Looking back on 'things people say they loved about Spelljammer' from campaigns back in the day we can ask does it look like we will get these things from this new edition?
Positive things appearing in discussions:
1. Easy to integrate into settings
2. Cool ships
3. Weird Aliens
4. Vast and weird setting
5. Space-swashbuckling atmosphere
So as a first look, we can refer to the Wizkids ship scale minis as to what we might be getting. That they have all these ship scale figures for tactical combat strongly implies we'll get some ship combat system? Reskin of the systems from Ghosts of Saltmarsh? We can also get a good sense of the aesthetic we will be getting.
Screencap from the announcement video
Nice to see those old friends - the aesthetic has been retained with instantly recognisable Hammership, Damselfly and Man-o-War appearing alongside revised Nautiloids (plus a variant?) and something we had a top-down angle on so unknown. We saw some more old friends in the art - a squidship similar to one that appears in Storm Kings Thunder but also a Deathspider, suggesting your friends and mine the neogi are going to be about. Looking at the Wizkids pre-orders there is a good range of ships and a decent selection of cosmic scale monsters.
Screencap from the Wizkids preorders
I like the format - three 64-page hardcover books in a slipcase is cool, only slightly pricier at ~ $80 but if it has enough content fair enough.
Screencap from the announcement video
First book is The Astral Adventurer’s Guide, "for players and Dungeon Masters that presents the Astral Plane as a campaign setting and includes space-based character options, spells and magic items, deck plans and descriptions for spelljamming ships, and more." For comparison 'On Ships and the Sea' in Ghosts of Saltmarsh is 42 pages and assuming we're going to get stats for all the ships in the Wizkids set, I counted 17, let us assume at least ~ 1 page each for deck-plan and stats, that accounts for ~1/3 of the book. Saltmarsh managed to cram in ships, crew and upgrades, travel and ocean encounter rules, and a bunch of locations into that 42 pages - expand that a little for the variety of space locations and I think there will be a light-but-complete set of space-faring mechanics. Given this is the only book listed as 'for players too' I assume the new player races (Hadozee, Thri-keen, oozes, giff, autognomes and astral elves) are all in here too, for ~ another 12 pages. That leaves about half the book for spells, magic items and whatever extra we get for the Rock of Bral as a campaign setting.
Second book is Boo’s Astral Menagerie, gives us over 60 creatures found in Wildspace and the Astral Sea which will fill that book neatly.
Lastly we get Light of Xaryxis, an adventure set in the Astral Plane and designed for characters of levels 5–8. On the announcement we heard this comes in 12 seperate episodes so ~ 5 pages each, which will be a lot shorter than anything we have seen before. Typical chapter length for other adventures (Storm Kings Thunder, Dragon Heist) were ~15 pages. I am going to guess that much of the supporting material is going to be in the Astral Adventurers Guide - locations will be ships, so space is saved by re-using deckplans. Alternatively all the Rock of Bral info will be interspersed through the adventure.
The set also contains a poster map of the Rock of Bral - another nice return though now on the astral not in wildspace somewhere.
Looking at the monsters from the compendium we see some other old friends in the Clockwork Horror and the Gadabout. We also get Asteroid spider, Eldritch lich, Fractine, Goon balloon, Nightmare beast, Puppeteer parasite, Star lancer, Yggdrasti - together spanning the range from grim to wacky which is exactly like old Spelljammer was too.
All in all - I see a solid aim at 4 of the 5 'most sought' elements from above - the mechanics will be light enough, comparable to Saltmarsh. The cool ships are rolling off the assembly lines. The weird aliens are available already in the Compendium and the space-swashbuckling atmosphere is definitely the flavour the trailer was going for. The only unknown is whether we are going to get much to crank open the setting into the mysterious depths of the spheres and beyond - I do not see room in the books in this set to really give us that but 4 out of 5 is good marks for a starter set.
Most indicative; I have already been arm-twisted into running Spelljammer for my group, they already decided what they want to play.
This is also going to throw wide the floodgates of DMsguild content...
I'm not a fan of spelljammer but I do like the three books as a way to publish a new setting. Follow that up with some modules specific to that setting and move on to the next setting.
ReplyDeleteYep - it is a little slim but this box as the how-to then a some combo adventure/new-sphere books and we're in business.
DeleteIt occurred to me after I wrote all this that the fact we are retaining the ship designs means there is a ready-made well of ship plans, lore, etc. that can all be brought straight back into service because the continuity is maintained.