My Perspective (Bias)
I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons actively for quite a few years. When 3rd Edition came out, I picked up the PHB and the DMG in the event I found a pick up game. I still have not absorbed all of the rules, and find the core books a bit too dry to read. This is probably the perspective of age, b/c when I was in high school (read: several decades ago) I had no problem memorizing 1st Edition down to page number references for pretty much everything of note.
So, what am I doing writing a review of a rules supplement for Dungeons and Dragons? I'm certainly not yet a qualified player of 3rd Edition, but I've been delving into online resources for the game more lately. I decided to pick up a copy of Dungeon to give it a once over, and found to my pleasant surprise that Polyhedron has somehow formed a symbiotic relationship with it, and not only that, it has a 3rd Edition supplement for Spelljammer in it!
I bought the original box set when it came out in 1989, and our group was very impressed by it, but we never got around to actually starting a Spelljammer campaign because we were having too much fun with Marvel Superheroes. The box sat around languishing for a few years before being traded off out of a sense that such a cool little accessory shouldn't be left languishing on a shelf.
So, I turned to Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon with a bit of nostalgia which was totally uninformed by any real memories of the setting.
Which means I'm vastly under-qualified to review the product, so be merciful. =)
Hopefully, this review will bring forth a bit of interest in the new material and some better informed opinions and commentary.
Style:
Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon (hereafter SJ:SOTSM) is an approximately fifty page section of Polyhedron issue number 151. The section starts with a full page of "cover art" and has its own borders, which are neither too large nor too ornate. Each chapter has a different colored border. The typeface is a nice readable size, standard 3 column magazine layout on a white background, so no eyestrain.
The cover and interior art is done by Scott Schomberg and is of excellent quality. The art is evocative and consistant in mood throughout. The character portraits are realistically proportioned and well-designed, if slightly static. (This is hard to quantify; there is good detail in these pictures, and they feel "complete" as to accoutrement.) The ship drawings are executed well, but nothing there is particularly innovative over the original (to my recollection and after surfing a few sites dedicated to the original) designs. All in all, I was very impressed by the quality of the artwork.
The writing style is a bit less engaging than the art, but it is generally clear and concise with attention paid to house style and pointing out rules points which saves a bit on flipping over to one of the core books. The majority of my assessment on the writing falls more into the "substance" category, so I'm not weighting it too heavily in the Style category.
Substance:
SJ:SOTSM is divided into 5 Chapters, as follows:
Chapter 1: Characters
The first part of the chapter deals with Races, but doesn't include anything really new in the mechanics department. Rather, the race descriptions focus on the status of each race within a setting consisting of a star system in which each race lives on its own planet. Humans live on a watery world, Elves on a forested world, etc. Dwarves and Gnomes both come from shattered worlds, however. The dwarves' world was conquered by the illithids, resulting in a bitter outlook. The gnomes' world was destroyed long ago, now existing only as an asteroid belt, but the gnomes make do by becoming expert scavengers, portrayed as somewhat merry space tramps. Both of these descriptions are ripe with story potential, while the rest left me kind of cold.
The next section deals with Classes, starting with a brief listing of the core classes which gives a rundown of their role in the setting. None of this really grabbed me much, to be honest. After the core classes come the Prestige Classes, and things are looking up again.
Overall, I think the prestige classes presented do a good job of adding flavor to the setting without being overpowering. They are:
Master Scavenger: This is a Gnome prestige class, with an emphasis on, well, scavaging. This class features a slow BAB progression but a good savings throw progression, with special abilities that include bonuses to search rolls, magic detection, the aiblity to "inflate value" of an item, selling it for more than it's worth, and the ability to improvise tools and weapons. The class also comes with "Gnome Respect" (at 2nd level), which aside from Diplomacy and Gather Information bonuses provides a nice roleplaying hook.
Planetary Explorer: Again, this class is pretty much sumarized by its title. The BAB bonuses are again modest, with decent Save progressions, and the focus on special abilities is in Lore for the various planets in the system, with a few spell-like abilities such as Hear the World (commune with nature) and Speak with Stones (stonetell) added in to the mix.
Spelljammer Ace: The Spelljammer Ace is a superior pilot. Requires ability to cast first level spells, with continued spell progression as per original class, and provides enhancements to the various piloting skills and feats. These are well-thought out and consistant with the rules presented in the following chapter, but I'll forgo listing them as they'd be a bit much to explain without reproducing too much of the article. Note that a character doesn't have to have the Spelljammer Ace prestige class to be a pilot, but to be the best of the best pilots, this is the way to go.
Stellar Corsair: Eh, Star Pirate! Well, the names are descriptive, which is good, though it makes writing a short description of what the class is pretty futile. Basically, a pirate. Sort of blends some standard warrior abilities and rogue bobbing and weaving and backstabbing with a bit of pirare charm in abilities such as "Gather the Crew", "Fortune's Smile", "Inspire the Crew" and at 10th level "Scourage of the Spaceways." Like the "Gnome Respect" ability of the Master Scavenger class, these lend a lot of flavor to the roleplaying experience while being grounded in what seem to be solid mechanics. If you want to swash a few buckles, swing from the rigging (you get "Scale the Rigging" ability early on, and a cinamatic re-roll with "Fortune's Smile"), and be something between the Crimson Pirate and the Dread Pirate Roberts, the Stellar Corsair is worth considering.
Storykeeper: Ah! Finally, a class that's not totally self-explanatory in its name. Well, maybe it is. Kind of reminds me of Croaker from the Black Company novels by Cook. The storykeeper is the keeper of the "...legends and traditions of his people, regardless of any obstacles the culture might encounter..." This is basically a bard type of class, best suited for bards, and providing an alternate set of abilities to those in the normal bard progression. The mechanics might be a bit dry here in the sense that they're simply alternate bard-like abilities, but the backstory of the class is very evocative of the situation facing the gnomes (originators of the class) and the dwarves presented in the setting, and it's a common tie between the two which belies their very different outlooks. The accompanying portrait of a dwarven storyteller is one of the more compelling pieces.
Overall, the prestige classes look to have fairly easy entry requirements, usually skills that have to be at 8 ranks or so, and provide alternate progressions rather than amazing powers.
Feats are next, with 16 total, including a new type of feat, the Background Feat. These provide bonuses based on your character's origin, and only one can be taken, and must be taken at character creation time. They include: Born Spacer (bonus to Profession (spacehand) checks and will saves vs. fear), Education (gain a knowledge skill as a class skill), Mysterious Heritige ("Somewhere in your ancestory was a mysterious figure of great power." That line reminds me of something from Arduin. Small bonus to Intimidate and to your DC for enchantment spells.), No Identity (you don't have a public ID, and don't even know who you are, bonuses to several things, and may be a bit overpowered since it only seems balanced by the fact that the PC doesn't know his/her own ancestory, which only saves on some background material writing.), Nobel Birth (start w/double money, small bonus on Diplomacy checks).
The remaining Feats are centered around the ballista and cannon, spelljamming (piloting feats and item creation feat for the Spelljammer Helm (ship's helm, not helmet)), and some which appear to be adapted from d20 Modern, such as Athletic (I could be wrong here).
Chapter 2: Space and Spelljamming
This is the heart of the book. This chapter provides a fairly streamlined adaptation for ship combat based on normal d20 combat, adding facing (necessary for ships, which have to face to use their weapons) and rules for ship movement.
Basically, ships run off of their Spelljamming helms, a usually chair-like magical item which provides artificial air and most importantly, movement. It's described as the "engine" of the spelljamming vessel and responds to the pilot's will. There are minor and major helms, which mostly determine what size of vessel can be controlled, and maximum speed. Gravity is mentioned in the following section, but shipboard gravity isn't mentioned as a feature provided by the helms, as air is. I'd assume that normalizing gravity ala Star Trek would also be a function of the helm, but it's left uncertain. Also, the skills and feats in the prior chapter refer to getting more performance out of a spelljamming vessel but don't seem to be requirements to actually be a pilot. (The relevent skill is Pilot (Dex), which is crossclass unless the character has the Spelljammer Pilot feat, in which case it's a skill class for all of your classes. Note, "Spelljammer Pilot" isn't on the feat list, it has been changed to "Spelljammer Helm Operation")* I'd think that being a spelljammer pilot would be something special and at least require the "Spelljammer Helm Operation" feat, but the text is unclear on this.
Movement is covered, and consists of Crusing Speed (warp drive) in which the ship doesn't interact with anything else, and Tactical Speed (impulse power). The catch here is that if the ship is too close to a source of natural gravity equal to or greater than its own, it is forced out to drop to tactical speed. A simplified formula (halving over distance) is used to determine the effect of natural gravity of objects on one another and provides an interesting twist to ship to ship combat strategy. It may also explain how you can have Stellar Corsairs when ships move at interplanetary speeds: get an equal or greater mass of ship(s) close enough to your victim and they're forced to drop down to tactical speed. Unfortunately, I did not find any rule for overtaking a ship in this manner, though the idea is intriguing. Perhaps because ships moving at cruising speed are effectively invisible, bording them is an impossibilty. On the other hand, that takes a lot of the danger out of space travel. It would be nice to see suggestions on how a ship might be detected by other ships or creatures, because as it stands, ships are simply a safe transport from point A to point B, with all combat essentially taking place in orbit (whether around a planet, a chunk of asteroid, or a derilect space ship).
Simplified rules for a crew rating are presented briefly, as are rules for loss of air. Several ship maneuvers and the consequences of failed maneuvers are covered, as well as ramming and crashing rules, and rules for damage and repair. The rest of the chapter provides writeups of a small selection of ships. These are presented two per page (total of 13, with the Drow Dreadnaught sharing a page with rules for special ship attacks (web and grappling)) with decent illustrations. Deck plans aren't provided here.
Chapter 3: Equipment and Magic
Nothing to see here, move along. Really. There are some new magic items and some new weapons, including firearms, as well as some space-going equipment. Nothing reallly grabbed me, though, but nothing was outright bad.
Chapter 4: Setting
I'd have to read this again to give it a fair review, because it was frankly a bit boring and repetative in its presentation. We get descriptions of seven planets (one the defunct gnome world) and the "sun" of the system known as the Pyre. These have a suitable fantasy feel, but suffer from the problem of being one-topography planets. Having each race from a different planet is a (or a couple of races, like Humans/Halflings and Dwarf/Orcs) good concept, but rather than having different ethnic groups in different topographies, each planet is all-water (90% anyway), all forest, all underground caves, etc. I could be forgiving of this type of shortcut due to the space limitations of trying to fit this info into a fifty page mini-game format if there were interesting historical/cultural notes included, but nothing here struck me as especially innovative. For example, the endless war with the orcs and dwarves until the illithid came along and took over just didn't sound very interesting to me. In short, I got a huge feeling of "same-same" out of this section.
To be fair, I did skip over parts, figuring the best course is either to a) wait for followup articles in Polyhedron to fill in the blanks or b) simply do one's own world-building. There are a few interesting hooks in there, but not many.
Chapter Five: Enemies:
See comments on Chapter 4. We get a couple of pages of very brief comments on the illitid, the drow, the yuan-ti, the sahuagin, and the formians, but no substance. The extent of the material is what you might find in the race relations sections in the PHB, for example.
I think this book would have been better served by slight expansion of the locations (all tied to a race) in the race writeup section (the setting material is thin) and then providing a history of the central conflict involving the Drow and Illithids. The other races presented could also have been footnoted in the
Also, there were no monsters (other than the races listed). I was really looking forward to, I dunno, maybe giant space leviathans with hunger pangs. Or maybe something mysterious that haunts the asteroid belt that used to be the home planet of the gnomes.
Deckplans would have been nice.
Final item is a pullout (held in by glue that comes off easily) with cardboard ship counters.
Conclusion
Considering the limited number of pages in Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon, I was impressed by what was accomplished. Good prestige classes, a workable and simple ship combat system, a few genre specific skills and feats, and a bit of a sample campaign. The crunchy bits were worthwhile. Overall, considering all of the other content you get from Polyhedron and Dungeon, it's a great value. I'd like to see further support for Spelljammer and would buy future issues of the magazine (which I don't normally read) specifically for those articles. Not a bad endorsement.
The only caveat is that to run with these rules your DM will either have to do quite a bit of fleshing out of the provided setting (which may be worthwile) or rely on older Spelljammer products.
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*This naming faux pas also occurs with "Ballista Master" requiring "Ballista Training" feat, which is actually called "Ballista Specialist" in the text and on the feat table.
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