Spelljammin

Who here's played spelljammer? How was it?

Bonus points if its in 5e

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spelljammer.org/worlds/articles/SphereGuide/Guide to the Spheres.pdf
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i've been watching the catalog for days, waiting for a spelljammer thread.

I play in 5e. I don't use crystal spheres, and take a bit more sci fi approach. Space is planets orbiting stars, like space in the real world. I still keep most of the factions, imperial elven navy, the scro, shou lung. It has been a lot of fun. I definetly feel like its made me a better DM.

I also borrowed the concept of evil stars from 4e, inspired by blog of holding.

Check out the guide this player made. It was really helpful for me.

blogofholding.com/?p=6928

As a DM it was tough for a while, as the players had so many options. Sometimes they would just go somewhere and I woulnd't have much prepared. You need to have scenarios you can pull out of your hat for when the players go off track, otherwise you will be stumped as they do something totally different than you expected.

The biggest challenge for me is making the planets feel like planets, with multiple nations and cities and cultures. Making once city feel fleshed out is hard, a universe of planets is next to impossible. I've considered even writing some software to procedurally generate planets with nations, cities, races, cultures, and maybe some really shitty maps.

The biggest isue with spelljammer IMO is that it just wasn't finished.

if you spend some time reading the splat books, you will find tons of references the things that were never referenced again.

Who where the ancient Juna?
What happened during the unhuman wars?
Are the spirit warriors still in use?
What is the deal with the Ogres of the steel star?
What happened to the Vodoni after under the dark fist? Why are they never mentioned again?


The setting was never really finished.

The second biggest issue is inconsistencies, both in content and tone. Sometimes, like with the juna and the bionoids, the setting is almost lovecraftian. Other times, like with the giant hamsters, it is so wacky its hard to take seriously. As a DM it is up to you if you want to keep the conflicting tone (sometimes that can be good), or ignore things that don't match the tone you are going for. As for the continuity issues its best to just ignore them and say w/e makes the most sense to you.

Going through the Wildspace module in 2e. It's pretty rad so far.

Ask me anything.

This sort of weird unexplained background references are a part of the charm. You might as well ask why Lovecraft never finished his setting.

>Part of the attraction is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.

>tfw spell jammer but no dragonstar thread in the catalogue

I've been working on a setting that is like a fusion of Spelljammer and the Underdark. Sort of like the Elemental Plane of Earth but with a lot more open area, like if it was full of massive tunnels.
I call it CaveSpace, and it is full of weird races trying to survive in the strange pockets where life springs up while contending with wandering macrobeasts, raiders and ecological change caused by earthquakes and stuff.
Instead of adapting Spelljammer material, I'm using the many Stars Without Numbers books I have to convert it to Space Fantasy to be used with 5e D&D.

true

on the other hand that means you can make up almost anything you want for an adventure

>Bonus points if its in 5e

I know the unhuman wars were just a big stupid fight between elves and goblinoids. Called such because no human faction was involved. I don't recall much else, but they did discuss it some in the novels.

>Who where the ancient Juna?

where are they mentioned i don't think i've heard of them?

>What happened during the unhuman wars?

war crime after war crime

>Are the spirit warriors still in use?

yeah probably even if they aren't being made as often

>What is the deal with the Ogres of the steel star?
>What happened to the Vodoni after under the dark fist? Why are they never mentioned again?

I also don't think i've heard of these, what are they?

The Juna are a very rarely mentioned ancient race. In 4e they were briefly mentioned as what the Sharn modeled their trilateral bodies after in Dragon 373.


The vodoni are the bad guys from this adventure : rpgnow.com/product/17248/SJA4-Under-the-Dark-Fist-2e?it=1

They are supposed to control 12 crystal spheres, but after their emperor dies in this adventure they get only one more mention in any spelljammer product.

Looking now the steel star may actually have been fan made content from spelljammer.org

spelljammer.org/worlds/articles/SphereGuide/Guide to the Spheres.pdf

Anyway the vodoni are basically a bio-lycanthrope army.

The steel star ogres supposedly were discovered by khelben blackstaff. The steel star emits grey light, I think they are Oni. They are supposed to be this looming threat coming from beyond the bounds of known space.

this is really cool. How big is this setting supposed to be? Is it like thousands of miles of caves, or millions/billions of miles

oh ok

I never paid attention to 4e

i think I remember the little i know of the Vodoni

a human space empire right? I never read that adventure

so a werewolf space empire huh

surprisingly hard for me to come up with ideas for that

it's cool but where do you go with it know what i mean

In my mind, it's like an inverted universe that is mostly solid instead of mostly empty.
There are networks of tunnels that are thousands of miles in diameter and millions of miles long that were either carved by erosion or impossibly large and ancient worms.
They only ever dead end when geologic changes (such as the movement of galaxy-sized tectonic plates) cut them off.
There are also oceans of water, magma and ichor (like oil/tar infused with death magic) and all kinds of different environments.
I'm also not designing specific races or locations, but creating random tables to build them once they are discovered.

Alright, let's come up with a cool spelljammer plot that we can use in our games or just for the fun of making a plot.

Who should the bad guys be?

Neogi and mindflayers are classic, although personally I think mindflayers are overused in spelljammer and it makes them less scary.

Maybe the elven imperial navy? Those guys like to pretend they are in the right but often are not.

I've had some success with evil sentient stars corrupted by the far realm as the villians.

Maybe evil space dragons like the radiant dragons in spelljammer? Those are huge and smart, who knows what they are thinking?

The Reigar are pretty cool. They are supposed to be an ancient spelljamming race, predating the elves, that has fallen from grace, much like the Juna.

Maybe the bad guys could be from an alternate material plane, Invading this material plane through the deep shadow.

I played the original and enjoyed it. I like the "fuck physics" approach which seems more proper for it in my opinion. Other than that it is much like a game on sea with all the good and bad.

I like the Reigar

they basically have power rangers as minions with shakti as morphers

>On a second command word (also, of course, known only to the creator/user), the shakti transforms into a suit of armor and an accompanying weapon. The armor is reminiscent of the animal represented by the shakti’s dormant form, as is the special attack it bestows on its wearer. The weapon can be anything from a sword to a trident to a weighted net (use weapons tables from the Complete Fighter’s Handbook for ideas), and there is always a magical effect released in tandem with the attack. This may be merely for flash and effect, or it may relate to the damage caused. For example, a sword might emit a shower of colored light when swung at an opponent, but inflict no extra damage, or a net might paralyze a trapped victim.

yeah it's Age of Discovery IN SPACE!

but that just mean you can basically go any where and do any thing

Yeah, there is a lot of possibility for the right GM's, as without science to hold you back worlds can be ANYTHING and open a lot of fun.

you could literally have a cystal sphere where all the planets are being juggled by a giant Jester and they are all shaped like daggers, swords, clubs and anything else


Spelljammer is awesome

I feel like you have to do the Age of Discovery with a setting twist (like being in space) do to the political climate

Kind of? I took large swaths of ideas from it, but the actual game was a Kingdom Hearts one using the Saga Edition Star Wars rules adapted to D&D.

what do you mean?

Maybe it's just because I'm on the west coast, but I feel a lot of people around here would have problems playing in that era. Things like fighting Turks, reconquistaing, European contact with new world natives and the people in their colonies in Asia, etc.

Privateer?

Prirate?

Giant Space Hamsters smuggler?

honestly you can do anything and go any where and you will find Adventure in Spelljammer

oh

well it is in space with Elves and Orcs and you can always just not bring up stuff that angers people

Not wanting to play as xenophobic conquerors is a noble pursuit, but I think you are too narrowly interpreting the themes of Age of Discovery. I would recommend dropping the whole colonist aspect of it and focus on discovering and studying new places, species and cultures.

Why not make a Space Games General? Spelljammer, Dragonstar, Starfinder, and anything else can get a thread going that doesn't die in a few posts.

suppose some one Could

but I don't think it would go any where

Link me to some PDFs and I'll try it out

Oh, right...my character in 5e ended the campaign lost in the Astral Plane (long story). I find this kind of...anticlimactic, so I'm writing a story that involves her ending up in the City of Brass as a slave to an efreeti. And she'll be escaping via spelljammer. I've just reached the part where she first sees the spelljammer in question...

>“Oh, that is by far the least of its capabilities,” Kotai said, walking over to the edge of the railing and looking down at the ship. “You’ve never heard of spelljammers?” As Iliira shook her head, the azer sighed. “Not many have, these days. Once they were not so uncommon, but ever since the Scro Degradations, the Great Conflagration, the Spider Moon…” He shook his head. “It would take too long to explain. Suffice to say that this vessel, once completed, may be the only one of its kind in the cosmos, in all cosmos.”

>“Okay…” Iliira ventured, glancing to the vessel. “I’m gathering that it’s not just a flying ship, then.”

>“Of course she’s more,” Kotai confirmed. He looked to Iliira. “There are worlds beyond this one, Iliira. And I don’t mean beyond the Plane of Fire, you know that already. I mean that all of this,” he spread his arms wide, “everything you know…the Material Plane, the Elemental Planes, the Outer Planes…all of it…is just one cosmos, just one crystal sphere floating in a vast sea. And beyond that crystal sphere are innumerable others.”

>Iliira blinked a few times at that. “There’s…another Abeir-Toril?” She asked.

>“No, not quite,” Kotai responded. “As I said, everything you know is in a single crystal sphere, and Abeir-Toril sits at the center of that sphere. But there are other spheres that have a different world at their center. Krynn, Eberron, Mystara, Golarion, Athas, and countless more. And the spelljammer,” he swept his hand to the floating ship, “she can venture to those worlds.”

How far along are you? Are you the gm or a player?

You need to read into things a bit more. The Juna are implied to be the ones that originally built the Spelljammer.

Running a 3.5 game right now. Sea elf serving on a border legion ship. Elven Imperial Navy has rounded up (press ganged) hobbits and others to serve on this ship and try and keep things in order. Its been a good game so far.

Break out the pirates, Bad accents and all.

where is that implied? Is that in one of the novels? I've looked through like 7 different spelljammer pdfs and can't find any mention of the Juna.

Also what is their relation with the Reigar (if any)? Which is the older race?

Who /giantspacehamster/ here?

The shivaks on the Spelljammer come in the shapes of all the normal humanoid races, and an extra one that nobody knows what it is, but is described as a triradially symetrical form with 3 arms. Which would be the Juna.

Also, it's pretty much spelled out explicitly in the novels.

>everything you know…the Material Plane, the Elemental Planes, the Outer Planes…all of it…is just one cosmos, just one crystal sphere floating in a vast sea. And beyond that crystal sphere are innumerable others.
That's not how crystal spheres work m80.

Yeah, I'm just remembering that now...although that might be becuase personally I've never liked the idea of there being a single Elemental Fire, a single Nine Hells, etc.

One thing I like about Spelljammer is that it allows you to take joke races and make them something else. Lizard men are smarter and cooler, I made yuan-ti ships for a fallen society. heck I'm working on the grippli for the next encounter.

My group decided to use their flying ship to get from place to place on the game world, doing very little space stuff.

I played a Lovecraftian horror Spelljammer session. It didn't go well because of name jokes and silly stuff. A player felt railroaded as well, which was not always the case if he wasn't such a jokey dink.

I suggest Spelljammer for a different group, they wanted to be a pirate crew but must have space whales and snake people. It didn't went through but I'm still thinking how I could combine piracy, space whales, and snake people together. (Though the last wish doesn't need to go through because that guy was a meta gamer who hated me for reskinning.)

In 3e the material plane had multiple stars/planets, which shared outer planes, but alternate material planes each had different sets of outer planes.

Theres a Video Game called "We are the Dwarves" that runs on the exact same premise as your setting.

Its a great idea too.

Also you could only get to alternate material planes (which themselves could contain millions of planets) through the deep plane of shadow.

Here's an idea, evil space gnomes who bred intelligence into their giant space hamsters just to make them suffer as they power their horribly inefficient machines.

simple

turn the corpse of a space whale into a ship for a snake pirate crew

I've always liked the idea of multiple material planes, each with many spheres of their own, connected by the deep shadow.

I've been floating around the idea of shadowjammers, spelljammers equipped to sail through outer space in the plane of shadow. The bad guys would be invaders from an alternate material plane, who have equipped their spelljammers to fly through the deep shadow, and are now invading the spheres of the standard D&D material plane.

Perhaps the sharn could be invading from sharn-world, a universe where Tharizdun destroyed everything, and which also contained the Juna according to Dragon Magazine 373 (it is implied the sharn based their trilateral bodies on the Juna). Since that universe is now ruined due to Tharizdun, it would make sense to have the surviving monsters invading other material planes for resources.

Maybe the PCs have to learn the secret to shadow jamming so they can lead allied adventurers on a dangerous journey to the dead universe of the sharn, and stop the invasion at its source. Or they could just play defense and have a fun campaign that way.

YAR

everyone of couse

sounds more like the Dohwar or space penguin merchants user

remember the space swine they sell for mounts or food have a int of 3

thats the minimal for being sapient in dnd

Ready for duty!

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OP here, loving the /spacehamster/

I have a feeling the current game I'm running may very easily (d)evolve into space pirateering.

>Starfinder

Fuck off

i don't get the / / in spacehamster

>group of color-coordinated Reigar check on rumors about a local vigilante
>turns out to be a bionoid
>informs the group about a rare 5-man Spirit Warrior nearby
>likes the reigars' attitude

nah

Reigar don't fight

they have Helots and Lakshu for that

or Putties and Women with Attitude to put it another way

What is generally tougher, 1 bionoid or 1 spirit warrior?

I think it depends on the warrior in the Spirit Warrior

How about all things equal? Like an average elf gets turned into both. Or are you saying that some warriors do better as one than they would as another?

well a Spirit Warrior is basically an undead insect mecha that has a pilot in it

and the rules say a higher level pilot gets his more attacks

bionoids doesn't say anything ike that just 6 attacks

so am not sure who's better

Does the plane of shadow have phlogistin? If you travel to the edge of a crystal sphere in the plane of shadow is there some sort if shadow crystal sphere?

Anyone have any download links of spelljammer novels?

They're fucking awful, you wouldn't want to read them even if you had them.

It is my favorite thing and the only thing I actually enjoy playing. I sure as hell don't play it in 5th when I can play it with an old school system.

I just need it for inspiration, but I'm having a hard time finding anything.

You're better off reading setting books, honestly. The Rock of Bral, in particular, is interesting. The adventures are OK as well, combining all that together could give you some inspiration to work with.
The setting is sadly unfinished and pretty barren, otherwise, and the novels are just awful and don't help with that. Each one is written by a different author within the same single series - never a good thing.

I run a 5e spelljammer game in a modified version of Clusterspace (Astromundi cluster). My players have great fun running around trying to figure out the plots within plots within plots going on in the sphere, as well as SUN WIZARDS (and of course, one of the players has a /giantspacehamster/)

If your crew aren't a ragtag bunch of assholes you're playing the whole game wrong.

I didn't think the Cloakmaster Cycle was that bad.

I think it's a matter of the different elements you want co-existing in the same setting.

What if the snake people are an ancient civilization, well established on certain planets, who have yet to fully embrace Spelljammer technology? Some of their kind would make it into the Void - explorers, rogues, criminals escaping justice and the Lawbringers chasing them, merchants and the like - but what happens when something big and obvious goes down and this civilization, suddenly aware of the potential between the stars, starts to launch a fleet?

Space whales could be a resource harnessed by (human) mercantile interests. Whale oil was a fuel that literally ran the lanterns of the world at one time - Moby Dick is the story of one captain whose desire for revenge against a single, massive whale, dooms his entire ship and crew. The electronic game "Dishonored" explores an alternative setting where whale oil can be used to generate power - not hard to imagine, then, a fleet that runs on the stuff instead of Magic Furnaces.

Pirates are the easy part.

>“For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.”

Man after my own heart

Heres the basics
google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1452/83/1452837537158.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwj49dngw-rUAhWrjlQKHRSdBzkQFggdMAA&usg=AFQjCNFX7GGW6sYxHPPsPumrFSdog-N2CA

I ran a 15 year long campaign, 1st level to 32nd level, 2nd edition to PF.

I'm gonna take a look at what starfinder does for the sake of curiousity, but PF makes for a fine Spelljammer game.

Does pathfinder have level 30+?

Hey, if you're down to post some of that material I would love to get my hands on some of it.

If you mean Starts W/O Numbers I'll share what I can. You can probably find the rest in PDF threads.

To me the value of a setting is the amount of hooks you can extract from it. Buckets of unresolved references can't hurt. Why won't you go and find out?

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I thought about that, but the group is full of total noobs who don't know that they should care about something until it's too late.

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turning space whale corpse into ships is something necromancers do in Spelljammer

you could have them run into one

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No, you don't get it. TOTAL UTTER NOOBS. Even if the sun itself would explode and it would rain spiders, they wouldn't even figure out that they need to run for their fucking lives. That's how clueless they are. Or perhaps I just suck at making antagonists that are actual threats even though they tell them everything they do to people.

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ouch

yeah I don't think I can help you user

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