So, the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons community is booming in the aftermath of its release, and a lot of the people there are excited to adapt some of their favourite 2nd edition settings to AFD! It’s been suggested we use space as a connective tissue, so I’ve taken the mantle of writing some rules to cover it.

The Spelljammer rules are a mess. Let’s reimagine them as an analogue to the current rulesets, and pare them back to as little as we can to keep up the flavour. The biggest gap, for me, is that there is no weather tables for the phlogiston! I’m renaming that aether, just because phlogiston bothers me deeply, but if there are objections, I can flick it back to phlogiston. I’ve mainly drawn from Adventures in Space and Astromundi Cluster here, because the other supplements were setting specific.

The Aether

Every planet is unique. You travel between them using a Sphereclipper, a magical ship that can travel through the aether. A sphereclipper needs enough power to break through the membrane — known as a sphere — that stops the aether from drowning everyone on a planet, and it needs something to power its flight through the aether, which has a consistency slightly thicker than water. In the absence of any other power source, ships can travel on the unpredictable aetherial currents, which draw you inexorably towards the nearest sphere, unless you’re in a void, a place between the currents. Voids are usually filled with planetoids or asteroid belts that are often inhabited by aether-faring creatures.

Each ship is assigned a captain, who takes the helm, and a crew. For each member of the crew, a single attack can be made, up to the number of weapons that are facing the target. A ship without a captain cannot move.

Battle

Each ship needs a token, with a fore and aft. If two or more ships are in battle against each other, place a six-sided dice between their tokens on the table. This is their distance.

All movement is relative. If there are two or more ships, you must choose which ships your movement applies to; as you are moving in three dimensions, you can move a distance relative to three ships but not a fourth, for example, however, remember that ship movement is an abstract approximation.

Each turn, all ships roll their speed die, either a d4 for slow, a d6 for average, or a d8 for fast. The highest roll has moves up to the difference between their die and the second highest; the second highest roll has moves up to the difference between their high and the third highest, etc. For each move, you can either close the distance, increase the distance, or you can tack to turn 90 degrees to aim your cannons.

If the distance is reduced to 1 between any two ships, they are at boarding distance. If the distance is increased to 6 between a ship and all other ships in the battle, they are at escape distance and can exit the battle without hope of being caught.

If you are moving away from a ship with your aft facing them, you can use charges or mines to reduce their speed or damage their ship. If you are facing a ship within range, you can use your sternchaser to damage their ship or injure their crew. If you are tacked relative to a ship, you can use your cannons to damage their ship. To attack, the marshal

If a ship is tacked relative to your attacker, they are more likely to be hit, and their attacker rolls with advantage.

Ship weapons are described as normal weapons, except that they cause siege damage. 1 point of siege damage is worth 10 points of standard damage. Ships are only affected by siege damage. They have a range between 1 and 5. Their position on the ship determines their effect. The ship description determines the number of guns available.

Fore attacks can be aimed at crew members. A crew member hit will be reduced to 0 HP, however a crew member is unlikely to be hit: Number each crew member and roll 1d20. The crew member rolled is hit.

• Rams (1d8, siege, range 1, charge, fore)
• Harpoons (1d4, siege, range 1, grapple)
• Mines or greek fire (1d8, siege, range 2, aft)
• Charges (reduce speed by 1, range 2, aft)
• Short guns (1d6, siege, range 3)
• Cannon or ballista (1d8, siege, range 4)
• Long gun or catapault (1d4, siege, range 5)

Rams require the player to charge, that is to move 1 prior to making the attack. Harpoons cause a grapple effect; until action is taken to remove the bindings, the two ships are bound together.

Ships

• Name
• Description Indicate power source in here
• HP (Armour)
• Travel speed (H, C or D) Indicating half, cruise or double.
• Attack speed (d4, d6, d8)
• Fore (#) / Aft (#) / Side (#) Indicating number of guns
• Cargo (#) Indicating amount of cargo

When designing a ship, your speed determines your weight: Double speed ships are lightest: 1 weight for d8, 2 for d6 and 3 for d4, followed by cruise speed ships: 4 for d8, 5 for d6 and 6 for d4, then by half speed ships: 7 for d8, 8 for d6 and 9 for d4. Your weight determines the amount of guns and cargo you can carry, up to that number. A half speed ship with an attack speed of d4, can carry up to 6 guns (a fore, aft, and 2 on each side!), or cargo instead (a fore, aft, 1 cannon on each side and 2 cargo). A ship can mount half a set of guns on a single side, causing half damage. A ships HP is equal to its weight, x 5, and a ship can board crew up to its weight. Ships can expend a cargo for a special ability.

Travel

In your cargo, you need rations for your crew. 1 cargo holds 10 inventory slots, so 1 cargo of rations will last a crew of 10, 2 weeks.

A half speed ship travels at half speed, a cruise ship travels at normal speed, and a double speed ship travels at double speed. Unpowered ships drift at quarter speed towards the nearest planet.

Most actions taken while sailing through the aether take one day. A day proceeds as follows:

1. Expend a power, or drift.
2. The referee rolls the exploration die.
3. Expend a ration, or spend 1d6 HP.

The exploration die is a 1d6, +1 per day with no result, interpreted as follows:

1-4 Nothing happens
5-6 Aether encounter
7-8 The weather changes
9 Spells expire
10+ Shore leave required

Follow the basic procedure until each PC resolves their action, transitioning to other procedures as appropriate.

Repeat the cycle as long as the PCs are sailing in the aether.

Aetherial Weather

The lack of support for aetherial weather is a travesty, but I really can’t find anything interesting in terms of weather. I’ll pad this out later, I think, because it’s getting late.

Aetherial Encounters

There’s some weird stuff in the Clusterspace supplement that I think I’ll note: Dead rocks are asteroids of undead bound together. Gasteroids are asteroids made from flammable or fast-growth-causing gas. Iceteroids are made of ice; living asteroids are groups of psioncisists that meditated for so long that rock and ice formed around them; infinity vines are black vines that recoil from shadowstone and entangle ships; sargassos are areas where no magic functions; they usually have a visible boundary or a central beacon that they emanate from; temporal fugues distort time forward or backward; wrinkles are portals that link two places and are hard to detect; vents are one-way wrinkles. Starbeasts are iconic, and carry damned planets, they’re an excuse to include Discworld and things of that ilk in Spelljammer and we should lean into it.

Aether-faring Folk

Fascinatingly, Tanari’i first appear in a Spelljammer supplement, it seems. The idea of demonic pirates that sail the aether is compelling as hell to me. I’ve previously thought that Thri-Kreen feel out of place in Dark Sun, and AFD already has Manscorpions, so harkening Thri-Kreen back to their Green Martian origins and making them aether-faring also seems compelling to me; I’d scrap Neogi for this reason I think. Dowhar are space-faring bird-people, and if ever a bird-people belonged in AFD it’s in space, in my opinion. A great foil for the giff, which are iconic and need to be incorporated (interestingly, they only appear in realmspace); honestly I like Giff, but it’s silly considering them all warriors, they should just be space British, right? The Arcane are boring illithid-likes, and should be scrapped or should replace illithids. Illithids as an aether-faring race has always fallen flat to me, mainly because I don’t feel like they should be hanging out together, they feel like a solitary evil. I’ll have to reconsider illithids if I want to include them. Actually, more interestingly: What if Illithids and the Arcane are the same, but when Illithids aren’t exposed to aether, they become evil and in need of rescuing. That’s a hot take. That, let’s do that. Dragon-centaurs are not as cool as Draconians and are still more cool than Dragonborn, so let’s put Krynn’s draconians and put them in space. Celestial dragons are 10/10, definitely should hang out in space. Same as space whales. Maybe they can be smushed together. Krajen are tentacle-creatures that live in space, basically that thing in the Force Awakens, and yes, we obviously need a xenomorph to put in space, just like we need a predator, although I’ll have to look further afield I think to find who a predator will be.

Ok, that’s today’s thoughts on Sphereclipping. I’ll try to playtest this little board game to make sure it works well enough to throw out there, and then I’ll start work on the worldbuilding. I’m actually excited to do some worldbuilding in AFD. Thanks AFD discord for getting me excited about bonus AFD content!

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