Spelljammer coming for 5e!!!!!!

[Kthulhu]

Starjammer's biggest problem was that once it was created, most of the TSR people viewed it as less of a setting in it's own right and more of a way for characters to move between the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk. The same thing could be said of Planescape, albeit not to the same extent that it was true for Spelljammer.

memorax - I don't see why having a planet of tarrasques is inherently a problem.

[JoeJ]

Jeven wrote:

Spelljammer had its good points and its bad points.

The bad was that they completely threw all science out of the window. So every solar system was contained in a giant crystal sphere surrounded by whirling multicolored mists, and planetary environments were pretty nonsensical, e.g. a planet's distance from the sun had no bearing.

To me, that was a plus. A standard D&D world has to be operating on different physics anyway, just to allow rocs to fly and giant spiders to walk. So why not run with that idea and divorce space travel completely from the science of our universe?

[Jeven]

JoeJ wrote:

Jeven wrote:

Spelljammer had its good points and its bad points.

The bad was that they completely threw all science out of the window. So every solar system was contained in a giant crystal sphere surrounded by whirling multicolored mists, and planetary environments were pretty nonsensical, e.g. a planet's distance from the sun had no bearing.

To me, that was a plus. A standard D&D world has to be operating on different physics anyway, just to allow rocs to fly and giant spiders to walk. So why not run with that idea and divorce space travel completely from the science of our universe?

That's really what the planes are for and Planescape did that brilliantly.

The Material World is sort-of the real universe with magic. So Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk are basically normal planets (with all the normal assumptions of Earth - gravity, simple flora and fauna, weather, seasons, time) infused with magical energies. The crystal spheres and phlogiston(?) of Spelljammer were a bit unnecessary -- they could still have had the phlogiston but as another plane accessed with gates like Babylon5's hyperspace instead.