As the 'Official' fansite, I'd rather hoped they'd be more active, I do not want to see this much over-looked world of D&D fade into oblivion as so many other good ideas have. My e-mail is [email]Lord_Calibos@hotmail.com[/email]. I may not be regularly posting, or reading here, so if you have more information, any e-mail, or post would be appreciated.
Perhaps if we petitioned WotC we might be able to get them to assign a new "official" site for the Spelljammer setting?
I just wanted to chime in here on a few of the things you've mentioned.
1) Beyond the Moons has been updated much more recently than 4 years ago. The most recent post was on March 9th (2005) when the Blank Deckplans were added. (The "Recent Arrivals" sidebar at http://spelljammer.org/ lists most new material.) Shattered Fractine, on the other hand, is over a year out of date.
2) Petitioning WotC is unnecessary for a new site. Since BtM was chosen by the SJML (see this thread for more info: http://sjml.spelljammer.org/wotc/200001/20000101-000027.html on how that was done), all you have to do is present the list with an alternative website they'll accept. (I don't think WotC is very interested in the official sites anymore, anyway.)
3) BtM has always been, and will continue to be, a fan driven site. That means it doesn't grow without submissions from people who care about the setting. The submission guidelines for BtM are at http://spelljammer.org/misc/submit.html and http://spelljammer.org/sj3e/ has links to the latest "blessed" versions of 3e material for those only interested in 3e. (Most of it is 3.5e, btw.)
If you've got something you're working on--PrCs, Feats, ship-to-ship combat systems (I'm especially looking for a good one of these), etc.--then submit it. It's that simple.
-Static
Hello,
I just wanted to chime in here on a few of the things you've mentioned.
1) Beyond the Moons has been updated much more recently than 4 years ago. The most recent post was on March 9th (2005) when the Blank Deckplans were added. (The "Recent Arrivals" sidebar at http://spelljammer.org/ lists most new material.) Shattered Fractine, on the other hand, is over a year out of date.
2) Petitioning WotC is unnecessary for a new site. Since BtM was chosen by the SJML (see this thread for more info: http://sjml.spelljammer.org/wotc/200001/20000101-000027.html on how that was done), all you have to do is present the list with an alternative website they'll accept. (I don't think WotC is very interested in the official sites anymore, anyway.)
3) BtM has always been, and will continue to be, a fan driven site. That means it doesn't grow without submissions from people who care about the setting. The submission guidelines for BtM are at http://spelljammer.org/misc/submit.html and http://spelljammer.org/sj3e/ has links to the latest "blessed" versions of 3e material for those only interested in 3e. (Most of it is 3.5e, btw.)
If you've got something you're working on--PrCs, Feats, ship-to-ship combat systems (I'm especially looking for a good one of these), etc.--then submit it. It's that simple.
-Static
Sorry if we offended with this topic. Truthfully I didn't know that Beyond the Moons worked like that. I assumed it was a set-up like Athas.org and they had a site staff that worked on the conversions. I did not realize it opperated off of submission work.
If that's the case then the only ones we have to blame for not being as "done" as Athas.org is ourselves I guess.
)I'm left with finding people who do good work and getting them to help me on the parts of the conversion in which they are interested--which has been surprising successful in the quality of the material, if not its timeliness. If people are interested in helping out, then they can start by doing the type of work they'd like to see.
-Static
p.s. I mostly hang out on SJML and not the forums, so ping me directly if you've got something for inclusion.
In this thread alone there were two sj3e systems that people mentioned/offered. They both sound like excellent material for BtM.
Submit!... The main thing that needs to be gotten rid of in any new rule is the tonnage system determining a total number of hit/hull points. ...
If you come up with a solution to appease both the "tonnage/hull points" crowd and the "ships as structures" crowd, please let me know.
This is the biggest dividing point among sj3e ship-to-ship rules. And, in this case, the other side is bigger than yours--from what I've seen, at least.Since I really dont have any players wanting to play Spelljammer, I have just been toying with this. I run an Eberron campaign and thought it might be useful if ever the characters aquire an airship.
As it stands, most combat system I have seen for an update tend to ignore this.
Generally, the reason is that people want a viable ship combat system. 3e's item rules are not very good for using as a basis for such a system, due to two basic problems: high HP totals and the low amount of damage siege weapons do. From my research, most sailing ships had hulls at the very least 8" thick, and some where in upwards of 24" thick (the Mayflower, for example, had an 18" thick hull). So, say a tradesman has 12" thick hull, resulting in about 45 sections with 120 hp. Total hp at 5400, give or take a thousand or so for internal decks & walls. At 5d6 per 8 rounds, a heavy catapult just isn't going to cut it.
So, if going by 3e item rules, there's basically two solutions: ditch siege engines entirely, all combat becomes boarding combat; or shrink ships down to a more manageble level. This second option seems the one preferred by WotC (they had a couple of spelljammers on the website in an article a while ago), where they cut the scale by half. The ships were kinda laughable, because they didn't bother to redraw the interior walls, so you had hallways and stairs like 2' wide. Some rooms were way too tiny for their original purpose as well. Its one way to go, but results in really a totally different feel of a game.
I know I messed around with a similiar system a while ago, until I got sidelined by tons of other projects.
If you really want the mechanics though, assume the wood at 5 inches, and when you draw the deckplans, give hps based upon sectors of the ship, if you look at the overall hp assuming 1k or 2k, the ballistae bolt seems useless, but if you're looking at a single side, or a 10ft square its much more believable, and ship to ship combat becomes palatable again.
The other alteration I made in ship to ship combat was increasing the size of the ballistae by one category in larger ships which increases the damage, though increasing the number turns to ready and fire it.
Also I've been playing with some new concepts on ramming damage, basing it instead on a spear or blunt weapon increased to that size, with a strength bonus depending on the strength of the helm. (I need to find some conistant figures on helms that work for me, I haven't yet done my own conversions from AD&D, and what I've seen doesn't quite work in my head for some reason) I'd be happy to assist with any individual conversions in the meantime, although I've got an attention span of 'No' so regular submissions will be difficult to maintain, But when I have all the individual piece of a particular mechanic nailed down, I'm planning to post here, and e-mail it the BTM and SF sites if I remember. Oh, and I'm re-doing alot of creature conversions that I've seen elsewhere. Not including pictures, I'm not an artist but I'm sure you can all take care of that on your own
I use the rules found in Bastion Press' Airships, which I have found to be quite excellent. Just add a few space features and it's ready to go.
I'm rather fond of Airships as well. It provides a lot of neat options. I tried taking an SJ galleon and converting it to Airships, and it worked out pretty well.