Re: Pirates - Was: Places: Dragon Rock Map

>Heck, I know of characters that carried more magic items than some small
>countrys could afford.
>
>Night_Druid wrote:
>
>>>Spelljammer economics are extremely skewed by helms, to be honest,
>>>they throw everything into turmoil.
>>>
>>
>>    Heh, no worse than magic items in general, actually.  Some characters
>>carry around enough magic items that their combined value is far greater
>>than that of a helm :)
>>
>>Adam


Difference is, a Gm has complete contyrol over magic items.  Look at
how stingy I am in Jammers! :)

But in Spelljammer, you pretty much _have_ to allow players access to
helms.  _Every_ opposing ship has to have one, and fighting ship to
ship battles is one of the draws of the setting!  I think you can
really tell Spelljammer was designed in the Lorraine Williams era at
TSR, play-testing and design was shipshod. I love the setting, but I
think most of us can agree that purely on a technical, craftsman-like
level Spelljammer is shoddily put together.  Compare it, for example,
to the much more elegant campaign design of Birthright or Darksun.
Now, I prefer Spelljammer to both those settings, but they have
better basic design.  What they lack is the sheer imaginative leaps
of Spelljammer (still the single most unique and original Roleplaying
setting I've ever seen).

But getting back to helms, the answer is ether to 1) devalue helms,
2) come up with cheap but limited helm substitutes to carry the bulk
of SJ traffic, or 3) make it extremely easy to damage a helm.  For my
own games I've chosen all three options:)



--
"...How shall a man judge what to do in such times?!"
"As he has ever judged," said Aragorn "Good and evil have not changed
since yesteryear..."
J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers_

Paul Westermeyer,  westermeyer@????????.net