Re: Realmspace adversaries - Was: Places: Dragon Rock Map

From: "SUBSCRIBE REALMS-L tauster" <chefseehund@???.de>
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Places: Dragon Rock Map

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:25:25 -0000, David Shepheard
<david_shepheard@???????.com> wrote:

>>There should be at *least* one group of adversaries in almost every
sphere. Pirates are
>>one good enemy for players to fight, but I think that each sphere also
needs other
>>organised bad groups like the Tenth Pit. These groups don't necessarily
need to have a
>>major presence, but could instead be used to pull players out of their
home sphere to take
>>the battle back to their enemy's headquarters.

so what are the major baddies in realmspace?
- the pirates with their headquarter in garden
- the 10th pit (?)
- ???

If you are really interested in writing this up, you should read through Realmspace and
take some more notes, *before* you start.

1) You don't need to travel far to find the neogi at Journey's Legg. This is a slavers
hidaway in the Tears.

2) Eye of the Sky is another place in the Tears with baddies. This time it is the
Beholders. The description says "No one has successfully led an attack against this
asteroid" which implies that *unsuccessful* attacks have been led.

3) Haven, a moon orbiting Glyth is another place to look.

I'm sure there are several others.

>>I believe that these "parking places" are in the gaps between the
asteroids that make up
>>Garden. These gaps are "far enough apart to allow sight between them." and
can be "as far
>>as 100 yards apart" or "no closer than 100 feet apart." Slade then goes on
to say
>>something that is quite important: "This allows many spelljamming ships to
pass between
>>them if manoeuvred carefully."

<snip>

>agreed, to all and everything. ...seems my mental picture of garden was a
>little different from what was in the books. thanks for nudging me in the
>right direction. ;o)

No problem. I suggest you read Realmspace cover to cover a few times and take as many
notes as you can while cross referencing things. You will come up with a lot of
combinations that you can use to infer new stuff.

>>Someone could for example kit up a ship as a mobile inn or brothel and
cater to the
>>pirates in the centre of Garden. They would arrive with holds full of ale
and leave with
>>looted gold. They would trade stolen goods for other things that the
pirates need.

>i absolutely love the idea of the "brothel-jammer"! *rofl*
>it instantly conjures the picture of a run-down wrack, painted in hilarious
>colors (and therefore hidden VERY deep between the asteroids, perhaps
>camouflaged by a illusion made permanent by a "grateful" wizard patron), an
>obscene figurehead, pink sails and so on... :o)

LOL It would be great fun, but you would have to be very careful how you wrote it up as
someone could complain if you made it too graphic. It could also get the content rating of
any website it was on altered.

If you do have a brothel ship then perhaps it might be operated by the aperusa. I can
imagine that they would be very good at charming money out of the pirates.

>>A large
>>thieves guild, for example could set up a legal looking trading company to
handle goods
>>stolen by pirates. While these goods might be spotted if taken back to
where they were
>>stolen from, the Spelljammer universe is a big place and goods could be
fenced in a
>>different sphere.
>>
>>A thieves guild could even pass intelligence back to the pirates to help
them ambush ships
>>with expensive cargoes and few fighters. Pirates don't really make sense
in isolation.
>>They need an entire support network.

>some neat ideas about a spherewide operating thieves guild. we should
>tackle that in a seperate thread.

I'll look out for the thread.

>>The moons Templar and Farworld are the only inhabited places close to
Garden. I suppose
>>pirates could attack ships going there. I think that attacks near Templar
might attract
>>attention of the 100 mages there and attacks near Farworld might attract
attention of the
>>traders.

>...perhaps the wizard who camouflaged the brothel-ship is a regular from
>templar? ...perhaps most or all of them know about the pirates? they might
>even have some sort of agreement with them: "you procure rare/illegal spell
>components/paraphernalia for us and we supply you with magic".  that would
>give the pirates enough magical backup to make them major baddies in the
>sphere, and give both parties a substantial advantage.
>...should be tackled in a separate thread.

Don't forget that the pirates need helmsmen. If you are going to have a group of
spellcasters working with them, then the relationship could be closer than this.

>>I don't think Abeir-Toril was related to our real world. I think it was
related to *lots*
>>of other worlds. *All* of which have forgotten that it exists.

>i disagree. for one, there are many "non-native" races on toril. think of
>the planetouched, the thri-kreen, mindflayers, etc.

>ed greenwood describes faerun as "littered with gates to other worlds"
>(quoted from memory, probably worded different). i´m still looking for the
>article that explained the term "FR" , i am sure i´ve read it somewhere.
>elminster, khelben and lhaeral were visiting ed himself in his flat in
>canada, chatting about "the realms"; ed used this as background for
>articles with realms-lore.

How can you say you disagree and then say the same thing as me??? I said that rather than
Toril being connected to Earth it was connected to many worlds. That is the same thing
that you said, isn't it? Reading my sentence again, it looks like I was saying it wasn't
connected to Earth, but what I meant was that it was connnected to lots of worlds.

>>I agree that Torilspace would have been better than Realmspace. However,
what would have
>>been even better, would have been to have had Bral like communities in all
three of these
>>spheres that were so important to the spelljamming community that the
spheres were named
>>after them.

>agreed. but perhaps toril IS more important than we picture it? waterdeep,
>calimport, the dock, the karaturian ports... all of them supply services to
>spelljammers; waterdeep and calimport metropolitan cities where you can
>trade almost everything (apart from magical spelljamming equipment of
>course). both ports can be reached by a quick planethop. of course you
>should do this with a ship that looks like a seagoing vessel, or you´d be
>the attraction af the whole city...

I'm a bit confused by you saying: "but perhaps toril IS more important than we picture
it?" Is that a statement or a question? It doesn't scan right, that way.

If you were saying "Is Toril important?" then the answer has to be yes. Spelljammers land
there all the time, however one of the books specifically said that someone that tried to
run a lot of smoke powder down to Toril had their ship explode on them. This makes me
think that the Realmspace gods take an extreme interest in Toril and don't mind so much if
spelljammers do things in the rest of the system.

I think the best way to handle Realmspace (and probably the other two spheres in the big
three) is to make the rest of the sphere work as a stand alone thing, but *also* allow for
people that want to land on Toril. This means that anyone that doesn't want to use Toril
gets a fully working campaign and anyone that does want to use Toril, isn't forbidden to
do so.

To do this you need to have enough friendly and hostile factions in Realmspace, enough
ideas for adventure within the system and enough reasons for people to travel into and out
of the sphere. Slade has actually done a good job at this and if Realmspace had been
published by WotC it probably would have been a hard back book the size of the FRCS.

>>How about if Selune had been built up and everybody called the sphere
Selunespace. We
>>could then say "By the way this groundling planet over there is called
Toril and that is
>>where the Forgotten Realms campaign setting is based."
>>
>>After all if spacefarers don't really like groundlings why would they
bother to land on
>>Toril? Why is Toril the most important planet in the sphere?

>see above; i can imagine that toril IS quite important.

I'm not disputing the importance of Toril. Don't forget that it is the homeworld of the
Shou Lung. However, don't forget that Toril does not have a unified government and many of
its groundling nations don't know about or don't like spelljamming. The actual world of
Toril is WotC's product, so we shouldn't touch it at all except to provide a list of
places to land.

I don't think Toril would be the number one place to land in Realmspace, otherwise it
wouldn't be a groundling world. The people there would all know about the many
spelljammers landing there. So while gamesmasters should be free to land their players
there, Toril's economic spelljamming hub should be somewhere else.

>the other answer for why toril is the most important planet in the sphere
>might be "because it´s the one with the most inhabitants.".

That could be right. Or it could just be that the gods like Toril more than the rest of
the sphere. I don't think we need to know the reason, because players should never be able
to find stuff like this out.

>agreed. i just had a different garden in mind and needed a little
>correction... ;o)

No problem. Just go and have another read of it to update yourself.

>>Slade uses the word planet *because* these former asteroids are now
permanently joined
>>together by Yggsdrasil's Child. The fact that they have a singular name
(and no individual
>>names) backs this up. Garden also has one common atmosphere (while its
moons are outside
>>this atmosphere). The Shou Lung call Garden a liveworld. So they certainly
think it is one
>>planet.

>i found the description of planets in the concordance of arcane space
>today. you´re right.

There are all sorts of strange things that you can come up with if you use non-standard
planets. Take for example a dyson sphere. Its a sphere, but under spelljammer rules it
would probably also be a planet!

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/