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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8848471" data-attributes="member: 5948">It isn't actually bad, it's just utterly inadequate (and it's very large, elaborate, and expensive while still being inadequate, which didn't help its reception).  What there is, is mostly quite ok.  I have my issues with some of the player-facing material (I still hate elves having floating proficiencies, and the less said about the various hadozee disasters the better) but it seems acceptable, on the whole.You can reasonably argue for not having locations in a Spelljammer setting book, sure.  Space is big, and you can't cover it all - thought there's not many excuses for not at least covering SOME of it.  But in that case, you need to cover organisations.  Tell us who the Imperial Elven Navy (or the neogi, or the giff, or the beholders  or even the scro or the Shou trading fleets) are, what they want.  How are they structured, what are their goals, their enemies, their leaders, their tactics and strategies, their strongholds, their internal factions, the members of their organisation that PCs are likely to encounter in diplomatic/military/exploratory/assassination scenarios?  How does a PC join up, if they're so inclined?  What does an adventure involving them look like?  Give us plot hooks for these organisations, give us a variety of stat blocks for members of each organisation useable at different CRs.  In short, go look in the organisations section of Rising From The Last War, and do exactly what they did there, because that was really solid, useful, practical material for running a campaign.I'm not even mad about them not including anything about religion, just disappointed.  It's annoying, but after they wimped out on covering it in Ravenloft, they were never going to do it here.  There's lots of classic spelljammer monsters that the weren't included in Boo's book, so that a bunch of last-minute Dark sun rebrands could be shoved in there.  Spelljammer and Dark Sun are thematically worlds apart.  Belgoi etc fit in a Spelljammer monster manual like a live weasel fits in a caesar salad.  If, as you argue, there's already enough monsters in other sourcebooks that you don't need any more here, wind the monster book into the adventure book, don't just pad it out with critters that belong in an utterly different setting (if an anaemic 64 page pamphlet can be called 'padded out')(I remain baffled why the deckplans are black and white.  Spelljammer is retro, sure, but you don't need to be THAT retro!)The Spelljammer box is fundamentally not what was advertised.  It isn't a campaign setting, even though it claims to be.  It's an adventure that is dressed up as a campaign setting, like Strixhaven was, and like WotCs preferred model seems to be these days.  Radiant Citadel was the same sort of product but to its credit, was more honest about it.  The setting material only really exists in a bare minimum form to support the campaign.  The great majority of locations it covers are only detailed in the adventure and lack info that you'd need to make them useful outside the narrow scope of that plot, many of the monsters are not Spelljammer monsters and are only here because of the not-Athas world in the adventure, etc etc.  Which is ... fine .. if that's your thing.  You can play a non-Xaryxis campaign using this book in the same way you can run a non-Strahd Ravenloft campaign using only Curse of Strahd as your campaign setting.  Maybe the hags are your campaign-ending bad guys instead of the snappy-dressing guy in the castle.  Of course it's possible, but it's not intended, and the product doesn't make it easy.Aside from any/all of that, the format really bugged me.  We've been told continually that printing costs are high and printstock is in short supply - so why was this product sold in a format that involved so much wildly unnecessary cardboard?  There is FAR more cardboard than paper in the slipcase version.  I don't need or want a slipcase, i don't need or want a DM screen.  Don't give me all these expensive extra gubbins and fripperies and then spit out a skimpy content-light paraphrase of a campaign setting.  Give me useful, practical gaming content, then let Beadle and Grimm worry about all the bells and whistles later.  I kinda hate to pan this product as much as I am, because I like Spelljammer and I do want WotC to give us a decent 5th ed adaptation of legacy settings Dark Sun (or even a modernised Al-Qadim!).  And the art department knocked it out of the park, the books are gorgeous.  But all in all, the whole product is just an overwhelming victory of style over substance, and a massive lost opportunity.</blockquote>

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