Re: Spelljammer comics

From: "Trampas Whiteman" <dragonhelm@??????????.net>
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Spelljammer comics

> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:11:13 -0600, Night_Druid
> <Night_Druid@??????????.net> wrote:
>
> >> That being said, I do have a contact at Devil's Due and am putting my
> name
> >> in the hat for the writing duties.  :)  I'm hoping my experience
> adapting
> >> the Legend of Huma comics will pull this through for me.
> >
> >    Good luck with that!

Ditto to that. I'll have my fingers, toes, tentacles and other appendages crossed that
this comes off. If it does, can you let us have a bit of advance notice, as some of us
might need to order these to get them.

> Thanks, man.  I did talk with them today, and it sounds like it may be a
> possibility, but not for a while.

I hope they sell enough of the other ones to get a SJ comic off the drawing board. At
least the good news is you have more time to do any research you want to do.

One of the advantages Spelljammer has if it comes back, is that good ideas from later
products can be used to improve things. Reinventing the wheel, as SotSM did was a mistake,
in my opinion. Changing the ships (instead of adding new ships with different names) was
especially bad. (I can only imagine that someone wasn't happy about the original ship
designs being released under the conversion licence.) However, I don't see why Spelljammer
couldn't benefit from some of the better 3e changes or even some stuff from Planescape.

> >    Think you've missed a critical step: an engaging story to tell.

And don't forget the "hook". You need a hook on every cover that makes people need to pick
it up and read the first page. Once you have people on your hook, you can reel them in
with your engaging story.

I'm thinking of something dramatic like:- Your captain wrestling with a mind flayer on the
deck of a nautaloid.

Inside the magazine, the first panels could continue the action, showing a boarding party
fighting to get to your captain, before the flayer sucks out her brain. The mind flayer
can start to lock its tentacles onto the captain's head, as your giff first officer starts
to batter his way through the enemy. Just as everything looks lost, the captain could
reach the dagger of a fallen comrade and stab the illithid in the heart.

> Yeppers.  You know, the thought that came to my mind was to try to do
> something with a bit of a Firefly feel, where the ship does quasi-legal
> operations to survive, and flies another day.

Quasi-legal? Do you mean a story about a group of privateers? That could be fun, but if
that was what you meant, you would need to show the difference between your group and
pirates. Maybe they could be seen to be taking orders from an organisation like the
Pragmatic Order of Thought or handing over half their treasure to poor spacefaring
communities (in a Robin Hood style).

> >    To answer my own question, I'd start by making a story borrowing a bit
> >from Treasure Island/Planet.
>
> Treasure Planet is some of the best inspiration for Spelljammer.  :-)
>
> >I'd definately have a
> >racially varied crew, with a giff, gnome, maybe a lizardman, an elf or
> two,
> >and a red-shirt crew of humans, half-elves, halflings, and dwarves.
>
> I see a giff as the first mate, a female captain (human or half-elf), a
> human rogue who gets aboard by accident who plays her love interest (they
> spat a lot, although he's a charmer), a tinker gnome, a cleric of
> Celestian, and a female elf (White Robe?) wizard.

A sorcerer or half-orc added to the story at some point would let Spelljammer fans know
that this *is* third edition stuff.

(Actually sorcerers are something that needs to be explained. It seems to me that this 3e
class works a bit like a magical version of a psionic character. I suppose that many
people have the sorcerer talent and that sorcerers are able to help unlock the talent when
they meet someone with the gift who is willing to become an apprentice. Half-orcs are much
easier to deal with. I'm sure that they will have been around since The Unhuman War. There
could probably be a lot of half and half combinations if you mixed all the races. The Muls
in Dark Sun were a pretty cool addition.)

> Plus the Red Shirts of Entir'Pryz.  lol  *ZAP!*

An ogre-mage casting a fireball into the centre of the expendables, would make a great
cover picture! (I don't recall anyone using a shipboard fire in a story.)

Joking aside, I think "red shirt" characters have become a bit of a cliché in the Star
Trek novels. I don't want the main characters in a story to die, but if I know that *only*
the background characters are at risk, I don't worry about what is going to happen to the
heroes. I think that a bit of worry is necessary in order to make characters engaging.

It would be good to hide a fairly important character in the middle of *your* red shirts.
Then after a while, you could kill off an officer that you have built up to look like an
"important" character and have the red shirt character have to step into his/her shoes in
the middle of a dangerous situation and save the day. That way you can say to the readers
this is *not* Star Trek - *anyone* might get killed in the next issue.

I'm not sure what sort of officer could be replicable. Definitely nobody with magical
ability. Someone in charge of the siege weapons might be a good choice. You could even put
your human rogue in the expendables for the first issue and have the captain "reluctantly"
offer him a promotion by the end of the issue.

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/