Re: Barrier Peaks Bibliography Help

> I agree totally with you! 1st was quite instable, but i have to admit a
love
> it more than any other (except perhaps OD&D). About the Barrier Peaks
issue,
> a do not remeber which of the old books got it. Was it in the DA series?
> Please send a short bibliografy. I want to study these All-Powerful Ships!

The Barrier Peaks starship was possibly/probably the ship (or one like it)
from the now-ancient "First Age" game Metamorphosis: Alpha. The actual ship
was in an adventure (for Greyhawk when published) called "An Expedition To
Barrier Peaks". It was a dungeon hack through a starship. The ship was
buried in the side of mud cliffs which collapsed after a storm. And in you
went, pitting your wits and your 1e characters against "magical animated
armour" and "golems" (robots and cyborgs), gaining new and exciting "magic
items" (blasters etc.) and facing the mutated monsters trapped within such
as Vegepygmies (Russet Mould Men). The ship was offered as an explanation
for where at least some of the most psycho of the game's then-current
monsters had originated - they were part of the cargo, escaped during the
crash and then bred. Amongst the species that this was true of was the Umber
Hulk.

The tech you got as the loot from the starship was excellent but very
limited. It was way too advanced to ever copy and incredibly stingy in terms
of recharging or fixing. It was all very Arneson, but done in a very Gygax
way - successfully, which made a nice change.

There is an impossibly rare roneo stat loose sheet version containing the
very first version of this adventure, no idea where one could even find such
a thing. Barrier Peaks was selling at the local secondhand games and book
shop for $30.00.

The Tale of the Comet Odyssey line for 2e had a tech meets fantasy theme
also. It was a standalone boxed set effectively resurrecting a Barrier Peaks
type theme to use a springboard for a new campaign world.

Another adventure with a spelljammer-esque bit is the adventure Queen of the
Demonweb Pits. Lolth's spider craft is transplanar, with rooms opening to
different worlds, amongst them a parallel prime where her forces were
kicking ass and taking names. The ship thus travelled between what in SJ
terms would be crystal spheres, via the astral plane. A lot like some of the
last Planescape stuff detailed -  as in the guide to the Ethereal Plane book
with the artist's sketch of all the primes in their crystal shells jostling
against each other with phlogiston around them fed by the ethereal. Thus
demonic ships could be Planejammers as a matter of course, from the
perspective of spelljammers teleporting into and out of the parallel prime
material planes within their crystal shells.

Mentioning the DA-series for "Mystara", well that whole world is predicated
on technology way back in the age of Blackmoor, so there is actually a fair
bit of "Witchworld" / "Warlock In Spite Of Himself" sort of stuff - beyond
the fantasy RPG world of Mystara is a universe that had a Galactic
Federation a few thousands of years ago, one of whose ships crashed and gave
the world a technological bootstrap. Arneson's website has details on some
of that. A scoutship was stolen by a security officer and his allies and
they used their technology to found a Frog God religion also - more tech vs.
fantasy in which properly run technology would wipe many PCs off the face of
the earth. Of course Arneson's stuff requires a lighter touch and is more of
a swashbuckling romp as often as not. But clearly again technology functions
in a D&D world, implying that technological "spelljammers" would also
function. I guess we'll see what a techno-spelljammer can do when Disney's
TREASURE PLANET comes out..! (can't wait) ;-)