﻿For those of you who are unfamiliar with the setting of Spelljammer, here’s a little background. Spelljammer is a campaign setting that was created by Jeff Grubb and was published by TSR, Inc., 1989 for 2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons. Contrary to popular belief that the setting was created to connect all other settings, it was not the original intention. The original goal of the creators and editors was simple: take Dungeons & Dragons into space. Jeff Grubb and his team cloistered themselves away in a diner in Lake Geneva as they hashed out the details of their fantastical new setting. Their discussion was so other-worldly that the waitress waiting on them was convinced they were secretly working for Steven Spielberg, who was rumored to be scouting locations in the area.

Spelljammer spawned dozens of core products including box sets, adventures, monster manuals and accessories. A half dozen novels in the Spelljammer universe were supplemented by short stories, comic books and even a 1992 computer game, titled Pirates of Realmspace. Countless articles were published in Dragon Magazine and the fanbase was hooked. Science fantasy space adventures took over the minds of thousands of Dungeons & Dragons players across the world. Their campaigns set in the endless domain of space were limited only by their imaginations.

You might be thinking “Okay so it’s just fantasy in space? That’s not very groundbreaking. Sounds like Star Wars to me.” But you would be very wrong.

Zeb Cook, Jeff Grubb and the rest of their team had cooked up a tall order for themselves in that little diner in Lake Geneva. After coming up with their initial idea, they began to set directives for designing their setting. It couldn’t be like anything that had ever been created before. No sci-fi rip-offs, no fantasy world tropes and certainly no stereotypical space ships and aliens. But then came their biggest idea: to link together all of the settings in Dungeons & Dragons through their new setting. Find a way to link the Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Greyhawk and many other settings without invalidating the lore of any of the existing worlds.

So Spelljammer was born.

Sailing ships encased in bubbles of air travel throughout the vast realm of Wildspace, powered by their mystic helms that are used by a spellcaster, drawing on their magic to power the ship. Everything we might assume about gravity was thrown out the window and it became only a matter of convenience. A captain could tour the bottom of his ship by simply walking off the side. A larger ship might pull in a smaller ship simply because its gravity was greater. Entire solar systems are surrounded by colossal spheres made of an unbreakable crystal substance that protects them from an ocean of highly flammable swirling light and color, named the Phlogiston, which divides the void between stars.

Does that sound like Star Wars to you? I didn’t think so.

Spelljammer is a very different type of Dungeons & Dragons game than most other settings. Firstly, campaigns often spent long stretches of weeks, months or even years navigating the Phlogiston searching for another world to take refuge. Several new types of rules and statistics were introduced for powering your ship, fighting other ships and ship-to-ship combat. The setting has an overarching theme of science fiction but it’s fantasy roots are not forgotten. You might call it science-fantasy.

So how can you find out if the Spelljammer setting is right for you? Well if you haven’t decided by now that this sounds awesome, let me share a few major characteristics of Spelljammer, as defined by the published adventures to help you decide.

