Somebody recently asked on Google+ what to read about Spelljammer before running a campaign.
I run a Planescape/Spelljammer/Traveller/D&D sandbox. I started with a Traveller subsector map and called it the local Astral Sea, the systems are either gates to small demi-planes or little astroids and tiny planets. In a way, the only effect reading the Spelljammer books had on my campaign was that you can use certain ships to access the planes on my Traveller map instead of relying on gates and other pathways, as Planescape had done. All of this is just an excuse to provide fantastic adventures away from the D&D setting your started your campaign with. Bored of Middle Earth 2.0? Board a ship and extend your setting.
My recommendation is this:
1. Don’t read too much of the books. Look at the *pretty pictures* and populate some ships. Use these for random encounters to and from adventure locales. My game started with the players killing the mind flayers on a Nautiloid ship and exploring the Astral Sea using it. Then they had to fight Void Pirates and Grey Elves and Neogi Slavers and it all developed from there.
2. Make sure you have adventures to run on strange worlds. That’s the *point* of it all.
3. Familiarize yourself with *ship combat* rules. You will want to use them if your game has a lot of ships. They are remarkably similar to ordinary ship combat rules: hull points, siege weapons doing damage to people on deck or the ship itself, but with the addition of critical hits.
4. Familiarize yourself with how exactly gravity works. How do ships land and dock? Why are there no people on the underside of ships, that kind of thing. Your players will ask.
5. Familiarize yourself with how exactly food, water, and *air* works. Do you want to use the Spelljammer default or can you breathe in space? Does air turn stale? Is there a limit of how many people you can cram onto a ship due to the air? The default rules are not bad.
6. If you need a player base in space and you have nothing, use the Rock of Bral.
7. If you don’t have a map of space, create one. You don’t really need one, but the players love it. I have a Traveller Subsector Mapper. Just click on that *Random* button. 👍
Visual inspiration: Silverblade’s Suitcase. The “official” site: Beyond the Moons. Buy PDFs of the old books on D&D Classics.
#RPG
