While I've said it before on this blog, I'm not going to assume you've read all my stuff, so here's my background: I've played D&D 5th Edition for about six years. I recently picked up the Starfinder Core Rulebook and Alien Archive, and have been reading the book back and forth to learn the system. I've never played Pathfinder.
The most recent D&D Unearthed Arcana seems to imply that we'll be seeing a Spelljammer campaign setting sourcebook some time next year (I'd guess around early spring).
I've never officially played in a Spelljammer campaign, though I did play in a one-shot my friend ran that took place in Realmspace (it was an all-Warforged party, but with one player who didn't get the memo and played a human.)
While I've never read an actual Spelljammer sourcebook, my basic sense of the setting is the following: it does involve spaceships and interplanetary space, but the physical laws of reality are still very much within a fantasy context. Gravity on the setting's spaceships, known as Spelljammers (though there's also a legendary vessel called The Spelljammer) simply treats the middle of the ship as a plane of gravity, which carries an atmosphere with it. So you can fight on the deck of a ship in open space because your pocket of air will simply stick to the ship (you can also go to the underside of the ship and be stuck to the bottom, as the other side of that plane also attracts things).
Each canonical world in D&D (at least those in the Prime Material Plane) exists within a "crystal sphere" that serves as the bounds of that physical realm. So, places like Krynn (Dragonlance,) Toril (Forgotten Realms,) and Oerth (Greyhawk) are planets that float within their own crystal sphere. These spheres can contain other planets and such, but are relatively small compared to the grand expanse of the universe. As I understand it, simple teleportation magic like the Teleport spell can allow transit between those worlds, as they are still on the same plane of existence, but an individual would be unlikely to have the familiarity to make such transit safe. The Dream of the Blue Veil is a reliable and safe way to travel these worlds.
However, one can also do so in a Spelljammer, which requires you to use magic to open a portal in the Crystal Sphere and enter the Phlogiston, which is a sort of endless ocean of magical matter with currents that can be navigated to take you to other worlds. One of the oddities of the Phlogiston is that, while arcane magic works normally there, the gods are unable to have any effect on it, meaning that divine magic is nullified while in it.
The concept of Spelljammer was meant to evoke archaic models of the universe. Generally, when we look at space travel, it's usually within a science fiction context - even works where the supernatural is a powerful force (such as Star Wars) often treat space-travel as something to be solved with technology. Spelljammer, on the other hand, seems to firmly push things into the magical and fantastical realm. As I understand it (and I could be wrong,) the world of Spelljammer is not one of jump-drives, plasma blasters, and scrappy rust-buckets outfitted with illegal technology, but rather the magical equivalent thereof.
Starfinder (which, having the actual book, I'm obviously a bit more familiar with) mostly plays in a sci-fi context. However, it's also distinctly science-fantasy - it has gods that are not just theoretical, as well as magic and other planes of existence from which outsiders (such as angels, devils, and demons) come. It's also got elves, dwarves, and other such stock fantasy races on top of more original, otherworldly aliens.
But while magic exists, there's less of an emphasis on it. For example, The Drift, which is the most common from of faster-than-light travel, does happen to be another plane, but it can only be reached via technological means (the technology happened to be gifted to the various mortal races by a god, but on the other hand, it was the god/goddess of artificial intelligence, so we get a bit of a ping-pong effect here.)
The ships in Starfinder reflect a diverse number of alien homeworlds and designs, but they look more compatible with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica than Spelljammer's "sailing ship but in space" looks.
Starfinder is based on the Pathfinder rules system (and to be fair, as someone who has not played Pathfinder, I don't really know how much has changed) but it's clearly been overhauled to accommodate a more sci-fi genre experience. For example, there are skills one can learn like "Computers" and "Engineering," and "Piloting."
Class design is also very in-universe. The Mechanic could arguably be likened to the Artificer, but it has many abilities that only make sense in a sci-fi setting where there are computers to hack. The Technomancer, which is Starfinder's Wizard/Sorcerer equivalent, does focus on spellcasting, but you also get abilities that, for instance, draw on the power of an ordinary battery (which is usually used to power various technological devices or serve as ammunition for energy weapons).
Clearly, Paizo was not willing to just slap on some new races and subclasses can call it a day in designing Starfinder. However, this does carry with it the consequence that, while you can convert a Pathfinder character to work in Starfinder, it is pretty much a separate product line.
When it comes to Spelljammer, I don't think that Wizards of the Coast would want to break it off as a truly separate game, and I think as a result it has to bow to the demands of the fantasy genre.
On one hand, I get that - and I would really benefit from the ability to use my huge library of 5E books to provide content for a potential Spelljammer campaign.
I guess the question I then have is if Spelljammer must give up some of the sci-fi tropes that I enjoy. Even though I think of myself as more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi guy at this point, I grew up obsessed with spaceships and robots. While Starfinder has a whole dedicated system to hacking computers or building starships or running vehicle chases, I suspect that at least some of that would require a bit of homebrewing.
Of course, this is all speculative until we actually get an updated Spelljammer book - and that's not actually confirmed yet.
Starfinder has a default setting written into its core rulebook, but I think the system is easily versatile enough to let a GM homebrew a new setting. While I know some people really prefer a rules system to have the setting and specificity built in (I think that Matt Colville talked about how he had designed a class that was specific to its setting, and how this was good practice,) I sort of feel differently. Especially for rules systems, but even for something as broad as a class, I think giving them a great deal of flexibility in the lore allows people to do with them what they want. I like that, for example, various Colleges for Bards are just a broad sense of their vibe and style, rather than specific places in a specific setting (though giving examples from various worlds is fine).
I don't know what the ratio of DMs/GMs is between people who run things in established versus homebrew settings, but I feel like part of what makes TTRPGs so fun is that you get to be so inventive. While I've enjoyed running my Ravnica-based game (and at some point want to run a Ravenloft one - though that's much more homebrew-friendly) I do really miss having full control over the setting and letting myself build the world to serve the kind of adventures I want to run (and add in things the players come up with as canonical to the world.)
That's getting a bit off-track. I do really appreciate the way that WotC (and predecessors) handle the kind of meta-settings. The Prime Material Plane is large enough to allow everyone's homebrew world to be "canonical," just as the Demiplane of Dread allows every homebrew domain to be.
But, the question is: within those settings, can you make significant shifts to the genre?
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