D&D 5E Compare Spell Jammer to Starfinder

[LuisCarlos17f]

Sometimes the horror is higher when it is mixed with comedy. Today horror+comedy movies are common. For example Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks". Those martians were fun and dreadful at the same time.

But speculative fiction is changing, and not only sci-fi is getting old. Today some players want biopunk organic technology as bionids, the gristle gun of David Croneberg's "eXistEnz", lifesapher tech by rhul-thaun (Dark Sun), or by yuuza vong from Star Wars Legends.

And at least as April Fool WotC should show D&D version of Hasbroverse franchises.

* Other matter. If firearms are in SJ then somebody will want weapons from d20 Past.... and alien races from d20 Future or from Starfinder.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sometimes the horror is higher when it is mixed with comedy. Today horror+comedy movies are common. For example Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks". Those martians were fun and dreadful at the same time.

But speculative fiction is changing, and not only sci-fi is getting old. Today some players want biopunk organic technology as bionids, the gristle gun of David Croneberg's "eXistEnz", lifesapher tech by rhul-thaun (Dark Sun), or by yuuza vong from Star Wars Legends.

And at least as April Fool WotC should show D&D version of Hasbroverse franchises.

* Other matter. If firearms are in SJ then somebody will want weapons from d20 Past.... and alien races from d20 Future or from Starfinder.

Your assertion that mars attacks was at all horror makes me figure that you never saw any of the old war of the worlds & other alien invader movies of their time that it was poking fun of.

The absurdity of spelljammer is a problem for multiversal verisimilitude though because a lot of that absurdity is also linked to cranking the cargo cult treatment of magic that you see in Forgotten Realms & Greyhawk up to 11. That was fine when those were the only settings, but darksun & eberron had not been published in 1989 when SJ was released. Both of those settings take an often darker take on magic as a (semi-lost) science & magic as a still advancing science. It's possible to cargo cult & even silly up magic as a (lost) science for tables that want to do that, but not really the other way around.... examples of doing that kind of thing include jaws>sharknado war of the worlds>mars attacks Independence day>iron sky, etc but there's just not enough meat to the plot in order spin the sugary nonsense of the spoofs into the more serious source material without putting in serious work to invent something new.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

When a franchise/IP universe is enough big, there is enough space for different tones, from comedy to horror.

Other matter is the retcons about some details. Maybe SJ will be practically a total reboot. Maybe the crystal spheres will suffering something like the Abeir-Toril Sundering and the change of continents.

 

[tetrasodium]

When a franchise/IP universe is enough big, there is enough space for different tones, from comedy to horror.

Other matter is the retcons about some details. Maybe SJ will be practically a total reboot. Maybe the crystal spheres will suffering something like the Abeir-Toril Sundering and the change of continents.

they really wouldn't need to retcon much. Arcane is basically a megacorp from somewhere that keeps itself relatively secret. Since they are practically a blank slate it's easy enough to expand on them as say blue age halflings/a few hundred years advanced offshoot of the twelve/etc selling old model cut rate designs of stuff for premium prices to harmless but wealthy primitives while keeping any designs from within the last generation or six to themselves & very select clients like stable governments with resources they want & such to ensure there are no threats from the primitives.

 

[Salthorae]

While this is all accurate, I wouldn't count on new SJ being so silly. I don't think there's a real market for that.

Have you not seen the Acquisitions Inc. and Rick and Morty 5e publications? Not my cup of tea for full-fledged games, but there is definitely a market for silliness in D&D.

I'd love to see SJ take on more of the horror aspects that could be present in it. I mean hell, there are planets and ships and fleets full of Neogi, Beholders, and Illithids out there in the stars of Spelljammer. That is some scary stuff! Plus there are undead jammers.

I'd love to see them play into those concepts and races in space!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The Joker, the famous Batman's archenemy is a example of how he can fun or ridiculous (in the 60) or a monster (the Dark Knight movie or Tim Burton's version).

If illithid can be no so hostile in SJ, it is a good space to recover the thoon cult. and a nerfed subrace to be played as PCs.

* Scros need a new name. Scro sounds as scrottum, al least for me as Spanish-speaker.

* Insectares are perfect because nobody will say my PC is a bad guy because she hates insectares' holy war.

* Any players don't want the SJ fluff, the lore or background, but only the crunch, to create their own version of sci-fi franchises.

* When Stafinder comics?

 

[Ath-kethin]

The Joker, the famous Batman's archenemy is a example of how he can fun or ridiculous (in the 60) or a monster (the Dark Knight movie or Tim Burton's version).

If illithid can be no so hostile in SJ, it is a good space to recover the thoon cult. and a nerfed subrace to be played as PCs.

* Scros need a new name. Scro sounds as scrottum, al least for me as Spanish-speaker.

* Insectares are perfect because nobody will say my PC is a bad guy because she hates insectares' holy war.

* Any players don't want the SJ fluff, the lore or background, but only the crunch, to create their own version of sci-fi franchises.

* When Stafinder comics?

I am an avid Spelljammer fanboy, and I have run everything from goofy space hijinks to horro games using the setting. It's embrace of prehistoric, classical, and medieval takes on physics are great, and their application as "real" laws of nature are incredible.

And incidentally, "scro" is "orcs" spelled backwards, and is a race of space orcs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I ran a PC- The Gnome Ranger- with a white-furred giant space hamster named Mithril as his steed. He preferred using twin repeating hand-held crossbows as weapons, with silver tipped bolts.

Mithril’s cheek pouches came in handy moving the wounded from the field of battle...


Yes, I loved Spelljammer.

 

[kelskats]

Silly? Don't see it. There have been flying ships (actual sailing ships that flew) in D&D before; SJ just categorized them and added space travel rules to D&D. Yeah, there were some strange monsters, but when has that not been a part of D&D? Also some of the ships were very strange: squid-shaped ships, whale-shaped ships, or spider-shaped ships come to mind. The Spelljammer itself was a huge creature that looked like a bigger-than-colossal manta ray peopled with several factions all trying to gain control of it or escape from it. It flew around space as it wanted and had a big city on its back. D&D has always had a claim to the absurd; I remember a gun-slinging, old western-version angel (solar) in one adventure and the silliness never stops there even in "normal" D&D. Spelljamming was what driving the space ship was called and only spellcasters could drive and lost all spells in memory just trying (taking out the party's big guns for ship-to-ship combat). Siege weapons got described fully and some new ones added. So as always, silly is a part of it like silly is a part of all D&D; but silly as the descriptor for it, I think not.

The BEST answer so far. As spectacularly helpful as the previous ones were spectacularly insufficient !
THX!
-kel

 

[Reynard]

I always felt like Spelljammer was ‘Age of Sails’ type large ships.
Star finder seems like harder Sci-fi

Spelljammer is very much weirder than that, but it is also almost nothing like Starfinder.

EDIT: LOL. I didn't even realize I was replying to a necrothread.