SPELLJAMMER Explained! | D&D Lore 

Hell yeah, wizard has a sick ride lol

IIRC, it is from Space Station 13 Maybe that's how wizards break into the station and begin to wreak havok, because the station orbits near wildspace

It is SS13,...,fckn wizards ruining stuff up by turning crew into dildos.

Gotta get that tattooed with hdywtdt as the plate!

Nofatchicks is the license plate

Yes yes! I love Treasure Planet too. PERFECT example for Spelljammer.

Or wizardry 8

I literally just did that to warm up my group

@@pikminmaster2165 yeh soelljsmer if you make up you own dnd workd in the star wars glaxy

@@pikminmaster2165 did you get my rep,y that spellnjwmmer is like kf some made a dbd world imnthevstar wars glaxy

Don't forget to take your Centrum Silver or take 1 d8 back and knee psychic damage

@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD Ships cleric did a restoration. But the pills are like chips. Can't eat just one. Great heads up. Thanks. Game on.

WOTC announced they are bringing back about 3 old fan favorite settings to 5e in these next few years, so here's to hoping!

Well at least the trailer for Baldurs Gate III shows a Nautiloid so they did not forget about Spelljammer it seems.

@@Florian0799 not to mention the number of times nautiloids and spelljammer ships have popped up in the adventure modules.

John Bahamonde planescape has got to one of them

Sadly unlikely, as Diterlizzi specifically said he wasn't working with wiz on Planescape after buzz that he was; he was working with them for some random MTG thing. So they have an established business relationship and are on good terms, he's available, Planescape was visually dominated and defined by his vision, but he's not working on it. To me that means it's probable nobody is. The setting also uses alignment extensively, and 5e has deprecated that.

Starfinder is something I would recommend alongside using the Adventure Paths for beginners on both sides of the screen. At least using the APs, the rules flipping is cut down since its easier to prep for those situations.

It came just hours before I upload my own Spelljammer lore video, hahahaha.

I segest checking out MrRhexx as he has a couple hours of spelljammer content.

It didn't take off originally because it wasn't a setting in its own right. And that was an issue.

I remember an old screensaver on Spelljammer stating: D&D meets Star Trek - It is like porn for Nerds! With Baldur's Gate 3 somebody finally started copycatting those old Spelljammer adventures, so the next years may spoil another attempt by exclusively allowing toxic misanthropes to handle it.

You could probably run an entire 1-20 level campaign inside the Vodani Empire, with a bit of work.

It is part of the prime material plane, I just interpreted it like that. The Phlogiston is just weird and inaccessible except through Crystal Spheres.

It would be the first adventure supplement I'd buy from Wizards (mainly sticking with core and Unearth Arcana).

YES!!!! Omfg yes!! It really is a goddamned shame that virtually NONE of the D&Ders who started at any point after the pure kickassery that was AD&D 2ndEd. officially ended; these players will have never even heard of settings like Spelljammer, Planescape or Greyhawk (At least, I sure don't remember any 3rd or 3.5 Ed. Greyhawk content... or am I misremembering? Anyone happen to know?), and sadly even many of the old-schoolers all too often have precious little memory of Spelljammer - most remember that it was a thing back in 2nd Ed., that it was a kind of high-magic medievalesque setting in space, and that it was WEEEEIRD. And that's about where their knowledge on it stops! They're more likely to remember The Apocalypse Stone (which was kinda meant to be a figurative "Universe Eraser Button" fkr DMs who'd, for whatever reason, lost control of their games and whose players were running roughshod over it after finding some sort of overpowered exploit) Another detail most OGers tend to recall about Spelljammer is that, like Planescape - which is my personal favorite old AD&D 2ndEd. setting 😁 - it's a means for the party to venture to other campaign settings, allowing characters from Dragonlance or Dark Sun to wind up in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, etc. In my current gaming group (there are 6 of us, including me) I'm the ONLY ONE of us who now or has ever had ANY Spelljammer books, and I'm definitely the only one of us who's ever played it... On the other hand, pretty much ALL the old-schoolers I know DO fondly remember Planescape. Even if they've never actually played it they usually remember a lot of its bizarrest attributes (of which there're no shortages!). Hell, I personally find Planescape to be FAR weirder than Spelljammer... Planescape is essentially the ultimate crossover universe for all the world's religions (our world's IRL ones AND all the ones in the various settings). What REALLY bites about D&D 4th and 5th Eds. though is that, because Planescape was all but completely reliant on the old Alignment System for it to make pretty much ANY sense at all, it would be next to impossible to actually run a game in the setting without making some MAJOR House Rule adjustments first.

@@illuminocalypse5210 I am in exactly the same situation You are in My Friend. I taught My Kids with 2nd because there were so many options for settings. Now they complain that 5th is too dumbed down so We went back tp 2nd and did some Spelljamming. I never had a chance at Planescape but i would def try it.

It's coming. There's even a crashed ship in Icewind Dale, it has to be coming, lol.

I still have all of my Spelljammer books. I would lose my shit if they release 5e and would buy it all. I've been thinking about home brewing my own 5e version.

i so desperately want spelljammer for 5e. ever since watching a campaign on youtube i just...i fukin need it man

I hadnt heard of it either when we played years ago and then we found a rope ladder while traveling across the plains of greyhawk that led to a cloud high up in the sky. We all climbed up it, and we flipped to fk out. Now we own our own flying galleon and can adventure on land(planet) or out in space. WHAT AN ADVENTURE!!!! We got hooked...lol

They used that same ship in a recent adventure.

So cool!

They have put one of those types of nautiloids in Rime of the Frostmaiden.

All depends. Every setting that was a major part of Spelljammer - Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Dragonlance being the three main ones - has a sort of submetasetting in the sphere around them. Like, forgotten realms is a solar system, Toril is the third planet from the sun, and all the others are inhabited and detailed. Anadia (Anandia?) Is the closest to sun, it's hot and loaded with weird inbred sunbaked hill people halflings, there's Coliar, which is like communist star wars, with complex councils ruling everything and I think a lot of Lizardmen and aarakocra, garden, karpri, one is a big vine protected by xenophobic killer elves... I forget. Anyway, point being, in a Spelljammer campaign you are either making trips between planets in a sphere (relatively safe, not unlike sailing the ocean, visiting different continents and doing regular d&d exploring and adventuring - you're in Faerun, you do Faerun stuff. Maybe it's just LMoP.) Or OUTSIDE of a sphere, in wildspace, star trekking off into the unknown. Ship to ship battles are a thing for sure, but you can't do them too often. Disabled ships often mean a tpk out in wildspace, or if you're lucky, call the mind flayers for help. You know you messed up when it's time to voluntarily ask flayers to come get you

very cool!

Crystal spheres actually predate Dyson spheres. Look up Celestial Sphere on Wikipedia to see the spherical model of the universe that projects stars onto an invisible sphere. That mathematical concept is still used to align telescopes today (even though everyone knows it is not real). There is actually a Dyson Sphere in Spelljammer called Herdspace. You might like that.

I'm so glad!

Aha! The spelljammer port hidden in the Underdark below Waterdeep. It took me a while to find out that Forgotten Realms had put that there.

@@DavidShepheard when they say Waterdeep is The City of Splendor, they weren't kidding!

Glad you like them!

Corrections, fan added connections to Dark Sun is not canon and does not follow the lore of Dark Sun and for this reason should not be used. Including Mystara does make sense, though none of the Mystaran ships use helms. Birthright and Lankhmar could also be added, but trying to adapt Spelljamming to either setting would be difficult since neither one has Spelljammers visiting. Also demi-planes are inaccessible like Ravenloft without additional means which will also exclude most of the astral, ethereal, inner, and outer planes. Priest are not completely cut off from their deities in the phlogiston, they are extremely limited. Priests can still gain low level spells which still come directly from the powers they worship (a change from the 1st edition rules) and classes like the paladin whose powers are granted by their power (as opposed to how they are done in 5th edition) are also affected. Some powers are lost, others are reduced, while some remain unaffected.

Wow! You got the approval of Adam Miller!

@@craigtucker1290 Thri Kreen of Athas mentions Spelljammer. CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook basically says that nobody knows where the crystal sphere of Athas is, and that the Sorcerer Kings know nothing about spelljamming. So there is a canon link that Athas is part of the Spelljammer universe. But I think it would need to be discovered by players. There wouldn't be maps and charts. If anyone really wants to run a crossover game, they could use the Crimson Sphere homebrew sphere, on the official Spelljammer fansite, written by the person you are replying to. ;-) www.spelljammer.org/worlds/CrimsonSphere/ Technically, Mystara was added to the Spelljammer universe by an adventure in the First Quest boxed set. The adventure takes the PCs from Karameikos to wildspace: www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2574 It's an obscure link that even I didn't know about, but it's a canon link from the 2nd Edition era. CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook states that the Mists of Ravenloft sometimes appear in wildspace and that ships that sail into them can end up trapped in Ravenloft. One of the SJA adventures suggests to the DM that they might want to have the big bad evil guy get sucked into Ravenloft at the end of the adventure. (CGR1 does advise not doing crossover adventures between Spelljammer and Dark Sun or Ravenloft. But it does briefly show how to do them.) The planes are accessible from wildspace by canon. Wildspace and the Phlogistion are both part of the Material Plane. The Phlogision is cut off from the planes, but anything inside the crystal sphere can link to the planes using all the normal methods. By Spelljammmer canon the Pirates of Gith live in the Astrra Plane (they are githyanki) and travel to wildspace to attack spelljamming ships. They especially like elven ships, as they have the ability to move living ships between the Material Plane and the Astral Plane. (That implies that they can not move non-living ships onto the Astral Plane without other assistance.) There are a bunch of creatures from the Plane of Fire that have a hammership made from bronze that has sails made out of fire, in one of the SJR products. (They obviously could not leave their crystal sphere and go into the phlogiston, as their sails and their bodies would explode.) Lankhmar was never owned by TSR. They had a licence for it. So any "Lankhamarspace" conversion is going to be a fanon one. The same applies to Conan, which was also a 1st Edition licensed D&D setting. (Other IPs that have had official D&D products include Wilderlands, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Diablo, Warcraft and Rokugan - the Legend of the Five Rings world. You won't see anything other than fan conversions for them.) Birthright is do-able. WotC never mentions Birthright, but there is a Birthright community at The Piazza and they could help the Spelljammer community at The Piazza to work on fanon. A Blackmoor/Spelljammer crossover sphere would also be possible. Council of Wyrms could also be used, but, by CoW canon, it is set in the distant past and could not be used alongside Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace in the era of the rest of the SJ products. Jakandor could be used, but there isn't much to work with. A Night Below conversion to Spelljammer does exist: www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25389 Tale of the Comet could also be used. The mix of science fiction elements with space fantasy elements would not be something I would be interested in, but it's a valid mix and the technological stuff could be given an explanation that is more similar to the way that Eberron does things. There are a bunch of other one-shot D&D worlds that could have Spelljammer crystal spheres built around them. (Chris Perkins wrote one of those worlds for WotC and he still works for WotC, so that could be given a sidebar in a 5th Edition Spelljammer book.) I've got a topic about using Aelos, from CM6 Where Chaos Reigns, with Spelljammer, over at the Spelljammer forum: www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9420 Moving onto D&D worlds published after WotC took over D&D, the 3rd Edition OA featured a section on how to build your own campaign world. That world (Mahasarapa) was expanded in a Web Enhancement. And the Campaign Option series was revived with Ghostwalk. (The fanon name for the crystal sphere of Ghostwalk is "Manifestspace".) Eberron got a canon link to Spelljammer in the 3rd Edition product Monster Manual V, where nautiloids that could travel to other planes was used as the plot device to get Thoon from the Far Realm onto Eberron. Nentir Vale (the Points of Light world from 4th Edition) could also be used as the basis of a Spelljammer crystal sphere. I doubt that WotC would create full blown crystal spheres for all the worlds they can legally create crystal spheres for, but it would be nice if they created sidebars that listed the worlds of all of the ones they are allowed to use. If they did that the Adventurer's League team could publish adventures that expand upon that and they could be sold via DMs Guild.

No problem! I'm excited to do more with spelljammer!

Do you have that online anywhere Dex Chu朱? I always liked the Shou Lung elements in Spelljammer, but there are not enough Asian-style places for them to go to in their ships. They never really got used to best effect.

@@DavidShepheard So far it's just been a lot of cultural flavouring and description. I've compiled notes for things like the pantheon, analogous cultures, or major factions, which I'd be happy to share on google.drive. For more asian mythology inspired monsters there's the Monsters of the Orient resource off dmsguild.

Yeah I’ve found that too. There’s even a nautaloid being chased by githyanki on dragons in the bauldurs gate 3 trailer also minor spoiler for a location in the new ice wind dale rime of the frost maiden There’s even a crashed nautaloid full of gnome mindflayers with laser pistols if that’s not spelljammer then I don’t know what is!

They're also showing up in the books that add monsters such as Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes having the giff and the neogi.

This is not new. 2e and 3e Waterdeep and Undermountain have Spelljammer ships, ports, and lore.

Let's get through spelljammer first. If they can understand spelljammer they might be able to understand Dark Sun. And whatever you do don't try to spelljammer into Athas.

@ oh of course definitely dont overload them.

Come talk to the Spelljammer community, if you need inspiration to get you off the ground.

Go look up AuldDragon's Spelljammer Primer video. He has a ton of information in that. You can also visit Spelljammer: Beyond the Moons or go talk to the folks at the Spelljammer forum at The Piazza.

Spelljammer is strictly just an expansion of the prime material plane. The Phlogiston is technically a transitive plane but it is ONLY connected to the prime material plane. So in a way it's an extension of the prime.

Spelljamming allows you to move between different prime material planes, while various planar travel methods allow you to travel between planes including using them as short cuts to other prime material planes. Within a crystal sphere, you'd basically use planar rules for that setting, and outside a crystal sphere planar magic simply doesn't work. Some spheres, like Athas, may work strangely or even be locked.

Thanks guys!

@@Jorphdan Sorry, but the phlogiston is also part of the Material Plane. It is not a Transitive Plane. It's one of the few mistakes you made in your otherwise awesome video. If you check the 1e Manual of the Planes rules for weapons loosing a plus, when taken to other planes, it makes Spelljammer a way to get magic items from world to world...without loosing magical bonuses. (Later editions of D&D seem to have dropped that rule, but it seems to still be in place for the way that Jeff Grubb designed the phlogistion and crystal spheres.) 2nd Edition had Planescape, as a universal thing (although Dragonlance novels do not use the Great Wheel cosmology). 3rd Edition stepped away from that a bit, with Forgotten Realms getting a bit of a rebooted cosmology. 4th Edition rebooted things a bit more. The 5th Edition mantra on this, from shows like Dragon Talk, seems to be that all of these different interpretations of the planes are equally valid (so if you believe that the Great Wheel exists and try to navigate via that model of the universe, you will find places you are looking for). From a Planescape point of view, each setting has a fixed size (the size of the crystal sphere) and planewalkers going to that setting have to hit a target somewhere within that sphere. But mostly planewalkers seem to want to arrive on planets, rather than in wildspace. If there are a number of celestial bodies in a crystal sphere a planewalker might theoretically want to go to any of them. There are fire elementals that have moved onto the surfaces of some suns and fire planets, for example. There is even a bronze hammership, with sails made from fire that is crewed by Azer. (Obviously that ship could not go to the phlogistion, without everyone dying.)

@@DavidShepheard Planescape, which replaced Spelljammer, does use the the similar rules for losing enchantment as you move magical items away from the plane of creation. However, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms are on the prime material plane so they do not lose enchantments when shifted from one setting to another. Even if you use the ethereal plane to get from one setting to the next, the loss is only temporary and the item reverts back to normal when back on the prime material plane. It should also be noted that the phlogiston does not cut one completely off from the powers, it is still possible to get low level spells and retain some granted powers while other granted powers may be diminished or lost as in the case of paladins. Since this was never developed further in the case of specialty priest with granted powers similar to paladins, it would be very subjective what would be affected and what wouldn't be affected, but you could use the paladin modifications as a guide.

...and let's not forget the Artifact Helm and Forge Helm....but that'll probably be covered in the video about travel next time. :)

@@Doughy_in_the_Middle Yeah, the artifurnace is a good one. Lifejammers are my favorite alternate helm as a DM. Hueh hueh hueh.

@@AuntieHauntieGames most nautiloids actually use series helms, not spelljamming helms. pool helms are primarily (maybe exclusively) used on illithid dreadnaughts, as I recall.

@@sharkforce8147 Good catch! I was misremembering the series helm as a type of major helm. Quick read through of the ol' Concordance of Arcane Space shows you are correct. :)