The Spelljammer Letdown
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#jorphdan #dnd5e #spelljammer - บันเทิง
Before Spelljammer was even announced, 2 years ago when I was a year deep into my first homebrew campaign, I decided I was going to personally make a 5e conversion of AD&D's spelljammer rules into 5e with some personal flair. I was so excited when Spelljammer was actually announced but after the disappointment of Fizban's and Strixhaven, I decided to wait and see how it turned out.
I've never felt more vindicated in my entire life than sitting here, looking at my admittedly still in progress work on the conversion, and then looking at the steaming pile of garbage that is the official 5e Spelljammer books, and knowing that me, one person, cared more and worked harder on this than an entire company of professionals who are paid to work on this.
My story exactly, I Freely use roll20 rollable tables with each level of the ships deck plans, i can group the crew on deck, move ships up to the enemy, board, and fight down to the cargo deck level etc. Use spell slots for attuning & maneuvers. Convert MC to D=+1 to A=+4 for like a dex mod for grapples, facing turns, use squares so a 40 foot speed= move 8 squares etc. I made macros to generate random worlds, made a ship template with all possible actions & weapons, duplicated it, added the (rollable) token, & removed any weapons it didnt have. easy & fun
@@paulpicot4285 Would you be willing to share some of these assets? They sound very well done.
I would suggest using Wildjammer , an amazing fan-made conversion of Spelljammer.
That's how I feel about all of WotC, frankly. They don't care about their customers, the books are cheaply made and full of filler, and they are more interested in pushing a social agenda through their products rather than putting out quality game content.
All of the 5e books feel like that.
I remember Spelljammer for its exploration. It had one part star trek and one part high seas adventure, and you need a good pilot or chart to get around. The whole: if you can think of the place then you can just travel there is a real let down. I don't necessarily need the Phlogiston back, but I loved the idea of finding a chart, plotting a course, and all that could go wrong (getting lost, did we bring enough supplies). Not just, "Oh I'm in Realmspace, now I will just think of Krynnspace to do a quick stop off there before heading to Greyspace." It feels like they sold me a book to do random encounters in between running games in different settings.
I'd say that cutting the Phlogiston was way more consequential than anyone is admitting. Like you said, a big part of the flavor of Spelljammer was the exploration aspect and "danger on the High Seas". The Phlogiston's dynamic and (literally) combustible nature is an in-built source for that. Using thr Astral instead just really nerfs that.
DMChris literally said this in an interview. Travel time is up to the DM, you can just go there.
I will sorta defend this decision, but only half heartedly.
If you think of a place, you start moving in that direction. It says nothing about what happens along the way. It also says that systems are not at fixed points in the Astral Sea, so you're constantly moving toward a moving target. This can have its own problems, possibly leading to you never actually ending up at the same point. But that doesn't exactly give the same kinds of stories you want without some weird bending over backwards. In my games, I'm keeping the crystal spheres but losing the Flogiston, and saying that moving toward a target is only helpful if you're already close enough for that to matter
The thing that gets me about Phlogiston, is that it EASILY could've been added to the random encounter table. "Oh we're near the edge of Wildspace, and now there's all these Astral Sea clouds seeping in! Oh no! They're flammable!" That's an adventure hook in and of itself.
@@TheSteven00 Yeah, I don't take it for simply thinking of a planet and arriving. I'm starting into this with other friends who've never played D&D before, and we're two sessions into Spelljammer Academ. My character is the pilot, and while I didn't have to narrate a series of specific actions to get through space, we still had to stop and roll for hazards like a lightning storm and an asteroid field, which damaged the ship a little. I interpreted the rules as described to me that the spelljammer pilot sees where to go and moves the ship by willing it, but they still have to pay attention and know what direction to sail in. Just think of it like playing Star Fox in first person, but the controller is your mind.
For me, the shabby work on the “world” of Spelljammer is what bothers me most… Ship-to-ship combat would be awesome, but the fact that there’s so incredibly little detail about the setting and the worlds is what gets me. I’m not demanding Keith Baker level of detail… But this is just vacuous. :-/
It feels like they didn't have any interest in creating a world at all. Granted, there's just enough there to make the adventure work (Light of Xaryxis), but nothing to build other adventures off of, and nothing to help you generate your own world.
@@VinStJohn They didn't cave to public pressure they did this to extend the copyright.
@@lordmars2387sorry, I don't follow. This doesn't seem like you're replying to me or this thread, maybe it was a misclick? Spelljammer was definitely not under threat of its copyright ending (that's months away) and really, there's very little of the original spell jammer that would be protected by copyright in a meaningful way that is represented in this work.
@@VinStJohn sorry responded to the wrong thread. However their copyright on spelljammer was going to expire this year. They dont need much to claim they're "using" the material just look at the scam that was van richtens guide to ravenloft.
2e Spelljammer had little detail about the 'setting' either. It's always been about travelling between campaign settings. And we have details about those.
I will literally cry if they ruin planescape
Better to expect it, that way you won't be dissapointed when they do.
Or pleasantly surprised if they don't.
Spelljammer being a letdown is a colossal understatement, for me...so much so that I would say its completely soured me on all their upcoming setting content of Planescape and Dragonlance. The fact there are 4 people across writing/game design but 7 marketing people is insane.
Wildjammer: More Adventures in Space is a free 100 page book that works really well as a supplement to this mess, honestly. It was made fairly recently, has a few races that aren't included in this including Dohwar and Mindflayer. I'm using them as a whole to run a Spelljammer campaign. There's a whole section detailing how to build a ship, what the roles are. Highly recommend it to anyone looking for more ship mechanics.
Just curious. How would you Nerf a mindflayer enough to make it a balanced playable race for lvls 1-8?
@@psolomon83 it's honestly pretty good, if it's a home game and the player isn't a handful, just let them play it, it's fun, lol. I have a player in my Wildspace campaign playing an Illithid Echo Knight. Fucking rules, lol.
They have Darkvision, a psychic blast equal to a dragonborn's breath attack, and they can consume a brain to gain one skill or proficiency that person had in life (until long rest, you can only have one at a time)
This is the first book I will not purchase a physical copy of. If I could get a refund on D&D beyond I would but they don't do refunds. From now on I will wait for all reviews instead of pre-purchasing because this book was a shitshow it was a rushed product and it basically told us that ship combat in spell jammer is not something you should do which is ridiculous.
So you brought Strixheaven? Candlekeep Mysteries? The Wild Beyond the Witchlight? And all the rest of that crap?
@@CriticalHater what does that have to do with the former comment? They didn't say they bought every publication, just that all other purchases were physical (full cost).
@@CriticalHater I'm in the same general position as @Foulwin when it comes to Spelljammer, and I didn't buy the three books you named in full, because I don't run prepublished adventures.
I didn't have a lot of interest in Dragonlance, so that's not a "lost purchase" from me to WotC, but... I would have been mad for Planescape. Now, after seeing how they fucked up the (relatively) simple task of "put sailing ships in space", I have less than zero faith that Planescape will be anything I'll want or use. I'm not raging about "never buying anything from WotC", but it seems that the level of quality they deem acceptable is considerably lower than is the case for me. I will wait a month or two, let the hot takes simmer down, then see what the consensus is.
I'm running Witchlight right now, and that adventure rules.
I can't believe they brought out a book where we can use SPACESHIPS and they didn't think to include rules for SPACESHIP BATTLES. Boggles the mind.
I’m starting to think there’s an echo chamber within wizards of the coast. They’re too busy patting each other on the back for how great their ideas are rather than asking themselves the hard questions and challenging ideas based on merit, mechanics, and lore creation.
For some reason the loudest voice at Wotc seems to be “let’s not have great lore or mechanics, let’s just have ideas we don’t flesh out and the community will do the rest for themselves”.
My favorite part of the old monster manuals was the society and ecology sections on the creatures. I could always do something else entirely or make minor changes but having something fleshed out was nice. Draining all of the flavor is not required for players and DM’s to be able to make things their own.
They need better quality control and playtesting.
To be fair: it’s the newer mouth breathers that have been attracted to D&D, not for the game itself, but because a group of fictional teenagers and some voice actors played/liked it.
I blame Jeremy
Sounds like Bethesda lol. . . Fuck the whole reason I gave up gaming and started playing dnd was the assumption that we still had a few years before wotc went down that route. . . Guess not
Their issue has always been detail with the 5e books. Most of their books, have no real lore, or anything substantial for the world they are in. 5e has always relied on the lore of previous editions. It just often feels generic and you do what you want.
You can say THAT again! And that’s when they’re not retconning the lore from previous editions. Always “Yes, and…” but don’t contradict your own lore. Fantasy settings run on continuity. When something feels out of place, it breaks immersion.
Think of all the races and classes there are without any cohesion at all .
It's become so generic that it's just a fantasy superhero mmo rpg with to many races and classes with no real campaign setting .
So instead they create grand adventures taking characters from 1st level to 20th level and call out a setting because they don't think open world exploration where the DM created his own adventure sites is how d&d should be played .
The origional intent of d&d was to allow the DM to create their own settings and adventures while still having the rules as a foundation to build on , that's how setting like the original Greyhawk ( the first open world setting ) Dark Sun and Dragonlance were created
That's not true. Curse of Strahd fleshed out Barovia more than ever before, even the 2e Ravenloft campaign setting didn't go into that level of detail. Out of the Abyss gave a ton of Underdark lore. And the lore from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes may not be exactly what folks were looking for (the Oinoloth is a horrific disservice), but it wasn't 'light on lore'.
I noticed a drastic shift sometime around the time of the second Ravenloft book, maybe Tasha's Cauldron or the Feywild adventure. The quality of the game dropped, lore was glossed over or outright contradicted and stuff just seemed rushed rather than polished. Even the Magic the Gathering setting books have taken a turn for the worse. Ravnica and Theros gave me, a guy who was not familiar with either of those blocks, enough information to either strip out and put in my game or run DnD games in said setting. Strixhaven on the other hand...doesn't feel as complete.
@@testtest648 A lot of those weren't really set in Barovia though, they were set in Ravenloft at large. (I'm not disagreeing that Ravenloft was an awesome setting, but you seem to have grabbed a list of 2e Ravenloft books rather than limited it to just ones that involved Barovia.)
Obviously, Curse of Strahd is 5e Ravenloft (Module). I think it is leagues better than the 3.5 version of Ravenloft (Module), Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.
What bothered me the most was every spelljammer video the official channel released constantly mentioned "we had to fit information in our page limit". Why is there a page limit? This is nuts.
Yeah - the bit about the 'murdercomets' being named 'murdercomet' because they needed a monster in the 'M' space... makes me wonder if the books are laid out before the text is written? If so, that seems like... well it seems like building a book backward.
Indeed.
Just look at the books they made for 3/3.5e. Those are hundreds of pages of chunky content.
They are just lazy.
I was pretty letdown at the lack of systems info or ability to randomly craft a wildspace system. Especially given how much info was put into the Ravenloft book about various Domains of Dread, I’d have thought there would be more flavor in the Spelljammer release. Ship-to-ship combat has been the bane of a lot of RPGs I’ve played. It’d difficult to make it flexible enough to involve all the players at the table and make it fun for everyone. And it really sucks when the pilot rolls poorly resulting in a TPK (been there, done that). That said, it appers Wizards just decided it was too hard and said f-- it, pull alongside and fight individually.
highly recc starfinder.
@@0xA455h I was about to say that.
@@0xA455h what does recc mean?
@@testtest648 recommended
There's a free third party supplement called Wild jammer 5e.. I really like a lot of the stuff in it. I would suggest giving it a quick go through and taking ideas from it
I use the dark sun 5e arcana info. Its amazing
Once again, though, why do we the consumer have to fix Hasbro’s game?
I came here to mention this
Does it use the avernus vehicles to make ship combat rules??
@@MsQuikly didn't read Avernus rules but I don't think so.
The designers have become afraid of crunch, so they keep stripping more and more crunch out of the game with each new book. But when you don't have any crunch, you just have this smooth, plain oatmeal.
You also have no CONTENT! What am I even paying for?!
Could you describe what you mean by crunch?
@@31Legomaster Crunch in a game design context typically refers to granularity in rules and systems. The counter force to "crunch", is "flow", referring to how quickly and smoothly things can play out.
Too much crunch can bog things down at the table. Not enough crunch can make everything feel like it runs together. It's almost a paradox, where a lack of rules and systems can actually make the players feel like they have fewer options rather than make them feel more free of constraints.
There's a balance that needs to be found, and different people will have different preferences for that balance, but I think DND has been erring on one side of that balance for a while now.
Soon D&D will become GURPS of the 21st century.
WOTC's approach is basically the blizzard approach.
"Don't you guys have DM's?"
From the beginning of 5e there has been a noticeable disinterest in the lore from WOTC. It's been how many years and we still don't have a Manual of the Planes for 5e, we still don't have a 5e lore book for Forgotten Realms overall. What little we do get is all too often buried with the adventure modules, which you might not want to play.
For me this just solidifies the primacy of the OSR crowd where I can get a whole host of mini-settings, spellbooks, megadungeons and splat books filled with random tables and weird, off the wall ideas... at a far cheaper price.
Its because WotC has left the lore of worlds up to the DM world creators since homebrew ideas always override the official literature. So do ask for something you plan on changing anyway to fit your homebrew world. WotC are not mindreaders and have no idea what your mind's eye of said lore should be. Obviously your idea and theirs don't sync and unless you can introduce your ideas to the developers you are stuck with their ideas so don't complain too much.
Spelljammer 5e: A few sidebars of info, for the price of a campaign setting!
While I like 5e and I run it. This just goes with something I've been saying for awhile. It's fine to want to leave things a little open for players, but at a certain point people pay for the system. Leaving everything up to the consumer to make it work is lazy and sad. It's like they don't trust themselves. And if they don't, then they need to clean house and get actual creators that can come up with material instead of asking the public to make it for them. And I agree with your olanescape comment. That was my 2nd thought. I think ebberon was good was because they had the creator ofbthe setting working on it with them. I don't even like ebberon but it was so much better than most of what the wotc crew has put out.
Agreed. Instead of wasting our time with books where DMs still have to homebrew the heck out of it, they can just post a one-sentence topic like "DnD in Space!" and then we can make it up from there. Skip the charade of a book.
I've been calling it for a while. WotC is going down the path of Bethesda, they let their consumers fix their games, and they claim they made a great game. They just get lazier and lazier and modders/homebrewers fix their game and make it enjoyable. This is a terrible state WotC is in currently.
5head marketing is selling you an empty rule book with 1 map and telling you it is the most custom player friendly world ever. You can invent whatever you want!
Indeed.
The books have so much less useful stuff than they did in the 3e days.
Just look at the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting compared to the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide.
And for 3/3.5 there are a lot more FR books, while for 5e, that SCAG is basically all there is.
@@rogerwilco2actually most 5e stuff is set in FR ( Waterdeep heist & Frost maiden are two I can think of at top of my head - FR isn't exactly my favourite setting but we make do to convert them). I want settings like Ravnica, Theros & Eberron that have one book to have a Yawning portal style adventures book so there's more reasons to play the settings - hell there's no excuse for Eberron, just update some of the old adventures! Wildermount is interesting but it's still a setting that not everyone plays and is currently only getting attention because of Critical Roll. It can't be that hard to convert old Forgetton Relams & Eberron adventures for us? (Dragonlance is the only one I want ones from scratch.... the old ones aren't that great😅 but the other two had some incredibly good ones!)
"Trust us, One D&D will be nigh-perfect, only requiring occasional tweaks."
Or more like a final nail to the coffin
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket Money is a helluva drug.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket Didn't they say something similar about Windows 8? and Vista?
Can we get them to throw out one D&D instead?
Jorphdan: We can't just hand everything to the players.
Wotc: Hold my beer.
That's not a beer...
There is this feeling I'm having from the 5e that they kind expect you to have read older editions, not only for the details on the world, but also for the lore.
They mention characters, places, things that happened, but you can only find information about it on the older versions lore.
For exemple...who is Mordenkainen? Tasha? Volo? They have books named after them, but you know nothing about them, because there is no Greyhawk Guide for 5e
There is this example that annoys me to this day - on the Monsters Manual, on the "Retriever" description they mention that a Bebilith is used to create a Retriever....but the Bebilith itself is not on the book. So if you haven't read older versions of the book, you would have no idea of what they are talking about.
I feel that this atitude is present in all the worldbuilding for this edition.
The whole thing feels sloppy and superficial and incomplete.
A glaring example for me: maps in the core rule books assume readers know what the standard D&D icons are. There's no legend explaining that a pentagram drawn on a map means a statue, or that a light colored square in a wall is a door. A friend new to D&D wanted to draw a map for our group, and I had to google a legend for her. She had no "cartographical alphabet" from 5e. But 5e has room for runic alphabets for languages they don't use in the books...
2E's Spelljammer setting was, as I remember it, very vivid and imaginative. It's really frustrating we didn't get more than 1 or 2 pages of vague setting info here.
I miss the details about specific planets and systems, but I actually overall like the 5e lore more. I think linking systems through the Astral Sea is WAY cooler/more usable than phlogiston.
@@Anisozygoptera That's fair! But they don't really give us much beyond the basic concept, do they?
@@Anisozygoptera I like the concept overall, but it's far away from being close to worth the $70 suggested retail for it rn. The $42 on sale on Amazon right now might arguably be closer to being worth it but only barely, and when you consider that physical copy gets you fuck all for Roll20 or DnD Beyond... Egh
@@varyar77 No, you're right. It's for sure too minimal. But I remember reading about Realmspace in 2e, thinking it was super cool, but... you'd still need to come up with a LOT as a DM to run an adventure in it. Like Glyth is a fun concept, for example, but it leaves a lot for a DM. I THINK the idea with 5e was to go less broad but more deep with the Rock of Bral? Maybe?
@@Anisozygoptera Perhaps!
As someone who has watched your spelljammer videos, I was so excited for this new release, and utterly let down by what I received. Thank you for all you do for the community.
P.S. we named our Hammerhead in your honor, Jorphdan's Law
WotC letdowns have been the flavor of the year for the last five years. I've run or played almost everything they've put out for five years and it's always the same thing: this was written really poorly, so let's see what Sly Flourish's fix is. I think the only exception to this rule was WBtW which I found very competent.
I had the same experience trying to run literally anything after Curse of Strahd. Like, I paid for this module, why am I spending more time fixing it than I would have spent on some homebrew adventure?
@@TJ-vo3rv Try Frostmaiden. I didn't play it yet but people speak highly about it.
@@105saphira Thanks for the suggestion!
@@TJ-vo3rv I found tomb of annihilation quite good.
Agreed with This Guy, except WBtW, because I haven't looked at it. Think of it, the best campaign book for 5e is Curse of Strahd, a rehash of a 30+ year old adventure. Icewind Dale is AWFUL. If you haven't played or read it, what would you say about a setting where it has been winter for 2 years and the temperature is regularly -40? Probably food would be scarce right, since you can't plant any crops in that. Can't move trade caravans in that. Basically can't live in that. Nope, not in the campaign. Plenty of food, plenty of firewood (where that comes from in the tundra, I don't know), and people just bebop around no worries despite that being lethal temperature.
Descent into Avernus was even worse, and I found I had to rewrite the entire thing to make a salvageable story. And I paid money for both of those. Why?
And never again.
Quick fix: Buy Stars Without Number instead. It's a lot more usable for Space and even though it's not explicitly a fantasy/sci-fi Hybrid, you can just buy Worlds Without Number by the same author as well to go along with it and basically play a much robust version of what Spelljammer would feel like.
Heck there are official free versions of both pdfs and the only thing not in the free version is mech rules. No reason not to try it.
I just started reading this yesterday and its honestly just what I needed. Spelljammer offered very little guidance.
There is also practical planetology which is what we needed in these books
I am running SWN in a spelljamer setting rn!
Love Star Without Number! Nice call out
This is depressing to hear, and I'll definitely pass on this. I still have the old boxed sets so I'll just tweak the 2E rules if I ever run a 5E Spelljammer game.
And I'm with you on the fact that this doesn't give me high hopes for Planescape, my favorite D&D setting of all time. I just have a bad feeling they're going to screw it up. Either by making it too vague in its information, or making dumb decisions like stating up the Lady of Pain for instance.
I mean, WotC doesn't believe in alignment, but the Outer Planes are based in alignment. Are you ready for not inherently evils Devil's and Demons?!
You know people say the new Spelljammer book is 192 pages. That's not really correct because I would not include the adventure book in that count. We still don't have a dedicated adventure for Eberron. So it's really 128 pages and a lot of that is art.
Hi Jorphdan, I recommend tracking down the "Spelljammer: Shadow of The Spider Moon" article from Dragon magazine #151. It's set within a single crystal sphere, but the actual Spelljammer mechanics are much better thought out, and are pretty easy to convert into 5e.
Is not dragon magazine is polyhedron
The Helm Duels things would also allow for PCs/NPCs to wrest control from the opposing group. The old "fighting over the ship's wheel" kinda thing.
Thats how i read it, you sneak aboard an enemy ship with your helm, lock yourself in a room initiate the duel and if you win you fly the ship somewhere, like a BBEG might hijack your Spelljammer and fly it into hostile territory or suicide run it into a star,.
Watched a video from a guy defending this set with "5e design is simplistic so a lack of rules is good, 2e was too complex and dense" as if those extremes are the only options, he even said we could play spelljammer without the set and thought that was an argument in his favour instead of the opposite.
This release is just useless except for the ship layouts assuming you buy the book for your preferred vtt, there is nothing in the book I couldn't have homebrewed myself with a 10 minute brainstorming session, or converted from 2e.
I bought it. I’ll use the monsters out of it. That’s it. Everyone in my D&D group is pretty underwhelmed by it.
It feels like Wizards put all their time into One D&D, and then remembered they have a book to put out so hashed it out in one day so they can get back to work on One D&D.
I think that's exactly what happened. They're already moving on, so much for the money you've already sunk in...
Seems like every 10 years or so they change rules sets forcing players to buy all new books costing into the hundreds just to play the game .
I started playing AD&D back in 1978 as an 11 year old and we had the same rules set for about 23 years before wizards bought the d&d from TSR .
Once we had the core books ( the players handbook , the unearthed arcana , the Dm's guide , monster manual 1&2 , the fiend folio , deities & demi gods , the wilderness survival guide and the Dungeoneers survival guide ) with those books we had many years of play and they were all we needed .
Now to play d&d you have to have 28+ books that include the adventure books only for wizards to go and change the rules once again .
To me it just seems like wizards is taking advantage of its player base by putting out subpar books like spelljammer
@@williamlee7482 You are right, but when I started in AD&D 2nd ed. It actually was worse. They seemed to put a book out every week back then. To the point every Race, and class had their own books on top of the core books.
@@marks2807 Yeah but those were options and every player didn't want them unlike with all the new books with new feats , new races , new spells that players today have to have .
I only used skills & powers and spells & magic but only a few select options from those two books .
Now players want every thing wizards puts out .
Plus those option books were up to the DM if they wanted them in their game or not .
I used the race and class point buy system along with the weapon and non weapon proficiencys but that was it because it allowed the players to customize their characters without changing the race or class into something far diffrent then the original race and class .
I never used the kit books because they didn't fit my campaign and my players were fine without them .
I have seen players quit a game at my local hobby shop because the DM wouldn't allow certain races and classes in their game .
Wizards bakes those books into their game to the point that they aren't really options but seem to be required for some of their adventure books .
Wizards knows that players today want every single option they can get their hands on to build the perfect character who can do massive amounts of damage or some other outrageous thing .
We never had character builds until the players options books came out but even then they wernt over powered fantasy superhero characters they were just characters with a slightly diffrent set of abilities that couldn't be abused like d&d 5e feats can be
Those ad&d option books were not concidered core and you didn't need them to play any module at all .
@williamlee
Okay boomer.
By the way, the best scenario adapted to 5ed was eberron, not even Forgotten Realms have a oficiall amazing book! The d&d 3rd FR is so much better.
I lost hope for a amazing book for planescape, dark sun or dragonlance.
There's no way they could make Dark Sun right now and still have it actually be Dark Sun. I hope they don't try.
3rd edition Forgotten Realms pails in comparison to AD&D 1st edition Forgotten Realms because just about every country had it's own source book packed with tons of information on the cities , people , monsters that might be encountered , magic items and more .
Now Forgotten Realms is just regulated to an adventure that takes place in one of its locations .
It's sad that wizards didn't keep the open world settings of the original campaigns
@@williamlee7482 Pales, but they aren't even the same thing. 1e FR was the creation of the setting. 3e FRCS was the updating of the setting to a new (and in some ways, drastically different) ruleset. And of course, following the Campaign setting, there were the 'just about every country' books that followed, that were packed with tons of info on the cities, people, monsters that might be encountered, magic items and more, as well as canonizing some of the changes that had taken place in the novels or the adventures. If one were so inclined, they could use the 1e and 3e lore together, in whichever version of the rules (1e, 2e or 3e) they preferred.
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 3e was a masterpiece of a book, and obviously a work of love for those involved with its creation. Whether you like 3e or not (I personally can't play it without getting a headache these days), that book was impressive not only for its comprehensive updating of the Realms, but the changes in game design that it pushed into the forefront of the game at the time.
@williamlee
Found the grognard boomer.
@@williamlee7482i say the same for Eberron. There was tons of great adventures, Sharn & Storm Reach had their own books, there was lore books race books ect....
I miss the days of 2e where you get so much details in the books. Every dollar was well spent (for the most part). I wish I could convince my group to let me run 2nd Ed!
I run a homebrew ad&d campaign using 1st edition classes a few classes and races from dragonlance , dragon magazines in a world I created that was at one time in the far past a huge continent but the gods had a war and one of the evil chaos gods sent one of the world's 4 moons smashing down in the center of the continent causing it to break up into thousands of islands , some only a few miles small all the way up to island a few hundred miles long .
Sailing l, skyships or standing stones are the only ways travel from island to island
I'm beginning to grow tired of the letdowns of 5e. I love homebrewing, but in 5e it feels like homebrewing is required. Monsters aren't powerful enough to challenge characters, rules aren't as clear as they need to be, etc. Is seems like all WoTC cares about is making new cool and powerful abilities for the PCs but they consistently leave the DM hanging out to dry.
I'm really considering switching systems, however, I own almost every 5e sourcebook so it makes it hard to just throw all of that away.
You can still use it with your other system. There is a lot of use I get out of the books still and I'm not really running 5e anymore.
My table has asked for our next campaign to use pathfinder 2e. They're sick of the direction WoTC is going in.
If I have to homebrew so much to add crunch back in, I may as well instead either use the old 3.5e rules, or just use pf2e which is frequently being updated and supported.
Wizards has become the Bethesda of Tabletops.
@@Tomeroche 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Try Pathfinder 2E, or Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Runequest, or Hperboria.
I'm very glad you made this video, because I was planning on buying this for mainly the ship combat and "Space" travel rules and incorporating that into my homebrew. But seeing as their is a lack of that in these books, i'd rather just look at DM's guild stuff or make it myself.
Seems like I'll be giving 5e Spelljammer a miss. After the early reviews it looked promising but now we are beginning to see cracks in the design (or maybe, gaping holes in the design). Since it seems to actually lack space combat rules, I have no interest in the product. If need be, I'll apply Starfinder space combat rules and mod those for Spelljammer. At least Starfinder gives roles to players, Captain, Pilot, Gunner,(s), Engineer, Science Officer, it gives real rules for ship to ship combat, it gives actions players can take, it gives stat blocks for starships.
At that point why not just play starfinder?
Just use the old stuff
A lifejammer helm would be so thematically perfect for Dark Sun.
Oddly i bet a life jammer is accidentally preserver magic though the demon infused death jammer is not.
I been using modified Woe rules from Last Citadel for my Dark Sun game
It's not terrible
I’ve been playing dnd 5e for about 3 years now. I’ve DMed a one shot or two but for the most part it’s been really intimidating for me and I haven’t had a lot of motivation to dive into it. Then I heard spelljammer was coming to 5e and for the first time I was excited to DM something for my friends. I was looking forward to building a universe for them to explore and plunder. Needless to say I was very disappointed when my setting book forgot to mention how to build a setting. I still play on running a spelljammer game, but man do I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Try tracking down the 2E book(s) since there’s a LOT of setting information that will actually help you build your worlds and systems!
Keep going. Bear in mind, Spelljamming is literally whatever setting you're in currently (minus Dark Sun). You're in Forgotten Realms? Now you have Forgotten Realms in space. Want to go to Krynn? Now you have Forgotten Realms in space with Dragonlance. That's Spelljammer. The only exception was (is it still?) Athas. Athas (Dark Sun) was inaccessible to Spelljammers.
Just refer to the DMG Chapter 2 (I believe) - Build a Multiverse. It very clearly tells you to build a multiverse. So all you have to do to build a multiverse is to build a multiverse. If you don't know how to build a multiverse, the best way to learn is by building a multiverse. /sarc
Yeah when I picked up the guides I was really let down by the lack of information on ship to ship combat and I really hated the rules using Saltmarsh. I’m almost tempted to use Starfinder rules for space combat and the infernal rules because you have more things to do in your role that can help and assist during combat and engage everyone. In our terrible saltmarsh play through that never finished we had a pretty big party 8 people and the DM wouldn’t allow multiple roles filled so it left 3 of us not doing anything for 4 sessions and I don’t know if that continued because I decided to quit when we weren’t done.
As someone who started D&D with 5e, one of my biggest problems is just having nothing to build on lore wise. It's one of the main reasons I made a homebrew world (Zelethor), before I found out about the premade adventures and what not, which I still haven't bought. I've literally learned more about the Spelljammer setting listening to Jorphdan's videos on it, than I think I would learn by reading the Spelljammer books. Another of my problems was reading through the 5e DMG. "What's the City of Brass? Where do people go when they die? What determines which place they go to when they die? Whats the Feywild look like?" etc. Your videos have very much helped in this regard, but there's still a lot that would be very easy to just write an extra paragraph, or a map, and it's fixed. Wizards of the Coast could just write mechanics and if those mechanics have one or two things that don't feel great, then those can be changed. I would much rather have a pile of garbage, mechanics and ideas to use as a base and tweak and fiddle with, than no garbage and no clue where to start.
Yeah the Astral Adventurer's Guide was a big nothing-burger. I can't believe they didn't try to use the Descent into Avernus or even Ghosts of Saltmarsh rules, all the work is done and they just had to import it over. Instead they opted for nothing, lol. Lesson learned twice between this and their Ravenloft book. Just stick to the old 2E versions of Dragonlance and Planescape and convert to 5E yourself. You literally can't do a worse or more lazy job than WotC does.
Your older videos on spelljammer got me to get the 2e book and man I'm glad I did. Love you content. Keep doing pelor's work.
It’s extremely dumb to me that the Star lancer, eldritch lich , fractine and gababout aren’t in boos but In a free supplement that came out months ago . Like why aren’t they in Boos
It is likely that they had to cut for page count. All 3 books are exactly the same size, and there must be some cost savings in that page count.
Not everyone is on D&D Beyond, anf the content is not available elsewhere. This is leverage to het people to sign up to their online system.
@@erickarnell I’m fairly disappointed in that as a player but can understand why the did it then . Changing your name should be easier on there too
Yeah, I pretty much agreed with all of that. I'm new to the Spelljammer content, so I was sort of envisioning there being like at least a half dozen new races which live on other planets and otherwise you'd never encounter and the bulk of any content would be space travel, ship combat, weird alien parasites, space resource harvesting, and a bunch of B movie sci-fi type stuff.
YES! I'm 100% aligned with your stance on this. I too am a fan of the 2e edition of Spelljammer, and was totally let down. I will probably be doing the same as you "fixing" this 5e version. What were they thinking?
As a big fan of 2e myself, I was too nervous about what WotC would do to desecrate it, so held off on buying this. Glad I did.
@@stephenclements6158 i even got the Alt cover version. 😢😢
Aw man. Sorry to hear it.
Have you looked Willdjammer? The fan 5e conversion that was done before WotC put out this buchery?
Almost the first thought that struck me with this coming out was that I'd rather take Traveller and dress it up with fantasy things.
I'm really getting worried about Planescape now, I had some hopes for Spelljammer, but given the recent developement in DnD books I was expecking a f*ck up.
I can see how painful it was for you to deliver this review and how badly you had wanted it to work, Jorphdan. Thank you for the precision analysis and good references of where to go for the needed patches. I hope they hear you loud and clear before they fail on Planescape!
I really recommend Vehicles Revisited on Drivethrough RPG. It had everything I wanted and works with land water and air vehicles. Spelljammer Combat Expanded on DMS Guild is good too, but I didn't like it as much. They are both pay what you want.
Technically there are two helms in 5E there is also the Helm of the Scavenger from Dungeon of the Mad Mage. But yeah there should absolutely be a greater variety of helms. It’s like they almost want us buy the 2E books to reverse engineer it all. More likely they were leaving room for more art and this less room for text.
I agree. Books like this or Strixhaven, which was last year's undercooked "Hasbro wants a 5th book released this year" book, feel like they're meant to funnel players in dmsguild resources. Wizards of the Coast gets 50% of anything sold on there (or 100% if it's old edition books they own) so they want you buy stuff off there. A PDF for planet generation. A PDF for ship-to-ship combat. A PDF to explain literally anything about any thri-kreen cultures in 5E. etc etc
You should but the 2E books, and enjoy a betted game.
@@Neverfate 30%. Roll20 gets the other 20% now.
@@Neverfate I wish I'd known that before I ordered my reprints of 2e spelljammer and dark sun, but...too late now I guess.
Yeah i noticed that with Wild Beyond Witchlight. Day dot of release they had a supplementary book for a certain spider character and it was like 'that should have been in the finished book'.
Was so excited for this and even bought the physical after I had pre-ordered the dndbeyond version. Its...ok. I have been hearing a lot of defense of it saying, "5e is light, these rules are light, what did you expect."
I expected some combat rules, hell even a reference to avernus (good call there) or salt marsh would have been nice. More random tables, and more setting. I feel like there was no mention of the settings namesake, no stories of the void, sailor tricks, or anything that gave this a setting, even Braal was glossed over. Random tables can add a lot to a setting without a lot of exposition. This would have been perfect in this small of a book. To be fair, some of this may be in the adventure, but I haven't read that yet.
I feel like I'm better off with 2e SJ, Beyond the Stars, and Enoch's Wake.
Glad to hear (I guess) that you didn't find these things in there either. I think planescape will be different, it's much more of a setting than a new system, the problem there is so much info already exists for the planes I can't see myself reinvesting in supplements if they're just updated Planes of x. I'd like for them to make complimentary supplement to all those old books. Without the chant...
Is that what they tried to do here? Is this SJ light, for more see 2e? That actually makes this book a little better. Here is what you need to update 2e to 5e. If your new, th8s is a taste of SJ. Of course that kind of written is no good unless they come out and say that beforehand.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I really appreciate the references to past editions and the other 5E adventures to compare the mechanics of the SpellJammer ships! Thank you for voicing the need for D&D to improve the quality of their products. Also thank you for the link to how to do AD&D ship combat! I've really enjoyed your videos and especially your OSR videos! Best to you and keep up the awesome vids!
13:25 fun fact, You say 20 gp is expensive for one hit point but in 2e costs 2,000gp a day to heal one hull point (which when comparing Hammerhead 400HP(5e) to 60HP(2e) is about 6.67 hit points per hull points) Costing you only 133 gp and 4 silver in repairs (though casting mending each hour is free). Also Remeber spelljamers and thier helms Cost 10s of thousands of Gold Pieces, and your likely PCs are also likely to be selling other expensive cargo on the side. This is not trekking through the wilds d&d; this is vehicular adventure d&d where every captured enemy vessel is worth about the same amount of money as a rare or up to a legendary magic item.
minor point but in 2e the ship HP are hull points and equal 10 hp as a pc measures them so it was 600 hp and cost 200 each to repair.
@@brianzmek7272 thanks, was not the most familiar with the 2e system so thank you for the more correct numbers.
I completely agree. This should have included something very similar to the appendix A of ghosts of Saltmarsh
Just FYI, on D&D Beyond when you're looking at the ships, you can see in the ship lore section that the ship name is in blue. Its a link, and clicking on it takes you to a statblock version of the ship. This can also be be reached from the D&D Beyond navigation bar: Game Rules > Vehicles. Granted, this is a perk of D&D Beyond and is not included in the physical book.
This is very disheartening. I've been reading the Dragonlance novels and I was really looking forward to the Dragonlance setting book. Normally, I would have it preordered already but if it turns out to be more Spelljammer than Eberron, I don't think I'll want it.
The Dragonlance book is an adventure not a sourcebook. At least that's what it's cover text says.
@@levihurley6504 it should have setting and character subclass/racial options. “Should•
@@levihurley6504 Really? That’s somehow more disheartening. I have no problem with WotC making an adventure for Dragonlance. In fact, I’m all for it. I’d just like a setting book first.
@@snieves4 I'm expecting it to be kind of like strixhaven, avernus and wild beyond the witchlight to some extent, at least how they had adventure and character options and setting/gazetteer stuff. but then again it's really impossible to tell with 5e books because other more setting focused books like the eberron book had an adventure. but i suspect most of the dragonlance book will be adventure with 20 pages for character options and setting info or something.
If there is an old setting that you want to use, grab the old books and adapt it to 5E. We don't need WOTC for that stuff.
Spelljammer pretty much exemplifies why I've lost interest in this game I've been playing for 42 years. There's a slew of specific complaints I could make, but it comes down to this; I'm tired of being bored running a game written for elementary school children.
The art is always great in the 5e books, but art is just a set piece, they have really let down most of the community as it was supposed to be something big but it is hollow and barren;
I wonder what Wotc thinks of the feedback on the set that is overpriced and lackluster
They've screwed up on the art front. In the recent Bigbys book one artists was caught running concept art through an AI generator just before the books were ment to be for sale. How that got through is anyone's guess but that should never have happened. It also means they have no copyright over some stuff in the book if someone decided to sue them.
It's a book I'd have liked to help with making Storm reach a place my players wanted to explore from but as an illustrator myself I can't bring myself to support that trash.
I actually think what we got was pretty neat, but good god we should have gotten more. It's such a shame, Fizbans and Tashas were so good but these last few books have been real letdowns
^Indulgent player-oriented books? I know Tashas is and have been disillusioned and haven’t looked at releases since then. Don’t know about Fizbans, but 5e has been really not good about providing DM’s with resources to enjoy the game.
Just thinking about this as a conclusion of that when players have to interact with the barebones stuff dms have been receiving for a long time.
It feels like Chris Perkins hates Spelljammer and made sure that it came out yucky just so he could shrug and say "yeah, always hated it, dunno why you idiots wanted it."
I think a lot of 5e stuff is made to work perfectly with the other rulesets by making everything more bare bones than it needs to be. I feel like with how much they push that the rules can be changed, it would make more sense to include alot more optional rules. Like they can introduce the challenges and prices and whatever but make them optional. Then you still have an official explanation of the rules without them being required
If you like Eberron, check out Keith Baker's (Eberron creator) other 5e Eberron book, Exploring Eberron, on the DM's Guild. I would like to point out that Wildemount and Ravnica are good setting books too. And the same as Exploring Eberron, with Widemount you have another book from the original author, Matt Mercer, in Tal'Dorei Reborn, to keep adding to the lore.
The random system generator was the ONE THING we needed in 5e
My biggest let down for the new Spelljammer is how they fused Space and the Astral Plane, as well as just deleting Crystal Spheres.
I often wonder if these things really are the letdown they seem to be, or are we just the minority (though vocal) of players. The main thing that WOTC seems to be moving further and further towards is a simple set of basic rules (that don't really need to be enforced at all and kinda don't matter) that allow for a basic roleplaying improve session.
That's not my kind of game so I use a TON of third party material that add more rules and complexity and overall fun (for me).
So why do I stick with 5e at all? Because I like to choose which complexities I add and PF and others seem to force the complexity on me in places I don't necessarily want.
So in conclusion, I can't wait to see what rises to the top as the best third party Spelljammer book!
I really think it is a letdown, there are a lot of things that are just not there, if we knew there would be more spelljammer releasing as a follow up then cool, but we don't. We are getting what we have and there are no info on any updates or add ons.
Both at once: yes we are the minority but also the minority that actually knows and cares about Spelljammer to begin with. Most new players really don’t mind setting or want something very familiar like books out popular D&D streamers for example
The problem that the minority of players who cry about every release don't (or won't) understand is that WotC isn't trying to lay out the entire universe for you anymore. If you check out the entire series of 5e releases, it still holds true to that. All the information is already available elsewhere, if people really want it, and is easy to make work in 5e, so why bother reprinting it? And if a table doesn't care about endless minutiae, then they can just run it simply and have fun that way.
No. Simple rules are not the problem. Simple rules are great. The problem is the recent trend of WotC not providing ANY rules, with Spelljammer being the most prominent example.
@@reapermox3704 haven't played 5th. Played 2nd. 3rd. One or two games of 4th and a host of other games.
Spelljammer was gonna bring me back, but after reading the setting book, I've decided this is another WOTC edition I'll be skipping.
What's more depressing... is they HAD all this. ALL of this information at their disposal (especially the random generation tables). And yet, they STILL half-assed it.
Also, I was very disappointed in the Menagerie. Most of the creatures presented are terrestrial based, with most of the others being Space Fish. It's SPACE. you could have Enormous creatures that make planets look like marbles. You could have could have stats for Dead Gods... who may not be as dead as first thought.
I have a group that loves playing the newest DnD stuff as it comes out, so we started on the "pre-adventure" about a month before the official rules came out. At level 2 they have their first space combat, and I read the module thinking, "This space combat system doesn't make sense. I wish they had included the actual space combat rules in the pre-adventure so I could know how to do it properly." Then the actual rules came out, and I realized that the pre-adventure rules WERE the actual rules.
for the spelljammer game i ran a couple years ago. the chair acted as both the method to fly it, as well as able to store a certain spell point pool and any magic user could pump points to the max it can hold. But still required a caster to hop in to it and then pilot it about. That would be for the standard type of course. not the odd ones like the life helm or furnace.
AS some one who played hard core in late 70s -early 90s all the old settings like Spelljammer , PlaneScape and Forgotten Realms brings a lot of fun times back to me. I hope that these new releases can be brought up to par and be fun for newer players
I'm just going to treat the Astral Sea as the Warp in 40K. I'm fleshing out the three galaxies setting from Rifts and would building my Warhammer, Starwars and Star Treck adventures with D&D books, mostly from 3rd party publishers.
I felt this way and is the main reason I just moved to a different system. I found something that needed much less conversion from the other developer's stuff I am using.
Why not just play those systems?
@@SlyBlueDemon because I want to fill a space hulk with D&D stuff instead of using a system I don't like with less monsters and playable races.
@@jerry247 I feel like this is a false dilemma. I like doing conversions and would have to in other games anyway.
@@lefu87williford55 it's not false if I feel that way. I'd rather spend prep time setting up cool scenarios than trying to convert stats from the stuff I'm using.
I regret buying Spelljammer. I will be fixing the ship combat if I can though. Good video
You mentioned one thing in there that I think WotC’s design team (and the player base, admittedly) needs to learn and that is that it’s easier to ignore or change an existing rule than it is to create new ones from scratch. I think the sidebar talking about just using normal combat would’ve gone over better if there was actually meaningful ship combat rules to be ignored in the first place.
And I feel like WotC has been leaning more and more on “just do the basics and let the DMs do the rest” is just leading to a lot of DM burnout. Seen a lot of people coming over to Pathfinder 2e because they’re getting sick of 5e’s need to be constantly patched and tweaked, like WotC only designed half a system and DMs have to build the rest on a foundation that’s got more than a few cracks in it.
Cool idea to reinvigorate this setting, I call em Astral Divers. Imagine a 10-15 foot tall old timey/steampunk diving suit with jet packs and leg thrusters that can fly through the void around a ship and fight with big old flintlocks, melee weapons or even flamethrowers!
The internet says that travel, exploration, and survival “suck”, so why in the worlds would WotC put any extra thought into the same thing for a new book?
Thanks for the suggestions on how to put together ship combat. There were ship combat rules released on dm's guild for a "pay what you want" amount. I'll just say, we'll probably have to make our own tables for making planets, but as someone who literally spent two days on making gravity work in a consistent and not "most convenient" way and also have it make sense of the gravity phenomena happening in the books... Well it'll be a relief to work on a chart/ table, so thanks again for compiling the relevant rules to look toward making ships work. 👍
I find it very telling that not a single designer at WotC uses 5e in their home games...
How do you know this?
@@jpulkkinen1250 watching interviews and reading forums
I said this on another channel: I do not think they wanted to make a Spelljammer setting material book or books. This feels phoned in and as you mentioned, folks on the DMs Guild will fix it for them.
Whilst they charge for a fully finished product. Assholes are taking the EA approach.
Agreed. It reads like designers who weren’t into SJ being ordered by the corporate overlords to make SJ 5e because of market potential.
dude the infernal war machines stuff in Descent into Avernus was a fantastic call out. I am treating spell jammer books as kind of my primer. These extra bits have really helped me think about how I am going to treat ship to ship combat
The thing is, it doesnt matter how bad it is. People will keep buying these products no matter how bad they are.
That's like Pokémon games all over again lol. Everyone hates them when they're released but sales keep going up. Then, you see people with comments like "I just buy everything because I can't complain if I don't give them money"
Are you wrong? My friend, you're 110% correct in everything you said.
Hey Jorphdan - I am a new subscriber and LOVE LOVE LOVE that you cover the older editions as they transition to 5e or 5.5e - I am running Vecna Eve of Ruin soon and I've been looking at the Rod of Seven Parts Campaign 2E for lore ideas etc as 5e books tend to be very lore light (No Forgotten Realms Campaign setting book this time around etc) Having said that I was very much looking forward to Spelljammer and "letdown" is a very good word for this. I've been playing since AD&D in the 80s and had everything for Spelljammer 2E and the amount of Lore missing from these books is immense. The art of course, was fantastic - I did like the story of the Star Elves and what they were doing to suns - we ran that campaign (though sadly didnt finish). The ship combat was non-existent and I am not at all a fan of using the Astral Sea as Outer Space now - as opposed to a plane that intersects others - that to me wasn't the best thinking.
And now we are hearing WoTC lost a lot of people in their Book Division from layoffs so the chances of getting lore heavy supplements in the new edition are NOT looking good. So as a PSA I would tell people - don't sell your older stuff if you plan to keep on playing - you may need it. Thanks for the great videos - definitely need to wait and see how Vecna turns out before starting it. Happy 20s everyone!
You're not wrong. I already homebrewed out the ship to ship combat and tweaked a few things for realism and missing information. Like stating that the Gravity Wells for planets and ships extended 2x the diameter, but the atmosphere only occupies 25% of the gravity well. The 100 million miles per day I called "Astral Slipstream" and created Jamming Speed, which is meant for maneuvering in Wildspace planetary gravity wells where you can't enter Astral Slipstream but yet still outside of the grapple of being inside another ship's atmosphere. So crossing into a Gravity Well knocks you from Slipstream to Jamming Speed, crossing the Atmosphere knocks you to Atmospheric flight/combat speed as expressed in feet per round. Jamming speed is 1 mile per round. Added a maneuverability score for minimum hexes forward before altering facing by one side. 0 to 5. Added some stuff for spell slots expenditures. Fleshed out Ships Weapons for ranges that work in Jamming Speed, made it so a Ships Weapon couldn't be used to target individuals below Huge (tracking wouldn't lock on).
If I could switch between the 5e ruleset and Starfinder ruleset without having my players in Fantasy Grounds have to relog in I would have just kept 5e classes and spells and taken Starfinder's ship mechanics whole cloth. But the modifications above work. Still had to homebrew 'em.
Shame on WoTC.
The problem that we've been having since Tasha's has basically been that WotC have been playing off the idea that we "shouldn't stifle creativity" as a way to not do work. We're paying the same price for each book and rather than giving us full content with actually fleshed out things, we're getting closer and closer to paying like £40 for a piece of paper that just says "If you want to play as something that we haven't covered in a previous book, ask your DM if they'll allow it in their game. -WotC"
They even stopped putting in things like lifespans of races or alignments, not to mention the ASI thing. Rather than putting in a whole concept that is fleshed out entirely and letting people just not pick up the entire thing for their games if they don't want to (eg "I know drow are meant to be evil, but in my campaign, I prefer to run them as more misunderstood than inherently evil"), they're instead opting to charge us the same amount for less and less stuff.
The fact there is one helm is just odd to me, the last two books with vehicles had uncommon and rare magic item upgrades to those!
And they are just like, \__shrug__/ let them make one as a spell… I’m ok with the spell, but wtf are there no upgrades to this stuff?
This angle of “no restrictions” misses out in the point that creativity and innovation increases when there are resource limitations and rules to follow. 5th Ed thinks there shouldn’t be any rules. You can do anything you want in the game - but what about those people who want more?
Corollary to this: if a new location/rhelm doesn't have any mechanics which force you to play differently, what is the point of going to that place? Its not like this is a video game, where there's a fancy backdrop which grabs my attention
@@JakalTalk What pains me about this observation is that 5e introduced nomenclature that would fit perfectly into SJ. In Tasha's DMG Tools section they introduced Supernatural Regions, Magical Phenomena, and Natural Hazards. All WoTC had to do was make a few new tables Just Like Those, framed within the context of Spelljammer. In Van Richtens Guide... they introduced mechanics to build a Dread Domain. Same thing; reframe the rules you already made into the Spelljammer IP. It blows my mind that this wasn't done.
The rules should be a starting point. The complexity should be there and allow dm's to remove them as they see fit. If they included the complexity of the AD&D books then just use the sidebar notes to mention "Rule Variant: No fuel ships..." It would be so much easier and make the DM's so much happier.
All those resources are already there. There's decades of stuff that's simple to adapt for 5e.
@@PaulGuy Cool, cool; next time you order a pizza, I hope they ship you only 80% of the individual ingredients you need to make a pizza.
I'm only 22 and have been running DnD for less than a decade, so I obviously wasn't around to play these when they came out, but I'm glad that I was desperate enough to play spelljammer that I actually bought the War Captain's Companion and Legend of the Spelljammer TSR box sets a few years back. Honestly, without these and a little bit of experience running spelljammer adventures in the past, theres no way I could've used these 5e books to run an immersive game within the 5e system. Definitely a pretty hard let down by WotC for sure...
I think the "Spelljammer Duels" section was mainly added because helms are now something you can create ad-hoc given the right ingredients, and I'll bet it came up in playtest that you could (for example) sneak into the hold of a Nautiloid, create a new helm there, and try to hijack the ship. It was a weird place to put the section, though -- the whole section about spelljammers was kind of incoherent, introducting topics seemingly at random.
In a setting called "Spelljammer" we got two new spells... Here I was hoping to chuck meteors at people as a crazy autognome wizard.
It's literally Hasbro's model. Get it printed and charge people for incomplete content. WotC has been super disappointing in the last few years. Hopefully there's some good community content to bridge everything
It’s disappointing to hear similar things from both you and Nerd Immersion. I pre-ordered the set because I was excited to have a completely different setting, and with no prior knowledge of the 2nd Edition version
I rend to agree with what you said regarding rules, but this is the direction that WotC have been taking in quite a while with their recent changes to rules and lore.
While I understand the desire to streamline things for accessibility, I also wish for an immersive and complete setting to allow me and my players to get immersed in.
You have piqued my interest with Eberron and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Maybe I’ll check them once we finish running RotFM (depending on what type of adventures my players will want to have).
I'm gathering mechanics and rules systems for a 5e Spelljammer homebrew, and would love to see what you come up with for yours!
I'm also looking at the Infernal War Machines rules, Brennan Lee Mulligan's simplified airship rules, GM Binder's 5e Spelljammer conversion, Arcadia Magazine's Aces High aerial combat, and Great GM's Naval Combat mechanics for further inspiration (great resource for realistic naval distances and engagement). There's SO much missing here, it's nice to hear others were hoping for more and looking to improve things too.
In Brazil we have a expression that really fits the feeling: "disappointed but not surprised". Unfortunatelly the box is meh, but I already expected that...
Concur that it doesn’t feel like their heart was in it. Also you didn’t even get to how much content they left out about Bral.
The more you dilute the hard parts in the name of accessibility, the less you should charge for the watered down product.
I recall someone from Wotc saying that they wanted 5e to be modular. And from a certain perspective they did do some of that.
But as we move into One D&D the core rules should be the lowest common core. The setting books should add complexity to the core for flavor and challenge.
Maybe they don't want D&D to be challenging anymore. Maybe they want the people who want more from their tabletop RPG to go elsewhere and quickly so they can serve milk toast without complaints.
You do you Wotc. You do you.
That squid ship is maneuverability class D. Maneuverability is explained in 2e DMG.
Class A is perfect in 3e
B is good
C fair
D poor. The 2e DMG explains exactly how far they move vs how far they turn.
I went & preordered the physical book SpellJammer, & long story short the package got stolen from my apartment’s doorstep before I got the delivery notification. I was super bummed that day. Now, I got my refund back & the knowledge that maybe I never would have been as happy as I thought I would have.
I played Spelljammer when it originally came out and I agree with your take. It's insulting to charge that much money so we can throw them all away and go back to 2nd Edition. It's just insulting. They could have literally reprinted the original books and done better.
For tables check out the book for "stars without number"
It does a great job of filling out a universe with all kinds of people's planets and ideas.
Where is it available?
@@InquisitorThomas it's free on drive thru rpg I think
The real reason this is that way it is they are making bank off of the dm's guild. Make the fans fix it and sell it on the the online dm's guild. they don't need pay any employees and then they get 95% of the profit from all the work fans do on the dm's guild. SO you are right they want you to go buy the 2e books from the dm's guild. We need to start sending them the books back or ask for refunds. this has started from the beginning remember the sword coast guide, they said it would never happen again, They even fired the company that helped publish it. Then it was the Van Ricktons guide, same vague wish washy stuff. But people bought it and praised how good it was.
as a DM who ran spelljammer for YEARS trust me, it was NOT fun for the players to loose all of their prepared spells just touching the held, to arive at a deralict ship or astroid and be compleatly useless because they had no spells. trust me, the change to not draining your spells is a very good improvement. in my game it was to the point NOONE wanted to be the helmsman wich kind of turned ship combat to be pointless.
I wouldve preffered a rule and lore book as thick as it was in 2nd edition. The three hardcovers make up so much weight compared to the actual pages, it almost felt like it was padding to make up for the rather light amount of text.