Spelljammer is one of my favorite D&D settings. I lived in a rural area and had no one to play with, but I'd bought the D&D box sets (Basic through Immortal) and even though Spelljammer was AD&D it spoke to me. I had to have it. I bought the box set as soon as I could and just fell in love with it. It was just such a wonderful mix of fantasy and space and weird. :D I loved using the random tables to create planets.
The way I would be doing my piloting in Spelljamer is akin to the system in Starfinder: - the person with the most spell levels is the pilot, - the person with the highest charisma is the captain (or inspiration) - the person with the highest dexterity is the engineer or the person who fixes the ship - and the person with the highest strength modifier is the weapons officer
wouldn't you want whoever has the highest *intelligence* on engineer duty? i'd imagine intelligence would be a fair bit more important for that kind of work
I dislike that you need to be a spellcaster to pilot the ships. What if your party is alle melee based, they can't use these ships. Going to homebrew that...
There was a small bit of Ravenloft, individually dedicated to Vecna and Kas. This was mentioned in his Ravenloft: Vecna Reborn video. But yeah, a full video dedicated to the Domains of Dread would be awesome.
I would recommend anyone who wants in depth Ravenloft content to check out "Hour of the Raven" on youtube. It is a small channel that deserves a lot more views.
Having played the old stuff 25 years or so ago, it sounds like you have it pretty close. It was an interesting setting, and we had some epic stuff happen amongst my friends that is still referenced today. Keep up the great work.
I was running through these videos because I'm about to run Rime of the Frost Maiden, and thought "my group is the type that's going to wind up flying off in a crashed space ship". Thanks for great content.
Back in 2e I ran 3 different campaigns that each became Spelljammer campaigns. One of them was a 1-player 1-DM campaign intended to be a Spelljammer campaign from the beginning and drew heavily on the Spelljammer novels for inspiration (although it didn't have any of the same characters and the spheres where it started and where the PC visited were completely different from in the books, I used the basics of the plot and some of the encounters and NPCs were inspired by things from the novels: for example, it started with the PC at 1st level witnessing a spelljammer ship crash, accidentally claiming an ultimate helm from the wreckage, and then being hunted by various groups seeking the helm). The other 2 campaigns just eventually became Spelljammer campaigns when the characters gradually grew too powerful and wealthy for the standard adventures on Faerun to hold as much interest as they once did. What's a great way to remove a lot of wealth from bored PCs? Introduce them to the galaxy of spelljamming adventures, and get them to buy an expensive ship and helm to go seeking out the wonders (and dangers) of space and other campaign worlds! While you can absolutely run a good Spelljammer campaign at any level, that's kind of what the Spelljammer campaign was originally intended for: bored high-level groups with lots of gold and magic who want new and completely different adventures.
Used to have a blast with the old 2nd edition spelljammer. My first d&d character was a minotaur in a homebrew setting. My buddy was the dm basically playing as a half drow. Back then, the rules said a minotaur was either born as one, or cursed. We ended up deciding mine was cursed, and after a long campaign he broke his curse, and went back to being a half elf. After much more playing, we didn't know what to do with him, so my friend introduced me to being the dm, and went into spelljammer. His half drew, ended up as the captain of the spelljammer, and I gave him the "smalljammer" ending of that story, and we ended up taking those characters into becoming gods.
Playing Wildspace is one of my favorite gaming memories. Our party had no idea what we were walking into. It was right around the release and we were clueless about SpellJammer. So much mayhem ensued.
I really like spelljammer as a campaign setting. I feel like it makes the outer planes more accessible to low level play without a super powerful wizard creating an arcane gate for the players, although that could still be an option.
Thank you for the SJ (albeit homebrew) rules. I played a SJ campaign back in the early 90s and loved it! We used Wild Space as our opening adventure. I recommend it. For the life of me I do not understand why WotC hasn't produced a setting book for this. Would you consider developing a short adventure using your 5e homebrew rules for us to get started?
Geez my poor brain. Off the bow of your ship. You hear the rumble of a engine. And maybe as if on the wind, the sound of laughter. From the wreckage busts the helm of the ship, rigged to a engine. And a cannon. Like a earth motorcycle. "Hands at the ready! Seems we still have some fight in this one!" Comes from the captain.
Another good possible set of rules to kitbash in would be the Pirate Compendium rules from Legendary Games. My group has been using them for awhile now for regular high seas adventures and are about to take a whack at using them in Spelljammer. So far, they look like a good fit.
I'm aware of three 5E Spelljammer conversions, aside from Jorphdan's. The first two are pretty straightforward adaptations of the original material. They're well-written and useful. "Spelljammer Companion" by "Ubiquity": www.gmbinder.com/share/-LBaY4l6HcR4M-sItfl_ "Spelljammer: 5E D&D Adventures in Space by Robert Lyons and Nicholas Pavlinsky: homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyJ66oDoX And the one I like the most (because I wrote it with the help of the other folks at the Tales from the Glass-Guarded World podcast): "Spelljammer 5E 'Theater of the Mind' Ship Combat Rules": traffic.libsyn.com/secure/tftggw/TFTGGW_Spelljammer_5E_Rules_Version_1.0.pdf Our ship combat rules are designed to be played without a map, and use game mechanics pretty similar to the heavy reliance on skills that Jorphdan talks about in the video. We give every player interesting actions for their character, and provide stats for ships and even some sample crews for the players to fight. We'll be using them extensively in the current season of our podcast, especially from episode 101 onward. If you give them a try, we'd appreciate any feedback and suggestions at tftggw @ gmail.com.
I’m doing a homebrew space campaign where I’m trying some meta stuff about the nature of the unknown, exploration, and there always being something more powerful. These rules seem really good for such a campaign!
My spelljammer quest is a regular sailing ship is asking for crew members and resupply the players agree they set sail wile on the water after leaveing port the ship starts going into the sky!!! The captain has shanghied them and there part of his spelljammer crew! He keeps them on the ship wirh promises of treasure and adventure!
Performance to assist with a critical syncronized timing task just like sea shanties keep rowing in sync. Like getting two engine cycles synced via massive cranks.
Once again, great video! im excited to check out your 5e adaptation. Also, please mention Large Luigi the beholder in one of these, he's the single greatest canon dnd character.
Turns out the next sourcebook is Ravenloft, but there's always hope. Hints of Nautoiloids in Volo's, Giffs in Mordernkaiden's, and two vehicle rules in Saltmash and Descent into Avernus. Not to mention, psionic fighters in Tasha's!
@@ivanivan744 the lead of D&D confirmed that there are two more revisit campaign books in the works so definitely still some hope, wondering what the third one will be, greyhawk could be fun to try and update as well.
My Drow Campaign where they found a Spelljammer outside Skullport has turned into them wanting to find out more about a necophage that is running amok in the goblinoid races.
Haha, it's interesting that XPtoLvl3 also said that the Saltmarsh boat rules are not that great and you should use the Avernus Machine rules instead. And now you say the same. I believed it was a "correct" opinion but now you solidified it and I'll have to check out the Avernus book :)
Consider this: What kind of Spelljammer would a Hag build if they got their hands on the knowledge of how to build a Spelljammer Helm.... (Could be an interesting Alternative to the other Spelljammer Helms as odds are the Hags would design them to have some horrendous cost to use when made for those outside the coven....) Space Hags would probably have suitably weird and scary looking Spelljammers too... Looking like animal skulls, or giant hand shaped dead trees....
For the people HP vs Hull HP, why not use Damage Threshold like other vehicles seem to have done before? Also I've always kinda wanted to experiment on using that mechanic for Gargantuan and Colossal creatures. Like, having it so the colossal Elder Red Dragon is immune to nonmagical weapons, except for siege weapons, but also has a Damage Threshold of 10 or 15
You are really making want to play a spelljammer campaign. Is it possible for you to make a publishing history for all the realms? The history of how dragon lance, eberron or forgotten realms came to be, their importance, the edition where they were played, etc.
There is the Helm of the Scavenger legendary item in 5e adventure Dungeon of the Mad Mage, wouldn't that be of help in creating the spelljamming rules for 5e?
The only trouble I've had is establishing the Str/Con/Dex values for the ships. I want the players to be able to upgrade the ships, so those values have to be tied to ability scores, just like in DiA. Dex I was doing based on MC, looks like it works well enough. Str makes sense to be based on tonnage, since tonnage is a measure of mass/volume in Spelljammer. But then Con is not affecting health, since 2e uses the tonnage to equal the hull points and air and crew capacities of the ship. I was thinking Con affects the AC DT and MT, while Str affected the hull etc, but it feels weird
Any chance of getting your Spelljammer document on DMsGuild/DriveThruRPG? I'd love to have it with my other content, with filtering for updated since last downloaded.
Personally, I'm only interested in the theater-of-the-mind aspect of Spelljammer. I want to design a ship, arm it, crew it, and sail it to different locations. I'm not interested in the battle simulator aspect of the old rules. I hope they focus on role-playing if they release this as one of the new settings.
@@Jorphdan whoa! a youtube sage responded to my comment. my kids will be impressed. i just meant when you flip through the books, would be neat to include Tasha now. :P
one of the polyhedron magazines back in the day had 3.x rules (also a setting, although the setting was *definitely* not the same as "standard" spelljammer, and they had made some changes from AD&D 2nd spelljammer if that matters to you). can't remember if it was 3.0 or 3.5 though. it came with some new paper ship models you could use, which was a nice throwback to the old boxed sets :) some quick googling suggests issue #151 is the one you're looking for.
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Hexagon are the best-agons
Spelljammer is one of my favorite D&D settings. I lived in a rural area and had no one to play with, but I'd bought the D&D box sets (Basic through Immortal) and even though Spelljammer was AD&D it spoke to me. I had to have it. I bought the box set as soon as I could and just fell in love with it. It was just such a wonderful mix of fantasy and space and weird. :D I loved using the random tables to create planets.
The way I would be doing my piloting in Spelljamer is akin to the system in Starfinder:
- the person with the most spell levels is the pilot,
- the person with the highest charisma is the captain (or inspiration)
- the person with the highest dexterity is the engineer or the person who fixes the ship
- and the person with the highest strength modifier is the weapons officer
wouldn't you want whoever has the highest *intelligence* on engineer duty? i'd imagine intelligence would be a fair bit more important for that kind of work
I dislike that you need to be a spellcaster to pilot the ships. What if your party is alle melee based, they can't use these ships. Going to homebrew that...
You need to do a series like this but for each of the Domains of Dread!!! Hey, Ravenloft... it's not just for Halloween anymore!
100% agree
There was a small bit of Ravenloft, individually dedicated to Vecna and Kas. This was mentioned in his Ravenloft: Vecna Reborn video.
But yeah, a full video dedicated to the Domains of Dread would be awesome.
I would recommend anyone who wants in depth Ravenloft content to check out "Hour of the Raven" on youtube. It is a small channel that deserves a lot more views.
@@B3nKen0bi That's the tip of the iceberg for the domains.
Very happy to return to this video now that the official WotC rules for Spelljammer were released and turned out to be insufficient.
I've been attempting to port Planescape over to 5e, and was going to work on Spelljammer after. Thanks for making this.
www.dropbox.com/s/he7b9dalo03whxp/Spelljammer%205e%20Homebrew%20Conversion%20_%20GM%20Binder.pdf?dl=0 This Should Help
Loving the spelljammer content. Hopefully with Baldurs Gate 3 out there will be more general interest in the setting.
Having played the old stuff 25 years or so ago, it sounds like you have it pretty close. It was an interesting setting, and we had some epic stuff happen amongst my friends that is still referenced today. Keep up the great work.
HEXAGONS ARE THE BESTAGONS!!! Shoutout to CGP Grey :)
I was wondering about that :) lol.
I was running through these videos because I'm about to run Rime of the Frost Maiden, and thought "my group is the type that's going to wind up flying off in a crashed space ship".
Thanks for great content.
Back in 2e I ran 3 different campaigns that each became Spelljammer campaigns. One of them was a 1-player 1-DM campaign intended to be a Spelljammer campaign from the beginning and drew heavily on the Spelljammer novels for inspiration (although it didn't have any of the same characters and the spheres where it started and where the PC visited were completely different from in the books, I used the basics of the plot and some of the encounters and NPCs were inspired by things from the novels: for example, it started with the PC at 1st level witnessing a spelljammer ship crash, accidentally claiming an ultimate helm from the wreckage, and then being hunted by various groups seeking the helm).
The other 2 campaigns just eventually became Spelljammer campaigns when the characters gradually grew too powerful and wealthy for the standard adventures on Faerun to hold as much interest as they once did. What's a great way to remove a lot of wealth from bored PCs? Introduce them to the galaxy of spelljamming adventures, and get them to buy an expensive ship and helm to go seeking out the wonders (and dangers) of space and other campaign worlds! While you can absolutely run a good Spelljammer campaign at any level, that's kind of what the Spelljammer campaign was originally intended for: bored high-level groups with lots of gold and magic who want new and completely different adventures.
Y'know, I've wondered about combining Spelljammer with Eberron; people building Siberis dragonshard-powered ships to explore the Moons of Eberron...
The creator of Eberron (Keith Baker) actually made 2 blog posts about this very idea! I believe they are both actually called Moons of Eberron
Amazing how this covers basically everything in the actual Spelljammer rules published.
Hi, I’m from the future! SPELLJAMMER is actually back! Wotc released a 5e edition!
🧠🤯🤯🤯
Used to have a blast with the old 2nd edition spelljammer. My first d&d character was a minotaur in a homebrew setting. My buddy was the dm basically playing as a half drow. Back then, the rules said a minotaur was either born as one, or cursed. We ended up deciding mine was cursed, and after a long campaign he broke his curse, and went back to being a half elf. After much more playing, we didn't know what to do with him, so my friend introduced me to being the dm, and went into spelljammer. His half drew, ended up as the captain of the spelljammer, and I gave him the "smalljammer" ending of that story, and we ended up taking those characters into becoming gods.
I still play 2E, and I'm considering adding Spelljammer elements to my current campaign. This video series has been very inspiring.
Nice to see people playing spelljammer jn 5e. Been running it for a year or so & its been my favourite thing ever, ever ever
Also I can almost hear Rod Serling. “Consider this.”
Playing Wildspace is one of my favorite gaming memories. Our party had no idea what we were walking into. It was right around the release and we were clueless about SpellJammer. So much mayhem ensued.
I really like spelljammer as a campaign setting. I feel like it makes the outer planes more accessible to low level play without a super powerful wizard creating an arcane gate for the players, although that could still be an option.
Spelljammer really doesn't have anything to do with the outer planes tho.
Thank you for the SJ (albeit homebrew) rules. I played a SJ campaign back in the early 90s and loved it! We used Wild Space as our opening adventure. I recommend it. For the life of me I do not understand why WotC hasn't produced a setting book for this. Would you consider developing a short adventure using your 5e homebrew rules for us to get started?
exactly what i'm doing now, working on adventure after events of ToA which will continue the hunt on Acererak
Geez my poor brain.
Off the bow of your ship. You hear the rumble of a engine. And maybe as if on the wind, the sound of laughter. From the wreckage busts the helm of the ship, rigged to a engine. And a cannon. Like a earth motorcycle.
"Hands at the ready! Seems we still have some fight in this one!"
Comes from the captain.
Another good possible set of rules to kitbash in would be the Pirate Compendium rules from Legendary Games. My group has been using them for awhile now for regular high seas adventures and are about to take a whack at using them in Spelljammer. So far, they look like a good fit.
OMG yes! Loving the Spelljammer content, this is so cool
I'm aware of three 5E Spelljammer conversions, aside from Jorphdan's. The first two are pretty straightforward adaptations of the original material. They're well-written and useful.
"Spelljammer Companion" by "Ubiquity": www.gmbinder.com/share/-LBaY4l6HcR4M-sItfl_
"Spelljammer: 5E D&D Adventures in Space by Robert Lyons and Nicholas Pavlinsky: homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyJ66oDoX
And the one I like the most (because I wrote it with the help of the other folks at the Tales from the Glass-Guarded World podcast):
"Spelljammer 5E 'Theater of the Mind' Ship Combat Rules": traffic.libsyn.com/secure/tftggw/TFTGGW_Spelljammer_5E_Rules_Version_1.0.pdf
Our ship combat rules are designed to be played without a map, and use game mechanics pretty similar to the heavy reliance on skills that Jorphdan talks about in the video. We give every player interesting actions for their character, and provide stats for ships and even some sample crews for the players to fight. We'll be using them extensively in the current season of our podcast, especially from episode 101 onward.
If you give them a try, we'd appreciate any feedback and suggestions at tftggw @ gmail.com.
I like what you got going with your Spelljammer rules so far.
I’m doing a homebrew space campaign where I’m trying some meta stuff about the nature of the unknown, exploration, and there always being something more powerful. These rules seem really good for such a campaign!
nice!
Thanks for doing this! Will probably use a few of these ideas in our 5e campaign! :)
Thanks for sharing your conversion with us.
My spelljammer quest is a regular sailing ship is asking for crew members and resupply the players agree they set sail wile on the water after leaveing port the ship starts going into the sky!!! The captain has shanghied them and there part of his spelljammer crew! He keeps them on the ship wirh promises of treasure and adventure!
Performance to assist with a critical syncronized timing task just like sea shanties keep rowing in sync. Like getting two engine cycles synced via massive cranks.
Once again, great video! im excited to check out your 5e adaptation. Also, please mention Large Luigi the beholder in one of these, he's the single greatest canon dnd character.
Isn't this the rumor for the next campaign book?
Turns out the next sourcebook is Ravenloft, but there's always hope. Hints of Nautoiloids in Volo's, Giffs in Mordernkaiden's, and two vehicle rules in Saltmash and Descent into Avernus. Not to mention, psionic fighters in Tasha's!
@@ivanivan744 the lead of D&D confirmed that there are two more revisit campaign books in the works so definitely still some hope, wondering what the third one will be, greyhawk could be fun to try and update as well.
My Drow Campaign where they found a Spelljammer outside Skullport has turned into them wanting to find out more about a necophage that is running amok in the goblinoid races.
Haha, it's interesting that XPtoLvl3 also said that the Saltmarsh boat rules are not that great and you should use the Avernus Machine rules instead. And now you say the same. I believed it was a "correct" opinion but now you solidified it and I'll have to check out the Avernus book :)
Thank you for this series Jorfdan.
Thanks for watching!
Just got recommended this vid after checking out the new spelljammer stuff announced for 5e
Consider this: What kind of Spelljammer would a Hag build if they got their hands on the knowledge of how to build a Spelljammer Helm.... (Could be an interesting Alternative to the other Spelljammer Helms as odds are the Hags would design them to have some horrendous cost to use when made for those outside the coven....)
Space Hags would probably have suitably weird and scary looking Spelljammers too... Looking like animal skulls, or giant hand shaped dead trees....
Great concept, keep up the 👍 good work.
YAY Just what I needed!
This campaign reminds me of two things from media, the Visionaries cartoon from the 80's and Brian Griffin's Space Shire 7 idea
See, I was already thinking about how 5e's Infernal Machine rules could add to Spelljammer, but I was thinking of Soul Coin-op ships.
“Lady. I love space. I know! Spell it! S P... AACE. Space. Space."
For the people HP vs Hull HP, why not use Damage Threshold like other vehicles seem to have done before? Also I've always kinda wanted to experiment on using that mechanic for Gargantuan and Colossal creatures. Like, having it so the colossal Elder Red Dragon is immune to nonmagical weapons, except for siege weapons, but also has a Damage Threshold of 10 or 15
My Dm had us go through Strad in space. Strands flying castle in spelljammer around torel
You are really making want to play a spelljammer campaign.
Is it possible for you to make a publishing history for all the realms? The history of how dragon lance, eberron or forgotten realms came to be, their importance, the edition where they were played, etc.
There is the Helm of the Scavenger legendary item in 5e adventure Dungeon of the Mad Mage, wouldn't that be of help in creating the spelljamming rules for 5e?
A Jorphdan space core that loves Forgotten Realms.
"Faerun. Faerun. You want to know about Faerun?
faaaaaaeeeruuunnn."
A day in the Spell Corps is like a day on the farm: Every meal's a banquet. Every paycheck's a fortune! Every formation's a parade! I love the Corps!
The only trouble I've had is establishing the Str/Con/Dex values for the ships.
I want the players to be able to upgrade the ships, so those values have to be tied to ability scores, just like in DiA.
Dex I was doing based on MC, looks like it works well enough.
Str makes sense to be based on tonnage, since tonnage is a measure of mass/volume in Spelljammer.
But then Con is not affecting health, since 2e uses the tonnage to equal the hull points and air and crew capacities of the ship.
I was thinking Con affects the AC DT and MT, while Str affected the hull etc, but it feels weird
@0:00 is that the intro music to "The Thing" during your video's intro? Your icewind dale is showing, boss
Can't wait for skill challenges! Would you ever consider using a spell surge to increase turning speed?
Yes! Your movement allows you to turn so I intended for it to help turning.
@@Jorphdan Thank you! I love your work
I needed this
Im sick of FR and no one wants to play in Eberron
Hexagons are indeed bestigons, Tim!
2:20 Or maybe someone unleashed the Terrasque and you have to stop it or something crazy like that.
This is amazing thank you!!
Glad you like it!
When Spelljammer actually got in 5e. The unlikely happened.
Does the silent PH in Jorphdan stand for players handbook?
I think its Dr Jordan..?
i wish you talked about Dongen of the mad mage, as it has rules for spell jammers.
Any chance of getting your Spelljammer document on DMsGuild/DriveThruRPG?
I'd love to have it with my other content, with filtering for updated since last downloaded.
Hello from the phuture, where the "PH" is out loud!
Personally, I'm only interested in the theater-of-the-mind aspect of Spelljammer. I want to design a ship, arm it, crew it, and sail it to different locations. I'm not interested in the battle simulator aspect of the old rules. I hope they focus on role-playing if they release this as one of the new settings.
Hey Jorphdan is the Skill Challenge video out yet ?
YoHoHo and a bottle of space-rum.
Great video!
Thanks!
Great videos! And also good twist on the rules, you should try to post your version on r/spelljammer if u haven't already
Hexagons are infact the bestagons
1:19 Asking the real questions over here.
I wonder how close your homebrew will be to the official Spelljammer rules. I'm sure we're both excited to find out.
Oh no
I would like it to be known that there is a site spelljammer.org that converts from ADnD2 to 3rd edition if you want to check that out for reference.
He likes it Mikey he really likes it.
I would prefer conversion to 3.5 ed. but thank you very much for that video series
I have been waiting for this video so anxiously
There is only one way to play Spelljammer and it involves killer klowns!
Would knowledge of the ages work for ship repair
So spelljammer would be the best setting for a One Piece style of campaign?
Very nice
Interesting idea
I wanna see you dm and or play a spelljammer campaign like you do for rod of the seven parts over on teds channel
The @CPGrey shout out lol
it's just a fact, they are the bestagons!
Have you ever thought of talking about Theros?
I touched on it here, before the supplement was released.
ruclips.net/video/fSSo-Gxghzk/видео.html
@@Jorphdan Sorry my mistake.
I heard that chuckle when suggesting bards could inspire the crew...just sayin.
When are we gonna start seeing Tasha's in your outro?
I recently updated the outro! Do you mean a linked video or her face in the background?
@@Jorphdan whoa! a youtube sage responded to my comment. my kids will be impressed. i just meant when you flip through the books, would be neat to include Tasha now. :P
I wish I lived in the future.
Future me, enjoy the next video 🤘
Thanks past me! I'm about to watch it right now 🤘
Doesn't the caster on the helm lose most of their spell slots?
I'm surprised that 5e has a spelljammer helm and a mythallar.
So where's playing Sspelljammer with 3.5?
one of the polyhedron magazines back in the day had 3.x rules (also a setting, although the setting was *definitely* not the same as "standard" spelljammer, and they had made some changes from AD&D 2nd spelljammer if that matters to you). can't remember if it was 3.0 or 3.5 though. it came with some new paper ship models you could use, which was a nice throwback to the old boxed sets :)
some quick googling suggests issue #151 is the one you're looking for.
You don't say doobleedoo anymore? 😢
I should get back to that :D
oh no, I don't live in the future
When I don't live in the future 😔
Anyone wanna go Tinker Gnome hunting?
I hate skill challenges as written. It's too arbitrary and feels real video-gamey.