Talk:Spelljammer

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This article says that there was a Spelljammer sphere for each of the other campaign worlds, but I was under the impression that Ravenloft was not supposed to be accessible through Spelljammer flight.

Also, is Spelljammer out of print? It seems to have been superceded by Planescape. — Gwalla | Talk 01:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Not superseded

Spelljammer describes outer SPACE. whereas planscape describes other DIMENSIONS.

Gwalla is quite right about spelljammers not being able to get to Ravenloft, because it exists in its own demiplane. I've corrected the article to make it clearer that the Spelljammer universe is specifically the Prime Material Plane. Having said that, I think it was stated somewhere that either Athas wasn't in the Spelljammer universe or its crystal sphere was hidden somehow, but I could be wrong. Daibhid C

I too have heard that Athasspace is cut off from the rest of the Prime somehow. However, it is most definately a regular Prime Material world in all other aspects. MasterGrazzt 21:17, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Page 13 of "The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook" says:
Athas. The World of the DARK SUN (tm) campaign is not on the spacelanes where Realmspace, Krynnspace, and Greyspace can be found. No spelljammer travels its skies; no ancient tome tells of the routes to its crystal sphere. Whether it is unreachable by spelljammer or merely so far from these worlds that any journey would take lifetimes is unknown.
The current inhabitants of Athas have no knowledge of spelljamming. There is no way to know whether the closely guarded library of some sorcerer-king conceals an ancient tome revealing the basic concepts of wildspace. Even if such a tome were found, the defiling power of such powerful magic would certainly wreak havoc on the fragile balance of life on Athas.
--Prosfilaes 23:21, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ravenloft, Dark Sun and other settings and Spelljammer

Gwalla and Daibhid C are both incorrect about Ravenloft not being accessable via Spelljammer flight. Ravenloft can sometimes be accessed on a spelljamming ship, but it does depend on whether the ship is inside or outside a crystal sphere.

Crystal spheres are extremely large bubble like structures. The inside, containing planets (including campaign worlds where Ravenloft could already grab characters), suns and space (called wildspace within a sphere) can all be connected to Ravenloft. The outside, containing the phlogiston (the name for space outside a sphere), can not connect to any other planes, so ships outside a crystal sphere are safe from Ravenlofts influence.

I don't have the page, but The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook says something along the lines of: The mists of Ravenloft can reach anywhere including wildspace. A spelljamming ship that sails into these mists will be taken to the Ravenloft. However, ships can not escape Ravenloft by Spelljamming. I believe a captured ship that tries to sail out gets lost and comes back again.

As for Athasspace, although it is described as "not on the spacelanes", TSR do hint that there might be some way to get there. As well as the extract that Prosfilaes quoted, Athas is also mentioned in the Astromundi Cluster boxed set. Beyond the Moons (the official Spelljammer website) has a conversion of Dark Sun to Spelljammer called The Crimson Sphere by Adam "Night Druid" Miller (a major Spelljammer fan author).

Any other campaign setting could also be connected to the Spelljammer campaign setting. All a gamesmaster has to do is create a crysal sphere around its campaign world. This might have been done for more worlds if TSR had not discontinued Spelljammer.

Big Mac 05:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of Spelljammer novels

If there are less than a dozen of them, I think it's fine to merge List of Spelljammer novels to the main article. -- Perfecto 04:10, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Me too. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 04:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

My List of Spelljammer novels article, was made following the format of the List of Fogotten Realms novels. I figured that because the novels were books rather than role playing games, that it would be a separate thing people might look like. Will the categories make sense if the two things are merged? I'm not so sure. I intend to add more stuff to the Spelljammer article that relates specifically to the role playing game and has nothing to do with novels. Big Mac 05:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The answer is: It depends. In some cases you'll want a separate list, in other cases you don't. In the specific case of The Forgotten Realms, they have a metric ton of books, and adding the entire list of all the novels ever set in the Forgotten Realms to Forgotten Realms would make an already large article even larger and more cumbersome.
The same doesn't apply to Spelljammer. It is (alas) a dead setting, with near-zero chance of ever receiving official support in the future. There are six Spelljammer novels, and unless I win the Powerball lottery, it is very likely that there will only ever be six Spelljammer novels. And since the Spelljammer article itself isn't overly large, it makes more sense from an organizational standpoint to have the novels listed in the main article.
If the Spelljammer article should ever get large enough that the list of novels is a cumbersome addition, the list can be split back off again without difficulty. But let's wait until that happens before making the move. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 05:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I see. It kind of makes sense and I suppose it doesn't really matter where it is as long as people can find it. By the way, although Spelljammer may be dead as a role playing setting (at the moment), but Devil's Due have recently bought the rights to make new comic books about it from Wizards of the Coast. WotC also mention the "Sea of Night" in their new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, so I think that they don't want to totally close the door on SJ.

[edit] Airships and magical ships

The description of spelljamming ships is currently inaccurate. I intend to carry on editing this article and will soon change this.

While I am doing this I am trying to keep descriptions of what Spelljammer is like (eg: "The Spelljammer setting is designed to allow some fantastic space adventures to take place within the traditional sword and sorcery milieu...") at the top of the article, but move descriptions of game mechanics (eg: 'Both alien space ("wildspace") and planets are inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures unknown to "groundlings."') down below the contents list to add it somewhere after the 'crystal spheres' section..

[edit] Articles should not turn into fan sites

I'm a bit concerned about the direction this article is going. User:David Shepheard has been doing a lot of fine work recently, for which he should be applauded. The Spelljammer article was in something of a state of disrepair before he started editing it, and he has leapt in with enthusiasm and dispatch. The article has improved profoundly in many ways since he started contributing to it.

However, the article is gradually moving away from being a brief, encyclopedic article about the Spelljammer setting, and is turning more into a collection of trivial minutae that is of no interest to anyone who is not already a fan of the setting.

Ideally, an article in Wikipedia should cover the important bits, without delving into too much trivial detail. The article should be meaty enough that people who have not encountered the subject of the article before can read the article and get a good overview of the subject, but not so filled with detail (especially trivial detail) that only enthusiasts of the subject would find it enjoyable or interesting to read.

Specifically to the Spelljammer article, the entirety of the "Spelljammer Speed" and "Spelljammer Shock" sections should probably be removed. These two sections contain the very definition of "information only interesting to a fan of the setting." Likewise, most of the information under "Spelljamming Helms" and the "Gravity" sections should be excised. I think there's some information in these two sections that's relevant to constructing an overview of Spelljammer, but stuff like the rate at which major/minor helms convert spells to SR is really of no interest to the casual reader.

I will have a go at moving the article back to a more encyclopedic style later this morning.
→ Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 13:11, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all your assistance and pointers (the help system at Wikipedia leaves a lot to be desired and I'd have struggled to get this done without your comments - I was fighting for ages to get the logos working).
I've been trying to walk the tightrope between not properly explaining Spelljammer (which is how it was before) and getting into game mechanics (which I was trying to avoid). I've been trying my best to keep an impartial voice in my writing, but Spelljammer can be quite complecated so if I've gone over the line, I'd be glad for the help to get back on track. If you can get rid of the game mechanics without loosing the overview of how they work then that would be good.
Maybe some of these terms could be 'cut down' rather than 'removed entirely'. I was looking up other things, in order to get an idea of what style to use, and saw some very small definitions (some of which were not even stubbs).
Gravity in Spelljammer is definately something that people get wrong about the game. (The previous text suggested ships generate gravity magically, which just is not true.) Spelljammers pseudogravity is one of the things that allows open decked ships with catapults and is a fundemental part of its appeal, so it needs to be there in some form.
In the spelljammer speed section, I was trying to convey that these ships zip along at great speed, but also sometimes travel slowly. Maybe you could cut it down to that sort of length rather than getting rid of it.
I agree that the amount of SR is not important and was trying to find a way around that, so if you can say "this helm is quicker than that one" then go for it.
I'm pretty much done playing with this artical now, Mr Unction. The next think I'll play with is the 'List of Spelljammer crystal spheres' (which I renamed from the incorrect 'List of Spelljammer solar systems') I searched as hard as I could for pages linking to the old name (I'd be grateful if you could double check I didn't miss one as the help system didn't really tell me the best way to trace links back from the destination to the source. I think Wikipedia could do with having some tutorials as I've learned more from a couple of your posts than I have from reading much more help.)
The only problem with that page is that if it is taken to its logical conclusion, it will be very big. The Astromundi Cluster sphere has as many planetary bodies as everything else in SJ added together (I counted them once and got 39 bodies - not including moons and individual asterods). Perhaps each crystal sphere should have its own page (with Krynnspace pointing to Spelljammer, Dragonlance, Ansalon and Talidas and Realmspace pointing to Spelljammer, Fogotten Realms, Faerun, Kara-Tur, Maztica, The Hoard and Al-Quadim.) Then the List of crystal spheres could literally be a list of sphere names with links to their pages.
By the way this page needs a link to the List of Spelljammer crystal spheres. Any idea on where to put it?
Anyway, I'll leave you to your editing. I'm just glad to have given you something that could be edited into an artical of similar quality as the Planescape one.

[edit] Gravity in Spelljammer

I may be straining my braincells a bit much but I thought that while the concept of gravity remained almost identical to the real world (ie all bodies of mass create gravity but the degree of the force was enough to retain oxygen against the surface), that the gravity generated by the Spelljamming Helm was different.

It wasn't a case of gravity automatically aligning itself so that it is what beings consider "sensible", but the helm itself aligned gravity along whatever plans the ship itself required. More often than not this was a "plane" of gravity where you could either stand on the top surface of the ship as per normal, or if you "fell" overboard you would fall below the plane, only to be pulled by gravity going the other way. Thus oscilating between the two until you finally came to rest in the middle of that plane.

Will have to go back and read the materials again but I am sure the helm is what set gravitational pull... some ships choosing to keep standard gravity, others making it a plane. Enigmatical 00:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

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