2 days ago
Spelljammer Campaign Setting Review
Forgotten Realms was originally intended to provide a place
for 2e adventures, however with the heavy editing and playtesting which took
place during the writing process, nobody really knew what the final ruleset was
going to be, and they didn’t want to have Forgotten Realms on the back burner
for two years, so in 1987 they began the process of releasing it.
Besides the Realms, people who didn’t want to invent their
own worlds could play in Greyhawk, or Dragonlance, but the first true setting
of the 2e era was a strange one. SPELLJAMMER! The Manual of the Planes had
talked about linking worlds together, but this product was the result of a long
and productive brainstorming session which took place at a restaurant with the
intention of linking the worlds through space travel. What it became was much
bigger than that! Space travel kind of took a back seat as the ideas produced a
true setting that was unique to itself.
At the time, SPELLJAMMER was a huge flop with consumers. I
remember walking into a Kaybee Toy Store in the mid-90’s and seeing a shopping
cart full of Spelljammer box sets going for $5, I’d like to say that I’d picked
it up, but I can’t. Spelljammer was way ahead of its time, few players bought
into it, but today it is a huge cult hit that is actually still supported by an
Official Website at spelljammer.org
Spelljammer is not Science Fiction in any way, the laws of
physics and magic all hold true to high fantasy architypes; space ships are not
designed to function realistically, they are powered by magic and the less one
thinks about it, the healthier their mind will be.
Since the system contained lots of rules that were unique to
it, and because Jeff Grubb was able to get enough solid information out of Dave
Cook to sync it up with 2nd Edition rules, Spelljammer was able to
get a release date in 1989 with product 1049: Adventures In Space
Campaign Setting Boxset.
Buyers got two rulebooks, full color cards depicting a huge
collection of fully mapped ships, a giant map of the Spelljammer craft itself,
as well as a good collection of new monsters unique to the setting. It was one
of those products that offered a bang for one’s buck, and with a cover price of
only $15, you’d figure that Spelljammer would had sold like hotcakes! It of
course didn’t. I think that the low price scared many people off, not to
mention that many believed that it was a Science Fiction genre thing, but for
this box specifically, you had people trying to learn the new 2e ruleset, and
they just didn’t want to be distracted at this point by some weird space game.
My biggest problem with it was that it wasn’t labeled well. There
were a total of 4 boxsets published, with no real labeling as to which one was
the original, which would be this one, Adventures In Space. To me, that
always sounded like it was a supplement, so I had no idea what to get. I’m the
kind of DM who prefers to write my own supplemental material and adventures;
when I buy into a setting, I want enough there to actually play with, without
having to head right back to the store to get more information. Did SPELLJAMMER
satisfy this requirement by giving us complete information? From looking over
the material available on PDF format, I think that they did.
Buying into Spelljammer is expensive. Retailers shipped tons
of unsold copies back to TSR and they were eventually destroyed, making them
rare in today’s market and highly desired by collectors. Finding a complete
copy of the setting on the used market is difficult, so prices are going to run
higher. I rarely promote PDF play, but a DM’s got to do what a DM’s got to do,
and in this case, it is cheaper to print off your own copy.
This is a neat and unique setting to have adventures in, it
was one of those products that pushed the game forward (a bit too far forward
at the time), but now that people are more willing to try new things,
Spelljammer has finally found its market. At the time I would have graded this
product as an F, I had no interest in it; this grade has improved, I now give
the product a B+ I’m not sure how sturdy this one box is on its own, but as it
pushed the game so hard, and it is so original with tons of adventure ideas and
hooks at the DM’s disposal, I publicly take back all of the mean and
unwarranted criticism that I had bestowed upon it in my early gaming days. Now
I wish that I would have bought it, and I have a feeling that I’m not alone
with this assessment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My Blog List
-
My Shoe is Safe - Yesterday's quiz was a toughie. In it, to recap, commenters were encouraged to guess at what the following pieces of art, generated by Substack's own AI ...
-
Fifth-Edition D&D’s Original Lead Designer Calls Out the Game’s “Secret Error” That Remains Today - In fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, characters and monsters calculate the difficulty class (DC) number needed to save against their spells and powers usin...4 days ago
-
-
La nuova vita di Dungeons&Dragons versione Mentzer! - Ben ritrovati, di recente mi è capitato di leggere su Facebook un commento che mi ha lasciato attonito. In corrispondenza a un post che pubblicizzava un...
1 week ago -
Who Made Blackmoor? A History of Setting Development - In a sense Blackmoor "grew like Topsy", that is to say wild and on its own. Perhaps the first iteration of anything we might call Blackmoor is the well-d...2 weeks ago
-
Banquet For Fools With Game Developers Hannah And Joseph Williams – Episode 281 – 11/26/2024 - Shane Plays Geek Talk Episode #281 – 11/26/2024 Game developers Hannah and Joseph Williams join to chat about their new “Dark Crystal”-like CRPG Banquet ...3 weeks ago
-
All the holidays, all the prices ... (and some news!) - *The short of it is: all my games are on the cheap from now on until January. It is the season, after all. And while I'm here, I might as well talk a bit...
4 weeks ago -
Grimdark vs. Eucatastrophe - Noisms has some interesting ideas in this post about his desire for some depth to his grimdark, and turns to Gene Wolfe and Tolkien for relief. Now, it ...
6 months ago -
Attronarch's Athenaeum - Over at the forum El Borak mentioned Attronarch in his thread Hirelings, loyalty, and morale which you should take a look at. Attronarch has a website Att...9 months ago
-
Last move - to self-hosting! - As my vote regarding Substack in the “marketplace of ideas”, I’m moving to self-hosting. I’m now at (and hopefully staying for a long time at) Blog: ht...11 months ago
-
It's been a decade, now... - This is a tough time of year for me. So, with your indulgence, here's this link to a post I did a decade ago... EDIT: I have no idea why it didn't take. S...2 years ago
-
This Blog is now on Indefinite Hiatus - Greetings, I haven’t been able to post except sporadically for a while. I just found out I will need to find a new place to live within the next few months...3 years ago
-
RIP Christopher Tolkien - LONDON (AP) – Christopher Tolkien, who played a major role protecting the legacy of his father’s The Lord of the Rings series, has died. He was 95. The Tol...4 years ago
-
Sacrifice in the Perilous Realms - Characters sacrifice consumable goods to gods and demons. Characters specify a particular recipient of sacrifice. Characters must find a suitable altar ...4 years ago
-
The Sprawl Session Recaps - For those interested in Actual Play for my campaign of The Sprawl, a Powered by the Apocalypse cyberpunk RPG by Hamish Cameron, I've made a landing page fo...5 years ago
-
Lake Geneva Original RPG Campaign: New EN World Column: #1 - Lake Geneva Original RPG Campaign: New EN World Column: #1: I am now an author for EN World with a monthly column. Six lead columns have been submitted to...5 years ago
-
Blackmoor Week 2019 (9/24/19) - Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day running from September 24th through October 1st. This year 2019 is the 45th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and ...5 years ago
-
Dave Arneson Blackmoor Week and Game Day 2019 - Blackmoor Week begins today Sept 24, 2019. What are you doing this week to celebrate Dave Arneson's Birthday and his foundational game setting Blackmoor ak...
5 years ago -
Blackmoor Week Day I 2019 - *Blackmoor Week* kicks off today and concludes on October 1st with *Dave Arneson Game Day*. [image: Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor - B-Ware - Sphärenmeisters Spi...5 years ago
-
Basic Land Cannons: Classic and OSR - Basic Land Cannons Threw together some basic cannon rules for a bit of fun carnage. First up: I'm keeping it simple. Cannons are complicated; there are many...
5 years ago -
Character Concepts: Planescape pt 3 - Part 1 Part 2 Continuing my series on oddball Planescape Faction Personalities... Harmonium Sidby the Stick (LG/halfling/fighter) - Sidby's a good enough b...5 years ago
-
Ravensburg Reboot: Streamlined City Map - I mentioned in my last post how I was tweaking and reworking parts of my Ravensburg setting. Today I streamlined the city map. The old map had lots of redu...
5 years ago -
And Now the News Draft Download on Patreon - It's self-styled Throwback Thursday and *having just released the 34-page draft booklet of Hill Cantons news to my Patreon backers* I am going to indulge m...5 years ago
-
Save Versus All Wands Contest: What is the Value of the Coin Hoard? - Treasure Type H Announcing the third annual (well, not quite) Save Versus All Wands contest! You can read about and see the results of the first two - *...
6 years ago -
NIGHTMARES AND SUBURBS: CHARACTER SOCIAL CLASS TABLE - * CHARACTER SOCIAL CLASS * *BACKGROUND TABLE* *I am a big fan of the “Social Origin Roll” for all my player characters in all my g...6 years ago
-
RPGs, Avatar vs Chess Piece Playing - I've gone from DMing AD&D 1E games for friends to my kids to paying clients as a team building tool. I've seen the approaches of playing a character as an...7 years ago
Links to Suggested Stuff
6 comments:
I love me some Spelljammer! Of course it's hard to get any hard copies of those books, but the only true revision of AD&D 2E (Hackmaster 4E, naturally) managed to squeeze a supplement out there condensing 5 major Spelljammer supplements into one sweet volume: HackJammer. 128 pages of awesome and maybe (just maybe) easier to get than those other books. Worth hunting down, in my opinion ...
That is interesting Jens D. I had never really thought about Hackmaster as anything serious. I found a copy of that for $50, which is still more than I like to spend, but if you get 5 condensed supplements, and you are serious enough to really play it, that is a value!
HackMaster is a serious (and complete) revision of AD&D 2E, the presentation they chose is coming from a funny premise and many people didn't get it. As with every rpg, you can play the game as you like despite the tone it sports :) Wrote a love letter once about it, so if you are interested in reading a long and winded text about a game that deserves way more than that, you could look here:
http://the-disoriented-ranger.blogspot.de/2015/12/hackmaster-love-letter-for-4e-my-only.html
I tweaked AD&D 1 for combat realism. Spell-jammer came out in 1987. Grend Duchy of Karameikos setting came out in 1987. 1987 was a significant year in my life. A Separate post about that later. I fell in love with the Moldway dungeon design chapter in his red book, and since then I only run my own adventures. It's more fun to start from scratch. Literally. Spell Jammer has a special significance for me because Minsc's Boo is really a giant space hamster (Baldur's Gate CRPG).
Jens D.: I remember this article! It was a really good one, that I found surprising. I got tunnel vision with games. I have a few 3rd party products that are useless to me, but others are gold! I love the old generic Tunnels and Trolls stuff, but I've never personally bought anything for Hackmaster. If I find something for the right price, I'll pick it up!
Brooser Bear: I have never desired to really start from scratch. I suppose that I like to be motivated. My worlds are my own, I avoid mass plots unless they serve a purpose. When I fill in a city, it gets pretty detailed! I guess I prefer working on a small scale, rather then the large. There are things that I want to focus on, and things that I don't. Published settings have a good knack at filling in the stuff that I don't want to do for me.
Rip, I prefer small scale myself. Gygax never went in the direction of the players becoming immortals or kings, etc. High level AD&D gaming goes in a very different direction. The most overlooked piece of Gygax writing is his Appendix A, Random Dungeon Generator. It's not so much a random labyrinth algorithm, as it is a collection of his randomized descriptions, traps, special events, how the treasure is guarded and hidden. I am compiling all of the 1st edition writing on adventure design into one integrated whole, and I reviewed Gygax's appendices, and it suddenly occurred to me, that if you use Gygax's tables you will (i) DM adventurtes in the same style as Gygax and (ii) It will duplicate the setting described in the sword and sorcery stories much vaunted in the Appendix N. That was a touch of Gygax genius! Subsequent post-Moldway editions of Basic Expert Companion etc breaks down any kind of quality writing. Post Moldway edition cuts down verbiage and breaks down Moldway's language to dry instructions devoid of any kind of spark, and also breaks the spell by suggesting that the DM use explosive booby traps, anti-gravity fields etc for Dungeon Draps, amoing the most mundane pits and spring fired darts and arrows. Anti-Gravity fields, really? How about Uranium Hexafluoride gas in a flask in a Wizard's laboratory, one whiff and painful death in out world. No saving throw, for that matter how about V-Nerve gas condensate coated door handle. Also one of those painful death guaranteed things no saving throw allowed and by the time players figure out something is wrong, it will be too late to save the dum PC, since death will occur before the Cleric can cast any kind of a spell. I get it, it works great, but is it any kind of a medieval fantasy. Those books were written by dilettante hacks. Anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of that.
Jens D: I got all the D&D books I want a long, long time ago. I can still buy some old AD&D Modules on e-bay, the way some people collect comic books, but hadn't started. I still buy books that have writing about DMing and about how to write adventures, but these are no longer gaming books. Compleat Strategist in Manhattan, New York, used to carry a selection of books related to gaming that were not hobby publications, but they stopped carrying those. I picked up a book called Hamlet's Hit Points, a few years ago. It was not a great book, but an interesting read. I bought some books on cuty, wilderness and dungeon design that were put out by d20 Layers and Legends and by Wizards of the Coast in the 3rd Edition Era, also a couple of books on the history of the role-playing game hobby, most were product promotional garbage written by industry insiders in the vein of Gygax books wrote in the heyday, the only one worth getting is Jon Peterson's Playing at the World, which is written like a serious history work written by a professional academic, a breath of fresh air.
Post a Comment