Greg Benage
Legend
It would have been much more useful to me, and in that respect, it would have been a much better (i.e. more valuable) product. I bought it to use in a campaign.But does it make a better setting?
It would have been much more useful to me, and in that respect, it would have been a much better (i.e. more valuable) product. I bought it to use in a campaign.But does it make a better setting?
I checked the reviews on Amazon and it has more than 70% of reviews at 5 stars (from 2200)
So, doesn't seem that bad.
I had a look at Tasha's, and it has over 20,000 reviews and not a single review was under 3 stars.
8 pages of setting material for SPELLJAMMER, 6 of which is The Rock of Bral means that it's insufficient.Yeah, you disagree, but you have yet to demonstrate anything except "2e had more!!!". Which doesn't mean that this is insufficient.
The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was very good for a setting book. You can measure up the 8 pages of Spelljammer material to that book to see if Spelljammer is sufficient.Then every setting is incomplete, because no setting has a complete gazeteer about EVERYTHING. It is an impossible standard. And frankly, not one that I have ever heard before.
Um, yes locations inside a city are different from the city as a whole. That's the point.Wow... really? "Each of the walls of Minas Tirith" cover seven different locations? Did a quick google, seems each wall is not unique and special. Also, are the walls of a city really a different location than the city itself? Is the gate in the walls a different location than the walls?
No. It would be like the Rock of Bral saying it had Starhaven, Andru's palace as a separate location. Oh, wait. That's on page 60 of the 5e setting book. It's part of the 8 pages of setting material.That'd be like the writer of the Rock of Bral information saying that they had two locations, Elmandar's Star Charts, the business, and Elmandar's Bathroom inside of Elmandar's Star charts.
The setting is very, very sparse. Too sparse. 5e gave me 6 pages on the Rock of Bral. 2e gave me 85 pages on it.
2e and 3e did settings right. First they put out a decent comprehensive setting and then later more detailed sections of the settings. The section on the rock in the first setting product wasn't much to go on, either.Sorry to go all the way back to your first post, but when you say 2E had 85 pgs on The Rock of Bral, are you talking about the original Campaign setting box set? I thought that only had a 3 page appendix on The Rock of Bral?
Even 4e and 5e, with their much stripped-back setting support, have done good settings. 4e's "Eberron Campaign Guide" and 5e's "Rising from the Last War" are both very good one-book takes on the setting. Likewise, 4e's "Dark Sun Campaign Setting" and 5e's "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft", despite having significant changes to the setting that are very much not to some people's tastes, are well done books.2e and 3e did settings right. First they put out a decent comprehensive setting and then later more detailed sections of the settings. The section on the rock in the first setting product wasn't much to go on, either.
My 2 cents:Well, so far, from the very limited anecdotes in this thread, those who actually played it and used it, enjoyed it.
Has anyone run this and not enjoyed it? That, to me, would be the strongest condemnation. "It doesn't have X" is not a condemnation. If you want X, add it. It's not like it's all that hard. You can use the published 2e stuff, outside of mechanics, as is. You don't even have to do conversions.
Did pick up a really cool random world generator from Reddit. Will have to go poke around my hard drive when I get home and I'll post it here.
Yeah, our tables PCS are around the same level range as yours and I plan on doing a Spelljammer stint. Given this and other comments I will not be purchasing 5e's Spelljammer. I'd rather convert 2e material to be honest.WotC's decision to stop making content for high-level games really hurt the book's usefulness to me. My party was level 13-14 around the time they went to space, with a lot of powerful magic items and NPC sidekicks with them. As a result, I need a lot of high CR monsters to challenge them. Most of the monsters are in CR 3-9 range, so they weren't that useful to me, (snip)
I reject the proposition that an introduction should necessarily be quick and linear.
It should have something meaty in it. If not more setting, it should at a minimum have some way to generate places for the setting. I'm disappointed that there's basically no advice for creating planets, systems, or the like in it, for instance.
I'm not saying that you're wrong to say it's good enough for you. I'm just saying that I find it very, very disappointing, and that, moreover, the things I find disappointing are consistent in recent releases- everything after Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which, in contrast, I find fantastic and full of great advice and techniques for running horror games of all kinds. VRGtR was meaty; regardless of how closely it hewed to previous RL material, it provided what you need to run horror. It was like a great hunk of meat dripping with juice. In contrast, the 5e SJ book is like the bones left after you eat a steak: you can get a few scraps from it, but if you're hungry for D&D in space, you basically need to cook a new meal.
Fair enough. I didn't read the space clowns because they're not something I would ever use. I figured you got the name from the adventure which is something else I will never use. I was buying two books and only the monsters book mostly delivered. I was okay with that one. The setting book, though, failed to be much of anything. It was waaaaaaay too sparse with the information given. Hell, since you don't count mechanics as setting, there was almost no setting at all.
After PC options, which are not setting, it got into adventuring, which was nearly all mechanics. The only actual setting material in the setting book was the Rock of Bral and that was 6 pages, and 2 pages on the astral sea. 8 pages of setting in the setting book.
Speaking only for myself, who never owned a 2e spelljammer product til picking a couple up on DMGuild a bit before this release - I'm not judging it as a setting book against the 2e line. I haven't even read the majority of the 2e line. I'm judging it as a setting book against other 5e setting books - Rising from the Last War, VRGtR, SCAG, and even third party setting books like Midgard. It's 2022, we're not short of comparisons here.
Irrelevant I'm not buying it based in all the negative feedback.
. If I really want too run Spelljammer IL break out my 2E stuff no need to buy the 5E version.
Newer players can do whatever they like.
My players are getting value out of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign I created.So, it could be a GREAT setting, because newer players are getting value out of it.
(snip)
My point is that saying "there haven't been any good setting books" (The claim in the previous thread that inspired this) seems completely wrong when I can take a setting book with such horrible feedback and say "Nope, I can an entire campaign set in this world." The setting works fine, it is a good setting. The issue many people seem to have is it isn't the 2e setting.
I'm playing in a spelljammer game right now - it's okay. That group was already pretty gonzo and the ship is mostly just a home base, so it feels like just another setting.Well, so far, from the very limited anecdotes in this thread, those who actually played it and used it, enjoyed it.
Has anyone run this and not enjoyed it? That, to me, would be the strongest condemnation. "It doesn't have X" is not a condemnation. If you want X, add it. It's not like it's all that hard. You can use the published 2e stuff, outside of mechanics, as is. You don't even have to do conversions.
Did pick up a really cool random world generator from Reddit. Will have to go poke around my hard drive when I get home and I'll post it here.
... can you send me a link? My German is bad but I think this might be the sort of thing to make me actually practice it (plus I want to content)So, the Spelljammer Boxed set is a mixed bag.
1. The adventure is good. The format they picked is very easy to run with minimal prep. I like that.
2. The Monster book is fine and usable.
3. The Astral Adventurer’s Guide is lacking from a DMs perspective. For Players the ships and new species are fine.
For DMs?
There is not a lot to use. How do I build my own spelljammer systems? How do I build adventures in spelljammer? Is ship combat really so dull and boring (if you start at 1000 feet distance, you need at least 10 rounds before people can use anything else than the shipboard weapons, which don't do enough damage to change anything).
My expectations were something similiar to Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft. A freaking book that gives me a lot of examples on what to build. With Ravenloft I know now how to build a freaking domain of dread and have dozens of ideas.
With the 5e boxed set? Nothing. Two example systems without any details that sre not even jn the DM book but in the adventure.
I had to go to 2e to actually get an Idea on how to use spelljammer as DM. How to create systems and adventures in Spelljammer.
Very simple things are missing, like how long are traveltimes in the Astral Sea? How long does it take to start from a planet? What planet types are there?
When spelljammer came out, I wanted to write a short intro adventure for the DMs Guild in German (my native language). What I ended up with was a 50 page supplement with all the rules that were missing in my opinion from the 5e set - like system and planet creation rules, adventure creation tables and guidelines, more advanced ship combat and travel rules, hazards in space, magic items (like a low grade Spelljamming helm) and spells. And additionally an intro adventure that starts in space.
And what is crazy ... it is now not only the only German product for Spelljammer on the DMs Guild, it seems to be the only German spelljammer product ever (until they translate the boxes, which will probably again take forever).
That's not accurate. They do give regular speed which is a flat movement rate based on the individual ship. A Bombard has a fly speed of 35, so it will lose a race to a black pudding. The smaller ships are faster with the Damsel Fly having a speed of 70. So ships go from the faster ship barely being able to outpace a jogging human to warp speed with nothing in-between.I was very interested in the book before the came out. Then I read it. There are some useful rules stuff, but most of them give very vague ideas (how big air envelopes are etc.) that 1) already existed in the 2E books, sometimes with the same wording, 2) I could've come up with them using common sense. They completely axed any complex rules about space travel, and ships have a warp speed that is the same for all ships (so ship quality never affects travel times) and a regular speed - about which there are no rules.