Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 140 - Spelljammer

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Spelljammer is Dungeons and Dragons' attempt to bring a touch of sci fi to their traditional fantasy RPG.  It's like 50s Pulp Sci Fi novels were inserted into the world of swords and sorcery, gnomes and nagas.  Frankly it's very very strange but in this episode I encourage you to embrace the strange and don't dismiss it simply because it's different than your usual game. #DungeonsandDragons #DnD #Spelljammer #DMTips   Resources https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wey7sgBplp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ5y_9TdIJQ https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/spelljammer  

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Spelljammer is a way to bring just a little bit of science fiction into your fantasy world. But, if you open up Spelljammer, don't expect a lot of technological accuracy in the Spelljammer universe. Ladies and gentlemen, beloved DMs and players, welcome to episode 140 of the Taking20 Podcast. This week, all about the Spelljammer campaign setting and a little bit of the multiverse. This week's sponsor, astronauts. I asked my astronaut friend to go on a hike with me around the holidays, but he said he had foot problems.

Evidently, he'd come down with a bad case of missile toe. If you have an idea for a topic that you'd like to see covered, please feel free to leave it as a comment in the YouTube video, send me a message on YouTube, IG, or Facebook, or send me an email at feedback at taking20podcast.com. Even if you think it would only require a quick answer, send it anyway. I have viewer mailbag episodes every now and then, and I'll add it to the list of questions to answer then. Now before I get started, I have a confession to make. I had planned on talking about Spelljammer's history and lore and leaving it at that, but

as luck would have it, I got together with some DM friends and one person already had a copy of the 5e Spelljammer book, so perhaps foolishly, I've attempted to bring some of the official 5e lore into this episode as well. Now, I haven't had a lot of time with the material, like 5-10 minutes. I've poured whatever I remember into this episode. I expect I'll have to revisit this episode somewhere down the line once Spelljammer's been out for a long time and has become baked into the current edition of D&D. But the reason I wanted to talk about Spelljammer from the beginning was to admit how wrong I was about it when it first came out.

In the early 90s, I glanced at the rules and just said, it when it first came out. In the early 90s, I glanced at the rules and just said, this looks stupid. It's fucking weird. It doesn't even look very fun. I wasn't wrong the fact that it was weird, but boy, was I wrong about it not being fun. I judged Spelljammer based on the cover and the basic information about the campaign setting without even playing it. based on the cover and the basic information about the campaign setting without even playing it. I didn't like the thought of SHIPS IN SPACE. And if you get that reference, it's time to take your daily aspirin. A galleon fighting a giant squid in the ocean? I'm all about it. Sounds fun. But a space galleon fighting a space squid in space? That's stupid, right? It's gotta be. Two years later, a buddy of mine in college wanted to run a Spelljammer game,

and I sat down and expected this to be the dumbest thing ever. It wasn't. It was fun as hell. We spoke to a living asteroid who pointed us to the right world where we could go to resurrect a long-dead species in our world, bringing the centaurs back from near extinction. HL was a great DM, and he taught me not to judge adventures and campaign settings by their cover. That's why I started to make this episode a few weeks ago, and I hope it doesn't turn into a train wreck with this last-minute edition of 5e material. Speaking of the current edition,

I also want to talk briefly about the first 1D&D playtest package that was released on August 19th. 1D&D is fully releasing, I think, in 2024, and this is the first of what will be many releases of playtest material for the new version. I believe the only thing they released so far is character creation rules. Wizards of the Coast is moving away from versions of D&D, more towards an editionless version of D&D. That's their dream. So shit, last week when I talked about 5.5e and 6e maybe changing some stuff, yeah, I think that's probably the fastest any of my content has ever been completely abrogated. When 5e was originally

playtested, they listened to fans and incorporated a number of changes that were suggested by us, and I'm expecting them to do the same here. They've released the Character Origins playtest material, and it's a little bit different from 5e. In looking at the material that's been released, I've noticed that feats seem to be more critical, almost necessary in the playtest. 5e has some optional rules where you can throw feats out the window, but it really feels like it's going to be baked into one D&D. I also noticed that the spells are being broken down by type, like an arcane, a divine, and a primal spellcaster. So they're not just listing spells by class and level and then a giant alphabetical list that they are in the current player's handbook. Another thing I noticed is it looks like character

backgrounds do a lot more than just setting your initial starting gold. For example, they give you bonuses to a certain ability score depending on what background you select. Another thing that they're doing is that they're committed to keeping your 5e books compatible with the new system. So if you're like me and you've invested a lot of money in your current 5e material, that money is not wasted. You can still use that in the coming edition of 1D&D. Another thing that they're doing, and something that I had hoped for in a previous episode that I had recorded, they are more tightly integrating with D&D Beyond. And they're even working on providing bundles where you buy both the physical copy and you get the digital content as well on D&D Beyond. Finally,

I wanted to mention that they're working on their own dedicated virtual tabletop that's currently in development called D&D Digital. It looks pretty slick in the videos that they've released. I'm withholding my judgment until I see it actually run an adventure or campaign. Now, for those of you that play Pathfinder, some of this stuff may sound very familiar from what you've experienced in Pathfinder 2e. All I would ask is that you don't throw stones at 1D&D just because some of their ideas sound similar to what we have in Pathfinder 2E. Hell, Pathfinder 1E was a direct ripoff of 3.5, updated and with a few rules changed here and there. So don't get into a version war. Give it an honest try. Whenever it does come out, take a look at it. Take a look

at the playtest material as it gets released. You know what? You might have fun with that version as well as the current version that you're running now. I have to admit, I'm excited to see what 1D&D becomes, and I can't wait to find someone who's even more versed in 5e than I am. And whenever more of the 1D&D rules come out, I would love to sit down and play at their table. Can't wait to see what comes next. Now on to the episode. I love snacks. I've done some unhealthy snacking things in my life. I once made a sandwich by putting sliced pepperoni on two pieces of bread, melted mozzarella cheese on one of them, and made a greasy sandwich out of it. Not the healthiest of meals, and I've gotten better in my eating habits as I've gotten older. A long time ago in the U.S., there was a commercial for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, where one person was walking down the street eating a chocolate bar,

while another person's walking toward them eating directly out of a jar of peanut butter. As I mentioned, I love snacks and I've done some unhealthy things, but I don't think I've ever walked down the road eating peanut butter out of a container with a freaking spoon. Anyway, each person's so wrapped up in their food that they run into each other and the chocolate bar drops into the peanut butter and one says, hey, you got your chocolate bar, my peanut butter. And the other one says, hey, you got your peanut butter all over my chocolate. And then they look at each other and smile and they think it's better together. So you maybe wonder where the hell this is going,

Jeremy, besides simping for sponsorship from Reese's. There are RPG people who love fantasy with magic and elves and dragons and wizards and spells and the like. There are also RPG people who love science fiction with lasers and spaceships and aliens and stars. Spelljammer is the chocolate and peanut butter of fantasy and sci-fi.

To grossly oversimplify, Spelljammer is a way to bring just a little bit of science fiction into your fantasy world. But you need to remember that one of the major influences of the original rules of Spelljammer was campy sci-fi like Flash Gordon. So to set expectations, if you open up Spelljammer, don't expect a lot of technological accuracy in the Spelljammer universe. Spelljammer first came out in 1989 with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition and was designed by the great RPG veteran Jeff Grubb, who also worked on, oh I don't know, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms campaign settings,

helped write the original Unearthed Arcana book, heck, he worked with Gary Gygax himself on Monster Manual 2 book. He's written numerous RPG books besides those. He had this idea for a universe of magical starships traversing the crystal spheres to link various worlds together, and it would allow groundlings to travel from world to world. So imagine Forgotten Realms being on one planet and Kryn being on another, Earth being another, and any homebrewed world that you have being a different planet. You could take your Knight of Salamnia and bring it to Dark Sun, for example.

When they released Spelljammer, it was released with a rulebook along with novels and a comic book series, and it was really one of the first RPG releases that capitalized on multiple types of media. The book explained how the astral plane worked, what you could find there, who you could meet in the vast astral plane, and if I'm being honest, it's chock full of weird shit. I say that with all the love in the world, and I have a huge amount of respect for Mr. Grubb and the others who designed the mechanics and races of Spelljammer, but holy shit, it gets weird. In the interest of full disclosure, I mean, I haven't had time to fully review all the new Spelljammer books yet. I got together with some DM buddies earlier this week, and one of them had purchased it already. There's 200 pages of content here, and we passed the books around, and I had a chance to peruse some of the

parts that I was most interested in. A lot of it has a lot of the same feel as the old version that came out years ago, but some of it's new. For the purposes of this episode, though, I'm going to keep using the term astral plane. It is a plane of existence that surrounds the planets where your campaigns take place. I have an entire episode planned on the astral plane, so I'm going to keep my dissertation to a minimum here. The astral plane has two major components in Dungeons & Dragons, the astral sea and wild space. Okay, now get ready for some multiverse shenanigans here. Wild space is the part of the astral sea that is close to the material plane.

So when you're on your game world and you stare up at the night sky, you're looking at wild space. Even though it looks like a mostly black night sky when you're on Kryn or Athos or Earth or wherever your campaign home planet is, once you leave your planet with a magical ship and enter wild space, it is a rainbow of colors. Chris Perkins described it as kaleidoscopic and teeming with life, like an ocean, but you know, in space. Wild space is full of fish and jellyfish and planets of varied chemical compositions and makeup, a vast array of fish and jellyfish and planets of varied chemical compositions and makeup. A vast array of colors and strange occupants and beautiful sights to behold. Once you're in wild space, you can cross it in the same system that you're in, like go from planet to planet.

Like in that same system, much like you're going from Earth to Mars, for example. In my head, I think of wild space like within our solar system. It's not exactly analogous, but maybe that'll help you visualize what it's like. You can travel for eons in wild space and never leave it. But once you sail farther, everything gets silvery and distant stars start to shine through what looks like a veil. Crossing that veil means that you're entering the astral sea, a deeper part of the astral plane that connects different systems of worlds together. And if you thought the concept of wild space was weird, you're about to have your mind blown.

The astral sea is a silvery-purple array of clouds, even stranger creatures and beings that warp your mind. It has everything from strange monoliths that can be anything from lost planet sized modrons, to obelisks that can uplift entire species, to a planet-sized dragon and even the occasional dead god's corpse tumbling by. The designers described it as a realm of thought and concept, so it really can contain anything you can imagine. While you're in the astral sea, you don't need to eat or breathe, and one sourcebook that I glanced at mentioned that people don't even age in the astral sea, you don't need to eat or breathe. And in one source book that I glanced at mentioned that people don't even age in the astral sea. Jeff Grubb and 5e Spelljammer designer Chris Perkins both said something similar about Spelljammer when it was released.

In our world, space is empty and boring. There's vast swaths of emptiness and nothing. of emptiness and nothing. They didn't want D&D's quote-unquote outer space or astral plane to be the black or the void with matter occupying less than a billion billionth percent of the space available. It's not much of an adventure if the PCs get to the astral plane and you say, great, now nothing's going to happen for three months. So Spelljammer doesn't worry about physics and it has a little bit of magic in it with space fish and dead gods and, I don't know, nebula made of methyl alcohol. No, wait. We actually have one of those about 6,500 light years away from us right now. Now, before you hop on a ship and go to the nebula space bar where there's all sorts of methyl alcohol, you should know that methyl alcohol is not something you

want to drink. It's wood alcohol. You'll probably throw up, have a seizure, and go blind, and that's not something you want to do in space. I swear, I chase some weird rabbits and random topics in this podcast, but giving from Spelljammer to drinking wood alcohol may be a new record. I'd blame it on my brain surgery, but I've been doing this shit for years. Back to live action, though. So how do people get to the astral plane in Spelljammer? Well, with Spelljammers.

Okay, well, what are Spelljammers, Jeremy? I'm glad you asked. They're ships. And I know what you're thinking. Spaceships, right? Rockets on the back, enclosed cylinders, look vaguely like giant penises. You'd be wrong. Think less SpaceX and more weird.

What do you mean, like Pirates of the Caribbean ships? That is certainly a possibility, and that's a common ship design, but it could also be weirder than that. Giant blob of jelly, a huge disc, a mile-long creature that looks like a centipede. Yep, yep, and yep. Well, okay, hollowed-out asteroid, a giant scorpion-shaped ship, a ship that looks like a blade with a giant solar sail attached to it. Yep, yep, still yep. But Jeremy, I know how space works. Wouldn't people float off whatever ship they're on? Good question. Gold star for the day.

All ships in the Spelljammer universe have their own gravity that originates from a plane that bisects the object and its force is in the direction that is, quote, most convenient for the game, end quote. In other words, let's hand wave the complicated bullshit parts of space travel and let's just make it fun. But Jeremy, how did occupants breathe? You're asking a lot of freaking questions, aren't you? Okay, fine. In the bad old days, it was said that ships had air and could refill their air by dipping

into an atmosphere of a planet and capturing some of the air in its own gravity bubble. Every dip like that was usually enough to last about six months worth of travel. And the good news is that most trips took three months or less. Or, worst case scenario, had numerous places along the way where air could be collected. Interestingly, people had the same effect in the old Spelljammer rules. If you somehow fell off a ship, you'd pull a little air with you and keep you alive from 20 to 200 minutes. The old version even had something called air quality checks, where eventually air could become poisonous if it's not replenished often enough, and you could die from it. Now, with 5e, fuck it. You don't have to breathe. Again, they're hand-waving a lot of the not-fun parts of the adventure to get to the fun parts of astral travel. All of these ships, no matter

the shape that they are and who pilots it, are called spelljammers. Spelljammers used to be a single type of ship, but it gradually became the term for all ships. It's like the word taser. Taser is technically a brand name, but it's become synonymous for any device that does what a taser does. Spelljammers are powered using the intelligence of the creature at the helm. They don't have traditional engines that burn fuel, so you don't need dark matter pellets or chemical compositions or whatever. At least in 2E, the rules were that the higher the intelligence of the creature at the helm, the faster the ship can go. I haven't seen that similar rule in 5E, so check that for yourself before you rule it that way. Now, interestingly,

different races had different typical shapes and sizes of Spelljammers. Gnomes, for example, they used to travel in these things that look like giant seashells called whelks. Elves had the man of war that looked like a big ceramic bird of prey. Humans had a ship that was shaped like and called the Battle Dolphin. Spelljammer 5e has rules for building your own ships, and really the only limit is your imagination. These starships, rather than using technology to get through the astral plane, they use magic. If this sounds weird, yeah it should, but it wouldn't make sense in a world of magic, not technology, where spells are common, but the combustion engine is rare.

Why wouldn't outer space, quote unquote, be in a magical place that doesn't jive with our technological world? Speaking of unique stuff in 5e Spelljammer, by the way, there are six new races outlined in the new 5e book, and I'm going to list them in my order of excitement. First and foremost, the Thri-Creen. Oh, it's a blast from the past. Back in the D&D 3.0 days, this race was broken as shit, so I immediately turned to that page and did some reading. I don't think they're broken, but man, they are a strong, strong race option. They're a monstrous race, so depending on how your DM rules it, they may not be subject to spells like Charm Person and Sleep or similar spells that only work on humanoids. Your mileage may vary. Some DMs disagree with that statement

and make charm person work on all playable races. No judgment. Rule it the way you want, then however it makes sense to you. Thri-Kreen have higher than normal armor class. They have camouflage ability. They have a secondary set of arms that can wield a small weapon. Yep, big grasshoppers, four arms. They also have telepathy, and they don't have to share a language to telepathically communicate with people around them. They can be sized medium or small, they don't need to sleep, and they make great rogues and fighters, and I can't wait to play a Thri-Creen at some point in the near future.

Another race was the Plasmoids, ooze people. They can become completely amorphous. They can be either medium or small, and can squeeze through a gap as small as one inch high. Another race called the GIFs. Or GIFs. Or GIFs. Look, the acronym stands for graphic image format. The word graphic has a hard G, so it's GIF. Sorry, what? Oh, what? Oh, wrong gif? Oh, sorry. The Spelljammer race has two Fs.

Anyway, gifs... Just... You know, fuck it, gifs. They're hippo people. They have a mastery of firearms, and it looks like it'd be a fun grapple or sniper build. They're mercenaries, and... Oh, by the way, if you want to play someone who looks like Talaret from Moon Knight,

now's your chance. Tawaret with a sniper rifle, a rigid sense of duty, and chain of command? That sounds fun. Another race is the Autonomes. Small constructs, keep watch like Warforged, higher AC than normal. I kind of want to run an Autonome Rogue in the near future, but I'm hoping to have the opportunity to do so soon. Another race is the Hadazi. They're monkeys. They glide like flying squirrels. run an Autonome Rogue in the near future, but I'm hoping to have the opportunity to do so soon. Another race is the Hadazi. They're monkeys. They glide like flying squirrels. They can be small or medium. Their feet have thumbs. Feels broken on movement speed because I think you could jump and glide and go really, really far and around, but I would need to do a little more

playtesting with it. They really look like they'd be a good frontline barbarian build. playtesting with it. They really look like they'd be a good frontline barbarian build. Finally, the Astral Elves. A standard elf subrace. They've got Astral Trance instead of regular Trance, but they do gain proficiency in a single weapon or tool or skill every short rest. So, sounds interesting. I mean, you could adjust your skill and tool loadout to be better ready for whatever you're doing at the time. Now here's my criticism of the 5e Spelljammer books. There's only about a paragraph of lore for each race. It really makes it hard in roleplay heavy campaigns. I mean, give me something that tells me the difference in society and attitude, beliefs between, say, an astral elf and a high elf. To be fair, many of

these races, the Gifts, the Thric-Creen, the Hadazi, were in previous editions with much more information. The information in these older versions could easily be brought into your 5e campaign to give you more information about those races. Talk to your DM if you want to do so. But on the positive side, without the 5e official lore, that means we DMs can bring the old information into our game or, fuck it, make up our own lore, why they exist, and how these races behave in their societies. I mean, astral elves have to have a superiority complex, right? I mean, it'd be like we humans master space travel. We go to another world light years away to find humans with a stunning similarity to us, except they're, I don't know,

pink. Not pink like me going to the beach for a day pink. I'm thinking like Pepto-Bismol pink. Begonia pink. P*** pink. What? I can't say p***? Oh, come on. P***. Fine, you're faster on the button than I am. One thing to know is that some existing races are front and center if you're having adventures in the astral sea and to a lesser extent Wild Space. Mind Flayers are usually associated with Spelljammer adventures, and they have ships that resemble giant snail shells called Nautiloids. If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, that adventure starts on a Nautiloid. Nautiloids are strangely designed, but one consistency is they tend to not have a lot of windows and could easily have multiple places to helm the ship

to get to where you want it to go. I can't cover Mind Flayers here, but I talked about Illithids or Mind Flayers in episode 49. That episode was pre-5e Spelljammer, so there's not a lot of details about them in the Astral Plane, but give that a listen if you want more information about them. Remember earlier I said that the smarter the creature is, the faster the Spelljammer can travel through the astral plane?

Well, guess what the base intelligence is in Mind Flayers? 19. That's just one reason why they're feared in the astral plane. That and they're sadistic as hell and they reproduce by inserting larvae in their brain. Blech. Another race that shows up in the astral plane? Beholders. They can be found there.

They're also highly intelligent and can move through the astral plane with ease. Much more about them in episode 64. But in this book, there are legends of the great beholder mother. It's a beholder the size of a freaking planet. It drifts through the astral sea, populating planets with beholders that are her offspring. There's some nightmare fuel for you. And the last one I'm going to mention is the Gith, the Githyanki and the Githzerai. Their history is wrapped up with mind flayers, so it makes sense that they would be present in the Astral Plane. They were actually living in the Astral Plane before even being enslaved by the Illithids, and now they sail the plane hunting their former masters to punish them for their centuries of slavery. Gosh, this episode's already stretching

long and there's so much I haven't covered. I quickly want to praise the 5e design team for doing away with some dumb ideas from the past. Each universe is no longer encased in these unbreakable crystal spheres that you had to conjure portals to get into. The Astral Sea is no longer filled with this hyper-flammable liquid called phlogiston. Every fire spell cast in the astral sea used to be heightened and go off instantly and centered on you like a 10d6 fireball centered on you.

Ouch. It also used to be that clerics couldn't commune with their god in the astral sea. So if you were a cleric and you started sailing on the sea maybe for months at a time, no refreshed spells. Once you cast them, you're done until you make it back inside a crystal sphere to reconnect with your god. That's gone, thank goodness. And lastly, I think they did away with this idea of one-way colored pools that led to various planes of existence. Now, when it comes to tips for this episode,

here all the way at the end, 23 minutes in, I have one. If your DM wants to run something different than your usual fare, something like Spelljammer or Dark Sun or D&D Rules in the Wild Wild West, don't dismiss it because it's weird. A lot of fun can be found in the weird if you embrace it and just run the campaign or character that you've always thought would be fun but never had a place to do it. I missed out on a few years of Spelljammer adventures because I thought it sounded stupid. And when I actually got to play it, it actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

Just because something looks like you wouldn't enjoy it from the outside, doesn't mean you won't. Give it a try. 5e Spelljammer is not your typical Dungeons & Dragons game setting. It's a mind-warping setting with strange creatures and physics and ways to adjudicate situations, but it's a wide-open, no-holds-barred, anything-goes type of adventure location that allows you, the DM, to combine the best of space travel, planet hopping, naval combat, and yes, schools of space jellyfish that feed on whatever you want them to.

Rare metals, noble gases, or even conscious thought. If you have some time, peruse the new 5e Spelljammer rules. I had two dozen adventure ideas just thumbing through the book for a few minutes. If your gaming group is getting a little bored with traditional adventures, send them into the Astral Sea to purchase rare spices from the cute little space-faring merchant penguin people with hands called Doar. Send them to the body of a dead god to harvest some skin for a powerful spell and have to fight off the evil space clowns. Or give them the opportunity to have a full naval battle with a psionic monster that wants to kill and eat the PC's crew. Set sail for high adventures

where the sky is no longer the limit. Keep an open mind and I bet you and your players will have fun doing it. If you're listening to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, iHeartRadio, or Podbean, did you know I also have a YouTube channel? And if you're watching on YouTube, reverse the previous sentence. Tune in next week when I'll refocus on one of my core tips to GMs, how not to nerf your PCs. But before I go, I once again want to thank this week's sponsor, Astronauts. Astronauts are trying to create a restaurant on the moon. I just don't think it's going to take off, though.

The food's great, but there's no atmosphere. This has been episode 140, all about Spelljammer and a little bit about the multiverse. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube media production.

Copyright 2022. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.