Selljammer

That is definitely a cool way to do it, you definitely could have crystal spheres the size of a universe. I've just always loved the 3e cosmology since I read lords of madness and the manual of planes (not that it is any better than your method)

I've considered keeping the phlogiston in my games, but treating it kinda like hyper space. Its another conterminous plane, like the etheral, but you travel waaay faster in it. So ships can slip into the phlogiston, travel really far, then enter the material plane again once they reach a far away star.

Now what if they wana travel to another material plane entirely? Then they will need to travel through the deep shadow.

The alternate material planes I allow them to travel to will be really creepy. For example, in Dragon 373 an alternate material plane is described where Tharizdun had successfully destroyed everything. This plane is described as the home world of the Sharn.

There is also the home dimension of the Grell, which I have run on different physics, since Grell alchemy is some sort of wierd science that doesn't really follow the normal rules of the material plane.

Not a fan of 3e cosmology myself, though it's still leagues better than 4e. The plane of shadow is a much more boring Shadow World from Birthright. The Shadow World was a dark mirror, planar border, fairy world, and parallel world from which halflings originated. Travel to any other plane first passes through the Shadow World, sometimes things get stuck halfway. A place where illusion can be as real as anything else, that requires a special level of perception to see through.

I think the Elven Fleet deserves more use as an imperialist antagonist! Age of sail politics in fantasy space is the best way to run it in, though exploration and star trek style adventure is legit too.

>Called Spelljammer
>No one is jamming spells
This game is a house of lies.

I definitely feature the imperial elven navy in my games as a semi antagonist. They usually come across as xenophobic and heartless in my PC's encounters with them.

How do you come up with worlds effecitvley? I have a tough time when players just go to some random planet and I don't have much prepared for it.

their basically the east india company

The Brittish Empire in general, rather. Make a random table for cases like that, including the primary terrain that the majority of the population lives on, the dominant race, the general culture level, and maybe a simple quest hook.

Spelljammer looks fun and unique on the surface, but once you actually get to playing it, the themes are disappointingly shallow. There's actually nothing substantive about the "outer space" angle aside from weird gravity and limited clerical spells. You might as well just play a game where your PCs are pirates on the high seas. At least then it would be more grounded in one world. No one I've talked to who has played it has had a good time with it.
Elves are Chaotic Good, though.

You should have a general idea what's in each sphere before they even arrive. Most of a universe sized sphere is likely to be barren and lifeless, but there can easily be worlds where the Blood War rages, bases for the Scro empire or Elven fleet, a Tyrant Ship crash landed onto a weak world slowly but surely blasting it lifeless, or any number of things.

Consider having some unusual worlds too, like a Mobius strip or enormous drop of water on which islands float, while the depths hold metals in the form of some magical breed of coral.

their more neutral in Spelljammer

the Unhuman war was horrible on all sides and left its mark every where and on everyone

Not the Elven Fleet as a whole they aren't. The entire setting is clearly unfinished, and more a series of notes and ideas than a fleshed out setting. Things like air bubbles, the Phlogeston, casting in space and such all feel unfinished, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. The high seas are never going to be as unusual as literally sailing through space. Being unfinished it requires more out of the gm, but there's enough to work with to have an appealing campaign!

That sounds great.

Yeah real worlds are definitely important. I'm thinking of having a world where the planet and the moon have giant faces on them that occasionally talk, resulting in huge earthquakes. An user came up with an idea on a thread on Veeky Forums a few months ago.

Another fun example is a sphere that is entirely flooded by water. Some apocalypse killed everyone, leaving it filled entirely with water, though explorers and new settlers have built 'air pockets' with dense seaweed and magic. Don't recall where I read that one but it was neat. There was also the Witchlight sphere, where the stars scream and the worlds have clearly been visited and abandoned by the Far Plane. It's where the Scro got their Witchlight Marauder superweapons during the Unhuman wars, might be worth a visit should one show up again.

Is the witchlight sphere homebrew or was it in the setting? I've always wanted more info on the witchlight marauders. I ran a session where the players adventured inside of a giant witchlight marauder in space.

I don't remember, it was on the spelljammer.org site. Adventuring inside one would be neat, I ran an adventure in a 'dead' Tyrant ship while the party raced a team from the Kara-tur fleet to the center for a shard of an artifact that, it turned out, was being used as a lens for a death tyrant beholder's eye rays.

>Selljammer
>Sell Jammer
So, Rogue Trader?

>witchlight sphere homebrew or was it in the setting
During 3e, spelljammer.org was quasi-official. So it was both, really. But it never existed in 2e.

Not even a little. The two were more-or-less contemporaneous, by the way. Rogue Trader's first edition did predate Spelljammer by 2 years, but the two games have next-to-nothing in common. Not even thematically, let alone content-wise.

And now I notice the spelling error that prompted your comment, and realize the implications I'd drawn from your post are not related to the joke you were making.

I'm a terrible nerd and I've really wanted to run a spelljammer 40k crossover (that isn't DTD).

A lost troop of catchans into the Astromundi cluster would be kinda fun, I guess. They would be trying to work their way to the center to join the human-centric empire, I suppose, blowing up a lotta people along the way. Probably accusing everyone with magic of being a heretic.

I think the culture-shock shtick would wear thin pretty quickly, though.

I want a spelljammer/dragonstar-like 4x space game

what is 4x?

Explore, exploit, something something. Video games like the Civilization series. Or Masters of Orion.

A game based around helping to establish colonies in new, strange, and often hostile spheres where magic is not necessarily going to function as it did back home, among many other issues.. then defending it against pirates, hostile locals, or even imperialist folks there to seize it once it's up and running.

Rather, a game based on all that would be a fun one to run or play. Priests have to establish a local bastion of their faith to get their full powers, mages have to study some new ways to cast perhaps, or other things of that nature. Exploration, discovery, experimentation, and overcoming conflict would make great key themes for a game like that.

can spelljammers sail through space in the conterminous planes, like the etheral and shadow, in 2e?

Also, if the phlogistin is between the spheres in the material plane, what is between the etheral spheres in the etheral plane?

I would imagine they could sail it, yes. The deep ethereal is what's between the border ethereal and other planes, including prime worlds, the inner planes, and demiplanes that lie deep within the deep ethereal.

Ethereal is a-ok for spelljammer use. You can go into the ethereal while in the flow. It's just normal ethereal space, though. And without the flow to travel between spheres? It's just a big, empty nothing.

I assume you mean Ravenloft by shadow? The demiplane of dread is in the Ethereal. So sure: spelljammers should work just fine in it. Would it ever let one in? Eh. Prolly not. Although it could make for a fun demiplane: a giant ships' graveyard of people taken into it out of the flow. Ships all crashed together, spelljamming impossible for no aparent reason. Just a black nothingness with a core of immobile ships all stuck together. An urban space in an endless void where gravity becomes problematic on occasion.

Pretty sure there is no Ethereal coterminous to the plogiston. That's why extraplanar spells that rely on the Ethereal still don't work.

You literally jam spells into the ship to make it go

I like this map more.

Can spelljammer dock at Sigil?

I don't think there is any way in. Sigil is known as the cage, and you can only get in by portals iirc. You would need a big portal to fit an entire ship through.

You can probably get to Outlands at least and trade in a gate town, which then trades to and from Sigil itself.

Nothing cozier than a Spelljammer thread.

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A space version of Sargasso?

Already one in Ravenloft called, wait for it.. Saragos. If I were to make a spelljammer domain it'd probably be related to the Unhuman wars, having a region of eternal horrid war of constantly escalating superweapons and casualties, testing on civilians and all that horrible business.

I'm a big doom fan and spelljammer fan (I'm posting on both of the active spelljammer threads right now).

This made my day. This band is pretty cool. I love tuned down guitar.

Sigil has portals to everywhere so there could be a portal to many places in the phlogiston. A small space dock at such a portal would work.

>>portal to the phlogiston

I don't think you understand how the phlogiston works. Portal to wildspace, maybe.