Thursday, October 7, 2010

10 Reasons to Love Spelljammer


In principle, I thought TSR's Spelljammer could have been cool, but, as it turned out, it was just silly. - James Maliszewski

I love Spelljammer. Okay, there, I said it.

And, yes, much of Spelljammer is quite silly. Right out of the box it almost seems like an Encounter Critical expansion. Indeed, many gamers revile Spelljammer as a symbol of late-TSR’s gimmicky excesses. This 1989 boxed set in particular has been singled out as an example of why TSR went bankrupt. During the 2e era TSR released a series of non-traditional campaign settings as overstuffed boxed sets – Spelljammer, Hollow World, Dark Sun, Planescape, etc. From what I understand none of these boxed sets were profitable, and many of them are thought to have alienated traditional AD&D players while scaring off potential new players.

To be honest with you I know very little about late-TSR's output. I got out of roleplaying when 2e was released and I only got back into it a few years ago after Gygax’s death caused me to reexamine by boardgame-oriented gaming habits.  I had always thought of late-TSR material as derivative generic fantasy stuff (e.g. Dragonlance). Well, a few weeks ago on a whim I traded a twenty dollar bill for a used Spelljammer boxed set at a gaming con and I found it to be surprisingly bizarre and entertaining. My curiosity about late-TSR products has now been piqued – especially in terms of the weirdo campaign settings. I just purchased Dark Sun and Planescape on eBay and I’m very curious to see what they’re like. I’ve also been re-reading the old Manual of the Planes (AD&D hardback – the inspiration for Planescape) - much of it is ridiculous, but there is also a lot of creative stuff there that is weirdly delicious.

I cannot deny that there’s a good deal of indefensibly silly junk in Spelljammer. For instance, it’s painfully corny that many of the spaceships look like sea animals. Despite this, however, there are some great ideas in the set I’d love to employ in future games. If one stripped away a much of the campaign setting Spelljammer could make a great weird fantasy retroclone supplement. I think the best material in Spelljammer could be distilled into a highly appealing 32-page booklet.

Here are 10 reasons I accepted Spelljammer into my heart:

1. The title “Spelljammer” is so goofy it’s rad! I mean, c’mon, this game was published in 1989 but the title sounds like it’s from 1982. It sounds like it should be the name of a token white nerd kid in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo that got cut out of the film during editing.

2. The moment I saw this illustration of a Dwarf asteroid spaceship I knew I had to like Spelljammer:


3. Ha ha! Elves are so lame in their butterfly spaceships!

4. What’s not to like about wizards flying wooden spaceships through hypermassive extraplanetary spheres? There's lots of room for creative DMs to use Spelljammer to bring weird and creepy cosmic horror into their games. Of course, it's also great for gonzo-style gaming as well.

5. Beholders are one of the major evil alien races in Spelljammer. There are several different species of space beholders that fly around in scary spaceships crewed by space slaves!



6. Used Spelljammer boxed sets are cheap on eBay and they are packed with colorful goodies. Hopefully I can make a future post with pictures of all the stuff in the box. No wonder TSR went bankrupt...

7. Two words: ASTEROID DUNGEONS. This map is so cool I just might go bananas!


8. There are some wonderfully creative text passages like this:
Those fantasy systems with stars in the night sky often have these stars mounted along the inside of the crystal sphere. The nature of stars varies from sphere to sphere, however. Within some spheres the stars are small portholes looking out on the phlogiston, in some they are painted lights along the interior, in some they are great cities inhabited by alien creatures, and in others they are great bowls of fire held aloft by huge statues of forgotten gods.
9. The essence of the set – a ruleset for magical space travel – is simple, clever, and easily transferable between various editions of D&D. There's actually some good, practical, usable stuff in there.

10. Spelljammer is (mostly) steampunk-free!!! No offense to you steampunks out there, but I just can't handle steampunk in my D&D...

32 comments:

  1. Like you, I missed the whole 2E era, so I don't know much about the products released at that time, but Spelljammer sounds like a pretty interesting premise to me.

    I don't think the title is all that goofy, either; a windjammer is a large sailing ship, so it stands to reason that a spelljammer would be a magic-driven vessel.

    Furthermore, given my inordinate fondness for marine invertebrates, I find the idea of aquatic-themed gribbly spaceships pretty cool. I'm guessing that mind-flayers travel around in nautiloid vessels?

    Neat stuff, thanks for sharing.

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  2. Some of my fond memories involved 2nd edition materials. I was reintroduced to a friend's group in high school, and they had a veritable mythos of characters and stories from all over the published worlds, aided by the use of spelljamming and planeswalking.

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  3. I liked spelljammer myself. Never could get my players to do more then a few forays into that stretch of the game even with one PC having his own spelljamming vessel eventually.

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  4. Steampunk free? It has mad crazy Tinker Gnomes and quasi-19th C. Imperialist Giff with guns.

    I liked some of the ideas from Spelljammer but not the actual, well, Spelljamming parts. I like my stars to be stars.

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  5. I don't think the title is all that goofy, either; a windjammer is a large sailing ship, so it stands to reason that a spelljammer would be a magic-driven vessel.

    Good point - I never thought of that! It does makes the name same less dated. I still think Spelljammer is a goofy set overall, though!

    Furthermore, given my inordinate fondness for marine invertebrates, I find the idea of aquatic-themed gribbly spaceships pretty cool. I'm guessing that mind-flayers travel around in nautiloid vessels?

    I'm an entomologist myself (butterfly guy), but I still cringe at the mosquito, dragonfly, and butterfly ships. And yes, the mind flayers travel in nautilus and squid ships. If you like this kind of thing this set might be right up your alley!

    Luckily the spaceflight mechanic relies on a "Create Helm" spell cast by the controlling magic user. Therefore you are not bound at all to use the ships in the book. Create Helm can be used to turn anything into a spacefaring vessel. I'd be inclined to have glass spheres, flying towers, and giant zardozian heads in my own game.

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  6. I am a big fan of Speljjamer. One of my complaints, however, was that I wanted to see more of an emphasis on spacefaring cultures than setting to setting travel. I think there was a bit of that going o at least, which made for some engaging adventures, such as fending of Neogi slavers or fleeing illithid tyranny. Good stuff!

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  7. If you are a big fan, you might want to check out the upcoming Pirates of the Bronze Sky, a Eberron / Spelljammer mash-up setting for Paizo's Pathfinder RPG.

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  8. Steampunk free? It has mad crazy Tinker Gnomes and quasi-19th C. Imperialist Giff with guns.

    You're right, I guess I'll have to think of another Reason 10. At least there are no clockwork goggles, thank god.

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  9. And that dwarf citadel?

    All the dwarves inside are dressed like Sean Connery in "Zardoz".

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  10. All the dwarves inside are dressed like Sean Connery in "Zardoz".

    Absolutely! Zardoz is my favorite movie of all time, which is probably why that image resonated with me so much.

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  11. If you are a big fan, you might want to check out the upcoming Pirates of the Bronze Sky, a Eberron / Spelljammer mash-up setting for Paizo's Pathfinder RPG.

    Interesting, although I'd be afraid it might be a little too heavy on the steampunk for my own tastes.

    For what it's worth, there's also a rumor floating around that Hasbro will release a 4e version of Spelljammer next year.

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  12. @ Cyclopeatron
    Heck, plays into the "dwarves speak with Scots accents" trope as well. Only with red loincloths, mutton chops, and bandito bullet bandoliers.

    Actually, a flying mountain full of pissed off dwarf exterminators is pretty serious Planet Algol type stuff.

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  13. I bought Dark sun last year and theat led me to buy SpellJammer. Some of the ideas are great, but the ship designs are goofy and the less said about the interior art, the better.
    I love the idea of a stripped down setting free version, though.

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  14. Great article! I love Spelljammer too. The only thing I disagree with is #10. A little steam punk is always welcome. I have to forward this to the Spelljammer forum on the Piazza :)

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  15. Make the space elves into vulcans and throw in a heaping of science to balance the magic and I think you've got the beginnings of damn fine space opera setting.

    We all know beholders are aliens anyway, duh!

    Oh, here's something for your space dwarves fix.

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  16. Luckily the spaceflight mechanic relies on a "Create Helm" spell cast by the controlling magic user. Therefore you are not bound at all to use the ships in the book. Create Helm can be used to turn anything into a spacefaring vessel. I'd be inclined to have glass spheres, flying towers, and giant zardozian heads in my own game.

    This reminds a bit of the alien race from the X-Men comics, known as The Brood, that enslaved and lobotomized enormous creatures, implanting cybernetics and turning them into living space ships, which is cool if not icky.

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  17. I love the mjolnir-craft.

    Also: If you object to steampunk in your D&D, you'll need to delicately ignore some aspects of the Planescape setting.

    Speaking of which: Does anyone think Planescape and Spelljammer could be successfully kludged? They're my two favorite settings, but I don't think they make sense together. But the idea keeps crossing my mind.

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  18. I love Spelljammer. Although I wasn't interested in Planescape (or Dark Sun or Ravenloft, all from the same time period), with all the "berk" junk. But I did like the basic idea of planar travel, and I don't see why you couldn't somehow combine it with Spelljammer. I once had Elric come sailing into a dungeon on a plane-traveling ship and pick up my players' party.

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  19. I once had Elric come sailing into a dungeon on a plane-traveling ship and pick up my players' party.

    Ha ha! Rad!

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  20. Spelljammer was where we spent most of our time playing. It was sort of like AD&D but on a much larger scale. There was much attention paid to crew moral, alignment, docking fees, manifests, and such that it had the feel of a massive naval fleet with each player character eventually captaining and commanding their own ship in a mighty fleet that encountered similar challenges. It was swashbuckling on an interstellar scale, but kept the magic powered feel of AD&D in a way that is really underestimated. My rose coloured glasses may be obscuring my memories of it a bit, but Ninja kender teleporting with a ring of teleport into your hold and stealing as much treasure as they could carry, minotaur warrior generals commanding fleets of orcs in scorpion ships, broadside attacks from clipper ships manned with giff cannon, as well as conquering asteroids infested with undead legions and massive amounts of shipwrecked treasure?

    What's not to like?

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  21. It was swashbuckling on an interstellar scale, but kept the magic powered feel of AD&D in a way that is really underestimated.

    Bingo. To me this is one of the most appealing aspects of Spelljammer. It's all about weird magic, not pseudo-science and/or mystery technology. At it's core it really is D&D, not wizards haphazardly thrown into quasi-Victorian flying ships.

    Your games sound awesome, by the way. I'm jealous!

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  22. The Spelljammer conception of Elves also bears a lot of strong resemblance to the empire of Jurai from the "Tenchi Muyo" anime supercluster, what with the super space tree starships and whatnot. You could work that for some inspiration if you weren't into the big butterflies.

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  23. I think Spelljammer elves would be best suited as a race of space sex servants working in the pleasure chambers of the Dwarven Citadel...

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  24. Nigel Findley wrote a novel series way back when about the adventures of Telden Moore . . .

    can be found on Amazon

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  25. I've long maintained - almost as an article of faith - that the only good thing to come out of TSR's 2E era was (some of) their settings. That's where the gonzo was happening in the 80s; not in safe-and-easy cash cows like Dragonlance & the Realms.

    For instance, it’s painfully corny that many of the spaceships look like sea animals.

    Space is an ocean. You make laser eye beam space whale sad.

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  26. I might make a video blog about this later, but most D&D settings are silly to some degree. It is all in the execution if it is silly awesome or silly stupid. On the face of it Elves In Spaaace is no more silly than Ravenloft of Al Qadim. I hope Spelljammer get some 4E treatment eventually.

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  27. Spelljammer didn't appeal to me when it came out. The art turned me off, I'm afraid, and yes the wacky spaceships.

    Something has changed though. Partly it's the art and the ships, but I'm now attracted to settings that let me engage in sci-fi tropes (many of which are high-seas tropes anyway) in an ostensibly fantasy setting. I may have damaged my brain with too much He-Man as a child. I liked the 4E Manual of the Planes, and the other planes books, and I've already given some of my players a taste of astral adventuring. I can't wait until they're plying the Astral Sea, hopping from dominion to dominion. I might even try to buy one of those Spelljammer sets on eBay. (Sorry if this is a partial duplicate. It looked like my first post got vaped.)

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  28. I love Spelljammer. I loved it in 2nd edition. I loved it as Hackjammer. I have used Savage Worlds to run a version of it. In fact their Sundered Skies setting owes a lot to Spelljamer. I love its gonzo, oddball flavor. I always run it as pulpy and ridiculous as I can. Asteroids with natives who put the characters in giant cook pots. A proud Giff marine force obsessed with medals (also all of them must have -bottom as the last half of their last name)

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  29. rmckee78: Sounds like a perfect combination. I have sundered skies, but I would be interested in seeing any SJ conversions you may have done :)

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  30. I mostly hot shot Savage Worlds stuff but I will look to see if I wrote any of it down. If I can find anything I'll shoot it to you. This is Havard from the Blackmoor blog right?

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  31. Yeah, that's me. You can find my contact info on my blog. (Appologies to Cyclopeatron for starting up a private conversation here. )

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  32. Savage Worlds could be a fun ruleset for it. I have most of the books including the comics for it. So, the material is all there.

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