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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7739389" data-attributes="member: 32740">It's very simple: Because it dictates that any setting it is attached to shifts its tone and focus to that of Spelljammer, and thus everything about those settings that made them unique and worthwhile AS stand-alone settings is gutted in favor of a willfully undefined Frankenstein kit-bash of settings.Spelljammer's justification for how that always works was that groundling worlds don't care what happens in wildspace, and nobody in wildspace really cares about groundling worlds.  Not only does that beg the immediately obvious question of, "Then why bother?", but it's so patently ridiculous that the world-shattering advantages of spelljamming ships being introduced to a world that DOESN'T already have them is deliberately ignored.  As soon as you question that attitude of, "neither side will care about the other and never the twain shall mingle," it all goes pear-shaped.  If they aren't going to mix then why have both settings (not that Spelljammer really IS a setting in itself, it's more a leech that attaches to other settings <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )?  If they are going to mix then how can it be in any way sensible that the established ground setting doesn't actually change, or that the spelljamming interlopers won't see all the worlds to conquer, the markets to monopolize, the entire economic structures to collapse and insanely profit thereby?Castles can be bombed into rubble by dropping rocks from a stable, hovering spelljammer overhead that is out of range of spells and missiles - so every castle, EVERYWHERE, has a vested interest in obtaining spelljammers to either do such bombing themselves, or to park one overhead to prevent that.The first spelljamming ship that moves goods with absolute safety and impunity in LESS THAN A DAY what it takes an overland caravan to move at great risk and expense in months of overland travel will break world economics almost overnight.  You can move a ship load of food from Greyhawk to the Pomarj in about 2 hours.  You can effectively move 100 caravans worth of goods from several sources all over Kara-Tur to Waterdeep in 24 hours, limited only by the time it takes to actually load/unload rather than actually TRAVEL - and without need of scores of caravan guards to defend from bandits, monsters, adverse terrain, and the weather.  Hand a spelljamming captain an invoice in the morning for goods from a merchant on the other side of the world in Evermeet, and you can have it delivered to you in Shadowdale by noon.  Congratulations, you've just "invented" Faerun FedEx.  That isn't the Forgotten Realms anymore, and it's barely still Spelljammer (or at least what Spelljammer seems to WANT to be).  Who needs to have an army lay siege to a castle when you can drop wave after wave after wave troops at the tops of the walls or even right in the center of the courtyard?  That's if you don't just want to rubble it from on high of course.  Need to consult a book from the library in Candlekeep?  Hop in your Elven Flitter and fly down there and be back for supper.And yet, when it comes to connecting game worlds together I have only just realized how BAD it is at doing so.  As things are written, a round trip from, say, Oerth to Faerun would average nearly a year.  If you did indeed want to have those two settings mixed up a lot, it's hard to do so as Spelljammer is originally structured.  Just getting to the limit of the crystal sphere when leaving from Oerth, moving at a million miles a day, it will take 80 days.  Entering the phlogiston, the trip between the two spheres will take a hugely random 10-100 days.  Getting from the limit of its sphere to actually landing on Aebir-Toril will be around 30 days.  So 120 to 210 days, or 4-7 months ONE WAY.  Round trip: 8-14 months.  Though touted as a great way to connect wildly different game worlds, as written it can't be done casually and any such journey would be more like The Odyssey, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or maybe something done by Columbus or Magellan.  Teleportation or planar travel, which had been around in D&D rules already for at least 10 years before Spelljammer, are far faster and even safer and more reliable means of crossing to other game worlds - assuming that IS what you wanted to actually DO with Spelljammer.</blockquote>

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