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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9224341" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 92/151: May/Jun 2002part 11/12Setting: They’re didn’t mention interstellar travel at all in the systems section earlier, and here we see why. They’ve decided to avoid the whole weird business of crystal spheres and phlogiston by keeping it confined to a single star system, leaving you free to decide what kind of cosmology the wider universe has in your game. As with the space systems section, they don’t give hard numbers for things like distance between planets, length of year, day, etc on the individual ones at all, which is a level of vagueness I don’t approve of. The sun is occupied by salamanders and other creatures from the elemental plane of fire, and has a few earthbergs floating on it that are just about habitable if you have magic items to protect you from the heat. Then there’s 5 inhabitable planets before things get too cold and you’d once again need powerful magic to explore whatever lurks on the asteroids and comets beyond. The desert planet of Ashen, with hot days, surprisingly cold nights and lots of pyramids from a long-gone civilisation. The jungle planet of Verdura, heavy on the reptiles. The ocean planet of Quelya, where humans & halflings share the islands, but are vastly outnumbered by the Sahuguin that rule the seas. Similar to Verdura but cooler is the forest planet of Perianth, inhabited by the elves, with the Drow banished to the eponymous spider moon of the setting orbiting around it after a massive war. The Chain of Tears, once the original homeworld of the gnomes until they presumably blew it up in an experiment, (whether that could be classed as a failure or an excessive success is very much up for debate) now an undead-haunted belt of asteroids, with the main living inhabitants being pirates and treasure-hunters. Finally, the icy world of Moradin’s Forge, perpetually frozen on the surface but a planet-sized geothermaly heated dungeon inside. As should be obvious from it’s name, it was originally ruled by dwarves, but now the Mind Flayers are in charge, with only a few well-hidden villages continuing the resistance and obviously very paranoid, because when your enemy has that much mind-control power all it takes is a stray thought in the wrong place to ruin any plans of liberation. Overall it is a bit planet of the hats, and they don’t have any maps or even images of their basic geography from space, but at least effort has been made to make all these locations good places to adventure in, with distinct sets of antagonists and environmental challenges for each. Just the usual problem when you have a small page count to cover a very large area so you have to skip most of the the nuance and hope it’s still enough for the DM to build upon and run a game with. So this accomplishes what it sets out to do, be Spelljammer without the silliness or impossibly large scope, sticking close to the standard 3e rules wherever possible. If you set your sights low it’s easier to accomplish them.</blockquote>

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