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. |
This product is basically just a collection of adventure seeds, magic items, monsters, and new ships but it works. The additional vessels are all pretty cool and fill a niche, also they are not really any less well designed then those in the original boxed set. The adventure ideas are somewhat obvious but some gems are there to be mined. On the minus side, for some of the adventures to work the NPCs are often required to do some things that are simply impossible according to the rules. Also, the "Wonderseekers" seem like simply a very bad, virtually unworkable idea. Still, over all a good product.
This product has no Forgotten Realms flavor, no Spelljammer flavor, and damn little thought exhibited within it's pages. Some of the ideas are original and interesting (Coliar and Anadia pop to mind) but most GMs will spend a great deal of time simply rewriting this book. The NPC's motivations and background are simply unbelievable. While of little value some ideas can be gleaned, there are a handful of interesting magic items, and the map of Realmspace included is actually quite nice.
This product is exactly what it says and little else. It has some utility as a GM screen, but is otherwise greatly lacking. The additional fold up ships are a nice touch. While some may dislike them, Spelljammer's lack of miniature ships always depressed me and these are a reasonable substitute. With some work, they produce a visually interesting ship battle utilizing the hex grided star map in the original boxed set. But if you don't use the fold up paper ships, you don't need this product.
Basically a good book with lots of "drop in" planets correlated together. Some of the ideas work better then others but there is plenty to work with here. Has the same "plastic" or "unbelievable" feel of the "______space" sphere references in places but over all the product is helpful if a touch too sci-fi for my tastes. A nice touch is that many of these worlds appear in the Spelljammer novels, notably Findlay's own The Broken Sphere.
It is impossible to say enough good things about this product. It captures the flavor of Spelljammer perfectly, and provides a classic fantasy city setting, on par with the "greats" such as Lankhmar, Thieves' World, Waterdeep, or Greyhawk. If every spelljammer product had been to the same quality, Spelljammer would be as popular as Greyhawk is today. If you buy one Spelljammer book, buy this one.
All the flaws of Realmspace but slightly better because Borka and Ginsel are just damn interesting and useful planets to have in a Spelljammer campaign. Still, take away the name and this has none of Greyhawk's flavor, and the style of writing and organization is copied straight from SJR2 Realmspace (yuck!).
As bad as the other two "____space" books, this one is an improvement over Realmspace because it has more interesting NPCs and locations. Still, no Dragonlance flavor nor any real Spelljammer flavor. Same style and organization flaws.
A sweet little collection of lairs, just like the title says. Easily "plugged-in" to almost any campaign and all pretty well detailed. I especially like the "Base of Woes" even though it is mislabeled as an Elven Armada. Lots of good Spelljammer flavor and some interesting villains easily expanded by the GM if needed. Use this with SJR5 Rock of Bral and SJA2 Skull and Crossbows and you've got yourself a great Spelljammer campaign started! ["Gump's Back" caused me to buy a back-brush and use it in the shower every morning! :)]
