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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8821869" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997part 3/5Gnome Droppings: Our first spelljammer adventure in 3 years and it's a comedic one featuring gnomes with giant space hamsters. Why, Chris Perkins, why?! Being attacked by pirates, they jettisoned their most valuable cargo to the planet below in the hope of retrieving it later. This happens to be near the PC's, who will see it as a shooting star. If they choose to head for the place where it landed, they'll find themselves entangled in a whole series of irritations. First, the grimlocks in the cave next to where it crashed, which will be typically belligerent towards any intruders. Then you have to deal with the contents themselves, some rather damaged and prone to malfunction autognomes, with all sorts of random possibilities of how they could be a nuisance to interact with. Then some spriggans turn up to investigate and try to take the stuff from you. (and unless you have a gnome in your party, the autognomes will automatically side with them if they're still functional after the previous encounter.) Then several hours later the actual space gnomes will turn up to retrieve their cargo while making lots of Star Trek references. Will you let them have it or fight them as well? The kind of short, linear and wacky adventure that would be better homed in Polyhedron, this leans into the worst aspects of spelljammer while also being aimed at introducing newbies to the setting, which seems like a stupid combination of things to do if you actually want to attract new players. This won't encourage WotC to revive a several years cancelled setting. Huzza's Goblin O' War: From a short, somewhat silly adventure involving a spaceship, we go straight to a short, also slightly silly adventure on a regular ship. Huzza is a hill giant pirate who's become the scourge of the sea of fallen stars (or wherever else in your own campaign.) He uses his giantish throwing skills to hurl goblins onto the other ship to loot and pillage. Now he's added a couple of margoyles to the crew who pick them up and drop them over, which is slightly safer for the goblins since fewer overshoot and wind up in the drink, making for a goofy but tactically formidable combination. He also has a goblin shaman casting spells to back up the regular crew and a captured human wizard (who'll betray them in an instant if it looks like the PC's might win) to help them get close unsuspected before attacking. So this adventure is all one large, chaotic melee scenario against an interesting combination of enemies of widely varying power level who use good tactics that could be used whenever the PC's are traveling somewhere on a ship. Probably won't fill a whole session but does look pretty fun to play out and lets PC's and their hirelings make valid contributions to the battle at an equally wide range of levels. It also earns a little extra for considering what happens if the enemies surrender and get turned over to the law, or alternately, the logistical problems you'll face if you kill them all but want to keep their ship instead of abandoning it to drift. You can go on my random encounter tables any day.</blockquote>

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