Starting a SPELLJAMMER® Campaign (CSH)

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When you begin a SPELLJAMMER campaign, you face several fundamental choices. This section describes those choices and offers several campaign styles for consideration.
==Groundling or Spacefaring Characters?==
There are two ways to start your SPELLJAMMER campaign. You can launch your group's existing groundling adventurers into space, or you can generate new spacefaring characters.
Launching groundling characters into space makes the most sense if your players are not familiar with the SPELLJAMMER setting. This approach preserves the wonder. Instead of seeing a giff with a pistol, the PCs see a huge, hippopotamus-headed humanoid with an oddly shaped metal tube in his hands. The players can discover the fascinating nature of spelljamming along with their characters and will enjoy the discovery all the more for having experienced it first hand.
Some aspects of spelljamming are so dangerous that totally inexperienced spacefarers can find themselves learning a fatal lesson. Using a helm requires only a little practice, but the groundling characters will not know about neogi, illithids, beholders, dwin-
dling air supplies, and many other common problems of wildspace and the phlogiston. A menace that could be avoided by an experienced crew might be fatal to a group of spacefaring groundlings.
A kind-hearted DM may wish to give the players some guidance. One solution is to provide an experienced NPC who can warn the PCs of the most severe dangers. This NPC should not become the party leader, however. The NPC must be unwilling or unable to give the PCs any but the most essential help, or must be so untrustworthy that the PCs will not know when he is telling the truth. When the characters have become experienced enough in the spelljamming life that they no longer need advice, the NPC should be removed. There's no need to kill him off, however. Such NPCs make useful campaign fixtures long after their close association with the PCs has ended.
Many spacefaring proficiencies (such as the ones listed in this book) are unavailable to groundling characters, at least until they earn the proficiency slots to buy them. Thus, groundling characters gain skill slowly in spelljamming, space navigation, and other essential skills.
The other approach is to generate new spacefaring characters. This is preferred for players who already know a fair amount about the SPELLJAMMER setting and who wish to establish a new campaign there. Here the sense of discovery is replaced by greater competence. Instead of discovering the neogi for the first time, these characters have the skills needed to fight them on equal terms. The spacefaring characters are more familiar with the politics of the Known Spheres and can more effectively avoid or influence the power plays that divide and recombine the factions of space.
Generating new spacefaring characters is not without its problems, however. First of all, for players new to the SPELLJAMMER setting, spacefaring characters are more difficult to generate and to play, as the players do not know the basic features of the campaign. Telling them about the SPELLJAMMER universe is not as much fun as showing them.
Second, the SPELLJAMMER setting is more demanding than the typical beginning groundling campaign. Published adventures for the setting involve characters of 6th level or above. A spelljamming vessel piloted by a low-level mage or priest has all the speed and maneuverability of a barge. As slow ships are at a disadvantage in SPELLJAMMER campaign combat, this can be a serious liability. Characters can be generated above 1st level, but this eliminates much of the fun of developing the character from the beginning.
Finally, spacefaring characters tend to be less in-terested in activities in groundling nations. While this is appropriate in a pure SPELLJAMMER campaign, if interaction between the spacefaring and groundling cultures is planned, it may be difficult to convince your players to take their spacefaring characters down to a planetary surface.
==One Sphere or Many Spheres?==
A second consideration when starting a SPELLJAMMER® campaign is the physical extent of the campaign. Some campaigns occur primarily within a single crystal sphere; others span sphere after sphere in the quest for adventure.
We recommend sticking with a single sphere at the beginning of a campaign. Space is so large that discovering the features of just one sphere can consume several game sessions. Adventures can be found on any world, as well as in the wildspace between worlds.
If you start with a single-sphere campaign, the adventurers will eventually explore all the major features of the sphere. While adventures within a single sphere can last for years of play (as witnessed by innumerable standard AD&D® campaigns), the full potential of the SPELLJAMMER setting is not used in a single-sphere campaign. The opportunities for creating new systems and mind-boggling sphere-scale features are extremely limited within a single sphere. Only by traveling among the spheres can the true immensity and diversity of space be experienced.
However, a campaign that spans several spheres also has drawbacks. It is more difficult to find events that interest the characters if they have all of space to explore. Travel time between spheres can slow the game to a crawl, and characters may age two or even three years in a multi-sphere adventure. When you include travel time within the crystal shell, most spacefaring trips between spheres take more than three months.
Moreover, while this time passes very slowly for the characters, it may occur in an instant for the players. ("You leave Toril for Krynn. Six months later, you arrive.") You can try to make travel more inter-
esting than the sound of rolling dice (if you don't, your campaign is likely to suffer some problems), but journeys still occur quickly. This places the burden on you to complete construction of the destination by the time the PCs arrive. Things as complex as a coherent sphere are difficult to design, and can be used up amazingly fast in a multi-sphere SPELLJAMMER campaign.
==Long-term or Short-term Campaigns?==
Some campaigns start with a specific goal. When that goal is achieved, the campaign is over. If that goal is achievable quickly ("Rescue the elven princess from the neogi," or "Deliver this message to the illithid envoy on the Rock of Bral"), you have a short-term campaign. Further campaigns (sequels) may be run using the same characters, but there is usually a solid span of time between such campaign segments.
Long-term campaigns either have no specific goals or have unachievable ones (at least in the short term) like "Prevent the neogi from taking slaves" or "Return the hurwaeti to their lost glory." Such goals can provide structure to the campaign, even though achievement of the goals will probably not be within the characters' lifetimes.
SPELLJAMMER campaigns can be either of these types. Short-term SPELLJAMMER campaigns, because of their temporary nature and the size of space, tend to feel more isolated and less well integrated into the setting than such campaigns do in a groundling setting. Long-term campaigns, on the other hand, allow the background to seep through the emptiness of space, so that the players and their characters can view the SPELLJAMMER setting as real as any groundling campaign.
==Campaign Themes==
Every campaign needs a theme. A campaign can change its theme, but while it lasts, the theme provides a general sense of structure and a ready source of roles for new characters.
Merchants. In a merchants campaign, the characters are crewmembers on a merchant vessel. At low level, they are likely to serve under an NPC captain. When they reach higher levels, they will have a ship of their own.
The outward purpose of the characters' journeys is to make money through trade, by buying and selling goods. This provides motivation for travel and an explanation of how the characters are supported.
Buying and selling should not, however, be the focus of play. Haggling over an occasional cargo or scouring a market for a particularly good buy is can be interesting, but such activities should not consume more than their fair share of adventure time. Avoid turning the campaign into a mercantile game. Many visits will consist of simply dropping off one cargo and picking up another, with no more than a minute of real time spent on details. The focus should remain on the adventures that occur while traveling the spaceways.
Explorers. In an explorers campaign, the characters seek new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before. They travel from sphere to sphere, learning about the places within each one. Some explorers wander the fringes of the Known Spheres, looking for new worlds and recording their existence. Others travel within the Known Spheres, examining the many wonders to be found there.
Exploration can become the focus of adventure. Exploring ancient ruins, discovering the secret of the constellations of Krynnspace, or studying the walkers who endlessly circle the interior of Realmspace's crystal sphere can create fascinating adventures. However, there is no reason that an explorer campaign cannot have adventures of all types.
The Resistance. The characters are members of a group opposed to the current ruling faction in a sphere. This faction may be the Tenth Pit (see Lorebook of the Void, Chapter 3), or it may be some other imperial force. The characters seek to overthrow this faction by battle, sabotage, or any other means.
The characters do not have to be evil, or even chaotic, to pursue this goal. If the current rulers took control by force, lawful good characters could against tyranny regardless of the current "laws" such rulers have enacted.
Resistance activities tend to dominate in such a campaign. It is difficult for the characters to forget the grim task ahead of them in order to pursue adventure of any other sort. Moreover, these campaigns take place in a single sphere, as multi-sphere resistance efforts are beyond the abilities of any but the most powerful characters.
Mercenaries. The characters are mercenaries who fight for pay. This campaign is best suited to providing the characters with interesting military and tactical situations.
The adventurers may be a crack team trained for special missions. They can rescue trapped innocents from capture and slavery, acquire valuable artifacts, and foil nefarious plots—all for a fee.
Alternatively, the characters may be part of a larger military force involved in a long-standing war. Adventures in and out of battle are based on the nature of the war effort and the characters' crucial role in its success.
Pirates. The characters are predators of the spaceways, attacking and capturing spelljamming vessels for the loot aboard. They may be "good-guy" pirates who attack only the vessels of enemy ships (such as those of the neogi, beholders, or another human nation), or "bad-guy" pirates who pursue anything with a helm.
Good-Guy Pirates: Good-guy pirates may have been framed for crimes they did not commit, and were forced to flee. (It's hard to prove your innocence when you're in space). They may also be enemies of new rulers. If a wise ruler dies and is replaced by an oppressive new ruler, that's ample justification to embark on a life of outlawry—at least in the game.
In such a campaign, the characters are wanted by the law, but the law is wrong. Innocent victims of good-guy pirates are released unharmed (if a bit poorer), while true enemies suffer horribly. The campaign's goal is to restore the characters' good names by proving their innocence.
Bad-Guy Pirates: Bad-guy pirate campaigns are suited to gamers who want to play in a nasty fashion for a while. The characters are unrepentant scum, and they like it that way.
This is a dangerous environment and campaign. Since the PCs are as bad (or worse) than their enemies, there won't be any DM sympathy keeping them alive in bad situations. The PCs compete on equal terms with the nastiest of villains, and you can expect a high body count among PCs and MPCs alike. This style is best handled as a short-term campaign.
The Law. Unlike the previous theme, the characters in this campaign are on the side of the law. It is their job to keep the peace in the lawless realm of wildspace. They must do this with a combination of diplomacy and caution, as they cannot outgun their opposition. A group of marauding beholders, for example, can challenge even the highest-level group.
The aim of this campaign is to make the characters' sphere a safe and secure place for their people. If there are multiple factions within the sphere, the characters might be in conflict not only with true lawbreakers but also with powerful members of opposing factions. Generally, this type of campaign is limited to a single sphere (or a portion of a sphere), but it can last a long time.