Re: SJ Issues: Sj ships and Groundling Civs

>From: David Stairs <garhkal@?????.com>

[Snip a lot of stuff on the impact of spelljamming ships on intraplanetary
trade]

>First off.  Like several others have stated, there is the interaction with
>winds, weather (imagine flying through a storm front, or even worse a
>lightning storm)..  Second off, many major cities (like waterdeep) have
>made
>rules governing spelljamming ships, and with all their high level mages can
>enforce them rather well..  Then you also have to take into consideration
>other critters.

The problem with all of these is that spelljammers aren't the only method of
transport that have to suffer through/deal with all of these difficulties.
Caravans, wagon trains, and sailing ships also have to deal with this.

Flying through a storm front probably won't be much worse than sailing
through one on the ocean, particularly since the spelljammer can go up over
the storm and the windjammer cannot.

Critters?  Well, how many adventure plots for D&D (any edition) revolve
around some caravan or another that had been attacked and destroyed by
bandits/orcs/dragons/whatever, requiring the intervention of the PCs?
Spelljammers are just another type of caravan in this regard, and one that
is safer in the long run - they're faster (than sea-going ships or
land-based caravans), meaning they can spend less time in hostile territory.

And high-level mages?  Well, that's a matter of diplomacy and bribery.
Guarantee the high-level mage wholesale prices on certain rare and exotic
items, as well as a tithe of those items for free (as a "good-will
gesture").  At the same time, guarantee that your cartel will never fly over
the city itself, and you will probably eliminate their difficulties with
your flying merchants.

This isn't to say that spelljammers won't ever suffer difficulties.  Storms
still suck, and it takes *time* to get into orbit.  Flying critters tend to
be worse than land-based critters.  Some cities are just plain thaumophobic
or xenophobic.  But the spelljammers will have a serious advantage over any
groudling merchants.

So, I don't think the solution is to artifically handicap the spelljammer.
The first and best thing to do to avoid the difficulty is not to mix
groudnling campaigns and spelljammer campaigns.  Shoehorning Spelljammer
into Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Krynn without any real thought as
to what it would actually *do* to the settings was the biggest problem
Spelljammer had (IMHO, anyway).

If you really want to mix Spelljammers and groundlings, design the setting
from the ground up to support it.  And, in areas where the groundlings have
never seen a spelljammer before, let the players go crazy trying to exploit
the natives (if they want).  Until the natives get tired of being exploited.
  Then have the Arcane show up and sell helms to the groundling nations.
Start a spelljamming revolution.

[Snip the warfare thing]

>Well, while there is a great advantage to using SJ ships in ground warfare,
>that can easily be thwarted if the 'groundlings' know of SJ ships and tech.
>  Imagine for example a 6th level mage.  Casts invisibility on himself,
>then
>fly.  uses the flyto get to the ship, then using what knowledge he has of
>the SJ ship, moves to where the helm would be and then hits it with dispel
>magic.  Can you say ouch!!!!
>Or a slightly higher level mage using all sorts of monster summonings
>into/onto the ship?!?!

Spelljammers do, indeed, introduce a whole new dimension into strategic and
tactical planning.  And your ideas are not bad at all.  But I've got an even
simpler one, involving the 6th level wizard:  Invisibility, Fly, and a Wand
of Fireballs.  Even a high-level wizard on a helm has trouble with repeated
fireball strikes.

But, in a "first contact" scenario, I'd give a number of early victories to
the spelljammers.  And then I'd remind them that they are severly
outnumbered by the groundlings they are attacking.  If they then ally with a
local power, they get sucked into politics.  And the ruler of the local
power may just want to catch them off guard, murder them, and claim the
magic of the flying ships for themselves.

><<I don't like either of these scenarios, and I have my ways of taking care
>of them, but am curious to hear how everyone else deals with them (assuming
>others have had to confront these issues in their games.) Is there a
>generally agreed upon/enforced prime directive for spacefarers? Do you
>ignore groundling nations for the most part by making your crystal sphere
>mostly small asteroids and uninhabitable planets? I generally use the EIF
>as
>an enforcer, reasoning that their facist-paternalism (I lean very heavily
>on
>the EIF as the controling faction of space, and not a very sympathetic one
>at that) stands against interfering with groundling worlds directly like
>that.>>

I've always thought the Prime Directive was pretty lame, so I don't use it.
I allow all kinds of meddling with groundling nations.  But, in my campaign,
there aren't a lot of really big nation-states.  The Rock of Braal (Brall?)
is about typical for spacefaring nations, because of the difficulties of
supporting a large population on an asteroid (or even a cluster of
asteroids).  They try not to get involved in groundling affairs too much,
because they don't have the military might to do anything serious if it gets
ugly with the groundlings - not in the long run, at least.

Of course, in my campaign, the motto of Braal is:  "If you can't beat them,
buy them."  And its one of a number of asteroid cities based on the
city-states of the Italian Renaissance.

Richard Gant
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words;
on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
     -James Nicoll

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