I decided to read through all of the supplements and write down the compelling stuff that I’ll riff on for the zine:

Random thoughts

• From the Complete Spacefarer’s Handbook:
  • Groundling is a great name for non-aether-farers
  • Krynn has a spacefaring population: Draconians and Krynn minotaurs.
  • Gnomes make clockwork ships 10/10
  • An Egyptian god, Ptah, has gotten loose in space and has a fanatical monotheistic cult now. 10/10.
  • Smith’s Coster is a trading company; Gaspar Reclamations is a magical artefact locating company
• Practical Planetology is a bust, except:
  • Planets are split into elements, which means there’s an interesting thing there where I could use pseudoelements and have them substitute for the elemental planes too, just like phlogiston is substiuting for ethereal plane now. It’s a neat way to excise the planar structure at make room for Spelljammer, while leaving space for Planescape setting supplements later than centre around heavens and hells and sigil in particular.
• Legend of Spelljammer is a bust, too, although this big Spelljammer is a cool location that might be a fun module
  • The acknowledgements all get nicknames Steve “Old Man” Winter etc. I should do this for AFD.
• Setting-specific Supplements (I’ll do all three of these at once)
  • It’s weird to imagine that every setting has a solar system with active politics to me. Not a good idea.
  • Literally nothing interesting in Greyspace for me
  • Love that Elminster has a space hideout
  • Love that there are inhabitants of the sun in Krynnspace, efreet and “helians”. Krynnspace really doubles down on the elementals in space theme.
  • The fact the planets in Krynn are gods on Krynn seems like a massive missed opportunity to include starbeasts or something weirder like living planets
  • Asteroids connected by magical glowing ribbons of light you can walk on is also an exceptional idea
  • So are black clouds, the essence of evil people who died in wildspace. Cool weather idea.
  • Honestly why is Krynnspace so much better than the other two hahaha

System generation

Spelljammer really wants to be Traveller, or at least lacks the imagination to be something else; it’s super concerned with creating a realistic solar system, but does this less elegantly than Traveller did a decade earlier. More interesting than adapting that is probably to actually map out a solar system with all our faux 2nd edition settings assigned to planets, come up with a random encounter table that with perhaps a unique entry depending on the planet you’re closest to, and stick a bunch of these cool spacey locations in it.

Other supplements for Spelljamner

I don’t really want to read the modules, and aside from them I’ve read everything now. I’m writing a zine, not a line. There are some things in Spelljammer I’m going to steer clear of, mainly because they’re boring:

• Common heritages that occur on major planets (elves and stuff)
• Star trek analogues in space. I can’t imagine making the space viewer work for example, without making it the center of gameplay in a way I’m not really interested in.

And things I’m going to lean into:

• Swashbuckling
• Pirates
• Evil British
• Popular science fiction analogues like Alien, Predator
• Cool space scenery
• Using space as a way to incorporate some of the harder to conceptualise planar lore, like elemental planes and ethereal planes, leaving astral planes and the heavens and hells for the planescape zine
• If there’s not evil space-monks with light swords I’ve failed Spelljammer, really, haven’t I?

Ok, so my to do list is:

• Example ship list with cool captains
• Solar system
• Bestiary
• Heritages
• Playtest the combat rules

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