Why did Spelljammer fail?

[Brian]

At a guess, I'm the only person here who actually played (more than once) in the Spelljammer setting.

The first campaign I was in was all about us forming a crew, stealing a ship (or conning someone into giving us one), and then escaping the god-forsaken rock we were all exiled to (we were playing prisoners).  That campaign worked well, except for the fact that Spelljammer only figured in peripherally.  The campaign ended when we got onto the ship, because, well ... we won.  So we never actually used our ship in any of the setting beyond, "You're on an asteroid belt that runs through a comet farm; your rock is for prisoners.  A larger rock hosts citizens and the port.  Figure out how to get there and then steal a ship."

Campaign two started out on a prominent rock, where we were aboard a large warship (the largest in the book, IIRC; the Tsunami), and piloted smaller craft in somewhat oddly run dice-powered dogfights.  This campaign fell apart simply because while we had an initial goal (defend our home), the GM didn't really have anything to it beyond that.

Campaign three was a better approach to the situation; we started out on a magic-starved world where the highest level a mage could get was two, and priests were limited to four.  Enter the spelljammer, since spells beyond level two (mage) or three (priest) couldn't be cast, and there were no interstellar doors.  The ship carried us to a hub-world where we found that various planar dieties had decided to close the ways between the worlds, incidentally taking all of the magic away from our home.  To restore it we had to sail the phlostigon and--  Then I moved to California from Washington, so I'm not really sure how it turned out.

The only time I used spelljammer when GMing, I threw out the rules and pretty much just told the PCs that it was just what they'd use to get between planets in a specific system (the setting begs you not to do this, but ... eh).

For what it's worth, I think that Spelljammer's battle mechanics (especially the detailed ship-to-ship combat rules) were ... well.  Mechanical?  They didn't seem to flow, or feel very intuitive, and there were an awful lot of them.  Dex checks when handling your own weapons to make sure they don't misfire....  We lucked out by only piloting small craft in scenario 2, especially since our GM fudged the rules and sped up combat a bit.  Even then, it still dragged a lot.

Ultimately, the system was clunky, ill-concieved, and didn't really add much new (except, perhaps, Neogi Mindspiders).  If TSR wanted to make it succeed, they should have had spelljammers show up so they could get some crossover action going on between (say) Krynn and Greyhawk.  Or the Forgotten Realms.  Then after those books come out, lead up to something epic along the lines of a quest to ... something ... in the phlostigon.  Launch that as a campaign that defines various spheres of influence with specific goals and alliances, then close the epic saga with success and a ragged concordance that's on the edge of war.

Bah.  Might not have helped at the time, certainly too late now....  Oh well. :/

[Dracos]

As I said earlier though, that'd really change the dynamics of both.

In order to do that, spelljammer had to subsume them.  You had to throw away what the others were to create this new innovation off of it where instead of flying dragons, they flew ships.  At least in Dragonlance.  Not so sure on Greyhawk.

In other words, it'd be difficult to maintain the original world environment + spelljammers simultaneously.

Dracos

[Rift120]

Mmmm... I admittedly don't know much about Spelljammer.. but was a avid FR reader and collecter of FR modules a while back. And I learned of Spelljammer from there.

THere is SOME intereaction between the FR world at least and spelljamemr, albiet as more minor plotlines.

In the NEthril box set there is a description of a Netherese Spelljammer port...

In hte more modern day FR setting... there is actually a low Key shadow war between Native Toril Wizards and SPelljammers smuggling in 'flash powder' for toril's first firearms. Since guns are viewed as a radical 'equalizer' between the average person and wizards.

THe main reason its a shadow war is that onlya few Spelljammer smugglers are actually landing on toril... but they are trying ot finance a future black market through those jealous/desirious of wizards power.


On a unrelated note.

I'm curious as to whether you consider hte 'masque of the red death' a decent seting, extension of hte Ravenloft campaign.

[Dracos]

Rift:

In fairness, I've never seen anyone grab for spelljammer stuff in other campaigns while not using spelljammer.  Whether they write it in as little tiny subnotes doesn't really change that.

Dracos