A shame, that. I want my Keplerian physics and pyromaniac hippo-men.
A shame, that. I want my Keplerian physics and pyromaniac hippo-men.
Well, who doesn't?
Well, who doesn't?
I don't :P Spelljammer was waaayyy to silly for my taste, I'd much rather play a Son of Ether in Mage or a Nocker in Changeling, or really anything else BUT spelljammer...
Although the existence of spelljamming has been hinted at multiple times in various D&D supplements (most recently in Lords of Madness), there don't seem to be any plans to formally convert Spelljammer to 3.5.
A shame, that. I want my Keplerian physics and pyromaniac hippo-men.
Sometime in the last couple of years, Dragon Magazine ran an article titled something like "Races of Spelljammer" which had 3.5e specs for Scro, Giff and one other race.
There's also a fairly active fan community centered around http://www.spelljammer.org with a lot of 3e/3.5e conversion material. Check out the mailing list archives for most of it. The folks on the list have even created a "starter setting" crystal sphere called Maj Space.
I ran 3.5e Spelljammer game for a while using rules from the site -- it was fun. (I had missed Spelljammer when it first came out as the group I played and GM'ed in stuck to OD&D + house rules; leading to me, many years later, jumping directly from OD&D to 3.5e).
is there, or will there ever be, a spelljammers 3.5? i have been looking over some of the old second edition stuff (which i vaguely understand) and i think it is some really good stuff.
No.
Thankfully. Come on, Dark Sun, Spelljammers, let the bad, truly bad worlds rest in peace
I don't get why people dislike Spelljammer so much, or say it was such a bad idea? See, imo, by far the worst worlds are Dragonlance after the 5th age and Forgotten Realms, though the latter is still decent it just doesn't interest me.
What I liked about Dark Sun and Spelljammer was they pushed the creative envelope perhaps more so than any other setting in D&D. I can see people finding it somewhat strange, but compared to the stuff in Dragonlance lately (Why can't they just retcon to the point after Raistline fails to become a god) or the epic level back you get in the Realms its far more of an adventure.
As for Dark Sun, another great creative risk that had lots of fresh ideas for gaming.
This past issue of Dragon had URLs for the fansites. Check them out for the basis of your campaigns.
I don't get why people dislike Spelljammer so much, or say it was such a bad idea? See, imo, by far the worst worlds are Dragonlance after the 5th age and Forgotten Realms, though the latter is still decent it just doesn't interest me.
What I liked about Dark Sun and Spelljammer was they pushed the creative envelope perhaps more so than any other setting in D&D. I can see people finding it somewhat strange, but compared to the stuff in Dragonlance lately (Why can't they just retcon to the point after Raistline fails to become a god) or the epic level back you get in the Realms its far more of an adventure.
As for Dark Sun, another great creative risk that had lots of fresh ideas for gaming.
I'm not going to say it was a bad idea, but I think it was poorly exacuted. It had some great ideas, some interesting ones as well but a lot of it was silly, and most DND players dont want a lot of silly in thier games, theres nothing wrong with comic relief every once in a while, but flying giant space hamsters?
I do miss some things about Dark Sun, but the setting I miss the most is planescape. I also wish Ravenloft didn't fall in the hands of White Wolf because they truely destroyed it.
Spelljammer however did'nt hit as big a fan base as forgotten realms and dragonlance, and that is the main reason I doubt we will see a return, though I think a lot of 3rd edition fans are starting to tire of the realms, it seems to me it's slowly falling apart and I for one would love to see it crumble, I've hated it since secound even more so in 3rd.
SJ 3.5 must have its own developed setting (not just random single spheres, an entire universe of related spheres please) in order to be properly taken seriously as its own setting.
I think if Spelljammer had a weakness, it was that it got presented as a link mechanism to bring characters between the various campaign worlds, rather than being a developed world in and of itself.
SJ 3.5 must have its own developed setting (not just random single spheres, an entire universe of related spheres please) in order to be properly taken seriously as its own setting.
that's one of the projects that someone on the SJML is working on (a phlogiston river map, that is... think it's bigmac, but not sure... i could be completely off my rocker though).
on a side note, did this get moved from another section or something, or are the anti-spelljammer people visiting the spelljammer boards for some incomprehensible reason?
on a side note, did this get moved from another section or something, or are the anti-spelljammer people visiting the spelljammer boards for some incomprehensible reason?
Yep, it was moved from the Future Releases board.
But, on the interesting topic of this thread... Erik Mona, Editor-in-chief, Publisher, and Head-Bottle-Washer over at Paizo recently wrote an interesting entry in his blog entitled "Should Paizo Pitch a Spelljammer License?" He's mentioned to me on several occasions that he wanted to write an SJ blog entry, but when he saw my SJ ships page, it spurred him to action.
Side note: While blogs are normally... well... just blogs (and I do consider most to be a masturbatory waste of internet space), Erik's position in the industry means that many of his "blog friends" that comment in those threads are industry movers-and-shakers. In that thread particularly, e_cunningham is Elaine Cunningham, writer of the 4th book in the Cloakmaster novel series, and freeport_pirate is Chris Pramas, founder of Green Ronin.
I know alot of purists are not particularly found of his previous "Shadow of the Spider Moon" minigame incarnation, but as he explains, it was an experiment and not a setting cornerstone.
Advantages/disadvantages of such an action? The Greyhawk community wrestles with the licensing topic often, and the basics boil down to this:
Is a setting better untouched by "official" hands that might despoil its old 1E/2E heart, so that fans can continue to develop it on their own without the constraints imposed by new "canonical" materials. Materal possibly developed by people more interested in 3E crunch and putting their own personal (and possibly unpopular) spin on their shiny new toy, then the setting's original history and flavor?
Or is a setting better served by a coherent revival that brings new people (players and writers alike) to a fresh, professionally-produced and published campaign-world filled with new ideas, new materials and new adventures?
Tough decision, eh?
WotC's clearly annunciated official position for over half a decade has been to greatly limit its active campaign worlds to prevent the fustian MBA-buzz-phrased evil known as "setting dilution". Spelljammer will never be relaunched as a campaign world under their current policy. Certainly no chance of it if they won't even revive Greyhawk, which unlike SJ has HUGE support. The big difference between SJ and GH is that WotC might consider licensing SJ.
Opinions? :D
Denis, aka "Maldin"
=============================
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!!
i would say that the darksun folks have done extremely well, and i rather suspect that a single entity could not have done much better. faster, perhaps, but probably not better.
dragonlance, on the other hand, has actually done quite well for itself, having been revived (if not by WotC) and it is still quite alive and kicking, to provide an example of both fans and a company doing well by the conversion.
in comparison, i hear ravenloft didn't turn out so good when white wolf had it... the single 3rd party entity method *can* work, but in this case did not.
so like i said, it really depends. if we're looking at a company that's going to do a strong, careful, rebuild of the setting, with flavor intact, then that would be great (note: this is pretty much not going to happen; there simply isn't enough money to be had, at present, in spelljammer). the next best thing, imo, is to have a group of dedicated fans do it... which is what's going on right now.
reallistically, if a group buys the rights to spelljammer, they are doing so knowing that the previous incarnation of spelljammer wasn't a moneymaker. which means, if they plan to make money from spelljammer, either the target market must become very different somehow, or they are going to have to make the product very different.
it would be nice if dragon was to have the occasional article on spelljamming stuff, however, just to continue to allow new blood to come in ;)
But that's just my opinion.
that being said, i am not a huge fan of the astromundi cluster. i would much prefer it if bralspace were expanded upon. (and/or equated to spiralspace, which seems to be a popular choice of location relatively speaking).
in comparison, i hear ravenloft didn't turn out so good when white wolf had it... the single 3rd party entity method *can* work, but in this case did not.
That's the second time I've heard that in the past couple of weeks. I thought they did a good job with the core rulebook (though from what I've heard, most of the supplements weren't really up to snuff). Then again, I didn't get into Ravenloft until 3e.
so like i said, it really depends. if we're looking at a company that's going to do a strong, careful, rebuild of the setting, with flavor intact, then that would be great (note: this is pretty much not going to happen; there simply isn't enough money to be had, at present, in spelljammer). the next best thing, imo, is to have a group of dedicated fans do it... which is what's going on right now.
I think the ideal compromise would be for Kenzer & Co to publish a D&D3.5 conversion of the Hackjammer setting.
Wyvern
I think the ideal compromise would be for Kenzer & Co to publish a D&D3.5 conversion of the Hackjammer setting.
I can guarentee that won't happen. K&C wouldn't have a license to do something like that. On the other hand, future Hackjammer products are a possibility, if and only if the material was 100% original. Aka, they couldn't (or won't, I should say) do say "Under the BlackFist of Doom" as an adventure involving fighting an empire of werewolves & medusa, but they could do a similarly-themed adventure pitting PCs versus say orcs, ogres, and galwallers.
Actually, at least for ship building, I am modifying the Starship construction rules from d20 Future Tech.
i hope future tech is better than d20 future then, since from what i remember of d20 future the book should never have been published.
I can guarentee that won't happen. K&C wouldn't have a license to do something like that.
Just because they don't have one doesn't mean they couldn't get one. I'm not saying it's likely, just that if WotC were to give/sell the license to somebody, K&C seem like the best candidates to produce something that might actually please the hardcore fans and make a profit (because most of the development work is already done, and they're an established company).
Wyvern
i hope future tech is better than d20 future then, since from what i remember of d20 future the book should never have been published.
They just gathered all the rules together in the startship section to explain how they designed them. I really think they suck for a SciFi setting, but for something like Spelljammer, they might actually work.
I have changed my mind on going that route, though. I will just work on statting the ships out to the vehicle combat rule stats. In those, ships have a base speed, which varies, by design, from ship to ship. then they apply a wind multiplier to determine speed. For a spelljammer, that could be the SJ rating of the pilot. That way ships will have different speeds based on SJ rating, and the design of the ship.
WotC won't publish Spelljammer Campaign Setting in the nearest future, but what about a generic D&D book? You know a handbook about spelljamming would be cool, not focused onthe history, or inhabitants of the Wildspace but on the rules of spelljamming and living in Wildspace. It would be a great book to use in some campaigns.
That's the last thing they would publish, for ANY rules system. WotC (and other game companies) intentionally include a heavy amount of story/campaign based content in their published books because of a clause in US copyright law that, depending on which lawyer you ask, may make it impossible to copyright a book whose sole content is essentially game rules. afaik, that hasn't been formally tested yet, and I doubt any games company is keen to have it clarified, but equally, it'd be rather foolish for a games company to expose itself to a situation where they'd have to test it thoroughly to defend their interests.
That's the last thing they would publish, for ANY rules system. WotC (and other game companies) intentionally include a heavy amount of story/campaign based content in their published books because of a clause in US copyright law that, depending on which lawyer you ask, may make it impossible to copyright a book whose sole content is essentially game rules. afaik, that hasn't been formally tested yet, and I doubt any games company is keen to have it clarified, but equally, it'd be rather foolish for a games company to expose itself to a situation where they'd have to test it thoroughly to defend their interests.
uhhh... this is D&D 3.5
most of the basic rules and some of the more advanced ones are available online and can indeed be reused freely already, provided you acknowledge the original authors. likewise for d20 modern.
so there need not be more flavor/fluff than what is in, say, the player's handbook, and they might leave out a few things (for example, illithid, thri-kreen, and beholders) from the non-print version, but for the most part it's something that WotC has in fact actually done, multiple times. it's what the entire d20 third party supplement market is based on.
I have changed my mind on going that route, though. I will just work on statting the ships out to the vehicle combat rule stats. In those, ships have a base speed, which varies, by design, from ship to ship. then they apply a wind multiplier to determine speed. For a spelljammer, that could be the SJ rating of the pilot. That way ships will have different speeds based on SJ rating, and the design of the ship.
That's a pretty cool idea. What vehicle combat rules did you get that from?
Wyvern
That's a pretty cool idea. What vehicle combat rules did you get that from?
Wyvern
In the Arms & Equipment Guide, and again in Stormwrack. Nautical vessels have a base speed that is modified, if sail powered, by wind intensity. Light (1–10 mph)
ok, I said story/campaign based content. That's either/or, not both/and. A sourcebook that is basically just rules with no fluff material is in serious danger of being ripped off and the company later finding teh book undefendable in a copyright lawsuit.
Aside from Forgotten Realms supplements, nearly every book WotC has published has been primarily, if not entirely, filled with rules material. Sean K. Reynolds even wrote a rant on this topic a few years back.
Wyvern
I personaly think a spell jammers supplement would sell if they revamped it and dropped the gaint hampsters, collosal rasberry jello oozes, or huge cheese logs of devouring or whatever else was in the orignal.