bitches be like âthis is my comfort showâ and itâs a show about a bunch of gay kids with daddy issues running around killing monsters from a different dimension.
with the DnD Spelljammer setting finally releasing it's 5e conversation this month, I've decided to spruce up and share a page that's been invaluable to me over the years: a set of tables for DMs to help create solar systems and planets.
Spelljammer is coming out soon, do you have any adventure ideas for Spelljammer? Or at least some open sea adventures you have that we could reflavor appropriately ?
Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming
Itâs been a while since I penned my initial thoughts on sailing the astral sea, and since that time, a few things have changed:
WoTC revived the setting with kickass art and not much else, disappointing just about the entire fandom and yet again requiring us the players to do the design work for them.
I binged all of @dimension20officialâs âA Starstruck Odysseyâ, which not only got me really hype to run a space game but showed me a mechanical basis on which it could function ( seriously friends, go watch Starstruck)
 My Friend group decided to rewatch Treasure Planet, one of the formative pillars of my love of fantasy, and it got me thinking about how amazing the concept of space-pirate-fantasy is. I am and always will be a slut for cosmic wonder and thereâs just something about the combination of these concepts that makes my brain come alive.
And so, Iâve decided to take a crack at overhauling Spelljammer, partially to bring it in line with my own version of the d&d cosmos and partially because as a game designer I canât help but stare at all the negative space WotC gave us and imagine various possibilities. Mineâs not going to be a be all end all, and just like every homebrew fix I encourage you to look at different options until you find one that feels right to you and your table.
Now, below the cut Iâm going to go into things about the spelljammer setting and specific mechanics I think will be useful, but before I do Iâm going to give you folks a little preview of my opinions by going off on a meaningless tangent:
WHY THE HELL ARE SPELLJAMMING HELMS CHAIRS? No really, think about it. Apart from the fact that âHelmâ specifically refers to the wheel and steering apparatus of a ship, the fantasy that spelljammer is supposed to be pulling from is nautical adventure; steely eyed captains masterfully piloting their vessels along the edge of a storm, the ship and their body pulling as one against the elements. The decision to make the helms chairs that channel magic rather than a wheel that requires sill turns the act of cruising through the cosmos into a mostly passive act, which I suppose mirrors the design decision to not actually require any input on the part of the jammerâs crew in order to sail it. Itâs not even that the designers were trying to emulate other popular sci-fi properties like starwars/trek, because despite the fact that people sit down while piloting in those settings, ships have an entire crew manning different stations and doing things. Itâs almost like in trying to simplify a complicated game system, WotC decided that it would be better to remove ANY chance at interesting gameplay rather than put out a rules system that wouldnât please everyone.
First off, I have to plug SW5E, The Dimension 20 crew used it as the architecture for their space game and after multiple hours of stress testing I couldnât be more impressed. All the info is available for free online, and the more I dig into it, the more genius I find it:
Characters are given a second âdeploymentâ class, which represents their position on the ship and the actions they can take in ship to ship combat. This not only means that ship to ship combat can actually happen ( unlike the limp pre-boarding actions of default spelljammer), but they get a chance to grow and customize their character. These deployments are synergistic with how their mechanics work, facilitating a feeling that the crew is actually working together.
Lost of gear and upgrades for ships, which make a great resource sync for a mid to high level party thatâs sorely lacking in default d&d.
A well fleshed out âpowerâ system for the engineer to tinker with. Iâve had lots of players whoâve wanted to fulfill this role before but Iâve never seen a better version of it in numerous other space games.
Actual timeframes for how long it takes to get places at both impulse and warp speed to provide a guideline for narration and adventure building
An actual navigation system for ships thatâs so good Iâm considering backwards engineering it into regular exploration rules. Simple enough to breeze over in non-hostile situations but perfectly tuned to be a centerpoint of mid combat drama for those characters who want to do more than shoot things.
A mechanical tug of war: Apart from other controversies with Spelljammerâs release ( which Iâm not going to get into here), the main problem is that the audience for d&d has grown so large that theyâre never going to be happy with one level of complexity. On one hand you have a casual audience whoâs entertained with doing the yearly cinematic adventure module, and standing on the exact opposite side of the room from them are the people who are furious they didnât get an update to the super clunky rules from 2nd edition. Between them are the ACTUAL core d&d audience, people who are into the game enough to want some mechanical complexity but not so much that they want their enjoyment of things choked out by having to refer to a chart every 10 minutes.
In my personal opinion, we are best served by remembering that 5e was built on the idea of having a streamlined core system into which rules modules ( which would hopefully be equally streamlined) could be slotted, dialing up focus and complexity as needed depending on the different campaigns you ran. 5e was never meant to be a comprehensive ruleset, and even if WotC has forgotten to do the actual work, we the audience can kitbash something together to get the game the way we want it.... not that we should actually have to.Â
Itâs not space, and thatâs the point: what makes the spelljammer setting so interesting is that itâs a radical departure from most other ârealisticâ scifi settings out there. It harkens back to Flash Gordon, Jules Verne, and Edger Rice Boroughs, the things that inspired starwars and the original d&d. Planets that are the forgotten colonies of long vanished empires, mad tyrants ruling haunted moons, smuggler ports built into asteroid fields, all these things are shlocky, pulpy, and/or campy as hell and we should lean into that when weâre considering spelljammer adventures in the future. Personally I canât even think about the name without imagining vast reaches of stars and nebula matter resounding with the sounds of a sickass 80s inspired guitar solo. Where I think the reboot fails conceptually is that itâs ossified: the same weird but not too weird iconography and alien species from the original publishing without daring to make it any more wild. Iâve been hearing about the gun hippos since I got into the hobby 20 years ago, theyâve surely had more interesting ideas since then, right?
Hereâs some kitchen sink ideas to help make your wildspace a little more wild:
 Itâs not a lack of air thatâll kill you in the astral sea, itâs a lack of coherence. If the astral sea is the realm of dreams and thought from which gods and worlds are born, itâs safe to say that the major threat to travellers isnât the cold vacuum weâd expect from our own off-planet adventures. Instead, prolonged exposure to the astral risks a character becoming less and less real, slowly hollowed out into a barely-there concept of their former self. Ships, celestial bodies, and void suits assert a degree of reality in the space around them, not just providing an environment where characters CAN breathe, but an environment in which they MUST, in order to prevent their respiratory system from being forgotten. Similarly this is why you need to pack food and other supplies from a physical world (narratively encouraging trade and battles over resources), because eating nothing but imagined delicacies or simply ignoring your bodyâs need to eat is liable to make your digestive system imaginary as well
When I read the entry on astral elves, I couldnât help but be horrified: entire empires of immortals who never slept, ate, or aged, existing in a perpetual state of emotional and chronological detachment. While the packed in adventure did paint some of these elves as the villains, I feel as if they didnât do enough to follow through on the concept. Knowing how badly sensory deprivation fucks with the human mind, I couldnât help but imagine the astral elves as twitchy, impulse driven wrecks existing only in the moment and carrying around tens of millennia of unresolved trauma. Weâve seen space empires before, but what we havenât seen are derelict warships of maddened immortals hurdling towards conflict with eons of combat experience and an unquenchable desire to feel something, ANYTHING, even if it means ramming your ship along with theirs into an asteroid to ensure a confrontation. Elves as warboys, tell me that doesnât rule.
If you want the age of sail/pulp scifi themes of spelljammer to be anything more than a surface level aesthetic, consider reading up on some of the underlying economics that fuelled it, namely colonialism, slavery, and the exploitation of the frontier. While itâs perfeclty fine to have a rose-tinted cosmos where people adventure for adventures sake, WotCâs own missteps with the hadozee show that its all too easy to step into fucked up territory if weâre not mindful. Suffice to say, if youâre going to have space pirates in the space caribbean, figure out whoâs growing the space spices theyâre raiding from the space merchants.
Also, for those who might want direct access to my catalogue of adventures:
so i was watching cinderella while doing my nails and waiting for them to dry which was clearly a Mistake because now i canât help but think -
the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderellaâs - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. and then she gets married, and anastasia and drizella are ecstatic because this man seems kind and warm and maybe just maybe he can temper their mother, maybe with him around she wonât be so cruel. so theyâre on their very best behavior in the beginning, they do just as their mother taught - they trot out their best upper court manners in an attempt to get their new stepfather to like them. but it just comes off as cold and snooty and theyâre trying, they are, theyâre just bad at it. and they see how he is with cinderella, the smiling girl their own age, and they are jealous. they donât mean to be, they try not to be, they know it isnât becoming of young ladies. but she gets hugs and kisses and affection and they get rulers slapped on their hands when they reach for desert and sharp jabs to their sides when they slouch and - soon they hate cinderella, not for anything sheâs done, but for what she has and they dont
but then her father dies. and itâs all a tumble of things and cinderella is crying and theyâve lost their only chance at escaping their motherâs clutches and itâs terrible. and everything settles and thereâs no reason to be jealous anymore but resentment is hard to let go of and they donât know what to do. theyâre only kids too after all. and theyâre so terribly bad at comforting people, they can do flowery words and know all the right bows but cinderella is so sad and they just donât know what to do with that, because theyâre supposed to be sisters but theyâre not even friends
and slowly but surely their mother starts abusing cinderella, starts making her a maid in her own home, and sheâs their mother, what are anastasia and drizella supposed to do? she rules them with an iron fist, and cinderella doesnât even like them anyway, itâs none of their business.
except one night anastasia crawls into her sisterâs bed in the middle of the night and wakes her up. âi was thirsty,â she explains, eyes wide and shiny, and theyâre bad at this with other people but drizella has no problems with pulling anastasia into her arms. the younger girl clutches her sister and continues, âi was thirsty and i went down to the kitchen to get some water and - and cinderella is still up! sheâs doing the dishes, and she should be asleep, mom is going to make her make breakfast in the morning and -â she cuts herself off with a hiccup and whispers, âitâs not fair.â
âlife isnât fair,â drizella says, echoing one of their motherâs favorite phrases. but her sister is staring at her with wet eyes, and itâs not like their mother is likely to get up before sunrise anyway, she hates waking up, so she pulls herself and anastasia out of bed and off they go.
Iâm a cis-gender man which basically means that, when I was born, the doctor went âItâs a boy!â and when I was old enough to understand I agreed with him.
The thing is, I donât know why I feel like a man. I was teased and bullied for it a lot when I was little. Iâve never had stereotypically American male interests. I never cared about sports or cars or guns. I was more interested in music and cooking and the arts. Iâve always been emotionally in tune and sensitive, even when I did my best to suppress my emotions to survive a childhood of abuse from other children.
Itâs not physical either. I donât feel like a man because I have a penis or a beard. If you put my brain in a robot body or any other body, my essence would still feel male (I assume). I literally canât imagine what being any other gender would feel like, since I feel so acutely male.
I think thatâs why the concept of being transgender always made sense to me. Iâm a man. I donât have any bloody clue why I feel like a man, but I donât feel that itâs tied to my body or my interests or the way that Iâve been treated. I feel like a man because of something beyond that. Something ephemeral. So, why couldnât others feel the same? Why couldnât a person whoâs been misidentified as a girl feel like a boy for the exact same nebulous reasons that I do?
And, since gender really doesnât make any sense to me anyway, why couldnât there also be people who feel as if they donât have one? Or who flow across genders like a ship on a map?
Are there people out there whose sense of their own gender is inseparable from their physical form? If you put those people into robot bodies or, simply, other physically different bodies, would their gender identity also swap? If so, why? Are they actually more lost in their gender identity than I am and they need to hone in on the physical in order to anchor themselves?
Why do people feel like they are the gender that they are?
My grandfather, who had a difficult time coming to terms with it when I came out, has been working very hard to understand me and my experience. About 5 weeks ago, he asked me, almost offhand, âwhy are you so sure that youâre a man?â
And I replied, âwell, I could ask you the same thing.â And I moved on, continued, tried to explain why I feel the way that I do, but I donât think he heard any of those things that I said afterward.Â
Because six days later, we talked about it again, and this is what he told me:Â
âI couldnât stop thinking about what you said last week. Because all my life I identified it as âthese are the parts that I have, and so I am a manâ. But youâre living proof that gender is not limited to what is attached to your body, so I asked myself, why am I a man? And all I can say is âbecause I have no idea what it feels like to be anything elseâ. I cannot imagine what itâs like to be a woman. Or neither, or both, or any other gender. I have always been a man.â
And I replied, âthatâs exactly what it feels like for me.â
So, shoutout to my cisgender grandfather, for stumbling upon the essence of being trans accidentally, with very little help from me. I love you, grandpa.
not a lot of old-ass movies hold up in terms of comedy but sleeping beauty is fucking hilarious. âthis is the 14th century.â âthatâs because itâs on you dear.â the king at the end being confused af. fucking amazing
ok yeah im watching it again and nobody ever points out but. when merryweather says âyou canât sew and sheâs never cookedâ that like highkey implies that merryweather was the one in charge of actually taking care of the fucking kid which is hysterical. if merryweather was the main parental figure itâs a wonder aurora isnât down for murder 24/7
see itâs easy to say âflora fauna and merryweather are a polyam coupleâ but tbh i think just flora and fauna are married, they both seem vaguely maternal towards merryweather, who in turn seems a lot younger and less experienced. so i have the headcanon that over in the fae realm these two were put in charge of training merryweather as their fae apprentice or whatever which somehow makes âmerryweather was the one to take care of auroraâ even FUNNIER. imagine youâre trying to train under these two powerful fairies and then before you know it youâre in the middle of the woods raising a baby and it turns out that without their wands your mentors are useless lesbians who donât know how to cook. no wonder sheâs so pissed all the time
i never liked the criticism that âaurora doesnât do anything she only has like 10 lines thatâs not #feministâ because. the main characters of the movie are the fairies, she just happens to get marketed more nowadays cause of the disney princess lineup, if you actually watch the movie itâs clear sheâs not the protagonist, neither is phillip, i think he has roughly equal screentime to her. gender equality theyâre both useless
but anyway when disney was doing that thing where they made one-shitbillion sequels they have serious untapped potential in post-movie aurora main character. because listen. listen. first of all she went through the most wild life-changing shit all in like two hours so sheâs gonna be dealing with the fallout from that
but more importantly. girl was raised in the WOODS. she runs around barefoot petting wild animals and eating shit she picked up off the ground. she now lives in a castle as the future monarch. WHERE is my comedy sequel about that. where the FUCK is it. where is my scene of the servants and royals like âweâre so happy our beloved, perfect princess is finally back :)â and then she walks in covered in mud, smelling like riverwater, carrying a live fish and saying âi caught dinnerâ phillip sees nothing wrong with this
prince phillip is quietly and intensely goddamn grateful that he managed to be the first man aurora ever saw because like she is the most incredible woman heâs ever seen in the entire world and heâs a dude that hangs out in the woods talking to his horse which is also her favourite activity
like, their parents are all very smug at what a great love match theyâve made in hooking their kids up together somehowâthere was a dragon involved? ok??âexcept it turns out that the reason they get along so fucking well is theyâre snarky little shits with no tact and less patience who spend as much time as humanly possible ditching out on court duties to fuck around in the woods
the kings and queens can only hope that the prince and princess are literally fucking around in those woods, because at this rate their only hope for a halfway functional heir to the throne is going to be kidnapping their own grandchildren
me, reaching into my dresser drawer for black pants: I hope this isnât the pair with big holes worn in the inner thighs
Marie Kondo, gently over my shoulder: why is a pair of pants you find unwearable still in your dresser drawer
me: oh shit thatâs right!! The dresser is for clothes that under some circumstance I might conceivably wear!!
Marie Kondo, beaming proudly: Yes, thatâs correct!! These pants must have been your favorites. How wonderful that they were so comfortable and practical that you wore them out. But now since they no longer function as pants, you should move them from the drawer where you keep your functioning pants!
me: Yes thanks I got it theyâre in the fabric basket now
Marie Kondo, fading back into the darkness: I love what youâve done with the kitchen!!
Marie Kondo: Your room isnât very clean, but thatâs okay, I love mess! Does this spark joy?
Duolingo Owl: I wrote the ransom note in Spanish, and if you have to use Google Translate to read it, your kid gets it. You broke your streak. Iâll break your neck.
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