Spelljammer...just wow

[D.Shaffer]

I absolutely adored Spelljammer, including (Especially?) the goofiness. Spelljammer was the setting that you could toss anything at the characters, as their were an infinity of spheres out there. The fish shaped ships were nifty. And I loved the telepathic penguins. Also, since I was just getting into Anime at the time, all the anime refs (And there were a ton of those, mostly in the monsters), were 'too cool' at the time.

And am I the ONLY one who saw the Giff as being Prussian more then Victorian English? The Elven empire seemed more like the British then the Giff did.

That said, I think the setting would do better if it was its own setting, and not linked to all the others.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Spelljammer: cool idea, poor execution.

A lot of its flaws were likely related to poor quality control on TSR's part. TSR had a lot of imagination, but little in the way of business acumen or knowledge of good game design.

I know that one thing that turned me off early on Spelljammer was the reliance on the other settings. I didn't care about Dragonlance, Greyhawk, or the Realms at the time, so the whole "now you can adventure in all three" never appealed to me. And that seemed to be what most of the marketing was focused toward.

I didn't care to see Spelljammer forced into other settings. Sure, it was easy to ignore, but it was like having an extra page of adspace in the supplements. Some significant portions of adventure modules had to get redesigned to push the Spelljammer elements out of it. Again, not too hard, but an annoyance. I buy adventure modules to minimize the work I do. Forcing me to rewrite major treasures and such is an added irritation.

The goofiness was also a problem. There's a difference between light-heartedness and parody. A lot of Spelljammer material seemed to focus on turning the setting into a joke, which turned off a lot of people who saw some really cool concepts there.

Yeah, I could run Spelljammer without the Big Three and without the goofiness. I could also run the Forgotten Realms without the high-level NPCs, Eberron without the warforged, dragonmarks, and lightning rail, or I could put a massive ocean somewhere into the Dark Sun setting. But if I'm going to change a setting that much, why bother buying the setting in the first place? Through their support and supplements, TSR defined what they wanted Spelljammer to be. It's a shame that their definition strayed so far from what would have appealed to a majority of gamers.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Bizzare was truly the right word for it.
The ship combat was bad, the gravity extreamly counterintuitive. The fact that that a random encounter could be with 10-20 mind flayers or beholders were all problems with the setting.

Also the silliness was rampart - it was possible to screen for, but even before the afformentioned Space Hampsters - there were dreaded Tinker Gnomes.

I embraced the silliness My campaign lasted a couple of months - "Halflings in Space!", three halfling PCs, a ship that looked like a swan, and confidence that reality was for groundlings. Spellweavers, pirates, gith

 

[Henry]

Wow, that's almost as bad as the beer drinking texan Solar in Throne of Bloodstone. *shiver*

Reading about giff hiding under beds, and beer-drinking Texan Solars... you know, I used to think I had a far too normal life to have repressed memories, but now I'm not so sure...

I absolutely LOVED Spelljammer back in the early 1990's. I even ran a very long Spelljammer story arc as part of a two-year-long campaign back then. The characters were forced to find out about spelljamming by being dropped onto the Rock of Bral by a freed evil deity, and they basically fought and flew their way back home, freeing an evil-beseiged world, breaking Neogi Slavers, running from Beholder-ships, etc. It was great fun.

A second campaign saw the rise of a game legend in our group: The Giant Battle Sheep, Catapulted onto other spelljamming vessels to wreak havoc. We embraced the "wild and wahoo" elements, much like Gamma World in a way.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

There hasn't been any serious attempt to make it a coherent setting in its own right. Instead, it was a thin pastiche of the existing D&D setting - something to visit for groundhuggers who wanted to see something more. And that's what held it back.


If I were to rerelease it, I'd do it this way: I'd release a "default" setting that is strongly inspired by the 17th century Age of Sail.

You'd have a small cluster of "core spheres" that are fairly advanced and can support true interstellar navies. This is analogous to 17th century Europe and its Great Powers, who constantly scheme and vie for power with each other - and occasionally go to war with a rival.

Then you'd have a larger cluster of spheres around this. These are partially colonized by the Core Powers - primitive in some ways, but they have resources or strategic locations that are of interest to the interstellar powers. But there is plenty of wilderness still remaining in them - as well as all sorts of weirdness that the "civilized people" of the Core Spheres must struggle against.

And then you have the Periphery - the spheres outside of the influence of the Core Powers. Here the scro, mind flayers, beholders and worse lurk. But there are also untold riches to be claimed by brave adventurers (a fabled "Planet of Gold", perhaps), and a bold enough crew might be able to claim a new world for his Core Power - or even himself.

There should be a real sense of history in this setting - how the power of the Elven Navy waned, how the Core Powers came into being and how their rivalries developed, and what kind of wars and other incidents have been occupying the minds of spacefarers. All in all, it should be a setting the players can truly immerse themselves into.

And that, IMO, requires more than random tables whether any given world is cube- or torus-shaped.

 

[nothing to see here]

There hasn't been any serious attempt to make it a coherent setting in its own right. Instead, it was a thin pastiche of the existing D&D setting - something to visit for groundhuggers who wanted to see something more. And that's what held it back.


If I were to rerelease it, I'd do it this way: I'd release a "default" setting that is strongly inspired by the 17th century Age of Sail.

You'd have a small cluster of "core spheres" that are fairly advanced and can support true interstellar navies. This is analogous to 17th century Europe and its Great Powers, who constantly scheme and vie for power with each other - and occasionally go to war with a rival.

Then you'd have a larger cluster of spheres around this. These are partially colonized by the Core Powers - primitive in some ways, but they have resources or strategic locations that are of interest to the interstellar powers. But there is plenty of wilderness still remaining in them - as well as all sorts of weirdness that the "civilized people" of the Core Spheres must struggle against.

And then you have the Periphery - the spheres outside of the influence of the Core Powers. Here the scro, mind flayers, beholders and worse lurk. But there are also untold riches to be claimed by brave adventurers (a fabled "Planet of Gold", perhaps), and a bold enough crew might be able to claim a new world for his Core Power - or even himself.

There should be a real sense of history in this setting - how the power of the Elven Navy waned, how the Core Powers came into being and how their rivalries developed, and what kind of wars and other incidents have been occupying the minds of spacefarers. All in all, it should be a setting the players can truly immerse themselves into.

And that, IMO, requires more than random tables whether any given world is cube- or torus-shaped.

Ha Jürgen! I don't know if you did it intentionally or not, but you basically just summarized the design rationale behind TSR's Star*Drive campaign setting for the Alternity system.

Star*Drive was based explicitly around the contrast between a Core Region of Space, a Partially colonized fringe, and a completely menacing frontier. It also set up the 'great powers' and history of the setting in such a way that was both evocative and was filled to the brim with campaign possibilities.

Star*Drive was (and still is) a great setting to play a game in. It was also TSR's next big space-based setting after Spelljammer, so perhaps the designers took in the same lessons you did!

 

[Ry]

I liked Spelljammer, and always thought the basic premise was just never taken anywhere I wanted to go.

IMC, I use the Void as my Astral Plane.

 

[Anand]

I've always liked the idea of Spelljamming, specially the crystals and the ships. But I never had a chance to play it. The "meta"-way of a character going to Oerth, Toril and Krinn is very appealing to me.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I loved Spelljammer, for all its flaws. I appreciated the sense of fun, and just ignored elements that I didn't like.
I hated the guns and the giff, so I left them out. And my PCs were never high enough level to handle multiple mind flayers or beholders.

In my experience talking to other gamers, the ones who hated it were NOT those who loved Medieval Europe-flavored fantasy, but those who loved sci-fi games and really got into the sci-fi-science. For them, SJ's gravity and atmosphere was insultingly fake, whereas their beloved meson cannons and warp engines were realistic.

 

[Harker Wade]

Played Spelljammer as our primary setting throughout high school and into college. I loved the concept so much that I always hinted at the concept in all the games I've run since. Sure there was silly, but only as much as the DM and the players wanted. I have no problem with the phlogiston or the idea of the crystal spheres - they were neat. We rarely used the Big 3 as anyting other then dropoffs or pick-ups for cargo or characters. Spelljammer could explain any campaign specific character a lot better then - 'he's from an unknown area of the world.'

I'd love a proper spelljammer book. The ship combat, the strange new worlds & creatures and of course the fact that magic was just a part of life in the space....