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Legend of Spelljammer
Feared by some, hunted by others, the awesome vessel Spelljammer glides through the vastness of space on manta wings. For the first time ever, the myths surrounding the Great Ship are unveiled, allowing you to expand your SPELLJAMMER game campaign.
Is the Spelljammer a legend from the past of a mystery of the present? Is it truly a ship or a living being? Who commands it? What secrets hide in its massive hull and dark towers? The true story of the Spelljammer is revealed in this box.
This accessory is an epic adventure setting for use with the original SPELLJAMMER Adventures in Space boxed set. Within this box you will discover new monsters and races, exciting new ships and characters, plus the fantastic Spelljammer itself.
The Legend of Spelljammer accessory contains:
A 32-page book of legends and statistics about the Great Ship;
A 64-page guided tour of the citadels, towers, and communities that crowd the back of the Spelljammer;
A 96-page book of new ships and nonplayer characters, plus adventures aboard Spelljammer;
Two maps revealing the ship's citadels; and
Full-color cards showing new ships and their deck plans.
Is the Spelljammer a legend from the past of a mystery of the present? Is it truly a ship or a living being? Who commands it? What secrets hide in its massive hull and dark towers? The true story of the Spelljammer is revealed in this box.
This accessory is an epic adventure setting for use with the original SPELLJAMMER Adventures in Space boxed set. Within this box you will discover new monsters and races, exciting new ships and characters, plus the fantastic Spelljammer itself.
The Legend of Spelljammer accessory contains:
A 32-page book of legends and statistics about the Great Ship;
A 64-page guided tour of the citadels, towers, and communities that crowd the back of the Spelljammer;
A 96-page book of new ships and nonplayer characters, plus adventures aboard Spelljammer;
Two maps revealing the ship's citadels; and
Full-color cards showing new ships and their deck plans.
210 pages, Boxed Set
First published September 1, 1991
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44 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Grubb
199 books193 followersHe is an author and game designer.
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 29, 2021
Spelljammer was a setting intended to unite the other D&D settings. But, one problem it had was that it had little in the way of setting on its own. The Legend of Spelljammer box seeks to fix this by fleshing out the titular ship.
The Spelljammer is a massive ship in the shape of a manta ray with a city on its back that glides through the Phlogiston seemingly at its own whim and to its own ineffable ends. No one who has ever landed on the Spelljammer has returned to talk about it. Anyone attacking the Spelljammer has had the various towers of its city return fire or, if they are especially unlucky, the ship would turn its main weapon on them: A salvo of spheres of annihilation.
The box has 3 books, a couple of maps, more ship cards, and a couple of NPC cheat sheets. The books, if you read them in order, give you an overview of the Spelljammer's capabilities and ecology, before zooming in on the various factions that make up the city on its back, before finally focusing in on the individuals that lead those factions as well as some new ships and a couple of sample adventures.
The real meat here is the Spelljammer's city. It's a fully fleshed out society with dozens of NPCs and a carefully crafted political structure. The Spelljammer is a powder keg held together by a very tentative balance of forces. It's actually really cool how tenuous the peace is and how easily a part of ambitious PCs could absolutely screw everything up. There are several NPCs that are basically lynchpins and killing or incapacitating any one of them would kick off general anarchy. PCs who want to come onto the Spelljammer as HMFICs will quickly find themselves in a civil war in which they are the number 1 target. A party that wants to carefully ingratiate themselves in to this society can find tons of roleplay opportunities here.
The society on the Spelljammer is fleshed out enough to provide for whole campaigns on its own with the political machinations of the various factions. Navigating this could be hours and hours of gameplay all on its own without ever trying to take the captaincy of the Spelljammer itself. And that makes this supplement wonderful.
The cover art is just gorgeous, as befits any work by Jeff Easley. The interior artwork is okay. I really dislike the renderings of Umberhulks and am forever grateful for the superior design adopted from 3.x on.
The Spelljammer is a massive ship in the shape of a manta ray with a city on its back that glides through the Phlogiston seemingly at its own whim and to its own ineffable ends. No one who has ever landed on the Spelljammer has returned to talk about it. Anyone attacking the Spelljammer has had the various towers of its city return fire or, if they are especially unlucky, the ship would turn its main weapon on them: A salvo of spheres of annihilation.
The box has 3 books, a couple of maps, more ship cards, and a couple of NPC cheat sheets. The books, if you read them in order, give you an overview of the Spelljammer's capabilities and ecology, before zooming in on the various factions that make up the city on its back, before finally focusing in on the individuals that lead those factions as well as some new ships and a couple of sample adventures.
The real meat here is the Spelljammer's city. It's a fully fleshed out society with dozens of NPCs and a carefully crafted political structure. The Spelljammer is a powder keg held together by a very tentative balance of forces. It's actually really cool how tenuous the peace is and how easily a part of ambitious PCs could absolutely screw everything up. There are several NPCs that are basically lynchpins and killing or incapacitating any one of them would kick off general anarchy. PCs who want to come onto the Spelljammer as HMFICs will quickly find themselves in a civil war in which they are the number 1 target. A party that wants to carefully ingratiate themselves in to this society can find tons of roleplay opportunities here.
The society on the Spelljammer is fleshed out enough to provide for whole campaigns on its own with the political machinations of the various factions. Navigating this could be hours and hours of gameplay all on its own without ever trying to take the captaincy of the Spelljammer itself. And that makes this supplement wonderful.
The cover art is just gorgeous, as befits any work by Jeff Easley. The interior artwork is okay. I really dislike the renderings of Umberhulks and am forever grateful for the superior design adopted from 3.x on.
November 13, 2022
I read this supplement with interest because "back in the day" I created a whole campaign set on the Spelljammer - with detailed maps and a variety of monster groupings in the towers, along with an internal "dungeon" level. It made for a multi-year campaign, but very different than this published set. There are some cool concepts here, including NPC leaders with varying goals and secrets, allowing for a political type of adventure; but there isn't a great sense of major antagonists (perhaps one) and the DM would need to do a lot of work to make this a satisfying campaign. Additionally, the Spelljammer is SO out of scale with other ships (1.5 million tons vs 700 tons for the largest known vessel) that once it is under the captain's control, no real credible threats exist - it refers to fleets, but even a fleet of ships couldn't really stand against it. Also, the fact that the ship charms its inhabitants into staying permanently is a bit of a problem for roleplaying purposes. Overall, I found this supplement interesting and well done, but playability is questionable.
January 12, 2025
While this would be tough to use in most campaigns, it is an inventive mini-setting that shows how the larger Spelljammer setting differs from most others. It emphasizes the micro (a whole society of many different creatures aboard a giant ship they can never leave) and the macro (a ship powerful enough that the captain could challenge whole fleets). It sparked my imagination and left me with a soft spot for the Spelljammer setting.
July 12, 2014
Another useless product to add to my RPG collection
13 July 2014
I'm not sure how useful this box set really was, but I do remember when it came out and also scrapping together what meagre money that I had to rush out at purchase it without realising at the time that this was basically going to end up sitting on my self to never be used. Hey, at the time I loved the Spelljammer setting (after getting over my initial shock about it not being a strict science-fiction setting like, say, Doctor Who) and I would pretty much buy anything that was Spelljammer related (though that changed because from what I can remember I didn't end up finishing the Cloakmaster Cycle, and have only rated the first three books in the series), which included this book (or should I say boxed set, though it does contain three books, a map, and I believe some cards). Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if, instead of wasting all of this money, I had invested it. Well, one thing I can certainly say is that my life would probably have been somewhat more boring, and I wouldn't be writing this either.
Anyway, this particular box set deals with the massive living spaceship from which the setting gets its name, and when I say massive, I certainly mean massive. The Spelljammer has a city (or at least a very large fortress) sitting on its back, and the inhabitants have formed into factions that are struggling with each other for control of the ship. In fact every aspect of this ship is described in this box set, which makes one wonder where some of these writers get their ideas. Okay, there was a time when I dreamed of writing roleplaying products, and I still have a plethora of material sitting on a harddrive (and in boxes) that I have written, though there is no logical order to much of it. I would also sit down and draw maps of fantasy worlds (which, in the end, turned out to be little more than random squiggly lines on a piece of paper with more scribbles to indicate mountains, forests, and hills, which in the end really did not take all that much imagination to create). I even tried submitting some of my writings to Dungeon Magazine, but they all ended up getting rejected. Okay, some would suggest that I could have persevered, and but in the end I decided that there were more interesting things that attracted my attention than simply banging on TSR's door asking to be let in.
So, where does it leave this box set. Well, sitting in one of my crates up the back of my parents house, as well as a bunch of unsold listings on ebay where the purchase price seems to be less than US$5.00. So, while it may have caught my eye back in the day when pretty much anything that involved Dungeons and Dragons caught my eye, it seems that these days things have moved on and the days of these 2nd Edition experiments have disappeared into the past, only to be remembered by a bunch of people that have to list everything that have 'read' on Goodreads, as well as those dedicated enough to write a review on them as well.
13 July 2014
I'm not sure how useful this box set really was, but I do remember when it came out and also scrapping together what meagre money that I had to rush out at purchase it without realising at the time that this was basically going to end up sitting on my self to never be used. Hey, at the time I loved the Spelljammer setting (after getting over my initial shock about it not being a strict science-fiction setting like, say, Doctor Who) and I would pretty much buy anything that was Spelljammer related (though that changed because from what I can remember I didn't end up finishing the Cloakmaster Cycle, and have only rated the first three books in the series), which included this book (or should I say boxed set, though it does contain three books, a map, and I believe some cards). Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if, instead of wasting all of this money, I had invested it. Well, one thing I can certainly say is that my life would probably have been somewhat more boring, and I wouldn't be writing this either.
Anyway, this particular box set deals with the massive living spaceship from which the setting gets its name, and when I say massive, I certainly mean massive. The Spelljammer has a city (or at least a very large fortress) sitting on its back, and the inhabitants have formed into factions that are struggling with each other for control of the ship. In fact every aspect of this ship is described in this box set, which makes one wonder where some of these writers get their ideas. Okay, there was a time when I dreamed of writing roleplaying products, and I still have a plethora of material sitting on a harddrive (and in boxes) that I have written, though there is no logical order to much of it. I would also sit down and draw maps of fantasy worlds (which, in the end, turned out to be little more than random squiggly lines on a piece of paper with more scribbles to indicate mountains, forests, and hills, which in the end really did not take all that much imagination to create). I even tried submitting some of my writings to Dungeon Magazine, but they all ended up getting rejected. Okay, some would suggest that I could have persevered, and but in the end I decided that there were more interesting things that attracted my attention than simply banging on TSR's door asking to be let in.
So, where does it leave this box set. Well, sitting in one of my crates up the back of my parents house, as well as a bunch of unsold listings on ebay where the purchase price seems to be less than US$5.00. So, while it may have caught my eye back in the day when pretty much anything that involved Dungeons and Dragons caught my eye, it seems that these days things have moved on and the days of these 2nd Edition experiments have disappeared into the past, only to be remembered by a bunch of people that have to list everything that have 'read' on Goodreads, as well as those dedicated enough to write a review on them as well.
April 27, 2015
There is a ton of material in this box for any SpellJammer campaign to use regardless of if you plan to encounter The SpellJammer itself or not.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews