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.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

victorian military style explosion freaks

Great name for a band/album/song!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

On Spelljammer silliness: GSHs are required, IMHO, but need not be front & center. They could be a rare commodity, like Bugatti Veryons- rarely seen, but often discussed.

OTOH...

The Arcane animal husbandry employed by the gnomes who created GSHs could be quite...risky, resulting in all kinds of things. In the other 5Ed Spelljammer speculation thread, I joked about them creating miniature Kaiju. That’s a plot hook waiting to happen, and we’ve seen how fun it can be.

Inhabitants on a nice, jungle covered world buy loads of mini-Kaiju. Some escape..breed...

[video=youtube;dMjQ3hA9mEA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA&sns=em[/video]

[video=youtube;sd8Rk8_dUh4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd8Rk8_dUh4&sns=em[/video]

 

[Dungeonosophy]

It's very simple: Because it dictates that any setting it is attached to shifts its tone and focus to that of Spelljammer, and thus everything about those settings that made them unique and worthwhile AS stand-alone settings is gutted in favor of a willfully undefined Frankenstein kit-bash of settings.

The Forgotten Realms books (and other world-specific books) wouldn't bring Spelljammers in as a core element - because, as you say, space-travel is not essential to the tone of each setting...and for many campaigns it would be a distraction. But, vice versa, visiting strange new worlds is essential to the Spelljammer setting! I mean, sure, WotC could just do something like the 3E SJ minigame, and just focus on one corner of space, and not touch on the existing D&D worlds. And if they use the Curse of Strahd approach, they will just do one big adventure set in an iconic locale. But it just doesn't make sense to me to offer a D&D-in-Space book...but to ignore the location of the various D&D worlds! Even if the 5E SJ book is a single adventure, why not have a beautiful, detailed map of the D&D Galaxy as an appendix and show all the published worlds and spheres? Though I understand what you're saying in regard to the distinct tone of each published setting, in another sense, they are not "stand-alone" settings. The 5E PHB explicitly says all those worlds (Athas, Blackmoor, Oerth, Eberron, Toril, Krynn, Mystara, Aebrynis) are all in the same D&D Multiverse...in the same Material Plane.

Castles can be bombed into rubble by dropping rocks from a stable, hovering spelljammer overhead that is out of range of spells and missiles - so every castle, EVERYWHERE, has a vested interest in obtaining spelljammers to either do such bombing themselves, or to park one overhead to prevent that.

Yeah but at least two of the main D&D worlds already have airships built into the setting...Mystara (in a big way) and Eberron. Mystara was barely tied to the Spelljammer series (IIRC there was just one product and a DRAGON magazine article which mentioned Spelljammers in Mystara), but there are three nations (Alphatia, Thyatis, and Heldann) which have big Skyship fleets which are an integral part of the setting...and the world doesn't fall apart. Despite the presence of Skyships, castles and armies and caravan travel are mostly the same as in any other fantasy world. Most every D&D world already has flying carpets, attacking dragons, and all sorts of aerial assaults. Yeah, if a DM chose to introduce an invasion of Spelljammers into their sleepy fantasy world, it'd be a huge campaign event...just as would the invasion of the world by Tiamat, or Demigorgon, or the F.S.S. Beagle, or a Tarrasque, or the Night of the Comet, or whatever. Those cataclysmic events aren't essential to the tone of the setting, but they're well within the range of events which a Spelljammer product would address.

And yet, when it comes to connecting game worlds together I have only just realized how BAD it is at doing so. As things are written, a round trip from, say, Oerth to Faerun would average nearly a year. {...} Teleportation or planar travel, which had been around in D&D rules already for at least 10 years before Spelljammer, are far faster and even safer and more reliable means of crossing to other game worlds - assuming that IS what you wanted to actually DO with Spelljammer.

That's a good point. I'm all for changing the way Spelljamming works...whatever maximizes the fun. Also, I'm for offering full support for world-hopping campaigns (for those DMs who are interested)...and not only via Spelljammer, but also a 5E Chronomancer, and a 5E Planescape.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Here's an article I wrote about Spelljammer during the 3rd edition days, but I think a lot of the themes work here too.

Creating Spelljammer for 3rd Edition

Short version is that Spelljammer should be both its own setting and a way to travel between settings.

 

[maceochaid]

I think 4th edition had it right, move away from Spelljammers as dealing with traveling between crystal spheres and instead make it a pathway through the Astral Sea to the outer planes. What I like about the spell jamming helms is that they do provide good resource attrition for the exploration pillar, wizards on long journey have to spend spell slots to move, but the emphasis should be on balancing how that resources works out. Don't try and link worlds with Spelljammer, it will just make the canon murky. Dragonlance canon itself gets contradictory, trying to reconcile it with Athas and Toril is impossible. Treat it as a setting in it's own right and toss in a throw away line "Spelljammers are possibly way to access other worlds." But spill as little ink as possible on trying to reconcile it.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think 4th edition had it right, move away from Spelljammers as dealing with traveling between crystal spheres and instead make it a pathway through the Astral Sea to the outer planes. What I like about the spell jamming helms is that they do provide good resource attrition for the exploration pillar, wizards on long journey have to spend spell slots to move, but the emphasis should be on balancing how that resources works out. Don't try and link worlds with Spelljammer, it will just make the canon murky. Dragonlance canon itself gets contradictory, trying to reconcile it with Athas and Toril is impossible. Treat it as a setting in it's own right and toss in a throw away line "Spelljammers are possibly way to access other worlds." But spill as little ink as possible on trying to reconcile it.

I agree that's the most reasonable implementation of Spelljammer.

To be honest, in 4e I didn't even think of the 'Astral Sea' as a fresh take on Spelljammer. But you're totally right! "The Plane Above" and "The Plane Below" were also among my favorite supplements for 4e. By putting Spelljammer in the Astral Plane you neatly avoid all of the complications that the weird cosmology around crystal spheres and the phlogiston created. I didn't like Spelljammer in 2e, but I'd totally dig the 'Astral Sea' version.

 

[delericho]

Mystara was barely tied to the Spelljammer series (IIRC there was just one product and a DRAGON magazine article which mentioned Spelljammers in Mystara)...

For a very long time, Mystara was a D&D setting rather than an AD&D setting - for legal reasons, TSR had to maintain a very strict line between these two strands. Consequently, Mystara products couldn't link to Spelljammer.

Eventually, the various legal issues were reconciled, and Mystara had at least some books published for AD&D (I own a Monstrous Compendium appendix for the setting). I would guess those few links you mention are probably from about that time.

 

[delericho]

How would I design for Spelljammer?

Firstly, I'd make it mostly it's own setting - the 'big three' of Realmspace, Greyspace and Krynnspace would exist (along with Athas-space, Eberron-space, etc), but I'd move them waaay over to the side of the map. Links between Spelljammer and those other settings would need to be vanishingly rare - as noted, this is needed to avoid polluting those settings. (I would fix the Shou by casting the Spelljamming empire as an offshoot who departed the Realms centuries, and two editions ago, and who had been utterly cut off by one of the Realms-Shaking Events - an in-setting retcon )

I would remove the "Phlogiston is explosive" point of lore. That's a small thing, but necessary because I also want:

At least some ships should be mounted with cannon, and other black-powder weapons. (And, of course, the Giff just love these.) Also, I would have at least some Steampunk ships and helms in the mix.

I would also remove the "spellcasters lose their slots" bit of lore, since it's just pain (and was largely ignored anyway). And, in fact, I'd be inclined to get rid of the requirement that the helmsman be a caster anyway - base it on character level rather than caster level.

They need to introduce some things into the setting to make for an economy - if Krynn offers all the standard fantasy gear, and the Realms also offers all the same standard fantasy gear, how can there be trade between the two, especially if it's inherently slow and costly? So maybe there's a fleet of ships hunting for Space-whales for the oil, or miners extracting Residuum from various worldlets, or similar. (And the more they can make these into adventure-fodder, the better for everyone of course.)

I'd be disinclined to make the Elven Armada the "bad guys" - arrogant, officious and generally annoying, yes, but even more annoying because most of the time they're right. However, I'd be inclined to view them as a paper tiger - the Unhuman War was hugely destructive, to the extent that although they won the Elven Armada has had it's back broken and will never recover. Of course, the elves are desperate to hide this fact... and it also means that when the Scro get around to kicking off the Second Unhuman War there isn't actually anyone in a position to stop them.

The setting needs more settlements, especially small-ish settlements with distinct characters (and not just "this is the dwarf city", "this is the elf city" - they need to allow for a comfortable mix of races, yet not all feel the same).

And it also needs more mysterious locations. The Spelljammer is all well and good, but it's only one example - the PCs really need something to quest for in their second campaign as well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don’t agree with all of that, but much of that is pretty solid.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Spelljammer is fantasy space travel, so I would keep it as an add on to the D&D game, it is Dungeons and Dragons onboard magical flying ships in space, so I would keep the boarding action, and keep all the rules. I would not go in the direction of Starfinder, I would resist the temptation to introduce new tech to the game, by keeping it all magical but as D&D in space. I would use the monsters in the Monster Manuals as aliens. The one thing Starfinder does is it makes its setting "Science Fictional" without it actually being science fiction. As far as Science Fiction role playing games modeled after Dungeons and Dragons I liked the Buck Rogers XXV RPG.

The game was actually a hard science fiction role playing game despite its pulpish artwork. They published a more pulpish version later that I didn't like, but the original role playing game was great!, and it was compatible with Dungeons and Dragons at that time. I think we could make a 5e version of Buck Rogers XXV, what do you think?