What do you think of Spelljammer?

[David Argall]

idea good, execution flawed

Since I have never seen the newer stuff, I can't endorse the 2nd option, but it seems to be pretty much correct. Granted, fantasy is not supposed to be scientifically correct, but Spacejammer required you to hogtie and bury deep any sense of critical thinking. With more normal games you can just tell it to go stand in a corner.

The basic idea has a number of virtures, some place to put the epic levels who are threatening to go godhunting, simply a different background... But all this weird stuff just ruins it.

 

[Starspeed]

You and me both Starspeed. I still think back to that adventure Under the Dark Fist, which could have been so, so much more than it was...it almost breaks my heart, I swear.

Think about it...the premise is that an empire, composed of twelve crystal spheres, decides to conquer Greyspace, Realmspace, and Krynnspace. That could have been so huge, such a major universe-altering event...and they made it a 64-page adventure.

Agreed. In fact, I wasn't very impressed with the map of the Vodoni Empire, so I made my own here. The way I designed it, the PCs shouldn't be able to sneak into the Empire's capital so easily. That alone should increase the length of the adventure. You're going to have to sneak or fight your way to the capital rather than jumping right in.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I would probably have to say that I liked Spelljammer a lot but resented the silliness of the setting (i.e. the Giff). As of my vote, I am alone! Of course, only three people have voted so far.

I'm completely the opposite. I loved it BECAUSE of it's sheer wonkiness. It was the setting anything could show up in. Wanted to toss in your favorite anime critter? Unhuman war bioweapon. Space nazis? Scro. Victorian navy? Imperial Elven Fleet. TINKER GNOMES! Sure it could be silly, but that was the thrill!

 

[Darrin Drader]

I was gaming heavily in the days of Spelljammer and I used it heavily. Yes, there were some pretty wacked out elements, and for the most part, I ignored them in favor of the cooler stuff (and yes, there was some very cool stuff). I used it as a means for the characters to move from one campaign world to another, have adventures in space, and as a way to introduce my own wacked out characters. I used Spelljammer during my first major campaign, which ran for 3 years with the same players. Here's some highlights (just the interesting parts):

I Introduced Harlequin - a god-like being who was imprisoned in a building floating on an asteroid. He couldn't escape until someone let him out. The party killed him, thus releasing him. Oops. And H was such a madman, he came after the party later for to take revenge on them for killing him (Did I mention he was insane? I was also kind of into Batman at the time). The interesting bit about him was that he could only be damaged by magic. Cast a spell at him and do normal damage. Hit him with a +5 sword, do 5 damage. It kind of changed the dynamic of how you deal with a powerful enemy.

I had an unpopulated dungeon worked up that I planned to use at a later time. I figured it would be fun to have the party go through a bottle episode (ST term meaning they don't leave the ship). They met with a couple Illithid ships and made some extremely bad rolls. The ship ended up getting trashed and the party was taken prisoner to an asteroid where they were forced to wield pick axes and mine gold. Of course they wielded the pick axes, but they ended up being used against the Illithids instead. The party learned a lot about the uses of spent slaves (snack time and rooms full of chilled brains), bashed their way out, and took off.

Another adventure the party was to go to a desert world to recover an artifact called the Aqua Eye. No one seemed to notice that the only water on this planet was in the form of a river that ran in a circular pattern and then went underground. The party fought their way into the dungeon, constantly dealing with some meddlesome characters whose motives they could never figure out. When they arrived they found that the planet was dying and had been for hundreds of years and the Aqua Eye produced the only source of water on the planet. Not only did the party not take it, but they had to deal with the person who hired them to prevent them from trying to hire someone else to take it.

There were more, but you get the idea.

The biggest issue I had with the setting was the concept of crystal spheres and phlogiston. Of course that's easily done away with. Just change the prime material plane to something we're familiar with and it works.

 

[flits3]

Ya Gotta Love Spelljammer. Ya have no alternative.

And my opinion is that the old SJ 2e was too silly in many ways. Three words... Hamster, Giant Space.

Ouch. My heart... my weak heart.

How can you not LOOOOOVVVVEEEEEE these fine fierce furry friends?

Is it because you are jealous because you cannot compete with the fierce reproductivity of the species or because you are allergic to their hairs?

As a gnome I would definately like to put these speculations to the test. Could you drop me a line when it is convenient that we come by and land our Gnomisch Sidewheeler to conduct our experiments on you? That is when we finally make our repairs to the steamfilled quarters to contain the immaculous pressure to propell our basically needed laboratories.

Needles to say "I love the setting"
Ever since it was released in the mid nineties I bought the most of the products and am currently very busy converting this to 3E. I had a site but dropped it. Now most of the stuff is published on the Shattered Fractine.

Why are you all complaining about the wonkiness of the setting. Like the constantly increasing powerlevels of a Said Elmister is realistic? Or the presence of a Half-God on the primary plane is a good representative of reality.

This is fantasy and it must fit a certain nice in fantasy to appeal to the right people.

In my opinion TSR tried to publish too much in too little time, thereby flooding the market. Better was to focus on one product and releases other products sparcely.

When you look at famous SF-movies you see all wonkiness ever more extreme than in the SpellJammer setting. Ever watched Star Wars? or Star Trek with the Crystal Entity or what comes in mind: Trills? (I think that was the name of the furry creatures than had a pacifying sound and cluttered the pipes of the Enterprise)

What about Aliens, E.T., Babylon 5, Final Fantasy...... all with strange unreal creatures.

When you play a setting that is very closely compared to SF movies than wonkiness goes with the territory.

Just my opinion:

Flits3

 

[Arnwyn]

When it first came out, I wanted to hate. Boy, did I want to hate it. D&D in fantasy space? What were they thinking?

Then I actually played it - and my players and I *loved* the game. I still do adore SJ, and have updated it to my 3e game.

However, I do agree with an above poster that said that Spelljammer is best left to its own small group of fans. It shouldn't be updated to 3e in any official capacity, as it would probably be screwed up in some way (cf. Shadow of the Spider Moon, a valiant attempt, but...). So I chose the first option in the poll, but I don't think it should be officially updated.

 

[Psion]

Curiously, my position is the exact opposite of this. I think Spelljammer works wonderfully as a stand-alone setting, and the main thing that killed it was the focus on using it as a way to travel from Oerth to Toril to Krynn.

Similar state of affairs here. I bought the early spelljammer stuff. While it really didn't catch on, it was an interesting diversion. I like the recent polyhedron take on it, as it seems to add a lot of focus that the setting didn't have before.

Now what did bug me is that they made alterations to the canon cosmology just to accomodate it. This really bugged me because I already had my own "arcane space", and it wasn't limited by anything like crystal spheres. I am glad they backed away from that in 3e.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Personally, I saw SJ as a mega-campaign setting where the possibilities never ended and absolutely loved it!

Agreed. I like Spelljammer a lot and for that exact reason.

One of the best campeigns I ever ran was about a planar entity that was slowly devouring crystal spheres- the pc's travelled to many different spheres to gather data/allies/means to confront such a thing.

Along the way they got involved in different more "local" matters throughout the spheres.

I got to use almost anything from fiction I could think of without blinking an eye on the rational limitation of it all existing on one planet. Visionaires and gelflings are the first ones that come to mind.

I think the complaint about the "silly" nature of spelljammer is a bit foolish. I look at Dragonlance, FR, and especially Planescape and I see a lot of silliness.

As with most campeign bits- it is only silly if used in a silly manner.

SD

 

[woodelf]

SpellJammer definitely needed some work, but it was a great concept. Problem is, in many ways Spider Moon went the wrong direction: too science-y. SJ needed to be, if anything, more fantastic, but with a greater internal consistency. I didn't care for the overt silliness (tinker gnomes), but the could-be-silly-could-be-fantasy elements (like the dohwar) were fine by me. Oh, and i had no idea that some thought of the giff, frex, as part of the "silly" parts--i think they're no more silly than standard D&D gnomes or elves.

The two biggest things that need fixing in SJ are the villains and the excessive ties to other worlds. Instead of designing it as essentially a bridge between the existing TSR D&D settings (something that got more and more emphasis as time went on), it should've been its own setting. With maybe a sidebar on how spacetravel would affect the established worlds should contact occur, and another on how to retool the existing settings as spacefairing ones. I was particularly annoyed by the amount of FR spillover into SJ, and the fact that everything was *just* like the groundling worlds. Frex, elves/humans are the goodguys, orcs/goblins are the badguys--they had al these great new races, and some retooled old races (lizardfolk), but they all pretty much took the sideline to the same-old, same-old elves-vs-orcs structure.

Along similar lines, beholders as group enemies just never worked for me--solitary just seems to be an inherent part of them. And inventing the silly neogi to be evil slaving think-of-everyone-else-as-less-than-people villains, and then changing the illithid from evil slaving think-of-everyone-else-as-less-than-people villains to ferengi-with-tentacles was really obnoxious.

I'm running an "Arcane Space" game right now, and i've retooled the race relations significantly--orcs and goblins are less civilized, but not "evil", though the scro are [and neither are elves automatically good]. Illithids are *the* badguys. neogi are an annoying sidenote. Tinkergnomes are gone, and gnomes and hobbits are minor races. FR, as well as Greyhawk and DL, are as described in all products prior to the advent of SJ--i.e., none of them have any significant knowledge of or contact with space societies.

 

[demiurge1138]

inventing the silly neogi to be evil slaving think-of-everyone-else-as-less-than-people villains, and then changing the illithid from evil slaving think-of-everyone-else-as-less-than-people villains to ferengi-with-tentacles was really obnoxious.

I never thought of it that way, but you're right. And you've given me a hilarious mental image.

Demiurge out.