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Spelljammer campaigns: how do they look?

I skipped over SJ when it first came out, but I did run a Sundered Skies campaign (which degenerated into 'hunt sky whales and buy real estate').

I am now casting about for new settings, and I see that material is being produced again. Is SJ just 'piracy among the stars', or is there some depth to the setting?
 

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Not running one right now, but semi-planning one for the future. Or at least it’ll be one of the options I pitch to my group once my current campaign winds up.

I’ll be redoing the second inhuman wars, heavily influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean and Farscape with the PCs caught between two near-equally unappealing superpowers. The Imperial Elven Armada will be taking the role of the colonialist British, keeping the peace (or a version of it) but arrogant, exploitative, prejudiced, and guilty of incredible acts of atrocity in the past. The Scro are, as in old spelljammer canon, are federation of orcs, goblins, Minotaurs, hobgoblins etc that fled the destruction of their old (raiding, slave-taking) nations and the deaths of their gods at the hands of the elves, and are building sometimes from the ashes. Some acro factions want to target particular elves and bring them to justice (of a sort) for their war crimes, others want to genocide the elves right back in their face.

PCs will be motivated mostly by their wallets but increasingly by their desire to stay alive as it becomes clear that in the first session they got (accidentally) entangled with what seemed to be a mundane set of shackles, but in reality is an artifact-level magic item that the elves used to imprison and destroy the unhuman gods, and EVERYONE wants them.

Leaning heavily into the Spelljammer wackiness to offset the heavy. Space clowns, space hamsters (giant and otherwise) , Giff exploding themselves, etc etc. There’s a Shou-town on every asteroid port, the Moonlight Cavalcade is a world-conquering fleet of lycanthropes and shifters who sail erratically about trying to ensure it’s a full moon ALL THE TIME where they are, and your friendly neighbourhood mind flayer embassy can ABSOLUTELY make that inconvenient person disappear for you, no questions asked. Oh, and bite the damn bullet (so to speak) and make cannons and gunpowder weapons standard already, it’s a damn pirate setting, and the very idea of trying to use a frigging CATAPULT to hit a moving ship in 3d space and zero gravity just hurts my sense of physics.

It’ll be a LOT of fun I think, but jeez WotC spelljammer left anyone looking to DM the setting a lot to do. There almost no modern material about the old SJ factions, especially art-wise for the shou and the scro, and I’m deeply suspicious about how the ship combat and travel system will work in play. Hopefully there’s some good third party stuff on DMsguild…
 


It very much looked like Farscape or Blake's 7 or those other series with a rogue crew gallivanting about in a spaceship, except everything looks low tech and magical and the ship is made of wood. But otherwise, pretty much standard sci-fi vibe really. was ok.
 

I skipped over SJ when it first came out, but I did run a Sundered Skies campaign (which degenerated into 'hunt sky whales and buy real estate').

I am now casting about for new settings, and I see that material is being produced again. Is SJ just 'piracy among the stars', or is there some depth to the setting?
Not "just", but that is a supported playstyle in Original Spelljammer.
It also implies that merchanting can be done, and gives construction and combat rules for space.
There are many places to live in Spelljammer, and the namesake herself is a stupendously large space manta... with a city crusted over her like barnacles...
Spelljamming can be used to move parties between Toril (Forgotton Realms, Kara-Tur) , Oerth (Grayhawk), Krynn (DragonLance) and several other settings; it can't get you to most of planescape, nor to Dark Sun's Athas, nor to any of the locations on the Demiplane of Dread (Ravenloft)... but one-way gates to Ravenloft can happen... and should you sail into one, the ship won't get you out.
Note that several traditionally eeevvvviiiilll species are presented as relatively low threat in spelljamming. Neogi and beholder trade ships routinely trade at certain ports. Illithids seek to pirate and eat, and, failing that, trade with, others.

Basically, Classic Spelljammer provides strong ship combat and ship construction rules, a number of species, old and new, that are common in space, common human, demi-human, Neogi, Illithid, and Beholder ships, and exists as a little known reality of the main adventure settings.

One key element is that it drains the helmsman caster of spells. Speed is by what slot is cast.

Encounters with space life can be amusing... most giants are too small, but knock them up a scale, and they can be a space being...

Note that each setting is in a separate crystal sphere, and physics can change between them somewhat. Clerics outside their home sphere can't renew (but usually can use) their higher level spells. Mid-levels are available via "local" gods; low levels are essentially not regulated save by the restrictions on magic for that sphere. Each sphere is at least a solar system in scale, and crossing between spheres can be days to months in the phlogiston, and no flames for the whole of the trip between spheres, or your Air Goes BOOM!

Spelljammer didn't add classes, but did add some NWP's, tho I know that's not going to matter much to you.

The most important elment of classic AD&D spelljammer is the air bubbles and the gravity planes... ships generate a gravity plane fore to aft, larboard to starboard, at the center of mass; Anything above falls down at 1 gee; anything below falls up. Plan cargo accordingly, because once in a bigger item's gravity well, the ship's shuts off. Most life forms don't generate a gravity plane. Cuboid planets pull down to the closest face; circular toward the center.
Also, all things grab an air envelope based upon their size. A human's is good for a few minutes, so if you go overboard it's not instadeath... but they better notice quick. A ship's is good for a week to a couple months... the Spelljammer itself has enough plantlife to keep the city going indefinitely. And presumablyb some longstanding mythals, as well.

Worlds are any combination of the 4 classic elements, some being one, others being 2, 3, or all four, and stars are really large fire and/or positive energy bodies. Worlds come in shapes including all the usual polyhedral dice and spheres. It's fairly well thought out, and the SJ adventures I read were not even planetary, but involved a lot of space travel and the resulting random encounters.

"New" Spelljammer: Adventures in Space for 5E...
No construction rules. About twice as many ship types as the adventure demands. A number of races; the Hadozee entry created a furor for including them having overturned their enslaver's culture... And note that Hadozee are D&D's Yazirians (from Star Frontiers). The Plasmoids are very close to Star Frontiers Dralasites, but not as thick. Workable combat rules.
No crystal spheres, no phlogiston. A number of subclasses. It does retain the gravity plane.
The speres of wildspace fade out into the shores of the Astral Sea... but they seem to have dropped the flattening of people as they hit the astral plane.
Note that gravity planes in 5E SJ only shut down when in contact with a larger body... who's own plane then asserts. But air envelopes can merge.
And the air bubble defines the limits of the gravity of the item, too. Anything Gargantuan size or smaller are air only, no gravity plane, and have 1 minute of air... so if you drift out of the air of your ship, you don't suffocate for a minute, then suffocate normally. (no vacuum damage.) Larger items hold an atmosphere as thick from its surface as its longest dimension, in roughly the same shape.
it's rules are a bit simplified from its precursor, in addition to omitting construction, random sphere generation, etc...

If you want to work it, either edition can support spacefaring cultures... but the AD&D one is more self-consistent, but both have major physics breaks as a matter of need.
 

2e Spelljammer varied widely based on the DM. Every supplement and adventure (or two part adventure series) was fairly self contained so themes and elements depended greatly on what the DM had and used.

There is a lot of cool faction stuff in the core boxed set that never gets revisited, so beholder variants fanatically genociding each other or Egyptian Ptah interstellar faith or Kara Tur expansion into space may be major in some campaigns but not others.

The games I played varied in theme from here is a crashed mindflayer ship take it over and welcome to spelljammer setting noob, to spelljamming pirates and trade, interstellar transport to different D&D worlds, imperial space elves and orcs resumption of space war where mercenary PCs infiltrate orc build up for intelligence missions, Moorcockian Dream sailing, to flying ship in the D&D world, and beholder space megadungeon.

The monster supplements provided a lot of obscure sci-fi converted to D&D and also bigger more massive stuff and weird stuff so space whales and truly massive dragons and giant space hamsters.

4e threw in spelljammer and planescape together by having spelljammers be transport in the Astral Sea where there are gith pirates. This was fairly popular from what I have seen and my experience as a player in 4e.

5e the spelljammer and DM's Guild support I could not really tell you about other than it is out there and with the Guild I expect a lot of variety varying by author and their own visions.
 


Swashbuckling Space Fantasy comes the closest to what Spelljammer "looks like". Firefly and The Orvile, and even more so Farscape come the closest in look and feel. And some Star Trek, Doctor Who, Stargate for a "strange new world each week".

For the best fit though...you really want 80's action cartoons....the ones that mixed sci-fi and magic in space. He-Man, Thundercats, The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Bravestar, Silverhawks, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Blackstar, Visionaries, and Thundar the Barbarian.
 

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