Spelljammer Spelljammer in 5e

[R_J_K75]

I suspect they realize this was a mistake and are working on ways to undo it for 5e. Although I honestly think they overthink trying to create continuity from edition to edition. Sometimes simply hand-waving something away and pretending it didn't happen is the best option.

Yeah. Best thing they could do is just give the pertinent rules of how, if and where the setting interacts with the planes, and prime material plane(s) and make it its own standalone setting with whatever special mechanics it needs. The only exceptions I could think of off the top of my head where Spelljamming might be affected or voided is Dark Sun, Eberron and Ravenloft. Even if that's the case a few sentences can solve that problem with something to the effect, "these planes are not accessible by Spelljammers".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Spelljammers were designed to fly in the void/phlogiston. To travel within the planes we would need a need a different magical skyship.

 

[Larnievc]

Spelljammers were designed to fly in the void/phlogiston. To travel within the planes we would need a need a different magical skyship.

Agreed. Wild space may even be a reflection of the Astral (or vice versa) but a Spelljammer isn’t a plane hopping vehicle.

 

[DammitVictor]

While all I can offer is speculation, it seems to me that there was too much of a focus on using it as an expansion of lore and mechanics to integrate a bunch of generic fantasy worlds into the same universe and not enough focus on building it as its own campaign setting, and you'll note that's exactly what Planescape achieved.

Yes. This, I will agree with entirely. This is an argument I have made myself, many times, in support of removing the Radiant Triangle and using Spelljammer as a standalone setting rather than a metasetting.

But "low magic" and "magitech" are not Spelljammer. They are, in many ways, the diametric opposite of Spelljammer, which was a decidedly high magic setting with decidedly pre-industrial economies and societies.

I'm not the only person telling you that this isn't Spelljammer. Do consider that if you want to sell a game on the brand appeal of the Spelljammer name, the people telling you that your work isn't what they're looking for are the people who are most likely to give your game a second look or a first chance.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Agreed. Wild space may even be a reflection of the Astral (or vice versa) but a Spelljammer isn’t a plane hopping vehicle.

Except that is how they tried to position it in 4e.

 

[Zardnaar]

Except that is how they tried to position it in 4e.

And it was hated.

I like Spelljammer but not interested in reimagining it in any serious way.

That means crystal spheres, phlogiston, giant space hamsters etc.

 

[Larnievc]

Except that is how they tried to position it in 4e.

I recall the wild space was gone and the Astral Sea was the medium of travel.

 

[Coroc]

I didn't play any D&D between 1984 and 2008 (basically no 2 or 3 for me). Is it totally crazy to combine Spelljammer and Planescape?

Yea, in a way it is. You see, Sigil is the city of portals. Planescape is about portals everywhere. No one needs a spelljammer to travel from prime A to prime B if two simple gate teleports (via Sigil) can accomplish the same with less time and risk.
So one of the main motivations of Spelljammer is circumvented a bit.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yea, in a way it is. You see, Sigil is the city of portals. Planescape is about portals everywhere. No one needs a spelljammer to travel from prime A to prime B if two simple gate teleports (via Sigil) can accomplish the same with less time and risk.
So one of the main motivations of Spelljammer is circumvented a bit.

Yes, they support a different campaign structure. In a Spelljammer campaign the players probably have a ship and go galivanting about the multiverse, whereas in a Planescape campaign the party is probably based in a fixed location and travel instantly to adventure sites.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In the Spelljammer campaigns that I ran previously, I used both the Spelljammer and Planescape setting stuff. The main difference being that portals were fast but useful only for individuals or small groups of some power, while spelljamming was relatively generally available to everyone, but slow.

Portals were mostly big enough only for individuals to go through, often sort of a pain to get open (i.e. to open this portal to eastern Oerik, I have to spill Flan blood), portaling from point A to point B may take a weird and circuitous route through several locations and planes, and a lot of portals were secret, known only to a few people.

Spelljamming, on the other hand, was widely available. You could reliably find passage on a spelljamming vessel from almost anywhere (on the prime) to almost anywhere (on the prime), but it would take weeks or months to get there, and occasionally, a ship would get eaten by monsters, taken by pirates, or get lost.

In both of those campaigns, the players got a spelljamming vessel pretty early on (at the beginning of the first session in one campaign, and by about the fourth session in the other), which they used to engage in adventures in various places on the prime, engage in trade, meet interesting personages as they transported them from place to place, and generally cause trouble. As those campaigns progressed, the player character transitioned more and more to using portals to get to some of the sites that they needed to do their adventuring in, using their spelljamming vessel as a home and base of operations.