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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnF" data-source="post: 8614931" data-attributes="member: 88851">So many others have already addressed the OP's question very well, but I'd like to share this perspective:I spent over two glorious years as a player in the Pathfinder 1e very pirate-forward AP Skull and Shackles, and there was never a moment's doubt as to our adventures' style, tone, or themes. We were freebooting adventurers making our mark among the region's pirates, crossing swords or outsailing the competition ([SPOILER]once in a regatta![/SPOILER]). It was certainly a high fantasy AP, but it was also thematically and mechanically grounded in the very reliable and familiar ocean-based, island-visiting, rum-drinking, seafaring, shanty-singing, port-a-calling, gravity-centric swashbuckling tropes of classic high seas adventures. If someone took that AP and replaced the ocean with space, would it really make a difference? ABSOLUTELY and, in every way, it would obliterate so much of the narrative tensions that were inherent in the adventurous goals and conflicts that unfolded in our large but still limited terrestrial region.Pirating and seafaring campaigns aren't simply about salty window dressing - the ocean/islands play a massive part in defining the motivations and challenges that make the genre and themes come to life for players. They can't simply be swapped out for space/planets without losing what makes them so particular.Spelljammer goes vast and cosmic and demands substantially different character motivations on such a scale. And the opportunities to travel huge distances to radically different worlds demands substantially different hooks than one would find in classic seafaring stories. Spelljammer PCs need to think very differently than their counterparts in a pirate campaign because a DM embracing Spelljammer to its fullest will be presenting the challenges, themes, mechanics, and world(s) in very unpredictable and alien ways (as already noted by many others in this thread)</blockquote>

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