Spelljammer I think Spelljammer will be more like Ravenloft then Strixhaven

[Stormonu]

Honestly, I want Spelljammer to have a Star Trek meets Captain Blood sort of feel, with most of the action involving travel to and fro and ship battles.

There’s a lot of interesting places that can be touched on - Astromundi Cluster, Krynnspace, Realmspace, Rock of Braal and even Shadow of the Spider Moon. The various SJ modules had a lot of fantastic places to draw from and there was even the Dragon magazine with the Kinori whales with communities/cities on their back.

I’d personally like it if they dumped the notions of Crystal Spheres and the Phologiston and made it possible to reach the outer planes, but that’s me.

Just, no Scro please.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Honestly, I want Spelljammer to have a Star Trek meets Captain Blood sort of feel, with most of the action involving travel to and fro and ship battles.

There’s a lot of interesting places that can be touched on - Astromundi Cluster, Krynnspace, Realmspace, Rock of Braal and even Shadow of the Spider Moon. The various SJ modules had a lot of fantastic places to draw from and there was even the Dragon magazine with the Kinori whales with communities/cities on their back.

I’d personally like it if they dumped the notions of Crystal Spheres and the Phologiston and made it possible to reach the outer planes, but that’s me.

Just, no Scro please.

What do you have against the Scro?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think Spelljammer will be more like Ravenloft then Strixhaven.

Here is why, they can break the setting up into Crystal Spheres the way Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft did with Domains, and that gives them a lot of room to explore very different settings.

Last year George, who did one of the major Domains for Ravenloft, said he was doing another South Asian thing for, D&D for WotC. I thought it was for FR as most other D&D settings don't have a fantasy India or Cambodia.

But it occurs to me what if it was for Spelljammer,, like what if they gave George his own Crystal Sphere to develop?

I mean the book could be broken up into Crystal Spheres like Ravenloft was for Domains. So there could be a Realmspace, Krynnspace, Greyspace, but also brand new Spheres exploring different themes, like a Fantasy India Spelljamming Crystal Sphere, or a fantasy Africa Crystal Sphere.

I don't think a huge part of it will be an adventure, unlike Strixhaven, only a minor part like VRGtR.

I hope so. A focus on crystal spheres would mean the game has more broadly useful stuff, especially for people like me who don’t like most of phlogiston oriented stuff of Spelljammer.

I do think it’s a missed opportunity to have VI’s or The Gatewatch or whatever guide to the multiverse, showing different 1-chapter guides to worlds new and old, D&D and MtG, that also functions as a worldbuilding guide, source for extraplanar characters and NPCs, and introduce new rules for planar travel.

 

[Stormonu]

What do you have against the Scro?

Lazy design - “they’re orcs, but opposite (and backwards)!” In 5E, using hobgoblins instead would do as well or better.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I'd really want a sphere sand box independent of the standard so you have a default location with plenty of spacey plot hooks. Then add the procedural world builder.

Heck this would be the place to put in the spacey stuff that we want but might have to tweak to make legally distinct (Blackmoor, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, that 2nd edition space ship box set (edit: aha Tales of the Comet), and Dragonstar).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Treasure Planet plus mind flayers and neogi. Hmm...Spelljammer.

Kiiiinda. Not sure how to get Treasure Planet without space, though.

still. I’ll burgle stuff from it liberally, so I’m glad it is (99% certain) going to be published within the next couple years.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The big thing about Spelljammer is the elevator pitch. It's a setting that mixes fantasy age of sail with all that implies for trading, piracy, and having a home ship that you can make yours. That's the point of releasing it - it was an amazing hook in 1989 and is an excellent hook today.

Absolutely.

It’s naval D&D campaigns in space (well kinda), which can be very fun.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I don't mind the lore or the background of the scros, but the name sounds horrible for my ears. It is too close to "scrotum".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

and why not just call them orcs? They're orcs. let them be orcs?

 

[Staffan]

It was indeed the case at the time of AD&D2, the crystal spheres contained all their own planes, including their cosmology of external planes. You could not travel from one crystal sphere to another one using other planes, for example.

But that is because, at the time, there were different primes. The 5e statement that there is only one prime material plane that contains all the worlds messed things up a bit, I think.

Nah, AD&D2 had a unified cosmology. Some settings had additional stuff (e.g. Dark Sun added the Gray and the Black), but they all still relied on the Great Wheel cosmology.

It was in 3e where different settings were allowed to have different cosmologies entirely, with access from one setting to another going through the Shadow Plane.