Re: Spelljammer 3E Thoughts

>Except for things like the astral, ethereal, material plane, that there
>are outer planes, and elemental planes, we don't need any more
>specifics.  Who cares if there are 100 outer planes and 40 elemental
>planes or just 5 of each?  TO SJ, it doesn't matter.

Actually, i'd say the "elemental" classification of planetary bodies
is one of the better elements of SJ that helps distinguish it from
space opera, or scifi-with-magic settings (like DragonStar, or Star
Wars).  In fact, for my own campaing i'm extending it slightly, so
that all natural bodies in space are based on rifts to one of the
inner planes.  the sun is a fire body, most planets are earth, water,
or air--but one is smoke--stars are radiance, the asteroids are a
mixture of earth, mineral, and ice, and comets are fast-moving rifts
to the ethereal plane--which means if you get aboard one
successfully, you can take advantage of both its speed and slower
time passage to make long journeys.

However, even if this were just a classification based on analogy,
not literal connection (with the exception of the comets, i haven't
decided for certain that they will all be formed around active
rifts), it would work.  And if that's the case, it doesn't matter if
those are *actually* the inner plaens, just that the model works.
So, i agree that all that matters, plane-wise, for SJ is
(1) you can't reach any other plane from the phlogiston
(2) the various crystal spheres may or may not be in the same
material plane--but it doesn't matter
(3) you can't teleport between crystal spheres

i don't think it even particularly matters whether or not there are
any other planes (ethereal, astral, inner, outer, shadow--whatever),
or, at least, no more so than it matters for any other setting.
there would be ramifications to changing the planar setup, but not
really any SJ-specific ones (at least not that i can think of--and
i'm currently elbow-deep in writing non-D&D rules for SJ, and ironing
out any setting inconsistencies, so i think i'd have noticed).
--
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http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/

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