In my quest to support the delusion that folks care what I think I've decided to start doing a series of quick and dirty reviews of all the Spelljammer products. I hope these will be useful to newcomers and those without all of the products.
Rating System:
| * | Mediocre, poorly written product with little usefulness. |
| ** | A bad product for several reasons with one or two useful aspects. |
| *** | An average product with some good and some bad points. |
| **** | An above average product with few bad points. |
| ***** | An excellent product with few if any bad points. An essential SJ product. |
(preview)
by Jeff Grubb (c)1990Just exactly what it claims to be, nothing more or less.
Straight forward Monstrous Compedium entries for the Chakchak, Oortling, and MagiStar. Most of those appeared in later Spelljammer modules (Oortlings are in SJR2 Realmspace, for example). The Oortlings are an excellent addition, easily added to mind Flayer communities where the GM wants a more cordial relationship between the Mind Flayers and the local human communities.
(adventure)
by Minniear and Bassingwaite (c)1992A very short adventure, but easily placed in most Spelljammer campaigns. A nice little NPC as well.
Space: 1889 is my other great love, after Spelljammer. In fact, all of my published RPG writing is for either Space: 1889 or Spelljammer. Brown does a good conversion job, but generally speaking the flavor and intent between the two settings is just too great to bridge. You might find some thing in here worth cannibalizing, however, and it's a fun read.
(adventure)
by Tom Prusa (c)1993A pretty decent adventure with a new crystal sphere that's dominated by the IEN. Not as good as Steven Kurtz' Dungeon adventures, but still worth having.
(adventure)
by Randall Lemon and Ed Peterson (c)1993This adventure takes place planet-side on Toril in the Forgotten Realms, but has a crashed Squidship. The Squidship is almost incidental, but the map could be used for a crashed squidship in space, and the plot could easily be integrated or convert for use with Spelljammer.
Just a write up on a Kobold NPC and his crew, but still a great single encounter to throw at PCs. Useful.
This is the start of a six part series that describes how a GM can design an "island" campaign. There is a little bit of good information on various possible Spelljammer "island campaign" locations, as well as similar information on other settings. Spelljammer lends itself to "islands", so the other setting information could be used as a laundry list for cannibalizing material from those settings.
On the surface, this installment has no connection to Spelljammer. But in fact, it provides a world nearly as well detailed as those found in Practical Planetology. The Gothmarian Hobgoblins would make a useful counterpoint to the Scro!
Not really connected to Spelljammer, but the demiplane information could prove useful.
This is a don't miss article. It begins a three part examination of the Tears of Selune asteroid field above Toril, but really is just a wonderful primer for any GM designing asteroid communities. Of special note is the chart "Surface Areas and Populations of Spherical Planetoids". Lots of solid practical discussion of trade and defense. Great stuff.
Another wonderful article, which discusses how to populate an asteroid without straining ecological credibility. And, we get a new Tears of Selune asteroid described, "Long Block", which I believe is the only wildspace community of Rastipedes described in published product.
Not quite as useful as the previous two installments, this basically describes how the Undermountain: Stardock can be adapted to have a larger Wildspace component. All in all a useful article, still. It should be noted that this article, like the article in Polyhedron #125, advocates placing the Rock of Bral in the Tears of Selune. But the context is a campaign example, and is clearly not intended to establish that as a canon location of the Rock.
Billed as a Spelljammer setting for d20 this "mini-setting" is a dismal failure written by people who seemed to dislike much of Spelljammer. But it still provides a new sphere with an involved history and good planet writes, some new ships, and some rules for 3e players that should help with conversion. In other words, like most Spelljammer material there is lots of good stuff buried in the dreck and the articles are ripe for cannibalization. Get it if it's cheap, or if you play 3e.
