Spelljammer Spelljammer, 5e, and the general angst against all things space

[Andor]

I would love to see your 5e conversions of spelljammer - would you be willing to toss me a link or email me?

Seconded.

As far as planejamming goes, that's always been a part of it, in that Spelljammer was the first meta-setting to link the various game worlds without needing umpty-ump level spells. Then planescape came out and made it even easier. So really I see nothing wrong with replacing the phlogiston between the spheres with taking shortcuts through the astral plane. Except that now I can't get out of my head the image of Han Solo saying "Hang on, I'm making the jump to Astral!"

 

[nomotog]

I just don't think your players will go for it. From the responses they give they sound like Potatoes and dragons type players. I guess you could try a really slimmed down version and pitch that to them, but that might not work. I tried to pitch the idea to my friends and they just don't like the core idea of sailing ships in space.

I didn't really like the the original spelljammer, I only warmed up to it latter and after I stripped out a lot of stuff like crystal spheres, and even spell jamming helms.

 

[DM_Jeff]

It's weird how fantasy has such a lead over sci-fi in RPGs.

According to this blog post there's at least some explanation for that...

http://www.postworldgames.com/

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Why not to add also the D&D version of Dr Who, with the time dragons, the chronomancers and the time spheres? Let's imagine demiplanes with alternative timelines, for example a Krynn where Lord Sorth avoided the Cataclysm.

* I imagine the D&D cylons from Galactica like Warforgeds, living contructs.

 

[Dire Bare]

I would more sneak it in.

Its one thing to oppose "spelljammer" a particular setting from the 2E era.

Its another thing entirely to resist a cool situation/plot that leads them to a spaceship that they can actually sail into space. And then do other cool things.

IMO, just don't call it "Spelljammer"! In my experience, an awful lot of gamers have irrational dislkies towards certain properties, and if you disguise them just a little bit, are none the wiser and somehow manage to have fun!

As others have stated, the weird fantasy physics gets to some folks, and adapting your spaceships and space travel to model real world physics more closely can help.

Steampunk is kinda hot right now, if you open to it, reskinning the magical butterfly ships of Spelljammer into steam-driven ships might work out well.

And look at other examples of fantasy space for inspiration, for you and your players. Disney's animated Treasure Island has a strong Spelljammery vibe for me, I'm sure there are other examples out there. I love how the Astral Sea was described in a fantasy space kind of way for the 4th Edition.

Keep what you really love about Spelljammer and mildy reskin other aspects, and your players will probably love it! And don't use the word, "spelljammer"!

 

[Dire Bare]

Ideas I have for a future Spelljammer-like campaign, include blending 4E's Astral Sea with Spelljammer. I like the idea of the crystal spheres, especially since they are drawn from real world pseudoscience, but rather than physical barriers they are mystical barriers that surround planetary systems. Magical flying ships (which I probably won't call "spelljammers") can fly in the Astral (which is "space" for my fantasy worlds) without the need for air envelopes as the Astral is breathable.

I'd like to link the phlogiston (again, from real-world pseudoscience) to the Elemental Chaos, which will be a transitive plane surrounding and supporting the elemental planes. Ships normally travel in the Astral, but can shift into the Ethereal or Phlogiston to travel, each having it's own unique advantages and dangers.

My favorite magical flying ships are the elementally powered ships from Eberron, both in look and in locomotion. But, I want to have a variety of methods to get that ship up in the air and flying through Astral Space. Although, my favorite flying D&D ship of all time is the reborn Princess Ark from BECMI D&D (Mystara). It's a pretty awesome beast!

 

[Dire Bare]

The crystal spheres and phlogiston aren't pseudo-scientific at all. In fact I can't really point to anything in Spelljammer that isn't inherently magical. The crystal spheres were an interesting concept to allow all the different AD&D world cosmologies to exist together by allowing for properties of space, the stars, and other heavenly bodies to vary from system to system. I can't really think of anything better to replace it with. I would have liked to see the phlogiston detailed much better than it was. The random trip length between crystal spheres (similar to travelling the Astral or Ethereal planes) leaves a lot to be desired. In fact I've never cared for the way it works in those transitive planes either.

Both the idea of the crystal spheres and the phlogiston are indeed drawn from real-world pseudoscientific theories. Now, how they are expressed in D&D is a bit different, as is almost always the case, but their source is real-world.

In the old geocentric model of the cosmos, the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun, Moon, planets were all fixed in solid, transparent crystal spheres that rotated around the Earth. The stars were gaps in the outer firmament between the material world and the heavens. Well, if I remember correctly.

In Spelljammer, we simply got rid of all of the crystal spheres except for the last one, with the stars affixed to it. Although we often kept the "geocentric" part, depending on the system.

Phlogiston was a proposed element, as was aether, and a lot of academic study went into trying to discover these proposed elements and their properties. Aether was a cool, misty, heavy element, and phlogiston was airy, light, and energetic. This has transferred over to D&D fairly well, I think! Again, if I remember correctly.

Of course, this was all quite some time ago, roughly two hundred years or so?

 

[Shasarak]

According to this blog post there's at least some explanation for that...

http://www.postworldgames.com/

Sorry, but I just could not get past the part where Star Wars is not Sci-Fi unless it is Sci-Fi but even then it is not real Sci-Fi.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's weird how fantasy has such a lead over sci-fi in RPGs.

D&D being the only RPG with broad name recognition probably has something to do with it.

My feeling has always been that sci-fi is just more varied than fantasy. Sci-fi/fantasy is often presented like a single genre, and one defining trait is that it asks you to accept one preposterous premise to make the story work. Fantasy asks you to accept magic & monsters, and is generally in an otherwise medieval setting. While there's a wide range of fantasy settings and stories, they have quite a lot in common, especially if you're willing to ignore any details about how magic works - a dude with a sword is not going to be out of place in many of 'em. Sci-fi stories, OTOH, often pivot around a different, more specific preposterous 'What if...' notion. There are bits and throwaway details that a lot of sci-fi recyles, FTL travel, bug-eyed aliens, ray guns and so forth, but it's not just that the details are different, but that the differences seem harder to ignore. And, even if you have all the throwaway details in approximate alignment, they can still feel very different. Star Trek and Star Wars both have humanoid aliens, ray guns, and FTL, but they could hardly be aped by the same RPG. Tolkien and REH, OTOH, both get used as inspiration for D&D with few issues. Dude with a sword works. Dude with a raygun is different if his ray-gun is a phaser than if it's a blaster.

So you really can't have a more or less generic SFRPG the way you can an FRPG like D&D, they're all condemned to more niche interest. If they try to cover a wider range, you end up with something like GURPS Space, Space Opera (which neatly illustrates how an amalgam of sci-fi from the 50s-70s just doesn't work like an amalgam of fantasy from the same period did for D&D), or Star Hero.

Edit: Actually, there's one sub-genre or tangent of sci-fi that does work for an RPG: superheroes. Each super-being gets to have his own preposterous 'what if' conceit, so you have an amalgam of all sorts of sci-fi ideas and bits (and fantasy for that matter) and it all sorta works within the weirdness of the genre. Champions! and Mutants & Masterminds are only two examples of good, reasonably successful superhero RPGs that are fairly generic.

 

[Morrus]

D&D being the only RPG with broad name recognition probably has something to do with it.

That's absolutely part of it.

Dude with a sword works. Dude with a raygun is different if his ray-gun is a phaser than if it's a blaster.

I don't agree there. They are just different made up words for a ray gun. They have no functional difference, narratively. At least, no more so than a short sword and a long sword. You can give one of 'em a special property or two if you want, but it's all the same.

So you really can't have a more or less generic SFRPG the way you can an FRPG like D&D, they're all condemned to more niche interest. If they try to cover a wider range, you end up with something like GURPS Space, Space Opera (which neatly illustrates how an amalgam of sci-fi from the 50s-70s just doesn't work like an amalgam of fantasy from the same period did for D&D), or Star Hero.

It pretty much does work - it's just not as popular thematically.

I think you hit on the answer at the start - the first RPG was fantasy, it's the biggest RPG to this day, and so is it's only serious competitor (hell, it's only serious competitor isn't just in the same genre, it's a different edition of the same game!)

It's about momentum. RPGs had D&D. Movies had Star Wars (and Trek). There was the Traveller RPG, I guess, and the Conan movies, but neither dominated.

Edit: Actually, there's one sub-genre or tangent of sci-fi that does work for an RPG: superheroes. Each super-being gets to have his own preposterous 'what if' conceit, so you have an amalgam of all sorts of sci-fi ideas and bits (and fantasy for that matter) and it all sorta works within the weirdness of the genre. Champions! and Mutants & Masterminds are only two examples of good, reasonably successful superhero RPGs that are fairly generic.

The issue isn't whether it works. There's lots of amazing RPGs that work. Dread works as well as any RPG I've ever seen. The question is what's popular (and it's not even a question - the answer is "Medieval Fantasy").