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. |
I've limited myself to products I think really influence Spelljammer, or are really useful. I haven't tracked down ever stray product with just one mention.
Great product that really fleshes out Beholder society. Though Spelljammer-specific content is light, it works wonderfully for detailing beholder ships and squadrons, and is very compatible with the beholder background provided in Spelljammer products. Provides a detailed beholder city that can be easily transferred to an asteroid as a ready-made beholder nation.
Much like I, Tyrant does for beholders this really fleshes out illithid society. Spelljammer-specific content is light but if you are designing an illithid ship or detailing an illithid world like Falx, you'll find a wealth of information here.
This is the second module in the companion trilogy to The Illithiad. It's basically a groundling Underdark adventure, but it ends with the discovery of a nautiloid.
Though it lacks the Spelljammer label, this is essentially a Spelljammer module. It involves a trip through wildspace and the flow, aboard a captured, ancient nautaloid, to the home sphere of the Illithids.
This book fully describes Serraine, a flying city of gnomes, pegataurs, and other creatures. It is a must have for any GM wishing to use gnomes in his campaign, as with very little tinkering it can easily become an asteroid city as interesting and vibrant as the Rock of Bral, yet extremely different in flavor and challenges. Plus, it includes some very unique gnomish techno-magic aircraft! Great stuff.
This set compiles the "Voyages of the Princess Ark" Dragon articles, and then expands them with wonderful details on Mystaraspace and flying ships. It includes great deck plans for ships that can be easily converted to Spelljammers, or used as is if one considers the Mystaran flying ship methods as a spelljamming alternative. It also includes a specific conversion method for Spelljammer and discusses how Mystara and Spelljammer interact. This product is the required base for any fan work on Mystaraspace. Lots of great NPCs and magic items as well. Only complaint is that there are no deckplans for the Princess Ark before the sky dragon merges with her. Highly, highly reccomended.
The module's plot is a bit convoluted, but the asteroid Stardock is a nice addition to the Tears of Selune, and there is a bit of lore on the Tears as well. Stardock could be easily cannalbalized and placed anywhere a GM needs an asteroid lair.
This is an odd product. It's not really an adventure, nor a geographic sourcebook. Rather it's a chronological sourcebook, detailing the conquest of the famous city of Myth Drannor in the Forgotten Realms. It's an elven city, and the description provides wonderful baseline details (ranks, ect) that can be extrapolated for the Elven Imperial Fleet. The chronology itself includes a description of the IEN's interaction with Myth Drannor and its fall, as well as highlighting the vulnerability of spelljammers when used as ground support weapons in a high fantasy world. As an FR product I rate this 5 stars, but for Spelljammer it's not quite as useful.
This is one of the worst Slade products, which is saying something. Even a flow chart (it has one included!) couldn't help this adventure. It does detail "Yeoman's Loft" Netheril's Spelljamming port back in the day. The description is so poor, however, that I still can't tell if Yeoman's Loft is one of the Netherese floating cities, or merely a town on top of a mountain. A major disappointment.
This Forgotten Realms product could have used better flavor text and tighter editing, but it has some great stuff. They includes stats for Ruathimaer, or "Starwings", essentially a 50 ton elven men-o-war which can land on water, plus the elven totem magic is very cool. I do wish they had included a deckplan for the Ruathimaer. If you like elves, or the Forgotten Realms, worth a buy.
Lots of great information on Forgotten Realms dragons, plus some really cool dragon-specific spells and magic items. For Spelljammer, it details a dracolich turning herslf into a Spelljammer by grafting on parts of a crashed elven man-o-war. As an FR product alone it would have 4 stars.
