Re: SPELLJAMMER Art

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:43 PM

> I say 10' ceilings, simply because the math is easier.

I didn't think of that. 10 foot high ceilings give you two five foot squares 
if the ship ever gets its gravity flipped (by crashing on its side). I 
shouldn't be mentioning ships that get flipped or I'll be wanting weird 
stuff like deck plans for ships that are upside down or on their side! ;-)

> And I think I've mentioned this before, but one thing
> I've noticed is that many ships look to have missing
> decks.  The tradesman should have at least one more
> deck, as well as the hammership and dragonfly.  The
> Deathspider is missing several decks; it should have a
> good 6-8 decks in that oversized butt, unless the
> neogi have massive, 30' gothic ceilings.  The
> mindspider needs a massive overall :p

Now that Stephen has pointed this out, the ships all look wonky to me too.

> Otherwise the pictures have hulls that are way too
> deep for the deckplans.  Without additional decks,
> some of those ships should look much "flatter" than
> they do.  And more decks would make sense from a
> ship-builder's point of view; many ships did have a
> good 4-5 short decks, not 1-2 long decks.  In a way,
> SJ ships, by the deckplans, would look more like
> flat-bottomed river barges, but the pictures look more
> like deep-keeled ships.

For Spelljammer it would "make sense" to either build very small highly 
manoeuvrable ships or ships that were either exactly 50 tons (if you own a 
minor helm) or exactly 100 tons (if you own a major helm). In Spelljammer 
tons means air and air means longer range. Get a big ship (with a relatively 
low crew) and fill the space up with cargo and you can go further before you 
have to stop off. Being able to go further lets you visit more crystal 
spheres. The spellcasting level of the helmsman is unimportant except during 
combat.

In Spelljammer you pay a fixed price for a minor or major helm and you pay 
the same price for a helmsman. So someone with a 10 ton damselfly or a 60 
ton hammership is getting "short changed". They are "paying" for an air 
envelope bigger than the one they are getting. To be honest, if I was a 
Spelljammer ship designer and had a 40 ton ship, I'd probably try to "glue" 
a 10 ton ram onto the front (just to give me a bigger air envelope). And if 
I was a ship owner with an unmodified 40 ton ship, I'd see if I could tow a 
10 ton "lifeboat" behind it. Actually the lifeboat idea is probably better, 
because it gives you several options (use the fresh air to go further, 
abandon ship in the lifeboat or cut the lifeboat loose if being chased).

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/