With Spelljammer 5E on the horizon, I was wondering with this boards general sentiment towards the setting is. I've never played in Spelljammer but I always heard good things about it. Any shot the 5E version stays true to the original or will it get the milquetoast SJW approved treatment that more recent 5E products have received?
And for some reason I always link Spelljammer and Planescape in my head even though there's no real reason for it, so the same goes for Planescape...how do you all feel about the setting overall?
Which books are "must haves" for both settings?
And can they exist within the same game world? Could have you have a campaign that uses both Spelljammer and Planescape rules and setting material?
Never played spelljammer, but I have some fond memories of planescape, both from it's 3e incarnation, and from the computer game and it's associated novelization.
As far as I know, the 2e planescape setting book is considered the definitive source on the setting, but the 3e manual of the planes was quite a good quality supplement as well. The CRPG planescape torment might be the most definitive take on the setting for most people, though. Fortunately you can still get it on Good Old Games for pocket change, and it holds up surprisingly well.
EDIT: For my money, Planescape is probably the best published setting for dealing with the more gonzo and high fantasy side of D&d. It can get pretty out there, and it comes with plenty of inherent rationale for why even mid-to-high level PCs would still start near the bottom of the food chain.
I was never a big fan of either setting. I'm sure, however, that whatever good points they have can be wrecked by the current crew.
Every time I tried to run a Spelljammer campaign, it has collapsed under the weight of its own ridiculousness.
Never ran Planescape.
I expect every WOTC release to be 2022 Seattle, from here on out.
Planescape appeals to me more than Spelljammer does.
Quote from: Jam The MF on August 15, 2022, 02:06:48 PM
I expect every WOTC release to be 2022 Seattle, from here on out.
Planescape appeals to me more than Spelljammer does.
Is WotC Seattle the ones responsible for all the woke changes?
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on August 15, 2022, 02:01:31 PM
Every time I tried to run a Spelljammer campaign, it has collapsed under the weight of its own ridiculousness.
Never ran Planescape.
Do you have an example by chance?
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 02:27:56 PM
Quote from: Jam The MF on August 15, 2022, 02:06:48 PM
I expect every WOTC release to be 2022 Seattle, from here on out.
Planescape appeals to me more than Spelljammer does.
Is WotC Seattle the ones responsible for all the woke changes?
The current staff at WOTC are imprinting current cultural norms, into and onto everything they create or re-publish for D&D. They feel they must atone for the sins of the past, by changing everything to fall into line with current cultural norms. Modern day Seattle, if you will. And Paizo is doing the same.
Played in a Spelljammer campaign long ago, but it didn't last more than a few sessions. I remember nobody really knowing what the heck to do (including the DM). My only experience with Planescape was mining the 3e sourcebook for mid-high level adventure ideas. Never dug into the more plane-hopping aspects of it.
I have no real opinions either way. Sorry to disappoint.
I think Spelljammer is a bunch of fun. Its very weird though. Not for those that want a more serious experience.
Its ship rules are eh.
Spelljammer 5e will definitely get the "current year" treatment. Can't find it now, but I already saw an article explaining about how "not all space vampires are bad, you know." And it looks like they're adding more new quirky furry races to play. Knowing WOTC, it'll be all about taking your crew of non-binary space hippos on a "so random" adventure to non-violently smash the space patriarchy.
Added spelljammer to my current campaign when it first came out. Once that campaign was over, never revisited it but the flying ships are still a thing to this day :)
As for 5e? Meh :)
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 15, 2022, 03:12:44 PM
Spelljammer 5e will definitely get the "current year" treatment. Can't find it now, but I already saw an article explaining about how "not all space vampires are bad, you know." And it looks like they're adding more new quirky furry races to play. Knowing WOTC, it'll be all about taking your crew of non-binary space hippos on a "so random" adventure to non-violently smash the space patriarchy.
You're most likely correct. I'm not even sure what to do about it anymore. Seems futile to try and fight it anymore, this nonsense seems inevitable.
I'm working on my own system for fixing the awful homogenization treatment they gave all the races that also gives a bit more freedom, so maybe just houseruling away all the SJW woke trash is the only real solution outside of abandoning D&D altogether.
I used Planescape a couple times and it's a pretty good setting. The (I think) 3.5 book was great had a lot of evocative imagery. Spelljammer is something I like in concept and have stol...borrowed concepts from the setting. But, as has been mentioned, using it wholesale is a bit too ridiculous for my preferences. Generally, I'd say Planescape is the more usable setting. Both have plenty of stuff worth copy-pasting into another game.
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 04:03:38 PM
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 15, 2022, 03:12:44 PM
Spelljammer 5e will definitely get the "current year" treatment. Can't find it now, but I already saw an article explaining about how "not all space vampires are bad, you know." And it looks like they're adding more new quirky furry races to play. Knowing WOTC, it'll be all about taking your crew of non-binary space hippos on a "so random" adventure to non-violently smash the space patriarchy.
You're most likely correct. I'm not even sure what to do about it anymore. Seems futile to try and fight it anymore, this nonsense seems inevitable.
I'm working on my own system for fixing the awful homogenization treatment they gave all the races that also gives a bit more freedom, so maybe just houseruling away all the SJW woke trash is the only real solution outside of abandoning D&D altogether.
Why not just use hard copies of the earlier print runs, for in person gaming? Provide a handout, saying you are running the original 5E core content only.
Quote from: Jam The MF on August 15, 2022, 04:52:59 PM
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 04:03:38 PM
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 15, 2022, 03:12:44 PM
Spelljammer 5e will definitely get the "current year" treatment. Can't find it now, but I already saw an article explaining about how "not all space vampires are bad, you know." And it looks like they're adding more new quirky furry races to play. Knowing WOTC, it'll be all about taking your crew of non-binary space hippos on a "so random" adventure to non-violently smash the space patriarchy.
You're most likely correct. I'm not even sure what to do about it anymore. Seems futile to try and fight it anymore, this nonsense seems inevitable.
I'm working on my own system for fixing the awful homogenization treatment they gave all the races that also gives a bit more freedom, so maybe just houseruling away all the SJW woke trash is the only real solution outside of abandoning D&D altogether.
Why not just use hard copies of the earlier print runs, for in person gaming? Provide a handout, saying you are running the original 5E core content only.
When last I looked, WOTC was still publishing the old books unabridged, in print--on-demand. Much as I don't like giving them any money, part of me thinks it's worthwhile to buy them, just so the bean counters get the message that there's still a market for TSR material (and for archival).
For Planescape 2E there is an enormous wealth of material and adventures (four base boxes! plus scores ) The Manual of the Planes 3E basically it is a conversion tool for all of this (along with The Planar Handbook). These books, however, are also useful for creating your own cosmology
I loved Planescape and it was a key component of my long running campaign. I discovered it thanks to "Planescape: Torment" (which is one of the best videogames I ever played) so, since you can buy it for a bunch of peanuts, you can try it and see if you like the setting.
Or you can buy the basic box in .PDF on DriveThrough RPG: if you like that you will like the rest.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 15, 2022, 03:07:55 PM
I think Spelljammer is a bunch of fun. Its very weird though. Not for those that want a more serious experience.
Its ship rules are eh.
That was my experience too. At the time Spelljammer came out, I wanted all my gaming to be super-serious all the time, and it just didn't work well for that. Because of that experience (and because I had moved away from D&D), I haver gave Planescape a chance.
Quote from: HappyDaze on August 15, 2022, 11:59:16 PM
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 15, 2022, 03:07:55 PM
I think Spelljammer is a bunch of fun. Its very weird though. Not for those that want a more serious experience.
Its ship rules are eh.
That was my experience too. At the time Spelljammer came out, I wanted all my gaming to be super-serious all the time, and it just didn't work well for that. Because of that experience (and because I had moved away from D&D), I haver gave Planescape a chance.
I have the basic box of Spelljammer, I read it and I never bothered to buy anything else from that line (or to run it). My players had their flying ship in 3E (the Alchemical Rainbow) and I wrote the rules for areal ships and fights with them - which worked well. Planescape gave me all I needed, including battles in the Astral Plane. I never included "other Prime Material Planes" (Krynn, Mystara) anyway. They once reached a "Dead Plane" where not even the Gods were present - and even then Planescape was all I needed. I understand the idea behind Spelljammer but Planescape killed it.
It's been ages since I've been able to play them, but Planescape and Spelljammer were my favorite D&D settings, after Dark Sun, back in the day (90s,). I never played SJ 100% RAW, but there was a period where every group we started had its own ship, and they were constantly flying around from place to place and characters could be from all over the place. I lost those books to a termite infestation, but I had the main boxed set and the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook (plus maybe a few others I can't remember), which added a bunch of races, kits and other stuff (recommended if you wanna play SJ 2e).
Planescape I couldn't play as much (that was around the time everyone in my group was growing up going off to work, or even moving away, etc), but it became of one my go-to settings during my last teenage years of gaming. Lots of interesting stuff dealing with the different factions and their philosophies, and such. I wish I could have spent more time in Sigil, but most of our adventures were random world hopping stuff, when we weren't playing Ravenloft, cuz one of my regular player I could always get a hold of at the time was obsessed with it (good setting too, I regret not getting the books now)
All of these settings will be crapped on by WotC. They weren't perfect by any stretch (except for Dark Sun, and even that suffered on its later supplements), but all four settings I mentioned in this post were the best D&D ever had to offer as far as I'm concerned. But WotC sucks at world-building, and now more than ever.
Reviews are coming in for the new Spelljammer books...not good so far. Minimal and nonsensical rules for ship combat with more rules dedicated to crashing than naval combat as a whole. Guess I'll be pillaging from older material instead. Glad I didn't waste my money.
I've been looking forward to Spelljammer in 5e for years, since I never got a chance to play it back in the day. But it looks like WOTC already mangled it just like all the other settings they've been putting out lately. Either the lore gets changed for no reason to its detriment, or it is basically an empty book with nothing of real value to offer, and it looks like Spelljammer is both right now, unfortunately.
Spelljammer was never my bag. Not all great tastes taste great together. There's a certain type of genre mixing that just doesn't pop off for me, and getting on your magic spaceboat and flying from Dragonlance to Dark Sun to Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms never sat well with me. I like these worlds better without visitors from another planet arriving on their magic spaceboat. I'm not much more enthusiastic about cross-pollinating these worlds through planeswalking, either.
I've lightened up a bit over the years. Spelljammer as a concept seems fine, but it kinda needs to be its own thing. Everything I've heard about the original Spelljammer has been positive, and that it's a fun gonzo adventure. I'm willing to take those reviews at face value.
I wanted to enjoy Planescape. It definitely set the cosmology in D&D. There were a few things about it that didn't jive with me. I didn't really like the factions and I wasn't all that interested in Sigil. Looking through the boxed set, I'm seeing the cracks. Some quick head math has this boxed set with about the same page count as the 3E Manual of the Planes. Over half of the boxed set is Sigil and the factions (so basically, Sigil). It doesn't really talk all that much about the other planes. If you don't have the other boxed sets (which I didn't back then) that's what Planescape is - Sigil. The other planes, which should be the interesting part of the setting, feel like a footnote. I think if the Planescape boxed set had contained the material that's in Manual of the Planes, I'd have liked it a lot more. All the infinite planes, and we're talking about this one city in the Outlands. Which, because it sits in the center of the plane that sits in the center of all the other outer planes, is the most important place in the multiverse. It makes Planescape feel small.
If I sat down and read through this again, I would probably like the factions more now. Having read Manual of the Planes definitely helps with that, and I can see how somebody who had the 1E version of that book might have been more interested. I now know things about those other planes that aren't presented to me in the original boxed set. I'm sure being in my 40s rather than high school makes a difference as well. I'm not a big fan of how all of the D&D game worlds are kind of shoehorned together to fit the Great Wheel. I prefer allowing each world to have its own cosmology that doesn't have to fit neatly with the others, but that's a tradeoff that probably has to be made in order to do Planescape as a campaign setting.
If WotC is going to do Planescape, I'd prefer for them not to try to do 2E Planescape. That's exactly what they're going to do, and it's going to be terrible, because WotC fundamentally doesn't understand what fans love about their favorite game worlds. This is entirely separate from any problems they have with the Seattle virus. WotC mangled the Forgotten Realms from 3E-4E-5E. What they're doing to Dragonlance also looks stupid. Trying to rewrite old Greyhawk modules to cram them into the Forgotten Realms is stupid. It's like they don't have anyone who knows how to write fluff, and they keep wanting to change fluff thinking it doesn't matter and nobody cares.
Planescape is built into WotC's flagship product. Release a full length book on Dominaria. That's the default game world where all your modules are set in. Your "Prime Material Plane". Then release Planeswalker's Guide to the Multiverse. Bam. 5E Planescape. Yeah, the old heads won't be happy that they didn't get their Planescape updated for 5E, but they all know they weren't going to get that, anyway. At least they won't be pissed off that their cool setting got butchered and mangled by incompetent buffoons.
Quote from: Corolinth on August 16, 2022, 07:33:56 PM
Spelljammer was never my bag. Not all great tastes taste great together. There's a certain type of genre mixing that just doesn't pop off for me, and getting on your magic spaceboat and flying from Dragonlance to Dark Sun to Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms never sat well with me. I like these worlds better without visitors from another planet arriving on their magic spaceboat. I'm not much more enthusiastic about cross-pollinating these worlds through planeswalking, either.
It's funny, when we ran Planescape as kids, whatever base setting we were using (usually Faerun) just was the material plane. It's probably because none of us had the Spelljammer books, but we basically assumed that only one D&D setting was canon at a time.
Quote from: Corolinth on August 16, 2022, 07:33:56 PM
Planescape is built into WotC's flagship product. Release a full length book on Dominaria. That's the default game world where all your modules are set in. Your "Prime Material Plane". Then release Planeswalker's Guide to the Multiverse. Bam. 5E Planescape. Yeah, the old heads won't be happy that they didn't get their Planescape updated for 5E, but they all know they weren't going to get that, anyway. At least they won't be pissed off that their cool setting got butchered and mangled by incompetent buffoons.
Plane Shift Dominaria was probably my single biggest 5e disappointment. I read the Urza novelizations back when that line of cards was current, and Dominaria is a legitimately interesting setting. They didn't even try to do it justice. At this point, I wouldn't buy a Dominaria source book if they published one, but I wish they'd done one for 3rd edition, back when they were still doing proper setting books.
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 16, 2022, 07:55:30 PM
Plane Shift Dominaria was probably my single biggest 5e disappointment. I read the Urza novelizations back when that line of cards was current, and Dominaria is a legitimately interesting setting. They didn't even try to do it justice. At this point, I wouldn't buy a Dominaria source book if they published one, but I wish they'd done one for 3rd edition, back when they were still doing proper setting books.
I'm not the world's biggest MTG fan. I played a bit in the 90s, and read two or three novels. I have a very rough understanding of several of the sets and their associated worlds, most of which I've acquired through osmosis. Dominaria is the world I'm most familiar with, because that's around the time I played. I understand your disappointment. I myself was pretty disappointed with the entire Plane Shift series. I think the concept had a lot of potential, and they threw it away on several free 24-page PDFs.
I would grouse about how WotC shits the bed on all of their world books, but I'm pretty sure they had that problem in 3E, too. That's why they needed that contest to get Keith Baker to make Eberron for them. Most of the 3E FR releases were just 1E and 2E books condensed, consolidated, and updated for 3E mechanics. It's clear to me now why so much stuff just sat on a shelf.
After looking over 2E Planescape and refreshing myself on the factions, I realize they've already done that in 5E. Ravnica is Sigil. The ten guilds are the factions.
Spelljammer and Planescape tried to do new things with the stagnant fantasy genre and didn't get much traction because Tolkien clones sell way better. It's disappointing.
I've run a decades-long Spelljammer campaigns that have lasted years. I've converted *every* player that's played in one into true fans of the setting. It's D&D + Star Wars + Pirates of the Caribbean in Baron Munchausen-Space. Sounds insane I know, but it works.
Ironically it actually allows for the modern freakshow style gaming, but again, as long as you as a GM curate the status-quo of wherever you're playing. There's politics galore and it's the setting that's the Matroyshka doll of sandboxes within sandboxes within sandboxes.
This new Spelljammer? Looks like complete dogshit to me.
Quote from: tenbones on August 17, 2022, 10:45:32 AM
I've run a decades-long Spelljammer campaigns that have lasted years. I've converted *every* player that's played in one into true fans of the setting. It's D&D + Star Wars + Pirates of the Caribbean in Baron Munchausen-Space. Sounds insane I know, but it works.
Well, I, with Planescape did The Iran-Contra scandal + Clear and Present Danger + Jason Bourne if it counts :D
Overrated garbage that is a mile wide and a foot deep.
When I was a young lad, I thought it was the coolest shit ever. "Wowee," I thought. "A literally infinite multiverse for my players to play and romp in!" Then I realized that the massive scope is actually a detriment to storytelling. When everything is infinite in scope, then your contribution doesn't really matter as much. You're not small fish in a big pond, you're big fish in an endless pond. And it's not just that either. Ultimately all the Planes is still just filler material until you get to the next interesting event. So maybe you're involved in Jinn politics and so you're moving around from the City of Brass, to the Coral Palace, to whatever the other two were. Great. Fantastic. After the first two times of the Elemental Planes being a hurdle, it stops being one - the players just say "Okay we do the thing we did before" and you fast-forward to the actually important thing. Unless you have a random encounter.
So ultimately, I don't see the point. Why not have these cool fantastical elements on the Prime Material then?
As campaign settings I think both are ambitious and ultimately kinda silly. Each has one great mechanic though: Planescape's doors, and Spelljammer's space physics.
I liked SpellJammer many years ago. I thought the setting was a lot of fun and kinda weird and Wacky Space/Scifi/Fantasy.
It was hard to get people to play it though in those days at least.
I doubt I'd buy any 5E material anymore, I'm a bit over it and WotC in general really.
Quote from: I HATE THE DEMIURGE I HATE THE DEMIURGE on August 17, 2022, 06:58:18 PM
Overrated garbage that is a mile wide and a foot deep.
When I was a young lad, I thought it was the coolest shit ever. "Wowee," I thought. "A literally infinite multiverse for my players to play and romp in!" Then I realized that the massive scope is actually a detriment to storytelling. When everything is infinite in scope, then your contribution doesn't really matter as much.
When your PCs discover that the Blood War was started by a group of "Good" Gods to put Devil and Demons one against the other, and revealing this means the Literal Apocalypse - all while they are around 7th level - be assured that what they choose to do counts.
Anyway, Planescape is about beliefs and even philosophy. The level of your character and the actual agency you have are, literally, two independent concepts.
Stumbled across another video about Spelljammer 5e. The guy (named Guy) does a pretty job illustrating exactly why the book sucks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4tL_K9r8ps
Skip to 1:30 to get past all his shilling of his books/social media.
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 12:42:10 PM
And for some reason I always link Spelljammer and Planescape in my head even though there's no real reason for it, so the same goes for Planescape...how do you all feel about the setting overall?
I didn't like either setting in the 2E era, so both are meh reactions.
The only setting I'd like to revisit from that era is Dark Sun, and the current direction at WotC can't do it justice so I prefer they leave it dead.
Never went in for Spelljammer myself. Just not really my bag. Seemed like it was a gonzo idea of, 'people love fantasy, people love sci fi, let's jam 'em together because of course!"
Planescape I kind of liked. Good concepts, etc. I liked the concept of a nexus place connecting all but we also didn't do such a great job imagining his a truly different plane would/could be. It was always just Prime Material Plane decorated for a a different theme. We didn't get into different physics, etc.
If it's from WOTC, I'm not interested. But if the two only Planescape has any appeal.
Quote from: Palleon on August 25, 2022, 11:59:49 AM
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 12:42:10 PM
And for some reason I always link Spelljammer and Planescape in my head even though there's no real reason for it, so the same goes for Planescape...how do you all feel about the setting overall?
I didn't like either setting in the 2E era, so both are meh reactions.
The only setting I'd like to revisit from that era is Dark Sun, and the current direction at WotC can't do it justice so I prefer they leave it dead.
Greetings!
I agree entirely, Palleon.
I have never been a big fan of Spelljammer or the Planescape campaigns. I also hope that WOTC leaves Dark Sun alone. WOTC would forever pollute and destroy Dark Sun if they touched it now. They would put Rainbow Hippos and Happy Carebears in Dark Sun, and pump the campaign full of syrup.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: SHARK on August 25, 2022, 12:14:58 PM
Quote from: Palleon on August 25, 2022, 11:59:49 AM
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 12:42:10 PM
And for some reason I always link Spelljammer and Planescape in my head even though there's no real reason for it, so the same goes for Planescape...how do you all feel about the setting overall?
I didn't like either setting in the 2E era, so both are meh reactions.
The only setting I'd like to revisit from that era is Dark Sun, and the current direction at WotC can't do it justice so I prefer they leave it dead.
Greetings!
I agree entirely, Palleon.
I have never been a big fan of Spelljammer or the Planescape campaigns. I also hope that WOTC leaves Dark Sun alone. WOTC would forever pollute and destroy Dark Sun if they touched it now. They would put Rainbow Hippos and Happy Carebears in Dark Sun, and pump the campaign full of syrup.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
With Dark Sun the only hope for anything not vomit-inducing to come out would be for WOTC to license that setting out to another company that was somehow also not Woke. I just don't see that happening. Especially since the nuTSR fiasco with Star Frontiers is going to make Hasbro lock down hard on their IPs.
On the other hand, I wouldn't worry about WOTC coming out with their own 5E Dark Sun. I can't see them having the stomach to even review the base material without having a mental health emergency.
Best you can do for new material is look for "off brand" Dark Sun-like material from the independent creators.
Quote from: Brooding Paladin on August 25, 2022, 12:13:00 PM
Never went in for Spelljammer myself. Just not really my bag. Seemed like it was a gonzo idea of, 'people love fantasy, people love sci fi, let's jam 'em together because of course!"
Planescape I kind of liked. Good concepts, etc. I liked the concept of a nexus place connecting all but we also didn't do such a great job imagining his a truly different plane would/could be. It was always just Prime Material Plane decorated for a a different theme. We didn't get into different physics, etc.
If it's from WOTC, I'm not interested. But if the two only Planescape has any appeal.
I agree and disagree.
One of the issues with other planes is that they're often very boring and one-note (https://blogofholding.com/?series=the-planes). This shouldn't be surprising because they were originally invented because of nerdy OCD autism even tho this served no practical purpose. At an absolute minimum other planes need to have things like geography and civilizations to be interesting. Perhaps redecorated versions of the prime wasn't creative enough, but that's still way more interesting than "the elemental plane of water is redundant to any prime ocean." That's why I've often suggested just discarding the planes entirely if you can't justify their existence over identical prime locations. There's nothing wrong with getting rid of ideas that don't work in practice.
I think
Spelljammer has a neat concept because it was basically
Treasure Planet years before that was a thing. It wasn't just a literal mashup of fantasy and scifi like
Dragonstar or
Starfinder, the writers went the extra mile to give wildspace unique physics distinct from real/scifi space travel. It feels more like the retroscifi from the era before people understood how physics worked, and thus feels like a better fit for the physics-defying medievalesque fantasy than conventional scifi space physics. Did they need to introduce a new transitive plane in the form of the phlogiston? Probably not.
I was initially skeptical of replacing the phlogiston with the astral because the astral's planar properties are so different. But now I think it was probably better than trying to introduce yet another transitive plane, especially when astral adventures and wildspace adventures are already so aesthetically similar. It does make aesthetic sense to replace phlogiston with the astral. It even makes a kind of etymological sense: if stars are windows in crystal spheres to the astral plane, then that explains why the astral is called the astral in the first place.
Astral literally means "of, connected with, or resembling the stars."
Quote from: wmarshal on August 25, 2022, 12:43:29 PM
Quote from: SHARK on August 25, 2022, 12:14:58 PM
Quote from: Palleon on August 25, 2022, 11:59:49 AM
Quote from: Monero on August 15, 2022, 12:42:10 PM
And for some reason I always link Spelljammer and Planescape in my head even though there's no real reason for it, so the same goes for Planescape...how do you all feel about the setting overall?
I didn't like either setting in the 2E era, so both are meh reactions.
The only setting I'd like to revisit from that era is Dark Sun, and the current direction at WotC can't do it justice so I prefer they leave it dead.
Greetings!
I agree entirely, Palleon.
I have never been a big fan of Spelljammer or the Planescape campaigns. I also hope that WOTC leaves Dark Sun alone. WOTC would forever pollute and destroy Dark Sun if they touched it now. They would put Rainbow Hippos and Happy Carebears in Dark Sun, and pump the campaign full of syrup.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
With Dark Sun the only hope for anything not vomit-inducing to come out would be for WOTC to license that setting out to another company that was somehow also not Woke. I just don't see that happening. Especially since the nuTSR fiasco with Star Frontiers is going to make Hasbro lock down hard on their IPs.
On the other hand, I wouldn't worry about WOTC coming out with their own 5E Dark Sun. I can't see them having the stomach to even review the base material without having a mental health emergency.
Best you can do for new material is look for "off brand" Dark Sun-like material from the independent creators.
I'm surprised, considering how popular muscle art is in the gay community. If you lookup adult fantasy art made by gay/bi men, it looks like an explicit version of Frazetta.
Quote from: Effete on August 24, 2022, 10:46:24 PM
Stumbled across another video about Spelljammer 5e. The guy (named Guy) does a pretty job illustrating exactly why the book sucks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4tL_K9r8ps
Skip to 1:30 to get past all his shilling of his books/social media.
That video was quite interesting to me when it popped up in my feed. I have a minor impersonal grudge against Guy Sclanders(sp?). I used to watch his videos, and the guy is ground zero for all the typical items of nu-school bad DM-ing advice (fudging dice, pre-planned character arcs, faking enemy stats, etc.) Trying to follow his advice ended up torpedoing one of my games, and I'm sure has done the same to tons of other people.
That said, I consider him to be a reasonable gauge of what the nu-school players are thinking, and if even he is fed up with the rubbish quality of WOTC releases, that might say something.
Never paid the slightest bit of attention to Spelljammer as I thought the concept was lame. We did have some guys in college that were way into it, but they weren't part of our gaming group.
As for Planescape, I loathe it with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns. I checked it out for the lore about the Hells & Abyss, but found it to be garbage. I hated everything from the tone, to the writing, to the lame-ass Blood War, the baatezu and tanar'ri (which of course was 2nd edition Snowflakism), to the atrocious DiTerlizzi art. Probably the worst "setting" ever created for any edition of D&D.
I don't play any WOTC games anyhow and never will so the latest announcements mean zero to me. But you asked.
Quote from: Palleon on August 25, 2022, 11:59:49 AM
The only setting I'd like to revisit from that era is Dark Sun, and the current direction at WotC can't do it justice so I prefer they leave it dead.
It'll be as smooth and featureless as a stone worn down by a river.
And every bit as skippable.
Spelljammer for me was always just connecting tissue. A way for PCs that didn't have access to planar magic or portals to move between different worlds in the Prime Material.
Planescape is my second favorite setting ever (beaten only by Birthright), and to me the perfect description of a general D&D Cosmology. Zeb Cook did an amazing job on the writing and set the tone for later writers in the setting.
I also much prefer the 2E terminology for the fiends (Baatezu, Tanar'ri, Yugoloth, Gehreleth) as opposed to the far more prosaic (not to mention potentially confusing) Devil, Demon, Daemon. The Blood War is a lovely way to explain why the incredibly numerous fiends don't just simply conquer everywhere else on the planes, and the background of the Yugoloth manipulation makes it all the more interesting.
I have always quite liked both as an intellectual exercise, but they struck me as a tremendous amount of campaign material that I would ever only use a small bit of. When writing an adventure, or even a campaign, I try to determine the area in which the players will be active, and add a lot of detail to bring it to life. As a practical matter I could develop a campaign in Pandesmos, Avernus, or Sigil (my top 3 planescape choices) and flesh it out enough to make it interesting, but my development of the world beyond the primary campaign plane, or even outside of the developed area, as each plane is infinite, would be cursory at best. Traveling into the undetailed areas would not be very interesting for me as a DM because I would be making it all up on the fly, and would be unsatisfying for my players as well, because I do my best work with a lot of preparation. One could also run a Star Trek style campaign where a new location is visited every adventure, but I expect that if I were to try it, I wouldn't have enough time to develop each location much, and the settings would be shallow and not very interesting.
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 25, 2022, 07:46:24 PM
Quote from: Effete on August 24, 2022, 10:46:24 PM
Stumbled across another video about Spelljammer 5e. The guy (named Guy) does a pretty job illustrating exactly why the book sucks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4tL_K9r8ps
Skip to 1:30 to get past all his shilling of his books/social media.
That video was quite interesting to me when it popped up in my feed. I have a minor impersonal grudge against Guy Sclanders(sp?). I used to watch his videos, and the guy is ground zero for all the typical items of nu-school bad DM-ing advice (fudging dice, pre-planned character arcs, faking enemy stats, etc.) Trying to follow his advice ended up torpedoing one of my games, and I'm sure has done the same to tons of other people.
That said, I consider him to be a reasonable gauge of what the nu-school players are thinking, and if even he is fed up with the rubbish quality of WOTC releases, that might say something.
I never ever heard of him before. </shrug>
To be fair, though, I also never looked up any DnD 5e videos on YT before. Although it is pretty funny his channel is called "Be a better DM" if he's giving out such low-tier advice. I mean, I suppose it's "better" than being an asshole DM, but it's not "good" advice.
I checked out the video that was linked earlier in the thread and my now YT suggestions are flooded with a bunch of 5e fanboy videos, with thumbnails of soyjaks jizzing themselves in front of images of Spelljammer and Radiant Citadel.
Quote from: Effete on August 24, 2022, 10:46:24 PM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4tL_K9r8ps
Skip to 1:30 to get past all his shilling of his books/social media.
FYI: https://youtu.be/t4tL_K9r8ps?t=90
So I haven't been keeping up with these projects. Any word on how WotC is going to handle Planescape as they move away from alignment in D&D?
Quote from: rkhigdon on August 26, 2022, 10:49:30 AM
So I haven't been keeping up with these projects. Any word on how WotC is going to handle Planescape as they move away from alignment in D&D?
I wouldn't expect any word from WOTC or its promoters to be trustworthy. It'd just be a meaningless sales pitch.
If they actually publish it I'd expect it to be amazingly bland. It will probably be like the Radiant Citadel (I went through some reviews from a non-hype viewpoint), in that Sigil will be described as some form of idealized utopia, and no adventures will occur in Sigil. You really can't adventure in a utopia.
Quote from: rkhigdon on August 26, 2022, 10:49:30 AM
So I haven't been keeping up with these projects. Any word on how WotC is going to handle Planescape as they move away from alignment in D&D?
They haven't removed the outer planes, so I'm assuming it won't be significantly different. They're probably going to ignore the faction war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faction_War) completely; at most they might mention it as an option.
I'm of the opinion that we don't need 18 outer planes and it would work fine with just 9 for each of the alignments, but WotC probably isn't going to make that change.
In the 2e era, I like Spelljammer a lot more than Planescape. Traveling between campaign settings was easy if the DM wanted it to happen, and the whole medieval space traveler thing was cool.
Planescape was just a little ridiculous. For years, D&D made certain creatures out to be pure evil or pure good - now we're supposed to believe that angels and demons, dead worshippers of deities and elementals, can all grab a drink at the bar in some multiplanar Casablanca?
When I first jumped from Rules Cyclopedia to AD&D 2nd, Spelljammer was my very first campaign setting. So I knew Spelljammer before I found out about Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance. Come to think of it, after Spelljammer was Dark Sun and Ravenloft, so I was more versed more in the 'alternate' settings before the core ones. That being said, I was rather fond of Spelljammer due to playing a lot of Sid Meier's Pirates on my Commadore 64. Not sure how I feel about the remake, since I am not real happy with what they did to Ravenloft (my favorite setting).
I adore Planescape, read many of the box sets and books, thought the various factions were awesome (Bleak Cabal, Doomguard, and Free League for the win). I don't think WOTC can capture the magic that made Planescape great. Victorian lower class lingo most likely will not show itself, the factions might make an appearance but I don't see how they can make them work beyond backgrounds, and I really don't want to see how they 'update' Sigil and the Lady of Pain.
I always wanted to play Spelljammer back in the day but never got a chance. Tried to run Planescape for a group but it ended horribly - probably not a good idea to try it your first time as DM, lol. I am hoping the new Spelljammer is decent so we can finally get to try it out. I always just looked at it as a nice way to tie together lots of things that normally wouldn't go together .
Spelljammer was my favorite 2e setting, with Planescape a close second. Both of them by their very nature could easily connect heavily with the other settings, but it was also a simple matter to have a campaign wholly in space or the planes and never run dry of things to do. I appreciated the strong pivot away from just generic swords and sorcery goblin-slaying and the more fantastical settings.
Quote from: sombodystolemyname on August 26, 2022, 04:23:14 PM
I always wanted to play Spelljammer back in the day but never got a chance. Tried to run Planescape for a group but it ended horribly - probably not a good idea to try it your first time as DM, lol. I am hoping the new Spelljammer is decent so we can finally get to try it out. I always just looked at it as a nice way to tie together lots of things that normally wouldn't go together .
I'd go with something besides WOTC at this point. I've seen a couple of reviews of Spelljammer by guys, who'd otherwise be called 5E fans, and both had low opinions of the new Spelljammer.
I suggest you look to the OSR. I'm familiar with Kevin Crawford's Without Number series, and I think you could make something Spelljammery from combining his Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number and Black Sun Codex. His upcoming Atlas of the Latter Earth will have airships that should be easy to adapt to spelljamming.
The only OSR space fantasy supplements I'm aware of are:
Void Spanners for Basic Fantasy
Dark Dungeons X chapter on fantasy space travel
Blood & Treasure planar cosmology turns the planes into celestial spheres
Aside from that I've haven't looked for anything, but there may be others
Honorable mention goes to Darkfuries' 3.x book Aether & Flux. It uses real space physics for the most part, but adds aether (as in luminiferous ether) and flux (basically electricity) to allow space travel. The two repel each other, so you can use flux generators attached to sails to propel a vessel without spells. Flux can also be used to generate artificial gravity, recycle air, and shoot lightning guns. Interstellar aether lets you travel at FTL so it's basically hyperspace. It was available on drivethru but got taken down years ago due to technical issues that have yet to be fixed. I've pestered both Drivethru support and the publisher's email to no avail. As you can probably tell I am a big fan of its magic space physics.
Quote from: Valatar on August 26, 2022, 04:30:26 PM
Spelljammer was my favorite 2e setting, with Planescape a close second. Both of them by their very nature could easily connect heavily with the other settings, but it was also a simple matter to have a campaign wholly in space or the planes and never run dry of things to do. I appreciated the strong pivot away from just generic swords and sorcery goblin-slaying and the more fantastical settings.
I just came across this:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/376271
I don't have it myself, but it would seem to be along the lines of what you're looking for.
Quote from: Zalman on August 26, 2022, 10:27:29 AM
Quote from: Effete on August 24, 2022, 10:46:24 PM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t4tL_K9r8ps
Skip to 1:30 to get past all his shilling of his books/social media.
FYI: https://youtu.be/t4tL_K9r8ps?t=90
Yeah, I know. I was on mobile at the time and a bit lazy. Thank you for updated link!
Spelljammer had one major good thing going, the idea that Mindflayers and Beholders came from outerspace. I like that, it's a neat and different origin for them. Though I'd make them more like Yag Kosha from the Conan Story Tower of The Elephant rather than using fantasy spaceships. Outside of that, I'd have to say it was mostly just too silly for me. The giant space hamsters were funny but belonged in an April Fools issue of Dragon, not the setting proper.
Planescape was beautiful and probably right to focus on the city of Sigil as the planes are too vast and dull to really make a great campaign. I sometimes think they should have just moved the spell jamming ships into the astral plane and ditched the magical space thing. Replacing the philostogen with astral space is a step in the right direction IMO.
Quote from: David Johansen on August 26, 2022, 11:07:44 PM
Spelljammer had one major good thing going, the idea that Mindflayers and Beholders came from outerspace. I like that, it's a neat and different origin for them. Though I'd make them more like Yag Kosha from the Conan Story Tower of The Elephant rather than using fantasy spaceships. Outside of that, I'd have to say it was mostly just too silly for me. The giant space hamsters were funny but belonged in an April Fools issue of Dragon, not the setting proper.
Planescape was beautiful and probably right to focus on the city of Sigil as the planes are too vast and dull to really make a great campaign. I sometimes think they should have just moved the spell jamming ships into the astral plane and ditched the magical space thing. Replacing the philostogen with astral space is a step in the right direction IMO.
But, space is *relatable* to players who've grown up in a post-Apollo world. Other planes of existence where good creatures and evil, dead and alive, happily engage in trade, personal relationships, etc. in a "neutral ground" is a bit far-fetched when all of the previous lore published is to the contrary. You could always ignore the space hamsters - or not. I introduced the dralasite, vrusk, etc. from Star Frontiers into my spelljammer campaigns - and it worked just fine.
I also have a personal dislike for the art and the manner of speech in the planescape products - they were trying too hard to be different *just* to be different - almost at if they were trying to court the emo/goth crowd - "look at us with our using made-up words in a pseudo-cockney manner; we're edgy, maaaann.".
I thought the Sigil cant was literally just cockney slang. Did they use it wrong?
I think it added color to the setting, and unlike WW it didn't sound pretentious af
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 15, 2022, 01:38:29 PMI'm sure, however, that whatever good points they have can be wrecked by the current crew.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Quote from: David Johansen on August 26, 2022, 11:07:44 PMI sometimes think they should have just moved the spell jamming ships into the astral plane and ditched the magical space thing. Replacing the philostogen with astral space is a step in the right direction IMO.
This is exactly what I thought after reading Spelljammer. I own the Ad&d 2nd edition Spelljammer box but never played. Definitely not my taste.
I picked up the 5e Planescape set for 50% off because I remember a few people telling me the 2e version was awesome. I skimmed through the three books for a few hours, and it's sat on my shelf since. I didn't really see the awesome, at least not in the current version. I talked to a friend that has the 2e version (many books) and he told me that it was mostly nostalgia and fuzzy memories, because the line was never really that great (in his opinion).
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 05, 2025, 01:57:19 AMI picked up the 5e Planescape set for 50% off because I remember a few people telling me the 2e version was awesome. I skimmed through the three books for a few hours, and it's sat on my shelf since. I didn't really see the awesome, at least not in the current version. I talked to a friend that has the 2e version (many books) and he told me that it was mostly nostalgia and fuzzy memories, because the line was never really that great (in his opinion).
I also own the 5e version. I have very little interest in the adventure module, and only mild interest in the bestiary book. The setting book and 2 sided map, are decent enough. Having a hub that connects to the spokes on the great wheel, is easy to envision.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 05, 2025, 01:57:19 AMI picked up the 5e Planescape set for 50% off because I remember a few people telling me the 2e version was awesome. I skimmed through the three books for a few hours, and it's sat on my shelf since. I didn't really see the awesome, at least not in the current version. I talked to a friend that has the 2e version (many books) and he told me that it was mostly nostalgia and fuzzy memories, because the line was never really that great (in his opinion).
Thats because the 5e Spelljammer somehow succeeds in being WORSE than the Polehedron 3e Spelljammer article.
The setting is completely gutted, the ship system is barely there and more like an after thought and pathetically UN-thought.
The original Spelljammer was all over the place. Lots of potential. That TSR never really made use of. Of the modules I have, only two stand out as good and then there is a third that starts off as standard groundside, but in the second module of a trilogy leaps into wildspace and one of my favorite 2e campaigns to DM.
Alot like Masque of the Red Death setting, it is VERY reliant on the DM to use the tools given to make it into whatever they want. Its one of the settings strong points and one of its weaknesses. Some DMs really need a compass to follow and a blueprint to build from. But thats true of alot of RPGs. 1st ed Shadowrun comes to mind as another that was very directionless and relied on the DM and players to give it direction.
While I think ditching phlogiston is good because the cosmology is already a mess as it is, substituting the astral plane breaks the cosmology. There's no longer a single prime material plane, just wildspace bubbles floating in the astral. It's now possible to travel between heaven and hell using a spelljammer vessel. The nature of the astral plane is also made even more convoluted, since it now exists alongside and outside of the wildspace bubbles. This means that a spelljammer vessel can turn around and see the entirety of wildspace from within the astral.
The only way to fix this is to split the astral plane into layers with different properties, like a "near astral" and a "far astral", which defeats the point of removing the phlogiston in the first place.
Quote from: Omega on February 05, 2025, 07:07:27 AMQuote from: HappyDaze on February 05, 2025, 01:57:19 AMI picked up the 5e Planescape set for 50% off because I remember a few people telling me the 2e version was awesome. I skimmed through the three books for a few hours, and it's sat on my shelf since. I didn't really see the awesome, at least not in the current version. I talked to a friend that has the 2e version (many books) and he told me that it was mostly nostalgia and fuzzy memories, because the line was never really that great (in his opinion).
Thats because the 5e Spelljammer somehow succeeds in being WORSE than the Polehedron 3e Spelljammer article.
The setting is completely gutted, the ship system is barely there and more like an after thought and pathetically UN-thought.
The original Spelljammer was all over the place. Lots of potential. That TSR never really made use of. Of the modules I have, only two stand out as good and then there is a third that starts off as standard groundside, but in the second module of a trilogy leaps into wildspace and one of my favorite 2e campaigns to DM.
Alot like Masque of the Red Death setting, it is VERY reliant on the DM to use the tools given to make it into whatever they want. Its one of the settings strong points and one of its weaknesses. Some DMs really need a compass to follow and a blueprint to build from. But thats true of alot of RPGs. 1st ed Shadowrun comes to mind as another that was very directionless and relied on the DM and players to give it direction.
I have no idea why you thought I said anything about Spelljammer.
As a huge fan of science fiction, Spelljammer is an okay setting worth exploiting. You have to buy into the idea that the entire franchise including D&D takes place in the future, however. Star Wars takes place long, long ago; D&D takes place after a nuclear apocalypse or something. Staples of our own culture have their timelines all screwed up compared to popular perception.
Where do the Spelljammer books say it takes place in our future?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 05, 2025, 03:56:41 PMWhere do the Spelljammer books say it takes place in our future?
I don't pretend to be a D&D historian, so maybe somebody can fill us in here, but I'm rather certain that the only way all the D&D worlds merge is if D&D itself is technically post-apocalyptic, which also explains the supernatural elements. I believe official canon explained this but admittedly I don't have a ready source.
Edit: Learned something new today. The Forgotten Realms don't even take place on Earth (though it is a boring part of it?), so the timelines really don't have any relevance to us anyway. All the ancient ruins suggest long-forgotten pasts and forgotten kingdoms, however. It's not unreasonable to assume that they lost technology along the way and reverted back to older ways of doing things. I'm no D&D expert.
Okay, here we go. Spelljammer's Into The Void takes place in 1361 DR. All the 5E classic adventures are around 1490 DR. Either the astral planes are just very expansive or something was lost. I guess Spelljammer could be the equivalent of aliens visiting Earth, but why wouldn't kingdoms worship them as Gods in that case? Again, I don't know that much about the lore.
QuoteA week in the Forgotten Realms is a tenday (10 days, not 7)
Curious how this affects total year and century count.
QuoteDalereckoning is taken from the Year of Sunrise, 1 DR, when the Standing Stone was raised by the elves of Cormanthyr and the humans of the Dalelands.
So I guess this is the Faerûn calendar system.
Quote623 DR: First time a spelljammer is confirmed. It is actually the Spelljammer.
Quote1279 DR: The green dragon Dretchroyaster of Cormanthor attacks three dales and is wounded, but his lair cannot be found. In 1352, the Cult of the Dragon offers the dragon to become a dracolich, and a new lair in Monarch's Fall Glade, where the remains of a Spelljammer had been found. Dretchoryaster wished to find a way to transform into a Spelljammer and fly through Realmspace. Dretchroyaster later appears again in the events of Vault of the Dracolich. (Note, the Grand History has an error, saying Dretchroyaster was slain in 1279).
I suppose Spelljammer as a setting can more be seen as 'ancient alien' technology found in the usual 5E settings. It doesn't necessarily make them post apocalyptic, but they certainly take place far
after the birth of spelljammers, so much so that it's odd that they aren't mentioned outside Spelljammer sourcebooks unless the technology was lost or gate-kept to certain cultures and areas.
I'll jump on this necro bandwagon!
Hot trash the both of them.
I've never understood the appeal of D&D's planar realm nonsense. But I guess they had to came up with something to do with their whacked cosmology.
I knew Spelljammer was stupid the first time I saw it on the FLGS shelf. Nothing that I have read or heard about it since has disabused me of that first accurate assessment.
The honest truth is that I am an outlier in the rpg hobby; baseline D&D is far too gonzo fantasy for my tastes.
Crap like planescape and spelljammer lean into those aspects of the game, and make me barf a little in my mouth just thinking that they were sold as actual rpg products.
For all the nostalgia that they seem to invoke today in certain quarters, the fact is they sold like crap back in the day, and the reboots sold even crappier.
Yes WotC is hopelessly woke and incompetent, but in all fairness it is easy to wind up with crap when you were starting with utter feces from the get go.
It's a shame that Terran Trade Authority was licensed out twice to be made into an RPG but neither attempt came anywhere near the books-- my favorite space fantasy franchise by far. DTRPG even has one of the sourcebooks for sale even though it's not a game, that's how suited it was for a good role-playing system. It felt very realistic, blending proto-cyberpunk with traditional ship stats and mixing in just enough Roger Dean-esque fantasy to make it really intereting. Starliners was my favorite book.
Might be an old thread, but it's more interesting than most newer posts...
But Spelljammer, the original, is fantasy space. It takes the premise that the fantasy world of D&D is not like Earth, it's a fantasy world. Greyhawk was like this before Spelljammer, because you had the sun literally going around Oerth. It's stuff like worlds being on the back of a turtle. Impossible by anything remotely like science.
I think many D&D players/GMs, including myself, want more of sword & planet/planetary romance style fantasy, where you have weird creatures and magic, but it's just high technology. And that is a clash with Spelljammer style fantasy.
I disliked Planescape because it turned the planes into Fantasy Victorian London, but I think the idea is solid. Most political compass graphs are along two axes so why not alignment?
<edit> misread the post
Quote from: D-ko on February 05, 2025, 04:46:39 PMOkay, here we go. Spelljammer's Into The Void takes place in 1361 DR. All the 5E classic adventures are around 1490 DR. Either the astral planes are just very expansive or something was lost. I guess Spelljammer could be the equivalent of aliens visiting Earth, but why wouldn't kingdoms worship them as Gods in that case? Again, I don't know that much about the lore.
I know the Spelljammer lore quite well. Spelljammer is ret-conned into the continuity of three main settings, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and the Forgotten Realms via their respective supplments "Krynnspace", "Greyspace", and "Realmspace".
The backdrop of Spelljammer is that there are Sphere-spanning empires and cultures much like in Star Wars, with this event called the Unhuman Wars between the Scro (advanced Orcs), and Imperial Elven Fleet which raged about ten-thousand+ years ago. They created horrifying bio-weapons that in-setting are world-shaking quasi-MacGuffins (Witchlight Marauders for instance) that eventually ended with the Elves winning victory at great cost.
The traditional Elven settlements you all know in Dragonlance, Realms and Greyhawk are really just localized outposts of the actual Elven Imperial Fleet. Imperial Elves are *militant* and pretty jingoistic because they know the monstrosities that exist in Wildspace. Beholders, Illithid, Scro, Gith, Neogi - and many more, all have their own empires, and largely it's the Elven Imperial fleet - alongside various human nations (depends on the Sphere) that keep them in check.
There is an ad-hoc Prime Directive in not interfering with terrestrial cultures - not because they don't want to "tamper" with cultures, but because Spelljammer culture *doesn't give a shit* (largely) of cultures that are strictly terrestrial. They look down on most of them as being kinda backwater and hokey.
The cultures that are "advanced" - like Greyhawk, or Waterdeep, or the Imperial Courts of Wa (yes! Oriental Adventure) - all know about Spelljammer and Wildspace and have rules for Spelljamming ships interacting with their cultures. Most of these cultures are trying to become Wildpace-faring in their own right. MOST cultures are unaware of Spelljamming, but they certainly can run across it if you want to start integrating it. Yes, it could come across as "aliens" - but it could also just be funny I mean, after all Spelljamming ships could look like just a flying galleon. Or it could be a giant spider filled with Eel-headed spider-monsters and Umber Hulk slaves looking to nab people for abduction.
There's lots of ways to introduce it to your games. And frankly, I was quite skeptical of Spelljammer for years. Once I was fully exposed to it, I've become an avid convert of it as a truly unique meta-setting. It allows you to use *all* your fantasy gaming material as you see fit in one bit super-setting that simply rocks.
Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2025, 10:33:04 AMQuote from: D-ko on February 05, 2025, 04:46:39 PMThere's lots of ways to introduce it to your games. And frankly, I was quite skeptical of Spelljammer for years. Once I was fully exposed to it, I've become an avid convert of it as a truly unique meta-setting. It allows you to use *all* your fantasy gaming material as you see fit in one bit super-setting that simply rocks.
More important question, have you Savaged it?
Spelljammer was one of the least-successful campaign settings released by TSR: it was simply too fantastical and genre-bending. I think it came from the whole "Princess Ark" series from Bruce Heard.
Nothing particularly wrong with it, but it served a niche audience, and I didn't have any interest.
It transitions well into the super-heroic, multiverse adventures, and fantastical themes of 5e D&D.
I go the other way with my games: more realism, real-world analogy, horror, suspense, etc.
I'm completely burnt out on D&D fantasy
I ran a short Spelljammer campaign back when it first came out. My players had fun flying around on their ship and going wherever they took a mind to go. It was really tiring for me. I have never leaned so hard on random tables before or since. It only lasted a few months before I burned out. A multi-star system sandbox is a lot and then there's wildspace itself.
I ran Planescape back in the day but it was really a Sigil game more than a Planescape game. They were a group of adventurers from the prime material plane trying to carve a niche for themselves in Sigil. They never left the city. It only lasted until level 6 before real life interfered so they never really did the planar stuff.
My problem with both was that they were "Multiversal" settings, where "Multiverse" meant "D&D style fantasy". Even Ravenloft had a more diverse array of settings (albeit small and illogical) to adventure in.
Quote from: Chainsaw Surgeon on February 09, 2025, 09:30:39 AMMore important question, have you Savaged it?
Working on Ship Combat rules now. :)
After that, it's a matter of ship-writeups, race write-ups (Hadozee, Giff, Gith/Githyanki/Githzerai, Scro etc), new Edges, Setting Rules (I play with Special interests rules for skills), Gear re-fluffing, New Spelljammer specific Spells.
I'm also toying with mini-Iconic frameworks for special things to "allow/inflict" PC's to play Bionoids, Illthid-hybrids, and a few other things that might be fun.
Cool. Spelljammer is something I considered doing a few times with Savage Worlds. I have not looked at the SciFi Companions Clash rules but they are supposedly designed for starship combat.
I own it. I'm deciding on whether to use the rules there (modified for Spelljammer combat), or just translate all the Spelljammer rules from the War Captain's Companion to SWADE and make it more tactical and gritty.
Spelljammer ship-combat can get pretty dramatic in its own right, SWADE could handle it, but there is something personal about the D&D edition's rules that really make you feel it.
I'm of the general opinion that when translating editions to Savage Worlds, the SWADE system works best when directly trying to encapsulate the conceits of the original system. Fortunately it's robust and adaptable enough to just stick with the core-rules where necessary or due to ease of use. I'm still weighing options.
Planescape and Spelljammer are more proof that these game designers smoke a lot of pot. Like anytime I watch "The Big Lebowski" I think TSR.
More proof? The Monster Manuals.
(https://bogleech.com/dnd/flumphentry.jpg)
Spelljammer is basically D&D trying to be Star Wars/Star Trek by way of Baron Munchausen.
It only take elements of generic D&D and scales them up with a pinch of sci-fi space opera into it.
Elves and Orc conflict is now akin to the Elder-Space races warring with one another. Monsters that were simply "monsters of nightmare" now have a place to have an origin - Beholders and Illithid are star-faring races that have existed for thousands of years in their respective domains in nooks and crannies across the cosmos.
You have elements of Star War's 'rim-culture' where you can do Space Tortuga. You have cosmic mysteries akin to Star Trek's "Crystal Entity" or just weird shit for your PC's to experience that would make *zero* sense in a "standard" fantasy setting, but in the Spelljammer setting not only makes perfect sense, adds depth beyond even the established Spelljammer assumptions.
Spelljammer is a Mandelbrot of a *lot* of fantasy tropes and has its own emergent ones nicely attached to them.
Planescape on the other hand, is a very flavored expression of what I think is a natural emergent possibility of the 1e's cosmic wheel. Why *not* have a centralized setting at the center of all planes? While the flavor of Planescape, and Sigil in particular might not be to everyone's tastes, you can't deny that conceptually it really does work. Nothing prevents one from re-calibrating it to their liking, obviously. I think it was a very honest stab at doing original work on what has already been established without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As to their success? Yeah they didn't sell through... yet they definitely have their fanbases. But I suspect perhaps they were ahead of their time?
Spelljammer: This was so goofy that I couldn't take it seriously as a setting.
Planescape: This had more potential, but I found that I preferred to use my own ideas about how the planes work, factions, and so on. I think the setting concept is okay, but preferred my own spin rather than TSR's implementation.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on February 10, 2025, 09:01:47 PMSpelljammer: This was so goofy that I couldn't take it seriously as a setting.
Seriously, I couldn't have agreed with you more. Then I sat down as a player which had, granted one of the greatest GM's to ever roll the dice, show me I was wrong. (that GM was Skip Williams, yeah The Sage himself).
I totally get how gonzo dumb it looks. But if anything I have to say about anything gaming has any weight at all - and ignore me and pick up a copy of The Rock of Bral, and the use the Spelljammer box-set and introduce your "normal" PC's to Spelljammer as ground-based characters coming to Wildspace. It really does work.
You don't have to take it "serious" it has its own inner-consistency which I find runs as Swashbuckling adventure with potential horror-elements in it. But it also has crazy exploration, and wonder that takes you far from the traditional 'D&D Fantasy' tropes without ever quite leaving them behind.
But I *DO* get it. That boxset sat on my shelf for years because I thumbed through it and scoffed mercilessly at it.