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.

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?

Review: Skycrawl

tl:dr; a great toolkit for adventures in strange skies; intended as its own whimsical variety but useful for all sorts of fantasy flight campaigns.

I picked this up while looking for good flying ship combat systems. Initially hesitant because I saw it lumped in with Powered By The Apocalypse games and thought it was only for those, I finally grabbed it after seeing lots of recommendations for the world-generation tools. I'm glad I did because it is much more useful than just as a PbtA supplement. I was a fan of Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies and found a more light-hearted version of flying ships between strange ports here.

Skycrawl with cover art by Laurence Gapaillard

First impression was this was a smaller text than I expected but having gone through it, it is a well distilled, taut book which is spare but not sparse in descriptions and mechanics. Designed for any fantasy RPG - I have brought it to bear for Spelljammer. The system within the book is set up around players make moves and on failures or other conditions DM's make moves to complicate their lives. It formalises things somewhat more than I am used to but you can also look at all of the moves as potential actions within a free-form frame and adapt it to any system that way.

Done by Aaron A. Reed in 2020 I believe the copy I got was print-on-demand from a sale, quality is good, art is mostly open source by Laurence Gapaillard which fits the proto-steampunk tone well.

Capsule Reviews #5: TTRPG Tsundoku

Inspired by Jeff Grubbs Game Tsundoku blogpost I want to take a glance over my TTRPG book Tsundoku - the books that have piled up.

Actively intended for review (notes in partially complete state)

Actual Test: 5e Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 6)

Tl;dr: if you want actual guidance on running fantasy flying ship combat, you need to look elsewhere.

Our previous effort tested 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 and the gridless, Theater of the Mind house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast.

Between running Spelljammer Academy at my local Adventurers League and an online 2-shot mini-campaign - the Interstellar Whaling mentioned on previous posts - I have gotten an unexpected amount of opportunities to test out the new 5e Spelljammer rules - and so how do they stack up? Certainly the sessions themselves were fun but this was no thanks to what came in the 5e Spelljammer: Adventures in Space books. As predicted, I got jack all in terms of mechanics or guidelines on how to run a decent flying ship combat session so while it worked pretty well at the table, it was only because I finessed across a lot of gaps.

Actual Test: Tales from the Glass Guarded World (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 5)

tl;dr: a chunky theater of the mind system that gives a party lots of options to fight spelljamming duels.

Our previous effort tested 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.

This set is the house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast. You can hear them play it out themselves on episode 101 and 141/142. Given that this was created while 5e Spelljammer was still a rumour and actually table-tested and refined, this is a window onto an alternate trouser-leg of possibility, happily one we can pick up and use ourselves.

Cover by Mike Hammock and Ignacio Corva

An interesting system with the focus firmly on giving players tools to use; there are a number of officer positions (Captain, Helmsman, Bosun, Gunner) and the default role of Deckhand which all offer lists of ship actions that can be taken during a round. There is no grid, just range bands of 'extreme', 'long' and 'close. Most weapons only work in long or close. This has a lot of the base elements of 2e ported forward and updated for 5e. Things like Ship Rating, the speed of a ship, being dependent on the type of helm and the level of the wizard remain. There is a lot of cunning redesign work here for the things that were retained to make them relevant to 5e.

Capsule Reviews #4: Flying Ship Combat Rules

Since the new Spelljammer dropped there has been an explosion of new rulesets or new spotlight cast on existing ones. Below are the ones I have found worthy of the name:

1. Tales from the Glass Guarded World, a spelljamming podcast has had their own narrative flying ship combat rules available for a while. Runs with distance bands and a focus on actions available to PC's playing officers - bosun, helmsman, weapon crew, etc. 20 pages.

2. Old Dungeon Master updated a set of OD&D skyship combat rules to 5e - the provenance can be seen in they are called Skyships not Spelljammers. This is their set of house rules which I find reassuring - other peoples table-tested stuff is always good. There is old-school crunch in here, with base stats and condition multipliers. Interesting in that it is gridless but still crunchy with pursuit and evasion rules and things like crew archery as well as PC officer actions. 22 pages.

3. Seafaring in Fifth Edition by u/RocksInMyDryer are ship rules that include up and down within them, not specifically flying ship rules but they can work. Draws on lots of 3.5e resources for structures then updates them to get a comprehensive 5e ruleset. Aimed at seafaring but the combat system could be used for flying ships. Based off which of the ships is "favoured" by conditions in a given round. 30 pages, includes ships, encounters & monsters.

4. Wildjammer (v0.97.2) adapts a bunch of ideas from DarkMatter. Comprehensive ~100 page supplement with species, subclasses, spells, locations, factions etc. Introduces 'mega scale' for handling ship scale ~ 100:1 to normal. Comprehensive, somewhat dense, everything is in here but it requires some careful reading.

5. Spelljammer Combat Expanded (v1.4) is a straight up reaction to the new 5e Spelljammer and patches in missing things. 20 pages with actions for officer positions, takes a 'skill check' driven approach, has solid guidance on how to set up for grids which is good.

6. Snoop's Superb Spelljammer Supplement v7 on GM Binder is one of the more complex set-ups with movement points, some good old-school crunch like minor and major helms but also a handy flowchart at the back to help guide you through the detail.

7. I am also going to check out the old 3e Ship Construction and Combat Rules on Spelljammer.org as one of the projects that progressed during the long twilight between official Spelljammers. Has all the expected 3e crunch including how to handle ships larger than a single hex which is good practical guidance to have.

I hope to get these properly table-tested in the coming months. Others that we tested previously:

8. Shadow of the Spider Moon (3.5e, published in Polygon #151 / Dungeon #92) - our playtest

9. Aces High published in Arcadia issue #3 - our playtest

10. AD&D Spelljammer (AD&D, available as print on demand from DriveThruRPG) - our playtest

11. Calidar skyship combat rules (OD&D, by Bruce Heard who did the original D&D skyship in Voyages of the Princess Ark) - our playtest

Finally this thread on Reddit is a round up of systems - Collection of 5e ship vs. ship combat rules for spelljammers - with a lot of overlap with here but also a few seeds of cool ideas like spell-slots-for-movement-boosts.

Consensus appears to be that PC's should have ship-combat specific actions, there should be some ranged combat system but otherwise there are a lot of variations on the theme here to try out.

Overloaded Wildspace Voyage Dice & Gravity Slingshots

tl;dr: since space is enormous, keep journeys interesting with overloaded travel encounter dice and a speed-boost from using planetary gravity wells.

One of the things with travel in space is that space is very large which can make travel somewhat dull. I could see the upcoming Spelljammer reboot hand-wave wildspace travel with a serious speed boost for Spelljammers. Currently at 100 million miles/day, I could see a factor of 5 or 10 increase to make interplanetary travel quicker. For comparison - the squares on the right hand inner system are 200 million miles across, those on the left hand outer system are 400 million miles across.

(Digitally) Modified Planetary Display Map from my Spelljammer box

What that means practically - if we take Smoulder-space that I rolled up recently - starting off at Planet 3, the outermost of the inner planets, and heading out to the crystal sphere takes 130 days of travel, never mind wherever you are going after that. Assuming a quick 30 day jaunt to the next system, a similar flight in-system, doing a thing for a fortnight and returning, we rapidly arrive at a two year journey. That is significant travel time and with the removal of crystal spheres and the fade of deep wildspace into the Astral sea, I can see those journey times getting cut down.
While that would be a potential fix, I feel it a bit too hard of a wrench so I would suggest the following alternative: - overload your wildspace encounter dice - give planets a gravity-slingshot speed boost effect

Actual Test: Calidar (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 4)

tl;dr: fantasy flying ship combat where the wind direction matters - surprisingly easy to pick up, lots of fun and some great old school damage tables detail that makes ship combat more than just slugging away at hull points.

After testing 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 we come to the thing that kicked all this off - Calidar.

Actual Play: Aces High Aerial Combat at the table

I have reviewed Aces High in 'set piece test' format before for flying-ship-on-flying-ship combat but I had the great good fortune to be able to test them as they were intended in our last session.

Some background - our party of dragonbloods (reskinned dragonkings from Atlas Games 7 Civilisations) has pulled a dragon saddle off the wall behind the old throne of their legendary great-great-great grandsire after a hard nudge from a wizarding uncle to sort their own stuff out and stop bugging him about site-to-site transport. Lacking the dragon that their grandsire had, they secured something broadly-like a whaling longboat and got the palace carpenter to put a roof over the front half to make it aerodynamic. The magical saddle was strapped across the top and after a few flight tests where speeds were determined, the party, their aunt, all her luggage and their grandfather the Duke boarded to set off for the frontiers of the kingdom to try and find a misplaced treaty stone that had kept the peace between giants and dragons for the past few generations.

En route, they encountered a territorial dragon - not a very large one, merely a juvenile red - and it gave a good 'real play' test of the rules - putting a relatively standard foe up against whatever contraption a party manages to get their hands on.

Actual Test: AD&D Spelljammer (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 3)

After testing 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 early in 2021 we come to the grand-daddy of them all, the original AD&D Spelljammer.

I put a lot of hours into fighting Spelljammers across the hexed skies back when I first got the set but it has been easily a quarter century ago so this was a vital refresher to confirm that my memories were broadly correct.

Actual Test: Aces High (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 2)

Continuing testing of fantasy space combat systems following our first go with Shadow of the Spider Moon, we come to our second test: Aces High, the 5e aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM earlier this year.

This is designed for flying mounts and big monsters so it needed a little bricolage to make work for flying ship combat - but not much. The main 'work' was extending the flight modifiers table to account for colossal things - such as a 120 hull point drow Deathspider.

We took the same stat sheets from Spider Moon for the ships - 3.5e being close enough to 5e - but here the victory conditions were adjusted. Aces High assumes a tight hairball of a combat with no lateral movement, just altitude, so there was no 'off the board' escape route, just climbing up and out.

Owing to a screw-up in my reading of the rules we did two tests but I think both are interesting and hinge on one missed set of 3 words.

Actual Test: Shadow of the Spider Moon (Fantasy Space Combat Rules Part 1)

After my Calidar books arrived in the mail, I thought the time was ripe for testing the D&D space combat systems against one another to see which was most fun.

Current contenders for testing are: - Shadow of the Spider Moon (3.5e) - Aces High (5e, from Arcadia #3 by MCDM) - Spelljammer (AD&D) - Calidar (OD&D update) - Crawljammer (DCC - not pictured)