Working on a long running Spelljammer exploration campaign

[Gryphonfg]

I've toyed around with doing a Spelljammer game loosely inspired by One Piece. I found an awesome, huge Spelljammer map online and started to wonder, what's beyond the edge. So, I thought that would be a cool campaign. I thought that the PCs start with some clue about a grand treasure at the end of the Arcane Outer Flow and a small ship. However, I'm short on ideas of what happens along the way. I had a few quests for while the PCs are low levels to gain more crew (unique NPCs with 2 or 3 levels). Maybe a random attack by goblin pirates. After that, I don't have much for mid level PCs. Any suggestions?

[Andry]

An encounter with a neogi slaver ship? A crippled ship or is it? crewed by some Pirates of Gith

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Gryphonfg
I found an awesome, huge Spelljammer map online....

Share?

:smalltongue:

[Telok]

Share?

:smalltongue:

I use this one

http://nerik.orpheusweb.co.uk/files/Spelljammer/Flow_map_18-06-12.svg

[unseenmage]

I always wanted to run a game of two worlds. Eberron and Faerun. Basically it'd be the TV series Fringe and the adventures would just be those episodes reskinned for D&D.

Any reason you can't just refluff the stories as presented in the show? Or from any other travelling adventure serial?

Spelljammer is pretty broad in what stories you can potentially tell. So narrowing your focus on what sorts of stories you want to tell helps.

You already mentioned you want it to be One Piece-esque; but how much so? Do you intend to keep the zany overpowered shonen protagonists theme? The awkwardly awesome character interactions with memorable if groanworthy NPCs?

How much One Piece do you want in your Spelljammer and vice versa?

[Gryphonfg]

That map looks about the same as the one I found.

As far as how One Piece I want to go, I don't want the OP characters, I want the characters to be challenged. I want the memorable encounters, the fun role play, and the adventures on the way to their main goal: some insane treasure that everyone wants.

Though an idea did hit me at work yesterday, have them not sure where the treasure is. But they have clues. The person who left the treasure left markers to follow. So, they find one marker, it leads them to another planet where they have some short adventures and discover the next marker.

The neogi slave ship could be a fun encounter along the way.

[Andor13]

I mean, it's Spelljammer, you can run literally any adventure you want.

Assuming you don't want them to get caught up on some dirtside dungeon-crawl you're going to want to mostly stick to space based adventures, but that still leaves you with everything from Marie Celeste style mysteries to abandoned-and-infested-dwarfhold bughunts, to running 3-way ship battles.

I think I would probably try to split the campaign arc into 'seasons' based on both level range and stellography.
So season 1 "The hero's set sail" is set around the home sphere and last from levels 1-(3 to 5). Probably I would have a few isolated encounters with their nemesis being a local space pirate. Season 1 ends with them finishing him and burning/capturing his ship and they enter the phlogiston.
Season 2 "The journey begins" cover the first journey to a new sphere, encounters therein, and leaving. Probably levels (3-5)to (7-9). Here they encounter their first racial enemy and friend, maybe scro pirates and arcane merchants.
And so on. each arc is structured like a season of a show, with a few bad guys, a mcguffin, and some new friends to make.

Spelljammer lends itself naturally to this structure, being centered on travel and with clear breaks between spheres.

[Gryphonfg]

The Marie Celeste mystery sounds like it could be interesting.

My problem when I can do anything is that anything is just so much, its a bit overwhelming.

I would like to thank you all for your help. However, as one idea rolled into another, the idea for the spelljammer game has given way to a Starfinder game, to try out the new systems. And one of my friends suggested trying something completely different, a space station. Now all the adventures will just come to them. I didn't really want to do the long journey game with Starfinder as it's setting is not really flushed out yet.

[unseenmage]

Deep Space Absolom it is then.

Hope you all have fun!

[Gryphonfg]

Vanguard Station One. I'm borrowing a bit from Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine for the campaign. They will be far enough from the Pact Worlds that they shouldn't expect a lot of help. I'm thinking about including some ambassadors from different races, like the Azlanti Empire, for some political fun. And then the Dominion invade.

[Bronk]

There's a lot of good stuff in Afroakuma's old planar question threads, and those threads use a similar map from the same source as a basis for Spelljammer answers.

http://nerik.orpheusweb.co.uk/files/Spelljammer/Flow_map_01-12-12.pdf