Sailors on star lite seas, navigating the black in search of fortune and adventure. Sword and Sorcery in space with D&D style monsters and Tolkien races.
Been thinking of remaking Spelljammer. I've been running a 5e Spelljammer game for a bit now and there some kool stuff about it but there is a bunch of meh in there as well. Fantasy adventurers sailing through space using magic and skill is awesome. I think it's great. But there is also a lot of stuff that sounds cool on paper but that functionally doesn't work out as well as a game element as other possibilities can.
The whole thing with the helms is ... meh. I think there is just another way to do it that might be more interesting.
So with the Helm in Spelljammer, you attune to it as a spell caster and in the original 2e AD&D game, while attached to the helm the caster could not cast any spells and it took 24 hours to attune from the device. Pretty harsh. Functionally, this makes one player unable to play half or more of their character. there is actually a lot more to it than this too. And there is a lot of holes in how this all works. But essentially, the helm pulls magic from the users and uses it to run the ship. Leaving the port, leaving a planet's atmosphere, maneuvers in combat, etc all use spells slots to move the ship. 2e didn't have spell slots per se but it basically worked the same way. You burn spell you memorized to move the ship.
In the game I run, I changed some of this. It took 10 minutes to attune to the Helm and another 10 minutes to unattuned to it. This way they could do something other than being a siphon for the ship. The player still spends spell slots to move the ship though.
Some of the holes I saw as we played were things like, "if I spent a high-level spell slot can I make the ship go faster?" Well, yes and no. In combat, yes. To leave a planet's atmosphere, yes. Any other time... No. Why is that? In spelljammer, space is huge, just like in real life. A spelljammer ship can travel 100,000 miles in a day. No matter what kind of ship you're flying, as long as it is not near a source of gravity, all ships travel at max speeds of 100,000 miles in a day. When a ship gets close to a source of gravity the ship automatically slows down to combat speed. Guess this is a safety feature built into the Helm. The game doesn't really say. It's ok, that's kind of boring but not a big deal. I mean, space is big, why let travel take longer. The fact the ship moves around because one player is doing something is kind of boring. It's a mini-game for one player. This is not unusual for games from back in the day, but in modern game design, we tend to lean away from making games that split the players into their own mini-games.
Also, I think there is just not enough weirdness in the game. Its essentially, a Seven Seas game in space, as written.
Things I would like to change in my own game:
I would just throw out the helm. I don't want my Sword and Sorcery Space travel to feel like a guy in a cockpit flying a modern aircraft or spaceship. I rather it worked like a Ship. Wher, yes you have a helmsman, who steers the boat, but also works with the crew to maneuver the ship, speed up/ slow down, etc. This takes the Single player mini-game and turns it into teamwork. Everyone gets to play at sailing.
There are two ways I could replace the helm as a power source for the magic of the ship. 1) I could replace it with something that could be managed like any other resource in the game. In the original rules the ship, unless the attune caster was dead, the ship never ran out of power. You were never going to have that worry. I would replace the helm with a Large Runic Crystal. Kind of like FF: Crystal Caravan. it would have x amount of every, depending on the type, and you would refuel at specific areas. mana wells and such. This way you can run out of fuel and get stuck until you're saved or find a way around.
I could also just make the sails magical, they are designed to capture solar winds to move the ship just like ships on the high seas capture winds too move.
Though maybe I would do both. What if your crystal was a power source for that solar wind capturing sails and what also helped create gravity on the ship, create a stable temperature o the ship, and hold the atmosphere around the ship. The sails maneuver the ship around space, while the crystal keeps everyone alive. in the 2e game, everything that left a planet, took atmosphere with it. So if you shot a gnome into space, they would have 15-30 minutes of oxygen left before they would die. The other idea is that everything with mass generates its own gravity. This is all kool, but if your survival is all dependant on a magic crystal, I think it adds an edge of danger to the setting. If it gets damaged nothing is holding you or the oxygen on the ship. Space can be terrifying, so maybe that terror should be put back in the game.
Anyway, These are just some random thoughts on the subject that have been kicking around in my head. Personally, I think this is the problem that you get from taking a cool concept and ramming it into a preexisting game system. You have to make compromises and they are not often good ones.
Edit: Below you can see my Spelljammer page over on World Anvil.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/high-level-spelljammer-skulldixon
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