for Airship Pirates IN SPAAACE, plus it could look a lot more like the visually awesome Treasure Planet movie.

There's canonically a broken sphere, forget the details.

Ruleswise....

So I hate the Hit Point mechanic, in general...

I can almost deal with it for hack-n-slash. But if a setting includes firearms?

No, just no. All the little things that make HP kinda work (in-fiction) when you squint your eyes in fantasy just go away when firearms are involved.

I almost feel like firearms require a Karma/Charisma-based saving throw mechanic, rather than HP. Like, you get shot and start making a series of saves. Each missed save increases the severity of the injury. (some number 3, 4, 5? misses means instant-kill)

My current game is a port to GURPS 4e, which handles the intersection of swords, guns, and badassery by making defences separate from hit points; not getting hit is totally unrelated to ability to soak damage, and a solid hit can positively ruin your day.

Oh, and it seems to me that the solution to the "bomber" problem is just to make atmospheric operations of a helm crazy expensive or awkward somehow. (Like real costs to players, not just money.) If getting into and out of orbit is easier than sailing to next county....

Weather can be made as much of a problem as a GM feels like, but the other answer is a combination of 'anyplace worth bombing has defences against that kind of thing' and 'if the PCs want to gather a fleet and make themselves an out-of-context problem for some backwater planet, that's their fun'. In my version of the setting, Realmspace, Greyspace, and Krynnspace are basically the middle of nowhere; obscure systems off the major transit routes that are full of impoverished hicks who have nothing anyone in space really wants. They're visited sometimes by tramp freighters and slave raiders, but mostly nobody can be bothered.