Things changed on Saturday when a hapless pair of lvl 1 PCs sat their rumps in an Apparatus of Kwalish that was fitted with "an extremely ornate chair" and activated the homing spell cast upon it. The last thing they saw was the planet they called home shrinking away behind them as they sped towards the Rock of Bral.
It'll be a short while before the campaign gets going as I have to finalise a lot of details and decide which set of 3rd Ed rules I'll be using, but I was thinking of posting my progress in this thread as I go along in the hope that it might be of use to some other DMs interested in Spelljammer to see how the campagn progresses and what problems arise.
Of course if there's any advice that people want to offer, I'd be happy to hear it.
Looks like I could be in for my second session this weekend as one of the players has just emailed me to say he's free; here's hoping for the others.
For ease and saving valuable time I've decided to use the basic solar system of the SOSM setting, but to try to bring back in elements such as the Rock of Bral, Spelljammer races and the feel of the 2nd Ed setting. The Hackmaster system of treating the Phlogiston as a hyperspace and the Crystal Spheres as only visible from the outside is pretty much what I had decided myself, so that's what I'll be going with.
The major changes to the setting are that the Chain of Tears asteroid belt is the remains of a planet known as Balthus that was destroyed at the climax of a war between an ancient human civilisation and an alliance of elves and dragons.
The elves and dragons lost the war and have ever since been reduced to a shadow of their former power. The elves occupy a trio of small moons orbiting one of the inner planets in the system and as a result the Elven navy is very weak within the system.
In the background the Prince is manouvering them to take out the pirate known as Caine due to the fact that he was implicit in the disappearence of his elder brother and Andru's claiming the throne.
The common rumour is that Andru simply had his elder brother killed and framed another for the crime. But the truth is that the elder Cozar brother was not the debauched fool people thought he was, rather a cultist devoted to the resurrection of a demonic power.
Andru's brother disdainfully abdicated in his favour when he confronted him on his plans. Afterwards he left on his personal ship to seek the resting place of his demonic master and Andru sent Caine in pursuit. Unable to kill his target, Caine limped away from the battle after making sure that the cultists' ship was crippled and marooned in a place where it would not return from.
He lied to Andru, claiming to have killed his brother when in fact he was still alive and now the Prince wants him silenced, tiring of his attempts at extortion. At the same time, Andru's nephew is keen to discover the truth and intends to find a mallable group of adventurers to help him do it.
Cool!
I just thought it was a more interesting twist on the usual "Andru killed his portbrained brother and framed someone else" take on the issue of who gets to sit on the throne of Bral.:embarrass
I'm going to be sending my group into space in the near future. I'm going to introduce them to Spelljammer slowly. Tomorrow they're going to encounter a ship that has crash landed nowhere near water. Presently they're travelling to Waterdeep. Once I get them there, then I might lead them to the Rock of Bral, which I've placed in the Toril's solar system. If I like what you're doing, I might steal, I mean borrow your ideas. ;)If I like what you're doing, I might steal, I mean borrow your ideas. ;)
It's the way forward!
When thinking about the iconic images of the old Spelljammer setting, apart from the obvious list of things such as the Spelljammer itself, one of the most striking sights I recall was the encounter I and my fellow players had with a pyramid ship and its undead crew. The concept of a huge stone pyramid hurtling through wildspace is one of those things that means more in terms of the setting than any number of complaints about the silliness of giant space hamsters.
I decided to use to use the iconic sight of the pyramids to scare and inspire the players by...borrowing...certain ideas from a sci-fi race that travel the galaxy in cuboid and spherical vessels. So I created a unique type of undead that spreads its contagion through biting and acts as a hive-mind and this is what the PCs encountered in the swamp where they began the campaign. The regular supply ship had gone missing and they were dispatched from the gaol where they were guards to find it.
When they located the barge with the supplies they found the crew in a undead state and engaged in the act of stripping the vessel of all the useful parts. They remained oblivious to the PCs and simply piled the materials, which were collected by other zombies and carried to a base of operations deeper in the swamp. From there they found the place filled with inert zombies and the followed the materials to a galleon which the creatures were outfitting to spelljam.
The main inspiration for the scenario came from the Enterprise episode where researchers find the crashed Borg sphere from First Contact and are assimilated.
The Apparatus set down in a cluttered warehouse in the docks of the Rock, where the party were greeted by the somewhat bizarre figure of Aldebrecht Litzenreich III, esteemed member of the Fireball Alliance. Claiming to be 250 years old and sporting transparent skin as a result of his consumption of the rare and valuable spice known as Chanv, the mage explained that he was expecting the apparatus to return with his apprentice, Carrick, whom the PCs eventually figured out was not the nefarious figure commanding the undead in the swamp they had discovered, but the dead body they has seen in the villain's hideout (at this point I almost jumped for joy as they put it all together!).
They soon learned that the world from which they had come was somewhat of a backwater and populated with ignorant savages, and as a result there were no regular passages to be booked. They would just have to find some way of raising the funds to charter a vessel to take them home. Litzenreich couldn't afford to pay himself despite the fact that he wanted his apprentice back and as he felt responsible for their predicament he suggested that they form a common cause and offered them employment through his advocate of law, the dwarf Brin Broadvein.
They were contracted to enter a section of the dwarven tunnels beneath the surface and complete the retreval of a holy symbol that Litzenreich's last employee's had died in the attempt to claim for him (I admit there's an element of Futurama's Prof Farnsworth to him!). They dutifully did so and found themselves in a small dungeon complex that led to an abandoned tomb populated with the undead members of the last expedition.
They triumphed, collected some nice loot and returned to the surface with enough xp to advance to lvl 2 and were duly paid the agreed sum of 500gps each by Litzenreich.
At the moment their next mission is unclear, but Litzenreich did mention the fact that the celebrations for Prince Andru's 20th year on the throne are soon to take place and there's a lucrative prize for the team that triumphs in the arena.
Litzenreich is the mentor and close friend of Aric Cozar, Calar's son and the only other claimant to Andru's throne. The old mage has been instrumental in Aric's attempts to discover the truth behind the supposed death of his father, acting as a somewhat eccentric and dodery shield to hide him from Andru's attention.
Both Andru and Litzenreich see the PCs as useful due to the fact that they are new to the Rock and thus have no ties to any other powerful figures and no real knowledge of the politics surrounding the House of Cozar.
The dungeon into which they were sent leads to a temple that was used by Calar and his depraved cult before his disappearance and supposed death, which was reached via a secret passage in the family mausoleum of the Pitts. This is the family of Aric's mother and the connection is of course meaningless to the PCs at the current time.
Looking good, Carmine.
Thanks.
I'm feeling the pressure of having only 2 PCs and no magical support in the party, kind of takes away from the epic feel that I wanted.
They'll need spelljamming NPCs anyway, so that could round things out.
Nagel was left behind by Frun under orders to keep the cult's affairs running and the temples on the Rock secure.
He failed once when Litzenreich located the temple and sent a party of adventurers down there and then failed a second time when the PCs were dispatched to finish the job and the undead he had raised to guard the location were destroyed.
Nagel is a control freak and feels slighted that he was left behind in the first place. The fact that the PCs have violated "his temple" only serves to make him all the more irate.
Using his band of street thugs, Nagel plans to make life very hard for the PCs in the comming days in order to have them pay for the insult he believes they have done him.
I'm hoping that this will get them used to the kind of combat that they will experience when the time comes to fight ship-to-ship.
At the award ceremony there will be an attempt made on the life of the Prince and the PCs will be in the perfect position to foil it. As a result, Andru will have them in mind when the POTS are given the letter of marque and he will insist that they are approached for the comission.
I'm feeling the pressure of having only 2 PCs and no magical support in the party, kind of takes away from the epic feel that I wanted.
They'll need spelljamming NPCs anyway, so that could round things out.
It seems that your party isn't big enough to work by itself.
So if they are low level PCs then why not turn the tables around and make them the NPCs working for a larger, more experienced (and higher level) party. If they sign on for one voyage with a party, then it would give you a good excuse to have an NPC boss who feeds them information, gathers their input and then gives out orders. (So if you give your PCs clues to an undead lair and they decode the clues and go to the boss, he can say: "right lets go get them", but it is still down to the PCs that it happened.)
This would allow your PCs to learn on the job, but you would also want them to face challenges on their own. So why not design your NPC party and your adventures, so that the NPCs "decide they have to split up".
The NPCs could split into 3 or 4 pairs and send your 2 PCs to deal with another tunnel. You could pre-determine the rest of the stuff and if your PCs get into real trouble, then some of the NPCs could arrive and bail them out.
You could also have your PCs sent off to do an easy task, and then give them the opportunity to bail out 2 of the NPCs who get into trouble.
As the PCs level up (and earn the respect of the NPCs) you could have one or two of the NPCs retire or get killed off and have the leader of the NPCs promote your PCs from hirelings to full members of the group. If you do that then you should think about bringing in new NPC "hirelings" who replace the roles filled by the PCs. The PCs can be told to train these hirelings. (So you could do some adventures or encounters where just the four work together.)
Eventually the leader of the group could retire and make one of your PCs the new leader. (This would give you a long-term plot to build an adventure party to go with your PCs.)
Alternatively, you could keep the leader in position, but have the group expand and decide to form two crews, who work together on big things, but work separately on small things. (This has the same advantages as the above option, but also allows you to keep the NPCs you remove for epic level events - you could also have the other ship captured by slavers, to encourage your PCs to go on a search and rescue mission.)
The second plot is the games planned to celebrate Andru's 20th year on the throne. The idea is for the PCs to become involved in a war game in the arena that will involve the use of weapons such as catapults and ballistas in the capture of a fortification.
Another alternative for this would be a Spelljammer version of jousting. Jousting lances for tournements are actually designed to break (rather than to kill the opponent).
If we forget about ramming, it is possible that non-leathal ammo could be made for SJ weapons.
Catapults could maybe fire something similar to a giant mellon. It might be dangerous enough to K/O a crewman, but fragile enough to avoid hull damage.
For balista, you could take the jousting approach and have balista bolts with blunt tips and shafts that are designed to shatter on impact. This could also cause subjual damage and K/O a crewman without risking hull damage.
If you go down this route, you could split Andru's forces and have one side fight the other. I would suggest something like having captains randomly pick coloured ribbons out of a barrel (in a lucky dip style). Otherwise you are implying that the forces are normally are divided into two camps and introducing the possibility that they might fall out with each other.
You could even have two ribbons with gold stitching on them that are used to randomly select two "admirals" for the exercise. (I would suggest rigging this if you want your PCs to be on the "command ship".)
If you throw in a big prize for the winner of the combat, you could have every ship fight as well as it can.
EDIT: I'd suggest a prize that was 50 percent for the ship and 50 percent for the crew. Maybe the ship could get some sort of improvement like hull plating or an item like magical sails. Maybe the crew could get some sort of minor non-combat magic items, like gloves that give +1 to rope use checks. Or maybe the crew could get normal looking cloaks that have a black lining with illusionary stars that constantly twinkle (the cloaks could be turned inside out to give a bonus to hiding checks).
I would suggest starting with a bout of one-to-one combats beween ships of the two teams. (If you do this first with two NPC ships your players could see the process from a distance before they take part. You might also want to keep the number of ships involved in the combat down to a maximum of 10, so that your players don't have to sit through more than 4 fights they are not involved in. I'd suggest sticking their fight in the middle, with two before them and two after them. And if you make the NPC controlled ships have a score of 2-2, then the PC controlled combat will win or loose the bout.)
After you are finished with one-to-one combat, you could do something else. Maybe a helmsman could fly between several asteroids, while deck crew use personal weapons to try to shoot targets on the suface of the rocks. This would be interesting if your PCs can use bows or crossbows, but you might also want to allow NPC magic users to zap targets with spells.
Finally, you could go back to ship to ship combat and have a spelljamming mêlée, where all the ships fly into the arena at the same time and blast each other with the non-leathal weapons I mentioned earlier. (Again if you make the background part of the battle a tie, then the PCs can win or loose this event.)
I'm hoping that this will get them used to the kind of combat that they will experience when the time comes to fight ship-to-ship.
Or you could do what I said and actually have them fight a real ship-to-ship combat that is a spacefaring version of a boxing match. (If you have a couple of NPCs get knocked out, or knocked overboard, you can introduce a small element of risk to this sort of thing.)
If you do want to bring some elements of spellcasting into the combat, then you could draw up a small list of non-leathal spells that are permitted during one-to-one fights and the mêlée at the end. (This would be a good way to show how certain spells fail in the void. You could have a helmsman and spellmaster try to coordinate a flyby attack that lets their air envelopes touch, only to fumble the attempt. An NPC spellcaster on your player's ship could use his Spellcraft skill and give a running comentary on what other spellcasters were doing - or trying and failing to do.)
At the award ceremony there will be an attempt made on the life of the Prince and the PCs will be in the perfect position to foil it. As a result, Andru will have them in mind when the POTS are given the letter of marque and he will insist that they are approached for the comission.
If you use my above idea (of an NPC group that hire the PCs) then you could make that group a local offshoot of the POTS. The group of POTS could be just one ship crew that have entered Andru's tournament.
And if you want your PCs to be alone when they save the day, then maybe you could have the "important" POTS (i.e. the NPCs who are "in charge") go off to meet Andru and leave the PCs on guard duty on their ship.
At this point you could give the PCs temporary access to fairly powerful magic items that belong to the NPCs. (They could for example have temporary use of the ships spyglasses.)
I think it would be fun for one of the spyglasses to be one that magnifies things and the other to be one that has true seeing ability. (It would be especially fun to have the command words for these spyglasses written in a groundling language from the PCs homeworld - giving them the ability to turn the devices on for the first time.)
You could have one PC see a fleet of enemy ships at extreme range and the other PC spot that one of the ships from the tournament is actually a different ship that is protected by some form of illusion. Alternatively the ship could be OK, but the crew could all be fake.
Whoever you want to issue the letter of marque against can be behind the attack. You can make it so that they ambushed one of the ships about to be in the tournament in order to sneak in a spy ship that could sabotage the ships during some sort of award ceremony. They spy ship can have deliberately lost all of its combats so that its captain hasn't won a seat at the award ceremony. (Alternatively, the crew could be at the ceremony, but a second crew could be hidden below decks and ready to swarm out and start slashing rigging and so on.)
Your PCs could then save the day by running to sound the alarm. If that isn't possible (for example if the bad guys get onto their plan and block the way) they could jump onto any ship, cut the moring lines and cast off. This would keep the bad guys away from them long enough for them to load up the ship's weapons and start firing mellons at the place where Prince Andru is entertaining all the high level people who can come back and take out the opposition.
And if enemy fleet start an attack run while most of the deck crew are 5 minutes running time away, you have an excuse for Andru's ships to need to depart with some of the crew missing. You can have whoever is nearby pressed into service by whatever officer makes it back to the ship first. Your PCs could both be given a couple of dock hands or bar-maids and ordered to run one of the ship's weapons each.
A crew that was all non-spacefarers, would probably loose in a fight, so maybe you should have your PCs ship and the rest of the ships from the tournament, go out to delay the enemy fleet, while a much larger force of ships that were not part of the tournament have their sails hoisted so that they can come out and join the fight. (The aim of the ships that your PCs are on, could be to fly to the enemy, force them to slow to tactical speed and keep them busy for a few minutes.)
If you give your PCs a tiny, but vital, role in the combat, then they can be heroes without actually having to win a big fight.
EDIT: And coming back to your letter of marque, Prince Andru could give it to "the captain of the ship with the two crewmen who sounded the alarm". The actions of your PCs could reflect well on all the NPCs that work with them. Having some of the NPCs also do something heroic, could help too (you could have 5 crewmen including your two PCs win the "Freedom of the Rock of Bral").
Wyvern
So is there any connection between the hive-minded undead and Calar's cult?
Wyvern
No.
The two threads of the campaign are intended to contrast the politics of Bral with a far greater threat that should come to a head after the dynastic struggles have been resolved and the characters have alliances and ties to the Rock.
If things come to fruition, the realisation that the undead pose a real threat should be building in the background as the characters are tracking down the pirates on the wanted list and plotting to either aid in removing Andru from the throne or whatever stance they decide to take on the issue.
I have a vision of a grand fianle involving a battle between the Bralian Navy, the Elven Navy (a minor power in the system) and their allies against the undead's invasion fleet.