I think I'm in the minority here, as a DM that's actually RUN a spelljamer campaign. Two actually, although one was just a week-long one-shot running through one of the SJ modules. The campaign that I ran was actually pretty successful, I think for two reasons.
First, I made my own solar system/setting. No mucking around with Toril and Krynn and all that, I started with the random tables and built a whole system to run the campaign in. It's really not that much different than creating a homebrew world, except that instead of your myaterious frontier existing in "faraway lands" you're putting your frontier on other worlds. So, I kind of had the benefit of a core setting, that was lacking in the out-of-the-box stuff.
The other thing that worked was that I was running the game for people 5 or 6 years younger than me, and I was about 17 at the time. Instead of the goofy parts of the setting turning them off, they really connected with it. The goofiness worked, because when 11-year-olds play D&D, I've found that it gets pretty silly anyway.
I actually like the altered-physics of the gravity and atmosphere rules, and whatnot. I saw it as a universe where physics really worked more fantastically, and less...um...physically? I threw some echoes of this into "groundling" physics, too: the reason that enormous dragons can fly is that when they take to the air they create their own gravity-plane. That kind of thing, that's fun to have a wise old wizard babble on about, as long as you don't question it too rigorously.
I'll echo the sentiments that if they put out a revised 3.5 Core Setting book for Spelljammer, I'd get it. There's got to be room for swashbuckling fantasy space pirates in magical flying ships.
First, I made my own solar system/setting. No mucking around with Toril and Krynn and all that, I started with the random tables and built a whole system to run the campaign in. It's really not that much different than creating a homebrew world, except that instead of your myaterious frontier existing in "faraway lands" you're putting your frontier on other worlds. So, I kind of had the benefit of a core setting, that was lacking in the out-of-the-box stuff.
The other thing that worked was that I was running the game for people 5 or 6 years younger than me, and I was about 17 at the time. Instead of the goofy parts of the setting turning them off, they really connected with it. The goofiness worked, because when 11-year-olds play D&D, I've found that it gets pretty silly anyway.
I actually like the altered-physics of the gravity and atmosphere rules, and whatnot. I saw it as a universe where physics really worked more fantastically, and less...um...physically? I threw some echoes of this into "groundling" physics, too: the reason that enormous dragons can fly is that when they take to the air they create their own gravity-plane. That kind of thing, that's fun to have a wise old wizard babble on about, as long as you don't question it too rigorously.
I'll echo the sentiments that if they put out a revised 3.5 Core Setting book for Spelljammer, I'd get it. There's got to be room for swashbuckling fantasy space pirates in magical flying ships.
), I will run him through the wildest, wackiest, funnest*, spell-jammingest D&D campaign ever. I can't wait. 
