D&D 5E PlaneJammer: Sailing the Astral Sea

[Reynard]

After some discussion, one of my weekly groups has decided on a kitbashed PlaneJammer (ie Spelljammer except in the Astral Plane where it belongs) campaign. They will be spending their time smuggling delicacies from Elysium to the Lower Planes and the like, dodging astral dreadnoughts and githyanki pirates.

The purpose of this thread is twofold:

1) Help! I need suggestions on what resources to fold into this campaign. What books will be of immediate use for a "smugglers plying the Astral Sea" with a pretty episodic structure.

2) I want your perspective on how to most effectively mash up the Spelljammer and Planescape aspects. The only ideas I have set in stone right now is that "planejammers" run on psychic power, not magic (although there could be different flavors for different factions; ie infernal "souljammers", etc.). What is the "best of" of Planescape and Spelljammer to incorporate.

Also, I will be running the game on Fantasy Grounds so I will need some 'jammer ship maps, as well as lots of weird locations.

 

[darjr]

Get the 4th edition astral sea books. Also collect the Iomadra articles from Chris Perkins.
Also look at the random sector generation stuff from Traveller, I often wish there was something similar for planar locations or places in the astral sea. Or for places in a fantasy sea.

 

[Reynard]

(although there could be different flavors for different factions; ie infernal "souljammers", etc.).

I just had a thought: all factions use different kinds of 'jammers:

Devils and demons use souljammers
modrons and inevitables use mathjammers
celestials use blissjammers
psionic races use mindjammers
etc...

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd probably make the ships run on tech rather than something a PC or NPC has as an ability. I like Jim Butcher's vision of this in his novel Aeronaut's Windlass, where the ships run on big aether crystals and 'firearms' run on smaller ones.

I'd suggest Skycrawl as a very useful tool. I like the nav and travel stuff there way more than anything from Spelljammer. From a D&D sourcebook perspective, the 4E sourcebook called Secrets of the Astral Sea has some exellent stuff in it for adventure types and hooks, and the Planeswalkers Handbook is probably the best single resource for quick sketches of all the planes, faces, and hooks. There's a 'zine called Crawljammer that's really good as well. Issue 6 has some good random tools for jamming pests and encounters, and issue 1 has some cool ideas for ship types and stats. As a baseline, and for some good stuff on tech and encounters, I'd suggest an OSR game called Into the Odd.

If you need some extra juice, Dragon Magazine Issues 371, 372, 372, 377 and 378 have solid planar content.

The above suggestions are based on my own resource gathering for a very similar project. I have way more than that, but those are the books I've been looking at the most (as recently as last night actually).

 

[Reynard]

I'd probably make the ships run on tech rather than something a PC or NPC has as an ability. I like Jim Butcher's vision of this in his novel Aeronaut's Windlass, where the ships run on big aether crystals and 'firearms' run on smaller ones.

I'd suggest Skycrawl as a very useful tool. I like the nav and travel stuff there way more than anything from Spelljammer. From a D&D sourcebook perspective, the 4E sourcebook called Secrets of the Astral Sea has some exellent stuff in it for adventure types and hooks, and the Planeswalkers Handbook is probably the best single resource for quick sketches of all the planes, faces, and hooks. There's a 'zine called Crawljammer that's really good as well. Issue 6 has some good random tools for jamming pests and encounters, and issue 1 has some cool ideas for ship types and stats. As a baseline, and for some good stuff on tech and encounters, I'd suggest an OSR game called Into the Odd.

If you need some extra juice, Dragon Magazine Issues 371, 372, 372, 377 and 378 have solid planar content.

The above suggestions are based on my own resource gathering for a very similar project. I have way more than that, but those are the books I've been looking at the most (as recently as last night actually).

Cool. Thanks.

For the record, I feel no compulsion to stick to any sort of canon -- no one playing this games cares about official perspectives on either Spelljammer or Planescape, so we will happily mix and match and throw in whatever cool side stuff we find. But by using the general structure of D&D cosmology and Spelljammer aesthetics, we have a solid foundation of common imagery and language from which to jump off.

 

[Reynard]

Does anyone have a good suggestion for merchant/smuggler operations? It doesn't have to be 5E I guess, but if the campaign is going to be built around it I would like a system in place that actually helps adjudicate success and failure, profit and loss.

 

[overgeeked]

The 4E books Manual of the Planes, Realm Above, and Realm Below. Between those three you’ll have enough for a campaign.

 

[darjr]

I’d go without an “engine”. Make them more like sailing ships. They ride on the winds of fate. Or something. Maybe different kinds of “wind” exist, like what was listed. The hot brimstone winds of hell. The clear air of the bright shores of eleysium. The bitter cold blasts of the one tree.

I think that would open up more sea faring like stories. Like the make shift raft to escape the rotting deserted desolate dead god floating in the astral sea.

 

[Fenris-77]

Cool. Thanks.

For the record, I feel no compulsion to stick to any sort of canon -- no one playing this games cares about official perspectives on either Spelljammer or Planescape, so we will happily mix and match and throw in whatever cool side stuff we find. But by using the general structure of D&D cosmology and Spelljammer aesthetics, we have a solid foundation of common imagery and language from which to jump off.

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think I'm likely to jettison some of the official cosmology, at least in terms of how it affects travel and also what exactly is in the Astral Plane. I want the Astral to look more like the world from movie Dragon Warriors, with shattered bits, realms, and all manner of strangeness floating and orbiting through it. The other thing I'm doing is I'm going to add ship sized gates to get from A to B.

That last bit needs a lot of unpacking, which I'll elide for the moment, but generally, I'm looking for a game that's more about investigating smaller locations, and less about long voyages and planet sized destinations. The latter especially is far too much scope for what I want to do.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think I'm likely to jettison some of the official cosmology, at least in terms of how it affects travel and also what exactly is in the Astral Plane. I want the Astral to look more like the world from movie Dragon Warriors, with shattered bits, realms, and all manner of strangeness floating and orbiting through it. The other thing I'm doing is I'm going to add ship sized gates to get from A to B.

That last bit needs a lot of unpacking, which I'll elide for the moment, but generally, I'm looking for a game that's more about investigating smaller locations, and less about long voyages and planet sized destinations. The latter especially is far too much scope for what I want to do.

The Disney film Treasure Planet is a good, quick watch for something like that.