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Message: <blockquote data-quote="blackrazor49" data-source="post: 7739882" data-attributes="member: 13481">I haven’t read many sourcebooks for Spelljammer and when I did read them it was a long time ago, so I don’t know the mechanics inside and out.  That being said, I think it is important to get the “feel” of the setting correct and design the mechanics later.  On a very high level, when I think Spelljammer the following pop into my head:•    Naval vessels in space•    Travel between worlds•    Pirates and boarding actions•    Large empires fighting for resources•    Magic used to power shipsFor me I would keep it as simple as possible so the players can relate more.  Instead of a true 3D space environment, ships MUST travel on a plane of floatable material.  Perhaps that floatable material curves up or down over a large area, but never so close that two ships attacking each other would be on different elevations.This means the ships float on a substance that does not extend into the atmosphere of the planet, thus preventing vessels from also becoming ocean/air travel means.  Spelljamming should not interfere with worlds too much.  Off the top of my head I would probably use teleport to go from ship to planet at specific circles (but the idea of a “shuttle craft” crashing to a planet is hard to pass up…have to think about this part a bit).In 5e most classes get some sort of spells so I would probably uses cantrips to power a ship (this way most classes could do it or even backgrounds).  Perhaps multiple casters could make the ship move faster (almost like a ritual) or casting certain levels of spells could help perform maneuvers.  Although keeping the ships on a plane makes it relatable, the thought of a ship flipping over the top of another one (as a previous poster mentioned) is a cool visual….at least to me.  Do you want to cast cloudkill on the deck of the other ship or use the spell slot on the helm to suddenly submerge and make the other ship tilt since you have a bunch of grappling hooks attached?The rest is just changing the setting to a larger scale.  An Elven empire that operates out of a core area or pirates on the edge of the empire.  Resources might be a bit hard to explain, unless planets weren’t that important (or were small in comparison to other resource nodes).  Personally I would have oxygen and gravity just exist everywhere, but light would need to be figured out.  Maybe there are large “star bases” that grow food since it is difficult to transport resources from the planet.  This would make for strategic places to attack and defend.Lastly, just place the core D&D worlds at the edge of known space.  They are difficult to get to, perhaps relatively unknown, and there is little reason to go to them often.  That way they are connected, but can be easily ignored if desired…that would just depend on what story the DM was creating.</blockquote>

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