tl;dr: no need to be afraid of early-modern fire-arms in your campaign
longstanding question about guns in D&D - my experiences no need to worry too much. I have had gunpowder crop up in two campaigns so far - Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis and Hexcrawl25 Realm of the Reluctant King - and in neither did it wreck the campaign.
First and most simply - one of the party was a musket armed Giff in the Spelljammer game and they played the part of a sniper par excellence - but no moreso than the long-bow wielding elf I adventured alongside in Out of the Abyss. Campaign took place in wildspace/on planets and in any case I was playing the campaign as written so no phlogiston nor the ignition risk of gunpowder associated with that. All in all, it was wholly a flavour thing beyond one trap made out of gunpowder barrels.
The players even made fairly large scale anti-shipping contraptions they launched with some spiky trap things included but never tried to acquire or incorporate gunpowder for whatever reasons.
In the second campaign - the Hexcrawl25 game - gunpowder had a lot more of a place but still did not break the game or ruin the flavour. It was introduced somewhat as an accident because I had resolved to try and use as much of Knock#1 as possible in that campaign and so when they searched the back rooms of a tavern unexpectedly I decided the '20 Gunpowders' table could be fun and it went from there.
The first thing they found was a heap of 'dragonpowder' - magical thermite essentially that "a wizard left there" which they stuffed into a bag and scarpered with. Afterwards I used a usage dice system to track depletion for their rather random use of it. It came in very handy for venturing through an insectfolk labyrinth where they used it to burn open some vaults.
With the knowledge that in-world there were such things, they took themselves to a goblin-market and traded various battlefield lootings for some more explosive powders - a handful of vials of saintsbone and a pouch of organic goblins-own gunpowder that could theoretically be self-replenishing. After this they took themselves off to commission a shotgun/blunderbus type weapon for the dwarf and after that considered themselves ready. These were a few mini-quests over a series of sessions as they were traipsing too and fro across the hexmap so I considered those things well earned.
Their final set up was for the dwarf to have the shotgun with their small squire riding on their shoulder and serving as a loader in fights. They also put a saddle-horn type mount for the gun on the top of their big lizard beast of burden so that the two small minions could operate it from beast-back while everyone else dismounted to fight on foot.
In the end, it never came into play as a game-breaking thing - it let the dwarf fighter participate in fights at range alongside the sorcerer and artificer - at about the same level of effectivenss which I could live with. Often at close quarters the noise of using the shotgun stopped it from being a 'first strike' weapon and the party as a whole leaned more on magic.
The funny thing is that these gunpowders came into play at the climax of each of the dungeons in Knock#1:
- In Citadel of Evil a batch of dragonpowder bundled to a vial of alchemists fire was catapulted into the main stairwell and set off an inferno that both torched out the top floors of the castle but also cut off the main villains line of retreat.
- In Praise the Fallen the main villain was about to teleport away on their initiative when the herbalist-themed artificer catapulted a bundle of all the saintsbone at their feet for great fistfuls of damage dice. This also threw some damage on most of the party and deafened them but it did succeed in over-killing the villain before they could flee
- In Zaratazarat's Manse when they found the mysterious monster-spawning slab they dumped most of their remaining dragonpowder onto it to burn through the slab while they fought the rest of the things around them. If I recall correctly some poor unfortunate bullywug or locathah spawned onto the table in the middle of that inferno and did not have a fun time either.
Otherwise, the dragonpowder saw the most use for burning through things and general destruction and mayhem against non-moving foes or other obstructions. Weirdly, they also decided during one significant night carousing to try inhaling dragonpowder and some more rolls on the goblin activity table established it to be a fairly effective hang-over cure.
There was two other notable uses of explosives throughout the campaign - first to cover a prison escape and second to collapse a doorway with hostiles on the far side.
The prison escape hinged off roping in some dwarven artificers who were part of the group being rescued to set up the trigger mechanisms to turn the explosives the players could supply into the time-delayed inferno they needed. I was pretty happy with this, as it was a pretty cunning plan overall relying on a pushing a rigged mine-cart onto a lift to the enemy camp above and then running like hell. The challenge for the players was not trivialised by the availability of explosives, so all to the good.
The door collapse was during the final session - while fighting thralls in "The Aboleths Dream" by Elven Tower the party had wedged the door leading into room seven while they fought other thralls. More thralls gathered from room(s) eight to bash down the door and had splintered it open Shining style when one of the party Catapults a bundle of vials of explosives wrapped around an alchemists fire. Big kaboom, bought them time to run off, and on their exit up stairs one they touched off the last of their gunpowder to shatter the entrance and let them get away.
In two separate campaigns the players never really went all-in on the potential of having access to explosives - except for the above 'big boss killer' moments. We were not seeing land-mine equivalents, doors being blown off hinges, explosives rolled into enemy strong points or similar item-focussed problem solving.
To mirror this, I did not lean heavily into explosives being in the hands of adversaries - the RAW magical ranged attacks of Astral Elves in the Light of Xaryxis campaign were sufficient for them. For the hexcrawl, the two major groups of adversaries so far have been mobs of cultists ambushed in tunnels and great beasts fought out in the open, neither of which have been made boring by the dwarf having a shotgun. The tunnel fights had a big element of sneaking about to not draw down the rest of the dungeon which kept things interesting. The big beasts were generally big enough that even a shotgun was not going to cut much mustard.
The main lesson I took from all this was that the gamebreaking potential of low-rate of fire weapons is overstated - the magical fire-power of standard classes of characters is equivalent, if not better. I cannot promise if you throw in some odd explosives for flavour, your players won't wreck your campaign but two completely different sets of players (different ages, nationalities, game formats) did not leverage them to wreck mine so maybe you'll be fine too.
Showing posts with label Spelljammer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spelljammer. Show all posts
03 June 2026
20 May 2026
Picks of #Spelljammer on tumblr
Whenever I trawl through RPG-tumblr I am struck that there is this persistent Spelljammer vibe, a sense that that setting thrives there in campaigns, fan-art, home-brew and general chatter more than anywhere else. I have no explanation but I am fascinated and I think it is great to see.
To contrast, the Planescape tag is channel-jammed by the old computer RPG Planescape: Torment and then what remains is mostly all Sigil - not bad if you like those sort of things but once you go past those two the rest of everything you get is so much more diffuse. There are flashes of brilliance in there for any given thing you might be interested in but with so much involved in the Planescape setting as a whole, you don't get much for any single thing.
I was pondering why I like what I see in the Spelljammer tag and I think it is because you can pretty much grab any good idea you see there and drop it into your own campaign as a wandering encounter, an NPC you run into or a site you find because you could come across anything in Wildspace, anything at all, whereas most other settings, require a touch more filtering for terrain-appropriate ideas (Planescape included, though swap in 'plane-appropriate').
I do not know why Spelljammer strikes a nerve - perhaps 'D&D in Spaaaace' falls closer to peoples hearts than it did, perhaps the kaleidoscopic-skies aesthetic aligns, who knows - but for whatever reason it is, if you are at all interested in Spelljammer, browsing the tag on tumblr is a good place for inspiration. Afterwards Reddit will give you crunch and answer questions once you have specific ones or you can delve into the vast wells of knowledge on forums like The Piazza.
Some of my favourite things I found:
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Drafting an Adventure: Setting Sail in the Astral Sea - good content for the Astral.
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming - significant thought on running Spelljammer right.
@leavingautumn13 gives us Reimagining the Neogi
@madlabgames writes Spelljamming, Reimagined: The Flow, The Void, and The Hull - delving back into AD&D lore and doing a complete rework of the whole concept. A solid alternate concept.
@spyglassrealms shares a More interesting Realmspace
@honourablejester throws out a bunch of Spelljammer Concepts for characters.
@dnd-5e-homebrew compiles some hombrew rules for Sailing the Astral Flow
@flailsnails gives us A Spelljammer Buyer's Guide - your grand list of capsule reviews for all the old AD&D products.
@nothingrpgzone gives us Spelljammer Advanced Sphere Generator - a nice revamp of the old AD&D sphere generator way, way more cleanly put together.
@thatboomerkid collates their SpellJammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon (Special Rules) from their campaign - for Pathfinder, but ideas useable whatever your system.
@madlabgames gives us 🦗 The Orthopterans: Threat Assessment & Cosmic Order ⚙️
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Monsters Reimagined: Mindflayers
@elbiotipo has Some thoughts for a D&D Spelljammer setting and gives us another trove of 'take as you please' ideas to tweak your own tables version.
@amarynceus compiles Old Spelljammer Artwork from their high-school game - great notes from someone who used the setting in anger.
@d20-dimwit worked up alternate 5e versions of the Spelljammer Races.
@kor-artificer works up Skyship Weatherlight as a vehicle so needs a touch more conversion work but a good start for a Spelljammer.
@dmsden gives us Shiver Me Timbers - Notes on running a pirate-themed campaign
@madlabgames shares 🔮⚓ Arcane Engines: Three Unique Spelljamming Helms for Your Crew! ⚙️💫
To contrast, the Planescape tag is channel-jammed by the old computer RPG Planescape: Torment and then what remains is mostly all Sigil - not bad if you like those sort of things but once you go past those two the rest of everything you get is so much more diffuse. There are flashes of brilliance in there for any given thing you might be interested in but with so much involved in the Planescape setting as a whole, you don't get much for any single thing.
I was pondering why I like what I see in the Spelljammer tag and I think it is because you can pretty much grab any good idea you see there and drop it into your own campaign as a wandering encounter, an NPC you run into or a site you find because you could come across anything in Wildspace, anything at all, whereas most other settings, require a touch more filtering for terrain-appropriate ideas (Planescape included, though swap in 'plane-appropriate').
I do not know why Spelljammer strikes a nerve - perhaps 'D&D in Spaaaace' falls closer to peoples hearts than it did, perhaps the kaleidoscopic-skies aesthetic aligns, who knows - but for whatever reason it is, if you are at all interested in Spelljammer, browsing the tag on tumblr is a good place for inspiration. Afterwards Reddit will give you crunch and answer questions once you have specific ones or you can delve into the vast wells of knowledge on forums like The Piazza.
Some of my favourite things I found:
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Drafting an Adventure: Setting Sail in the Astral Sea - good content for the Astral.
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming - significant thought on running Spelljammer right.
@leavingautumn13 gives us Reimagining the Neogi
@madlabgames writes Spelljamming, Reimagined: The Flow, The Void, and The Hull - delving back into AD&D lore and doing a complete rework of the whole concept. A solid alternate concept.
@spyglassrealms shares a More interesting Realmspace
@honourablejester throws out a bunch of Spelljammer Concepts for characters.
@dnd-5e-homebrew compiles some hombrew rules for Sailing the Astral Flow
@flailsnails gives us A Spelljammer Buyer's Guide - your grand list of capsule reviews for all the old AD&D products.
@nothingrpgzone gives us Spelljammer Advanced Sphere Generator - a nice revamp of the old AD&D sphere generator way, way more cleanly put together.
@thatboomerkid collates their SpellJammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon (Special Rules) from their campaign - for Pathfinder, but ideas useable whatever your system.
@madlabgames gives us 🦗 The Orthopterans: Threat Assessment & Cosmic Order ⚙️
@dailyadventureprompts gives us Monsters Reimagined: Mindflayers
@elbiotipo has Some thoughts for a D&D Spelljammer setting and gives us another trove of 'take as you please' ideas to tweak your own tables version.
@amarynceus compiles Old Spelljammer Artwork from their high-school game - great notes from someone who used the setting in anger.
@d20-dimwit worked up alternate 5e versions of the Spelljammer Races.
@kor-artificer works up Skyship Weatherlight as a vehicle so needs a touch more conversion work but a good start for a Spelljammer.
@dmsden gives us Shiver Me Timbers - Notes on running a pirate-themed campaign
@madlabgames shares 🔮⚓ Arcane Engines: Three Unique Spelljamming Helms for Your Crew! ⚙️💫
25 April 2026
d12 Attack flyers for Spelljammers
I see quite a few engined-/fighter-type things in various Spelljammer homebrew and it leaves me surprised we do not have more 'attack critters' for the same purpose but more aligned to the Age of Sail flavour - packs of trained beasts or flying mounts.
The archetype I can think of is the githyanki knight on a Star Lancer from the "Behold... H'Catha!" Spelljammer Academy 5e adventure though there have always been nods towards 'getting monsters on the opposing ship' - with catapults flinging skeleton-balls or bottled green slimes in various Spelljammer 2e adventures.
It feels like there should be more 'ship-based monsters' for boarding action support than we see - especially since in 5e killing the crew is a far more direct path to victory than attempting to batter the opposing ship apart.
Ship-to-ship encounters could be made more interesting with the addition of such 'attack monsters' - it is the equivalent to changing the terrain to make ship-to-ship action feel fresh again when you might be constrained by the ship deck plans or opposing forces otherwise being quite similar - e.g. in a conflict against a faction where you might repeatedly run up against the same ship type (i.e. terrain) and fights might get to feel samey.
My thoughts are that there are a couple of potential options that achieve this while fitting a bit more into the 'age of sail' flavour
- flying-steeds / mounted attackers - as per SJA knight-on-a-star lancer
- attack beasties - harassers, swarms, like a wardog in a dungeon
- flung critters - as above, skeletons, slimes or other 'living munitions'
- the 'fast-moving, damage-flinging single thing' is a mage or a monster - or someone decked out with a flying-carpet and a wand of fireballs.
If there is the means for a small-fast craft lying around, I would see it being more used for sneaky boarding actions rather than engaging something with a lot of weapons while you only have a few.
I think best illustrated by a few examples.
d12 creatures arriving as that craft closes to boarding distance
1. A burly crewman with a boarding pike atop a small wyvern swoops under your hull to attack weapon emplacements from the far side
2. A gallant captain with polished blade and befeathered hat atop a comet steed directly challenges his opposite number
3. Robes billowing behind them as they fly, a mage loops over your ship firing spells at exposed crew
4. An ogre flings howling goblins into the rigging of your ship, some with shortbows, some with firepots, others scuttle down below decks to ambush your crew there
5. Giant wolf-spiders leap from the drow ship, biting crew and darting along the hull
6. Illithids just appeared aboard, firing spells and trying to devour your crews succulent brains
7. Giant toads with psurlons atop them leap aboard and start trying to swallow your crew, fighting over them
8. A flyby from the neogi ship drops a spread of piercers on your deck
9. A squad of dohwar atop space swine swoops down on you weapon emplacements
10. An elf flying a gadabout drags a rope with a trio of fellows into your rigging
11. An enemy catapult flings a jar with a tar-form gehreleth onto your deck with the intention of standing off and allowing the fiend to rampage
12. Catapult flung balls of skeletons land on the deck, un-fold and attack
The archetype I can think of is the githyanki knight on a Star Lancer from the "Behold... H'Catha!" Spelljammer Academy 5e adventure though there have always been nods towards 'getting monsters on the opposing ship' - with catapults flinging skeleton-balls or bottled green slimes in various Spelljammer 2e adventures.
It feels like there should be more 'ship-based monsters' for boarding action support than we see - especially since in 5e killing the crew is a far more direct path to victory than attempting to batter the opposing ship apart.
Ship-to-ship encounters could be made more interesting with the addition of such 'attack monsters' - it is the equivalent to changing the terrain to make ship-to-ship action feel fresh again when you might be constrained by the ship deck plans or opposing forces otherwise being quite similar - e.g. in a conflict against a faction where you might repeatedly run up against the same ship type (i.e. terrain) and fights might get to feel samey.
My thoughts are that there are a couple of potential options that achieve this while fitting a bit more into the 'age of sail' flavour
- flying-steeds / mounted attackers - as per SJA knight-on-a-star lancer
- attack beasties - harassers, swarms, like a wardog in a dungeon
- flung critters - as above, skeletons, slimes or other 'living munitions'
- the 'fast-moving, damage-flinging single thing' is a mage or a monster - or someone decked out with a flying-carpet and a wand of fireballs.
If there is the means for a small-fast craft lying around, I would see it being more used for sneaky boarding actions rather than engaging something with a lot of weapons while you only have a few.
I think best illustrated by a few examples.
d12 creatures arriving as that craft closes to boarding distance
1. A burly crewman with a boarding pike atop a small wyvern swoops under your hull to attack weapon emplacements from the far side
2. A gallant captain with polished blade and befeathered hat atop a comet steed directly challenges his opposite number
3. Robes billowing behind them as they fly, a mage loops over your ship firing spells at exposed crew
4. An ogre flings howling goblins into the rigging of your ship, some with shortbows, some with firepots, others scuttle down below decks to ambush your crew there
5. Giant wolf-spiders leap from the drow ship, biting crew and darting along the hull
6. Illithids just appeared aboard, firing spells and trying to devour your crews succulent brains
7. Giant toads with psurlons atop them leap aboard and start trying to swallow your crew, fighting over them
8. A flyby from the neogi ship drops a spread of piercers on your deck
9. A squad of dohwar atop space swine swoops down on you weapon emplacements
10. An elf flying a gadabout drags a rope with a trio of fellows into your rigging
11. An enemy catapult flings a jar with a tar-form gehreleth onto your deck with the intention of standing off and allowing the fiend to rampage
12. Catapult flung balls of skeletons land on the deck, un-fold and attack
24 September 2025
Assessing your local crystal sphere for campaign potential
tl;dr: roughing out your local crystal sphere can pay dividends in keeping campaigns consistent.
This is an extension of the 'high-mobility magic' discussion about handling your players rapid unlocking of access to huge new areas.
As part of early-days prep for my Home Campaign I rolled up the local crystal sphere, just to get a sense of what was out there and what kind of things would be visible when you looked at the stars at night. I was glad I did because a couple of odd local phenomena that would be obvious in the night sky revealed themselves. Lately the players have begun to contemplate travelling off-world after getting access to some higher level magics and so I have revisited that early prep to build it out some more.
This is an extension of the 'high-mobility magic' discussion about handling your players rapid unlocking of access to huge new areas.
As part of early-days prep for my Home Campaign I rolled up the local crystal sphere, just to get a sense of what was out there and what kind of things would be visible when you looked at the stars at night. I was glad I did because a couple of odd local phenomena that would be obvious in the night sky revealed themselves. Lately the players have begun to contemplate travelling off-world after getting access to some higher level magics and so I have revisited that early prep to build it out some more.
12 March 2025
Campaign Retrospective: Spelljammer Academy III: Starlight Arcana
Since a mini-campaign actually finished, let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style particularly since I pulled the plug on this one earlier than I thought I might.
Spelljammer Academy: Starlight Arcana, 8 Sessions (Sep-Dec 2024)
What it was:
An open table follow-on to my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign. It was supposed to be run spelljammer-esque 3rd party content at the regular friday open tables
A vehicle to play through kick-started planar content - Path of the Planebreaker, Starlight Arcana, 5e Planescape and Planestriders Journal for LevelUp5e all came through the door around the time this was running.
The first of these open table runs I feel I fumbled.
What worked:
Pretty combat heavy stuff compared to what I usually did since this was more orthodox D&D; bad guys just drawing down and going straight to combat, straight-up murderous goblins as opposed to the ones that talk I usually run.
Adapting a big written adventure into episodic chunks worked better than I might have thought.
Retrofitting the campaign to Realmspace worked well; I dropped the ground location into the Dales, stuck some of the others on Coliar and then used Karpri in Realmspace for the ocean world
Pre-gen characters - I abandoned building characters with people who came without one - instead of having the table sit around while I worked with one person, I gave them a half dozen pre-gens to choose from and got things rolling.
What didn't:
It took too damn long to get the party onboarded with the continuing quest at the start of sessions. I tried having NPCs ask for help, tell them what was going on, etc - it all seemed to take too long while I watch the lights of interest gutter in their eyes.
Trying to maintain progress with different crews over multiple open tables - often the player who knew what was going on was playing a character who was just useless as a conduit of information from one session to the next - leaning too hard into their characters incapabilities through low intelligence or drunkeness. Characterful but sapped momentum.
(NPC) cast of thousands - even though practically it was three NPCs - but they were two different groups the Spelljammer Academy and the Starlight Arcana NPCs and it made the whole thing drag
Did not vibe with as many of the players that settled in as regulars compared to other campaigns. Not to say individuals were bad or did anything wrong but the table vibe was just not one that energised me.
Spelljammer does not work as a welcome wagon game - it is a 'twist' too far for beginning D&D folk and I was still often getting first-timers at the open tables.
Lessons learned:
For episodic one-shots, get things rolling quickly to a place where players are making decisions.
You can trust players to self-start where the setting is relatively vanilla but drop folk into a new or unusual setting and they will stall poking at the scenary to get a grip on where they are. Brancalonia is a relatively familiar setting, the uniqueness is the vibe and the non-lethal mechanics; Starlight Arcana/Spelljammer with the sky-sailing ships and the planar-influences plot was harder for people to grasp.
People far too often bring 'quirky' characters who are severely compromised as functional heroes - either unmotivated, unintelligent, unable to communicate, not actually an adventurer, etc. Getting them to do actual heroing was friction that needed to be overcome at the start of sessions.
Spelljammer Academy: Starlight Arcana, 8 Sessions (Sep-Dec 2024)
What it was:
An open table follow-on to my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign. It was supposed to be run spelljammer-esque 3rd party content at the regular friday open tables
A vehicle to play through kick-started planar content - Path of the Planebreaker, Starlight Arcana, 5e Planescape and Planestriders Journal for LevelUp5e all came through the door around the time this was running.
The first of these open table runs I feel I fumbled.
What worked:
Pretty combat heavy stuff compared to what I usually did since this was more orthodox D&D; bad guys just drawing down and going straight to combat, straight-up murderous goblins as opposed to the ones that talk I usually run.
Adapting a big written adventure into episodic chunks worked better than I might have thought.
Retrofitting the campaign to Realmspace worked well; I dropped the ground location into the Dales, stuck some of the others on Coliar and then used Karpri in Realmspace for the ocean world
Pre-gen characters - I abandoned building characters with people who came without one - instead of having the table sit around while I worked with one person, I gave them a half dozen pre-gens to choose from and got things rolling.
What didn't:
It took too damn long to get the party onboarded with the continuing quest at the start of sessions. I tried having NPCs ask for help, tell them what was going on, etc - it all seemed to take too long while I watch the lights of interest gutter in their eyes.
Trying to maintain progress with different crews over multiple open tables - often the player who knew what was going on was playing a character who was just useless as a conduit of information from one session to the next - leaning too hard into their characters incapabilities through low intelligence or drunkeness. Characterful but sapped momentum.
(NPC) cast of thousands - even though practically it was three NPCs - but they were two different groups the Spelljammer Academy and the Starlight Arcana NPCs and it made the whole thing drag
Did not vibe with as many of the players that settled in as regulars compared to other campaigns. Not to say individuals were bad or did anything wrong but the table vibe was just not one that energised me.
Spelljammer does not work as a welcome wagon game - it is a 'twist' too far for beginning D&D folk and I was still often getting first-timers at the open tables.
Lessons learned:
For episodic one-shots, get things rolling quickly to a place where players are making decisions.
You can trust players to self-start where the setting is relatively vanilla but drop folk into a new or unusual setting and they will stall poking at the scenary to get a grip on where they are. Brancalonia is a relatively familiar setting, the uniqueness is the vibe and the non-lethal mechanics; Starlight Arcana/Spelljammer with the sky-sailing ships and the planar-influences plot was harder for people to grasp.
People far too often bring 'quirky' characters who are severely compromised as functional heroes - either unmotivated, unintelligent, unable to communicate, not actually an adventurer, etc. Getting them to do actual heroing was friction that needed to be overcome at the start of sessions.
18 December 2024
d100 Deep Astral Spelljamming Encounters
I have been pondering the encounter table for travel on the Astral Sea and comparing it to the old encounter tables for the phlogiston from back in the day. The 5e one is all about running into things from across the planes - a good 30% chance of running into another ship but otherwise all planar travellers or monster encounters - one single site, no weather.
The old phlogiston table had a same chance of a ship but it had 40% of non critter things - space debris, planetoids and space phenomena which I think has been dropped a little too quickly from the current table.
The old phlogiston table had a same chance of a ship but it had 40% of non critter things - space debris, planetoids and space phenomena which I think has been dropped a little too quickly from the current table.
07 December 2024
Powers of the Astral
So I saw a post on Reddit that was positing that there are lots of powers kicking around on the astral that are pretty much keeping their heads down and being quiet because of the dark forest theory that posits, if you start getting too loud then the terrible things out there in the dark will come and stomp you flat.
The big difference for this latest iteration of the astral is that it means travel within systems is relatively slow (even with Spelljamming speed, ditching off Toril of Realmspace out to the Astral boundary is 30 days) but travel between systems is 'DM fiat' officially, 'speed of thought' by the Lore and looking at our last dedicated astral resource (The Plane Above of 4e) travel across the Astral point to point takes d4 to 2d6 days - a range of 1-12 which is still quicker than getting in and out of most systems. For 3.5e in the Manual of the Planes these travel times were 0.5-21 days - so even then travel time between systems was typically shorter than getting out to the Astral in the first place.
Checking what is typical for some famed systems - from the last planet to the Astral in Realmspace is 32 days - but from the Toril itself, 62 days. For Greyhawk this is 40 days from the Spectre - but Oerth is a geo-centric system so you are *80 days* from the Astral boundary to actually landing a Spelljammer on Mordenkainens lawn. Krynnspace is a bit smaller - 20 days from the stellar islands to the astral boundary, 39 days to Krynn. I generated a pair of systems for my Light of Xaryxis campaign and those had 60 and *76* days from the outer planet to the Astral Boundary. With a typical Spelljammer air-capacity of 120 days that makes it a risky business in some places to do the combined crossing of two 'outer systems' in a voyage - out from your start system - crossing the astral needs no air - then in at your destination.
All this suggests connecting Astral realms is simple enough but projecting power into systems is harder; suggesting you might have Astral based realms and powers who leave systems to themselves. Treating the Astral as an ocean and the spheres of wildspace as 'landmasses' seems broadly appropriate. However, almost all the 'landmasses' you come to on the astral sea have barren coastlines with all the interesting stuff in deep interior. The big difference between our perception of 'space is the high ground' from sci-fi is that we have three bits
- the astral which is really easy to traverse, if chaotic in how long it might take
- the wildspace 'expanse' between the astral boundary and any planets
- the various planets
Astral map from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
The big difference for this latest iteration of the astral is that it means travel within systems is relatively slow (even with Spelljamming speed, ditching off Toril of Realmspace out to the Astral boundary is 30 days) but travel between systems is 'DM fiat' officially, 'speed of thought' by the Lore and looking at our last dedicated astral resource (The Plane Above of 4e) travel across the Astral point to point takes d4 to 2d6 days - a range of 1-12 which is still quicker than getting in and out of most systems. For 3.5e in the Manual of the Planes these travel times were 0.5-21 days - so even then travel time between systems was typically shorter than getting out to the Astral in the first place.
Checking what is typical for some famed systems - from the last planet to the Astral in Realmspace is 32 days - but from the Toril itself, 62 days. For Greyhawk this is 40 days from the Spectre - but Oerth is a geo-centric system so you are *80 days* from the Astral boundary to actually landing a Spelljammer on Mordenkainens lawn. Krynnspace is a bit smaller - 20 days from the stellar islands to the astral boundary, 39 days to Krynn. I generated a pair of systems for my Light of Xaryxis campaign and those had 60 and *76* days from the outer planet to the Astral Boundary. With a typical Spelljammer air-capacity of 120 days that makes it a risky business in some places to do the combined crossing of two 'outer systems' in a voyage - out from your start system - crossing the astral needs no air - then in at your destination.
All this suggests connecting Astral realms is simple enough but projecting power into systems is harder; suggesting you might have Astral based realms and powers who leave systems to themselves. Treating the Astral as an ocean and the spheres of wildspace as 'landmasses' seems broadly appropriate. However, almost all the 'landmasses' you come to on the astral sea have barren coastlines with all the interesting stuff in deep interior. The big difference between our perception of 'space is the high ground' from sci-fi is that we have three bits
- the astral which is really easy to traverse, if chaotic in how long it might take
- the wildspace 'expanse' between the astral boundary and any planets
- the various planets
Typical random rolled star-system
13 November 2024
Review: Starlight Arcana
tl:dr; chunky, gorgeous book - great ideas, somewhat heavy to prep but has made it to my table where lots of other stuff has not
I spotted this on Kickstarter and tagged it as a kind of Spelljammer substitute - it was marketed as Voyage Across the Astral, Adventures Across the Starlight Arcana Astral Plane - I read that as something in the "Planejammer" space and was definitely on board for what I didn't get from Spelljammer - ship combat and actual planets to go to. With this coming out of Krakow, Poland I was also happy to support my local game developers.
It is a gorgeous book, the artwork and production values throughout are very very nice. This is a beautiful piece of kit with some great work in here. There is a tarot-themed sorcerer and there was a whole tarot deck with campaign appropriate art as part of the kickstarter. The tarot is also used for a tarot-driven divining of the fates and implementation of game effects while adventuring across planets in the sandbox part of the campaign. I like the idea but my shelves groan with tarot decks so I could not justify getting this one, even if beautiful.
I spotted this on Kickstarter and tagged it as a kind of Spelljammer substitute - it was marketed as Voyage Across the Astral, Adventures Across the Starlight Arcana Astral Plane - I read that as something in the "Planejammer" space and was definitely on board for what I didn't get from Spelljammer - ship combat and actual planets to go to. With this coming out of Krakow, Poland I was also happy to support my local game developers.
Art by Joanna 'Dusky Cat' Trzesniewska
First impression of Starlight Arcana is that it is a huge chonky book. About an eighth is the setting crunch, another eighth are the campaign mechanics, a third is the three acts of the campaign and then the back half-ish is the bestiary. It should probably be best conceptualised as a campaign book that comes with its own setting, bespoke mechanics and companion bestiary.It is a gorgeous book, the artwork and production values throughout are very very nice. This is a beautiful piece of kit with some great work in here. There is a tarot-themed sorcerer and there was a whole tarot deck with campaign appropriate art as part of the kickstarter. The tarot is also used for a tarot-driven divining of the fates and implementation of game effects while adventuring across planets in the sandbox part of the campaign. I like the idea but my shelves groan with tarot decks so I could not justify getting this one, even if beautiful.
Reference d20 for scale
There is a lot of content in here, that maybe could have benefited from a grizzled editor snarling 'kill your darlings' at the writers. The layout is two columns per page for most of the first half of the book, the bestiary varies from two column/two monster to single monster/stat block per page. Comparing it to something else recent - 5e Spelljammer - you get more for your page count - smaller margins, smaller font, more words on a two page spread. I spotted a couple of typos but overall for a first publication out of a new outfit, pretty damn good. I might have liked things boiled down more in OSR style but stylistically it cleaves to 5e house style.20 July 2024
Campaign Retrospective: Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis
Since a campaign finished, let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style as is now traditional.
Spelljammer: Light Of Xaryxis (2023-24)
What it was:
- Follow on from 5e Spelljammer rules test two-shot which were a pure systems test of the Spelljammer 5e rules. People liked that enough that it continued.
- My first attempt to run a 5e campaign off book - which was heavily remixed as described here
- My first 'formal' VTT campaign with battlemaps, tokens, getting the scales right and all that jazz
- 26 sessions from Oct 2022 to April 2024 with a slow burn start of getting in a session a month then a pause through April 23 after struggling to schedule sessions. We finally settled onto a base assumption of 'every second Monday night' which ran relatively smoothly through 2023. After smallest house-holders sleeping pattern fell apart that put a hard crimp on things as both I and the in-house test team were in this one. So we had a couple of chunky gaps for what was nominally a bi-weekly game - Jan-April 2023 and Jan-Feb 2024. The 'finite' nature of the campaign helped get things restarted in the sense that this was not an infinite committment.
What worked:
Spelljammer: Light Of Xaryxis (2023-24)
What it was:
- Follow on from 5e Spelljammer rules test two-shot which were a pure systems test of the Spelljammer 5e rules. People liked that enough that it continued.
- My first attempt to run a 5e campaign off book - which was heavily remixed as described here
- My first 'formal' VTT campaign with battlemaps, tokens, getting the scales right and all that jazz
- 26 sessions from Oct 2022 to April 2024 with a slow burn start of getting in a session a month then a pause through April 23 after struggling to schedule sessions. We finally settled onto a base assumption of 'every second Monday night' which ran relatively smoothly through 2023. After smallest house-holders sleeping pattern fell apart that put a hard crimp on things as both I and the in-house test team were in this one. So we had a couple of chunky gaps for what was nominally a bi-weekly game - Jan-April 2023 and Jan-Feb 2024. The 'finite' nature of the campaign helped get things restarted in the sense that this was not an infinite committment.
What worked:
25 May 2024
Remixing: Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis Part III
tl;dr: how the players actually bounced around the sandbox made by chopping up Light of Xaryxis
In the first part of this remix I wrote about what I did
* Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
* Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
* Created a system for all the action to happen in.
* Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense - this got more focus in the second part of the write up.
Below are the records of how the players moved among the various planets where the encounters from the adventure were scattered. Overall it worked well, with the start holding fairly true to what the adventure lays out then going all over the place in the middle before running through the ending more or less as planned out in the book.
To give context for all the movements described, the roster of planets in the system was:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star, where a prototype starseed had fizzled
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans, quasi-Xaryxian loyalists
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld - uninhabited
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves, system capital
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere inhabited by miners of many origins
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great aquatic beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world with a population of raft-dwellers
Below is a mid game map with the long diagonal mapping the 'rings' of the system using the old Spelljammer notation. The closer rings (top left) are one day travel at Spelljammer speed, the further apart rings are two days travel apiece. The astral boundary is bottom right corner - so a fair ways out. The map is from mid-campaign but as you can see, there is quite a chunk of distance, multiple days travel between the different planets - so this hex-crawl became *lengthy*.
In the first part of this remix I wrote about what I did
* Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
* Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
* Created a system for all the action to happen in.
* Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense - this got more focus in the second part of the write up.
Below are the records of how the players moved among the various planets where the encounters from the adventure were scattered. Overall it worked well, with the start holding fairly true to what the adventure lays out then going all over the place in the middle before running through the ending more or less as planned out in the book.
To give context for all the movements described, the roster of planets in the system was:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star, where a prototype starseed had fizzled
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans, quasi-Xaryxian loyalists
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld - uninhabited
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves, system capital
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere inhabited by miners of many origins
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great aquatic beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world with a population of raft-dwellers
Below is a mid game map with the long diagonal mapping the 'rings' of the system using the old Spelljammer notation. The closer rings (top left) are one day travel at Spelljammer speed, the further apart rings are two days travel apiece. The astral boundary is bottom right corner - so a fair ways out. The map is from mid-campaign but as you can see, there is quite a chunk of distance, multiple days travel between the different planets - so this hex-crawl became *lengthy*.
11 May 2024
Remixing: Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis Part II
With the campaign over, diving into a chapter-by-chapter pull-apart of Light of Xaryxis and how I turned it into a sandbox.
In the first part of this remix I wrote about what I did
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.
This post is going to go into more detail on the last point now - how exactly I pulled apart the adventure into how many chunks. The broad toolkit I was looking towards was The Alexandrian 'How to Remix an Adventure' in making a node based structure - where all the nodes here were planets. My initial work up had Chapter 2 happen then direct to Chapter 4, then Chapter 5 and after into 'sandboxing' where Chapters 3, 6, 7 and 8 were the recruitment quests for a different faction. Chapter 6 ropes in the vampirates, chapters 3 and 8 the mindflayers, chapter 8 the local barons and chapter 7 the local imperial loyalists.
To recap the system I rolled up:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere, with mines and Bral-like asteroid cities
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world, with a seafaring/spacefaring culture
Chapter 1 - tossed overboard entirely - replaced with a bridge from a 'space whaling' two-shot. I had the intro as the githyanki whaler captain be so impressed with them that they signed them up for what they figured would be a cushy number of a letter of marque with the Githyanki empire to go find a lost agent. This also served as an on-ramp to add players to the party. None of the book content got used as we never witnessed a Starseed drop from the ground. I could have recycled the Moondancer with Cpt. Sartell, Flapjack the Flumph, Traevus and his mutiny and all that elsewhere but I had no shortage of ships to use so they got sidelined.
Chapter 2 - used the Darkstar encounter more or less as is at the system boundary, just kept a more traditional hadozee crew to make the Dark Star and its mission a more orthodox fleet ship. My players, raised on Master and Commander, of *course* took the Dark Star as a prize. Rock of Bral was swapped out for main port in The Great Belt.
Chapter 3 - wreck of the Lucid Edict is a great encounter, lifted as the 'faction quest' to get the local Mindflayers of Fanthirs Ruin allied against the Xaryxians.
Chapter 4 - the Ebonsnare neogi ship got turned into a wildspace encounter - I did not bring in the Space Galleon rescuers since the PCs were well able to take the Ebonsnare apart alone. The Stalwart and Incorrigible were available for use but never got used. All the content about the Rock of Bral got lifted straight over to the local asteroid port, including the astral elf ambush; interestingly, this set the dogs running for the PCs that the Xaryxians must be running a big spy network, how to find it and rip it out? Krux gets found, mentions the Second Wind but the party has their own ship so they ignore it and head to Topolah's for intel. Fel Ardra got recycled as the Xaryxian spy network encounter later, Flinch and Starbough never got used. Hastain the reigar gets placed as an ambush encounter at the asteroid port but the PC's keep doing fast, cunning port departures and coincidentally spoiling Hastains ambush a few times.
Chapter 5 - Topolah's tower and the scavvers were used as is, placed in the Great Belt. Topolah was much appreciated as a source of good intel and her advice to find Gargenhale was taken seriously. The Kindori pod never got used; but this bunch had already been space-whaling. The Gargenhale content was used as was, placed over Obsidian Depths, the big local ocean planet. Throwaway lines in the Gargenhale set up - two starmoth wrecks, evidence of a fight - all this provided lots of investigation by the players trying to reconstruct the timeline of events which took a lot of DM prep on my side to figure out reasonable answers. The players of *course* stopped to strip the Starmoth wrecks to the deck-nails, looking for valuables and intel.
Chapter 6 - Gargenhale and his mutinous crew played as is - though the TPK potential of the explosive cargo of the Last Breath was something I watched nervously as people split up during the fight. There was also a good chance to blow Xedalli to kingdom come before ever meeting her if things go sideways in the fight with Agony. Xedalli was however found and promptly re-imprisoned by the party aboard their own ship.
Chapter 7 - Xedalli got used as is. Pretty much all the long-haul voyage content is here in the voyage to Doomspace so that got repurposed into general travel encounters. Aartuks of Aruun got recycled as the 'faction onboarding' quest for the ssussurans of Gorondirs Throne, including the bulettes. Doomspace itself got chucked - I kept everything in-system, especially since it turned out to be large with weeks of travel between planets.
Chapter 8 - Vocaths base got re-framed as the mindflayers orbital trade station over Fanthirs Ruin. Arena of Blood got turned into the "mindflayer alliance quest" and went by the numbers. Prince Xeleths ambush of his sister was recycled to trip once Xedalli showed herself in public (wherever). Xeleths back-up snatch team got repurposed into the Xaryxian spy network as an ambush on the capital of Hrungirs Roar.
Chapter 9 - Alliance in Doomspace was re-painted and used as a faction-building challenge series to recruit the quarreling local eleven remnants on Hrungirs Roar, the local capital planet. The goals/ambitions etc remained but I switched the races to be residents of Hrungirs Roar.
Chapter 10 - From here on the adventure ran pretty close to 'script'. Citadel assault was played straight up apart from the githyanki knight encounter getting thrown overboard. With the players allying with mindflayers and *being* the local githyanki force it did not feel like a good fit.
Chapter 11 - Trial by combat went more or less by the numbers - some villain monologuing then a beefy fight with a Zodar.
Chapter 12 - Betrayal, fight-back and then final decision to destroy Xaryxis were used as is.
So after I pulled all those bits out and scattered them around, I threw in another faction on Tears of Joy to be an accelerator - they would join once a majority of others were onboard.
I unleashed the players and after a fairly direct route in to liase with Krux they found themselves aware of the problem (sun is cooling due to starseeds, Xaryxians are assholes, they are attempting to reconquer the place, we need to get the locals off their butts by doing things to get them on-side against the Xaryxians). After that they had a bunch of leads to chase down corresponding to encounters from the book set on different planets and off they went. I did not worry too much about what level things were tuned for because with my experience 5e players can usually nova their way through whatever you throw at them and this table were some hard-bitten 30yr D&D vets.
I retooled the milestone levelling to be check-list - once a certain set of encounters were done, they levelled, which meant that it took a while as they cruised around doing bits and pieces then they started completing things and levelled relatively rapidly into the end game.
All in all it worked pretty well - the players went off on some tangents I was able to catch and over all 80% of the campaign sessions worked through at least some content from the book so we got good use out of it. I will walk through how the players interacted with all this on another post.
Light of Xaryxis lends itself well to remixing this way as there are lots of elements that can be swapped around without greatly impacting it
In the first part of this remix I wrote about what I did
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.
This post is going to go into more detail on the last point now - how exactly I pulled apart the adventure into how many chunks. The broad toolkit I was looking towards was The Alexandrian 'How to Remix an Adventure' in making a node based structure - where all the nodes here were planets. My initial work up had Chapter 2 happen then direct to Chapter 4, then Chapter 5 and after into 'sandboxing' where Chapters 3, 6, 7 and 8 were the recruitment quests for a different faction. Chapter 6 ropes in the vampirates, chapters 3 and 8 the mindflayers, chapter 8 the local barons and chapter 7 the local imperial loyalists.
To recap the system I rolled up:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere, with mines and Bral-like asteroid cities
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world, with a seafaring/spacefaring culture
Chapter 1 - tossed overboard entirely - replaced with a bridge from a 'space whaling' two-shot. I had the intro as the githyanki whaler captain be so impressed with them that they signed them up for what they figured would be a cushy number of a letter of marque with the Githyanki empire to go find a lost agent. This also served as an on-ramp to add players to the party. None of the book content got used as we never witnessed a Starseed drop from the ground. I could have recycled the Moondancer with Cpt. Sartell, Flapjack the Flumph, Traevus and his mutiny and all that elsewhere but I had no shortage of ships to use so they got sidelined.
Chapter 2 - used the Darkstar encounter more or less as is at the system boundary, just kept a more traditional hadozee crew to make the Dark Star and its mission a more orthodox fleet ship. My players, raised on Master and Commander, of *course* took the Dark Star as a prize. Rock of Bral was swapped out for main port in The Great Belt.
Chapter 3 - wreck of the Lucid Edict is a great encounter, lifted as the 'faction quest' to get the local Mindflayers of Fanthirs Ruin allied against the Xaryxians.
Chapter 4 - the Ebonsnare neogi ship got turned into a wildspace encounter - I did not bring in the Space Galleon rescuers since the PCs were well able to take the Ebonsnare apart alone. The Stalwart and Incorrigible were available for use but never got used. All the content about the Rock of Bral got lifted straight over to the local asteroid port, including the astral elf ambush; interestingly, this set the dogs running for the PCs that the Xaryxians must be running a big spy network, how to find it and rip it out? Krux gets found, mentions the Second Wind but the party has their own ship so they ignore it and head to Topolah's for intel. Fel Ardra got recycled as the Xaryxian spy network encounter later, Flinch and Starbough never got used. Hastain the reigar gets placed as an ambush encounter at the asteroid port but the PC's keep doing fast, cunning port departures and coincidentally spoiling Hastains ambush a few times.
Chapter 5 - Topolah's tower and the scavvers were used as is, placed in the Great Belt. Topolah was much appreciated as a source of good intel and her advice to find Gargenhale was taken seriously. The Kindori pod never got used; but this bunch had already been space-whaling. The Gargenhale content was used as was, placed over Obsidian Depths, the big local ocean planet. Throwaway lines in the Gargenhale set up - two starmoth wrecks, evidence of a fight - all this provided lots of investigation by the players trying to reconstruct the timeline of events which took a lot of DM prep on my side to figure out reasonable answers. The players of *course* stopped to strip the Starmoth wrecks to the deck-nails, looking for valuables and intel.
Chapter 6 - Gargenhale and his mutinous crew played as is - though the TPK potential of the explosive cargo of the Last Breath was something I watched nervously as people split up during the fight. There was also a good chance to blow Xedalli to kingdom come before ever meeting her if things go sideways in the fight with Agony. Xedalli was however found and promptly re-imprisoned by the party aboard their own ship.
Chapter 7 - Xedalli got used as is. Pretty much all the long-haul voyage content is here in the voyage to Doomspace so that got repurposed into general travel encounters. Aartuks of Aruun got recycled as the 'faction onboarding' quest for the ssussurans of Gorondirs Throne, including the bulettes. Doomspace itself got chucked - I kept everything in-system, especially since it turned out to be large with weeks of travel between planets.
Chapter 8 - Vocaths base got re-framed as the mindflayers orbital trade station over Fanthirs Ruin. Arena of Blood got turned into the "mindflayer alliance quest" and went by the numbers. Prince Xeleths ambush of his sister was recycled to trip once Xedalli showed herself in public (wherever). Xeleths back-up snatch team got repurposed into the Xaryxian spy network as an ambush on the capital of Hrungirs Roar.
Chapter 9 - Alliance in Doomspace was re-painted and used as a faction-building challenge series to recruit the quarreling local eleven remnants on Hrungirs Roar, the local capital planet. The goals/ambitions etc remained but I switched the races to be residents of Hrungirs Roar.
Chapter 10 - From here on the adventure ran pretty close to 'script'. Citadel assault was played straight up apart from the githyanki knight encounter getting thrown overboard. With the players allying with mindflayers and *being* the local githyanki force it did not feel like a good fit.
Chapter 11 - Trial by combat went more or less by the numbers - some villain monologuing then a beefy fight with a Zodar.
Chapter 12 - Betrayal, fight-back and then final decision to destroy Xaryxis were used as is.
So after I pulled all those bits out and scattered them around, I threw in another faction on Tears of Joy to be an accelerator - they would join once a majority of others were onboard.
I unleashed the players and after a fairly direct route in to liase with Krux they found themselves aware of the problem (sun is cooling due to starseeds, Xaryxians are assholes, they are attempting to reconquer the place, we need to get the locals off their butts by doing things to get them on-side against the Xaryxians). After that they had a bunch of leads to chase down corresponding to encounters from the book set on different planets and off they went. I did not worry too much about what level things were tuned for because with my experience 5e players can usually nova their way through whatever you throw at them and this table were some hard-bitten 30yr D&D vets.
I retooled the milestone levelling to be check-list - once a certain set of encounters were done, they levelled, which meant that it took a while as they cruised around doing bits and pieces then they started completing things and levelled relatively rapidly into the end game.
All in all it worked pretty well - the players went off on some tangents I was able to catch and over all 80% of the campaign sessions worked through at least some content from the book so we got good use out of it. I will walk through how the players interacted with all this on another post.
Light of Xaryxis lends itself well to remixing this way as there are lots of elements that can be swapped around without greatly impacting it
27 April 2024
Actual Test: Spelljammer 5e Fleet Combat (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 7)
tl;dr: not really a fantasy space fleet combat ruleset - but it sort of works at table.
I have run the 'fleet combat' set up for Spelljammer 5e by the book twice now (and it ran in the background for a third session) and it sort of serves its purpose as a dramatic device but I really hesitate to call it a rule-set. Following from writing on the Spelljammer 5e lack of rules before there is actually, toward the end of the adventure in the set Light of Xaryxis, some minimal mass combat rules: once you are in mass ship combat, each side loses a ship each round and the players get to focus on boarding actions.
Recalling what we saw previously - you practically cannot batter a 5e Spelljammer out of action through weapons fire alone without it being a deeply tedious dice-rolling exercise so the players getting stuck-in as boarders is the sensible thing to do - they will rip up an enemy crew a lot more quickly than their ship will hammer an enemy ship out of action. This 'chalk one ship off per round' is really just a timing mechanic to drive urgency in the boarding actions - but then making sure that the players have material targets that make enough of a difference within reachable distance is purely down to GM sleight of hand - exactly how far things are and how fast things are needs to get handwaved hard or players spend a lot of time too far off to be doing anything once they have crushed a first target but the battle is not yet resolved - or have foes come to them. If you actually look at the relative ship speeds, a foe trying to avoid boarding drives relative closing speeds per round down to 10-30' per round - starting even at the closest range of 250' that makes a long, long time trying to get to grips with folk.
Recapping the three instances where I've used the mass fleet combat:
First was the finale of the Spelljammer Academy extended campaign - and the players used their fleet to tie up the enemy fleet while they did an end run around to board the enemy base
Second was a variation on Chapter Nine of Light of Xaryxis where the players decided to slug it out with Xeleths fleet when he came to grab Xedalli because they had managed to round up some allies by then. That was an extended series of boarding actions to the backdrop of the fleets tearing each other apart.
Third was Chapter Ten of Light of Xaryxis where the players used their fleet as a blocking force against the citadel fleet and did a run directly for the citadel - fighting solar dragons on the way in.
It is enough mechanic for players to judge 'how is this fight likely to go' - which is purely 'have we at least a matching number of hulls to tie the enemy up while we do our thing'. Not very elegant but enough for the purposes of getting a session moving.
I guess it is *a* way to do multiple ship combats and my player groups have enjoyed the fleet actions because it keeps the focus on the heroes which I guess is the point for 5e. I write it up grudgingly because while I dislike it conceptually, my players have enjoyed the effect at the table. This feels wierd to me, but maybe it might be useful to you. It all feels a bit quantum ogre for me - the enemy will stumble upon you just at the appropriate moment - but really it just makes all the ship combat as wallpaper. The ships are just the shapes to have combats across; as long as you know that is the style of campaign you get with Spelljammer 5e, all is well.
If you want actual mechanic sets with a bit of heft to them, we have previously gone through two magazine-published sets of rules for fighting magical flying ships - the 3e adaptation Shadow of the Spider Moon and the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM as well as the original AD&D Spelljammer and the to-be-published OD&D compatible Calidar. Most recently we also tried the gridless, Theater of the Mind house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast.
I have run the 'fleet combat' set up for Spelljammer 5e by the book twice now (and it ran in the background for a third session) and it sort of serves its purpose as a dramatic device but I really hesitate to call it a rule-set. Following from writing on the Spelljammer 5e lack of rules before there is actually, toward the end of the adventure in the set Light of Xaryxis, some minimal mass combat rules: once you are in mass ship combat, each side loses a ship each round and the players get to focus on boarding actions.
Recalling what we saw previously - you practically cannot batter a 5e Spelljammer out of action through weapons fire alone without it being a deeply tedious dice-rolling exercise so the players getting stuck-in as boarders is the sensible thing to do - they will rip up an enemy crew a lot more quickly than their ship will hammer an enemy ship out of action. This 'chalk one ship off per round' is really just a timing mechanic to drive urgency in the boarding actions - but then making sure that the players have material targets that make enough of a difference within reachable distance is purely down to GM sleight of hand - exactly how far things are and how fast things are needs to get handwaved hard or players spend a lot of time too far off to be doing anything once they have crushed a first target but the battle is not yet resolved - or have foes come to them. If you actually look at the relative ship speeds, a foe trying to avoid boarding drives relative closing speeds per round down to 10-30' per round - starting even at the closest range of 250' that makes a long, long time trying to get to grips with folk.
Recapping the three instances where I've used the mass fleet combat:
First was the finale of the Spelljammer Academy extended campaign - and the players used their fleet to tie up the enemy fleet while they did an end run around to board the enemy base
Second was a variation on Chapter Nine of Light of Xaryxis where the players decided to slug it out with Xeleths fleet when he came to grab Xedalli because they had managed to round up some allies by then. That was an extended series of boarding actions to the backdrop of the fleets tearing each other apart.
Third was Chapter Ten of Light of Xaryxis where the players used their fleet as a blocking force against the citadel fleet and did a run directly for the citadel - fighting solar dragons on the way in.
It is enough mechanic for players to judge 'how is this fight likely to go' - which is purely 'have we at least a matching number of hulls to tie the enemy up while we do our thing'. Not very elegant but enough for the purposes of getting a session moving.
I guess it is *a* way to do multiple ship combats and my player groups have enjoyed the fleet actions because it keeps the focus on the heroes which I guess is the point for 5e. I write it up grudgingly because while I dislike it conceptually, my players have enjoyed the effect at the table. This feels wierd to me, but maybe it might be useful to you. It all feels a bit quantum ogre for me - the enemy will stumble upon you just at the appropriate moment - but really it just makes all the ship combat as wallpaper. The ships are just the shapes to have combats across; as long as you know that is the style of campaign you get with Spelljammer 5e, all is well.
If you want actual mechanic sets with a bit of heft to them, we have previously gone through two magazine-published sets of rules for fighting magical flying ships - the 3e adaptation Shadow of the Spider Moon and the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM as well as the original AD&D Spelljammer and the to-be-published OD&D compatible Calidar. Most recently we also tried the gridless, Theater of the Mind house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast.
07 December 2023
It Has A Name (NPC Management)
tl;dr: Name your NPCs to avoid slips and obfuscate who is important.
A theme of this year has been a lot more one shots and published material - me reading and assimilating other peoples stuff with not so much prep time before running it - Light of Xaryxis campaign and the Fistful of Quatrins series in the Bracalonia book among others. What I have found this has lead to is problems for me where NPCs have false identities or hidden aspects.
Examples:
This person they found has a core aspect of their identity that is not obvious on first glance.
That sailor is a shapeshifter? How to avoid slipping and referring to him by 'cultist' or 'shapeshifter'.
That voice behind the door is a monster? Better not refer to it as what it is.
That guy has a connection to people that is his only characterisation but you do not want that to spring out at folk
Solution - name them and never give another reference, even after things become clear.
Best part of this is that even after things come to blows and there are pieces on the battlefield, you just have different looking pieces but the names still obfuscate exactly what it is.
Spoilers ahead for light of Xaryxis (LoX).
A theme of this year has been a lot more one shots and published material - me reading and assimilating other peoples stuff with not so much prep time before running it - Light of Xaryxis campaign and the Fistful of Quatrins series in the Bracalonia book among others. What I have found this has lead to is problems for me where NPCs have false identities or hidden aspects.
Examples:
This person they found has a core aspect of their identity that is not obvious on first glance.
That sailor is a shapeshifter? How to avoid slipping and referring to him by 'cultist' or 'shapeshifter'.
That voice behind the door is a monster? Better not refer to it as what it is.
That guy has a connection to people that is his only characterisation but you do not want that to spring out at folk
Solution - name them and never give another reference, even after things become clear.
Best part of this is that even after things come to blows and there are pieces on the battlefield, you just have different looking pieces but the names still obfuscate exactly what it is.
Spoilers ahead for light of Xaryxis (LoX).
22 November 2023
Review: Skyrealms
tl:dr; a neat little setting for exploration, with a whimsical tone but some real teeth to adventure hooks here.
I backed the kickstarter as part of Zinequest #4 I think? First peered in for the Evlyn Moreau art then backed it when I saw floating islands.
First impression is of a surprisingly chunky set of zines in a stuffed packet of things. The cardstock is nice, the whole thing has a great tactility. As mentioned multiple times throughout the zines, these are also meant for colouring in and they have that arty feel. The interior lay outs have lots of white space and easy to absorb. The art by Evlyn Moreau is a treat, as always. Favourites for me were the Emobeast, the Crystal Kingdom and the Goosedemon.
I backed the kickstarter as part of Zinequest #4 I think? First peered in for the Evlyn Moreau art then backed it when I saw floating islands.
Art by Evlyn Moreau
First impression is of a surprisingly chunky set of zines in a stuffed packet of things. The cardstock is nice, the whole thing has a great tactility. As mentioned multiple times throughout the zines, these are also meant for colouring in and they have that arty feel. The interior lay outs have lots of white space and easy to absorb. The art by Evlyn Moreau is a treat, as always. Favourites for me were the Emobeast, the Crystal Kingdom and the Goosedemon.
06 September 2023
Remixing Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis
As mentioned on a previous post - I have been running Light of Xaryxis adapted to the wild randomness and sometimes paranoid tactical noses of my players. Just running them along the 'suddenly, neogi' path of the adventure would not fly so it has been fun so far collaging the set pieces and encounters from the adventure into a new structure which gives the players better motivations. It is beneficial to me also as some challenges and encounters get tripped where I would have hand-waved things along by instinct - so it makes things a bit more unpredictable and interesting. I have been a big fan of the Alexandrian remixes so I thought I would write up these mid-point notes.
What I did was:
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.
What I did was:
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.
19 August 2023
d20 illithid cultural artefacts
After spending a bunch of time thinking about illithid worlds due to Spelljammer, some general thoughts about things they will have lying around beyond the usual, recognisable stuff.
First, the general aesthetic will be:
- upsettingly asymmetrical because they like to hold things with their tentacles and long-fingered hands and like to know which way is the 'front' by feel
- flanged or ridged design with bits sticking out for ease of tentacle holding
- sensory tools for the senses of a mindflayer - emotion (empath), thought (telepathy), telekinesis, dream (which for them is 'channel the far realm'), body-mastery (a slightly taboo hobby of attuning with whatever form your tadpole took over)
- textural approach - etched in qualith text is very common both as instruction on the item, makers marks, dedications and other notes associated with its use or origin
- materials can include mother-of-pearl and other shell-like substances shaped into desired forms and highly precise carvings rendered using telekinetic abilities
d20 illithid cultural artifacts
1. Qualith meditation beads - quadripartite inscriptions spiralling around beads on a string, a relatively common design with a huge variety of writings available. Can be inscribed with koan-type truths, community doctrines, great questions, forget-me-not messages
2. Infinite sagas - a long flexible spiral, typically an embroidered or otherwise textured ribbon, containing stories that run on forever, reflecting the time-skipping nature of mindflayer dominion itself ".. until once more, at the far end of time, our Empire rose again and..."
3. Empathy detector - equivalent to an ear-horn, particularly for illithids who have spent too much time alone and want a little more clarity. Weakens defenses against 'blast' psychic attacks. Usually a hidden necklace as wearing one is a sign of weakness.
4. Emotional broadcaster - usually a very ostentatious head-piece that makes sure that what you feel, everyone else feels too. Wearing one of these is an illithid boss-move, be very sure of your place on the social ladder.
5. Empathy shield - for when others tiresome emotions are just not worth dealing with. Also provides some limited defense against psychic attacks. Usually a discrete brooch or pendant worn hidden as openly displaying you have one of these is seen as rude.
First, the general aesthetic will be:
- upsettingly asymmetrical because they like to hold things with their tentacles and long-fingered hands and like to know which way is the 'front' by feel
- flanged or ridged design with bits sticking out for ease of tentacle holding
- sensory tools for the senses of a mindflayer - emotion (empath), thought (telepathy), telekinesis, dream (which for them is 'channel the far realm'), body-mastery (a slightly taboo hobby of attuning with whatever form your tadpole took over)
- textural approach - etched in qualith text is very common both as instruction on the item, makers marks, dedications and other notes associated with its use or origin
- materials can include mother-of-pearl and other shell-like substances shaped into desired forms and highly precise carvings rendered using telekinetic abilities
d20 illithid cultural artifacts
1. Qualith meditation beads - quadripartite inscriptions spiralling around beads on a string, a relatively common design with a huge variety of writings available. Can be inscribed with koan-type truths, community doctrines, great questions, forget-me-not messages
2. Infinite sagas - a long flexible spiral, typically an embroidered or otherwise textured ribbon, containing stories that run on forever, reflecting the time-skipping nature of mindflayer dominion itself ".. until once more, at the far end of time, our Empire rose again and..."
3. Empathy detector - equivalent to an ear-horn, particularly for illithids who have spent too much time alone and want a little more clarity. Weakens defenses against 'blast' psychic attacks. Usually a hidden necklace as wearing one is a sign of weakness.
4. Emotional broadcaster - usually a very ostentatious head-piece that makes sure that what you feel, everyone else feels too. Wearing one of these is an illithid boss-move, be very sure of your place on the social ladder.
5. Empathy shield - for when others tiresome emotions are just not worth dealing with. Also provides some limited defense against psychic attacks. Usually a discrete brooch or pendant worn hidden as openly displaying you have one of these is seen as rude.
09 August 2023
Campaign Spin-Up VII - When One-Shots Sprawl
tl;dr: I ran Spelljammer Academy and then... just sort of kept going. This is about how I cooked up the additional episodes for the mini-campaign.
I have unexpectedly run a 'tour of the system' Spelljammer campaign, starting off with running Spelljammer Academy for my local gaming group. I was running Light of Xaryxis for another table and this group was drop-in/drop-out so I decided to just continue as one shots and it has been an interesting exercise. This write up focuses on where I got the session content from for all these one-shots, I wrote up the mechanics of running it in a Campaign Retrospective.
The key aspects of this were:
- open table
- no big idea just a knock-about game to allow venue testing
- unexpectedly ended up with 'core crew' at this open table
- got to trigger 'cool hooks' much more often than my standard campaign mode
- tried to integrate the advice from You Suck at Keeping your One-Offs as One-Offs by A Knight at the Opera
I have unexpectedly run a 'tour of the system' Spelljammer campaign, starting off with running Spelljammer Academy for my local gaming group. I was running Light of Xaryxis for another table and this group was drop-in/drop-out so I decided to just continue as one shots and it has been an interesting exercise. This write up focuses on where I got the session content from for all these one-shots, I wrote up the mechanics of running it in a Campaign Retrospective.
The key aspects of this were:
- open table
- no big idea just a knock-about game to allow venue testing
- unexpectedly ended up with 'core crew' at this open table
- got to trigger 'cool hooks' much more often than my standard campaign mode
- tried to integrate the advice from You Suck at Keeping your One-Offs as One-Offs by A Knight at the Opera
02 August 2023
Actual Play: giant cannon foundry as terrain
tl;dr: tested out a 'what-if' terrain set up, adding scale and verticality and it worked quite well
Having just listened to Hida-O-Win's lament about the lost opportunity in the final fight in the Enemy Within Book 4 (from the Adventuring Party podcast #752, spoilers ahoy for Enemy Within) I thought I'd try and execute his vision as described in the final fight in my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign.
The whole session was a bit of bricolage - it was the boarding and clearing of an old Dwarven Citadel taken over by a rogue Astral Elf star empire (the Xaryxians, straight out of the book). it started with a stolen version of the fleet action from Chapter 10 of Light of Xaryxis for the approach then gave the heroes the option to fight the fleet or be the landing party.
They chose landing party and for the interior of the Citadel I used Graphite Primes Mazes set up. The presence of a pair of artificers stood them in good stead getting past hazards but then there were two fights buried in the maze.
First was going to be the Xaryxian command post, second was their Scro allies who were looting technology from the Citadel. The Xaryxian fight was a nasty little brawl in a room, a knife fight in a phone-box that was difficult based off testing a range of the Xaryxian tougher types. There was effectively no terrain in that beyond a few stairways.
The scro fight I attempted to make more interesting. My sketch map below. Here we have high mesh gantries 60 ft up, 10 ft wide on either side of the room. The big thing in the middle is a 40 ft diameter cannon, a main gun for the citadel. 1/4 in from each end of the room and in the middle were a gantry of chain winches, essentially a curtain of chains. The opposition were three pairs of Scro warriors with a chest each they were carrying and a pair of Scro sergeants overseeing them. The two sergeants were up in the chain-gantries keeping an eye on things. The Scro were re-skinned Giff from the Boos Astral Menagerie - the warriors were CR3 Shipmates, the Sergeants CR6 Shock Troopers. They had muskets and grenades, according to the CR calculation widget this should have been a CR16 encounter, classed as Deadly.
The roster for the night was:
Having just listened to Hida-O-Win's lament about the lost opportunity in the final fight in the Enemy Within Book 4 (from the Adventuring Party podcast #752, spoilers ahoy for Enemy Within) I thought I'd try and execute his vision as described in the final fight in my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign.
The whole session was a bit of bricolage - it was the boarding and clearing of an old Dwarven Citadel taken over by a rogue Astral Elf star empire (the Xaryxians, straight out of the book). it started with a stolen version of the fleet action from Chapter 10 of Light of Xaryxis for the approach then gave the heroes the option to fight the fleet or be the landing party.
They chose landing party and for the interior of the Citadel I used Graphite Primes Mazes set up. The presence of a pair of artificers stood them in good stead getting past hazards but then there were two fights buried in the maze.
First was going to be the Xaryxian command post, second was their Scro allies who were looting technology from the Citadel. The Xaryxian fight was a nasty little brawl in a room, a knife fight in a phone-box that was difficult based off testing a range of the Xaryxian tougher types. There was effectively no terrain in that beyond a few stairways.
The scro fight I attempted to make more interesting. My sketch map below. Here we have high mesh gantries 60 ft up, 10 ft wide on either side of the room. The big thing in the middle is a 40 ft diameter cannon, a main gun for the citadel. 1/4 in from each end of the room and in the middle were a gantry of chain winches, essentially a curtain of chains. The opposition were three pairs of Scro warriors with a chest each they were carrying and a pair of Scro sergeants overseeing them. The two sergeants were up in the chain-gantries keeping an eye on things. The Scro were re-skinned Giff from the Boos Astral Menagerie - the warriors were CR3 Shipmates, the Sergeants CR6 Shock Troopers. They had muskets and grenades, according to the CR calculation widget this should have been a CR16 encounter, classed as Deadly.
The roster for the night was:
19 July 2023
Campaign Retrospective: Spelljammer Academy
Since a mini-campaign actually finished, let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style as we have previously.
Spelljammer Academy, 12 Sessions (Feb-June 2023)
What it was: semi-open table run continuation of the Spelljammer Academy adventure. It initially was the hook for us to test new venues for our games club so it was episodic one-shots I banged together fairly haphazardly and just let it evolve as it went
What worked: Episodic nature worked well, set-up tolerated a changing cast week on week really well. People were able to pick up the 'D&D in Space' vibe pretty well. I got to improve my 'minimum viable prep' muscles. We found some kick-ass venues, people were understanding when the venues were sub-par;
What didn't: Trying to be authentic and use the Realmspace supplement. Slogging into the morass of old Oriental Adventures content. What rose-tinted glasses I may have had about AD&D Spelljammer or Oriental Adventures were ripped off and ground underfoot. Some time management issues but that is perpetual with the drop in games. Some venues worked better than others.
Lessons learned:
Fixing two dates a month and asking a bunch of people to get a minimum table of 3 is much better for my stress levels than trying to align peoples schedules
Reduce what you need to carry by challenging yourself to run games with only what is in one or two books
Episodic things like this or Adventurers League are ideal for open tables but you can get much of the campaign 'actions have meaning' feeling with even one or two players continuing session to session
Read the abilities of your monsters and how they interact with players on ships - area effects like dragons-breath, banshee wails, etc. are a lot more effective because people cannot spread out
Spelljammer Academy, 12 Sessions (Feb-June 2023)
What it was: semi-open table run continuation of the Spelljammer Academy adventure. It initially was the hook for us to test new venues for our games club so it was episodic one-shots I banged together fairly haphazardly and just let it evolve as it went
What worked: Episodic nature worked well, set-up tolerated a changing cast week on week really well. People were able to pick up the 'D&D in Space' vibe pretty well. I got to improve my 'minimum viable prep' muscles. We found some kick-ass venues, people were understanding when the venues were sub-par;
What didn't: Trying to be authentic and use the Realmspace supplement. Slogging into the morass of old Oriental Adventures content. What rose-tinted glasses I may have had about AD&D Spelljammer or Oriental Adventures were ripped off and ground underfoot. Some time management issues but that is perpetual with the drop in games. Some venues worked better than others.
Lessons learned:
Fixing two dates a month and asking a bunch of people to get a minimum table of 3 is much better for my stress levels than trying to align peoples schedules
Reduce what you need to carry by challenging yourself to run games with only what is in one or two books
Episodic things like this or Adventurers League are ideal for open tables but you can get much of the campaign 'actions have meaning' feeling with even one or two players continuing session to session
Read the abilities of your monsters and how they interact with players on ships - area effects like dragons-breath, banshee wails, etc. are a lot more effective because people cannot spread out
24 June 2023
Review: Realmspace (1991)
tl:dr; ware ye, some good ideas in here but mostly one for the collectors only.
I grabbed this as a pdf with great excitement back when they started republishing these things on DriveThruRPG - skimmed it at the time but only recently got to going through it in detail trying to extract playable content from it. This is not a positive review, if you want to save your time and read up on something you might spend your money on, hit the review tab at right and pick anything else.
First impression is that this is not the best supplement I have ever read with an odd fixation on nit-picky bureacracy like port taxes and a paucity of information on what you might find assuming you pay the man and just get on with things. I see a weird reflection of an adverserial gaming group reflected back - with a whole system flattened out into just a couple of images and 'gotcha' traps.
The pdf rendering is ok - obviously a scan but apart from typos in the bookmarks and incomplete bookmarking there is nothing unusable. There is a bunch of repetition between sections - a thing mentioned in a planetary description is described again in the adventure hooks section - which somewhat irritating because tracking down exactly where you read a thing is trickier than it ought to be. It is hilarious to see the old prices on it - a supplement for $10.95! 3x inflation in 30 years.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
I grabbed this as a pdf with great excitement back when they started republishing these things on DriveThruRPG - skimmed it at the time but only recently got to going through it in detail trying to extract playable content from it. This is not a positive review, if you want to save your time and read up on something you might spend your money on, hit the review tab at right and pick anything else.
Realmspace cover art by Thomas Baxa
First impression is that this is not the best supplement I have ever read with an odd fixation on nit-picky bureacracy like port taxes and a paucity of information on what you might find assuming you pay the man and just get on with things. I see a weird reflection of an adverserial gaming group reflected back - with a whole system flattened out into just a couple of images and 'gotcha' traps.
The pdf rendering is ok - obviously a scan but apart from typos in the bookmarks and incomplete bookmarking there is nothing unusable. There is a bunch of repetition between sections - a thing mentioned in a planetary description is described again in the adventure hooks section - which somewhat irritating because tracking down exactly where you read a thing is trickier than it ought to be. It is hilarious to see the old prices on it - a supplement for $10.95! 3x inflation in 30 years.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
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