Re: Mosquito A4 card?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 12:15 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Mosquito A4 card?


> --- Steven <steven.james.1@??????????.??.uk> wrote:
>> www.silverblades-suitcase.com
>>  Odd question but I don't have A4 illustration card
>> with the mosquito ship:
>> was there one in SJ boxed set at all?
>
> No.  The mosquito never had a illustration card

I've always thought that was a shame and would love for someone artistic to 
create the missing pictures, so that Beyond the Moons could have a full set.

> (A4?
> That the designation for 'em?).

A4 is a UK standard paper size. None of TSRs products were printed in A4. I 
know because I photocopied all of the SJ monster sheets in my game books (to 
put them with my monster manuals) and had to trim the bottom off of all of 
the sheets. TSR book sizes are slightly shorter than A4, but approximately 
the same width. I'm not sure what the name of this size is, but it is 
probably some American standard size.

> The reasoning was
> that it was too similar to the dragonfly to need one.
> A lot of ships didn't have one; IIRC, the list is (&
> the reason for lacking a card) :
> Flitter (too small)

I'd still love to see a card for the flitter, to get an idea of how much 
room (if any) there is to have a melee combat on the deck. And if the ship 
is that small then it would probably be fairly easy to produce a 1 inch 
scale deck plan that could be printed, cut out and used in a SJ game.

> Mosquito (use dragonfly)

If WotC were doing Spelljammer this deck plan would probably have been a 
downloadable "web enhancement". I'd love to see someone do one.

> Caravel/Groundling ships sans Galleon (all assume to
> use Galleon)

But these ships actually have radically different deck layouts, so it would 
be good to have a set of these "poor quality" SJ ships. I think it would 
actually be good to have agressive groundling worlds with fleets of poor 
quality short range ships that can mob SJ ships that wander into their area. 
It would be another reason for groundling worlds to be avoided and poor 
quality ships wouldn't be able to take on an entire crystal sphere.

> Damselfly (use dragonfly)

Again it would be great to see this done.

> Tyrantship (no standard)

I feel that if SJ product line had continued for longer we might have had a 
SJR book about beholders (or failing that one about all of the major NPC 
races that had a chapter for beholders) and a fist full of tyrantship deck 
plans. It would be really great to see some of the rival beholder races 
fleshed out in more detail. Ship variants would be part of that process. But 
I'd also like to see variations in the beholders themselves (possibly even 
including variations in alignment and motivation). The entire racial 
deviation idea that was spun out in SJ was a fantastic idea, that never 
really got used properly. I think there was a mention somewhere that the 
beholders were supposed to be some sort of really wise (and possibly even 
good) race that would observe everything, but somehow got turned off of 
their destiny.

If we ever had the time, it might be nice to knock up a beholder crystal 
sphere, including an entire pantheon of good and bad beholder gods as well 
as a bunch of critters that fit in with the levitating biology of the 
beholder. I would suggest that beholders should have evolved somewhere where 
the concept of "ground" is meaningless, yet it is necessary to cut through 
solid objects in order to move around. I think that if you come up with an 
explanation for each of the beholder's powers you could use those reasons to 
define special laws within their home sphere.

> Sidewheeler (no standard)

There may be no standard for this, but it would have been nice to have seen 
one put into "SJR7 Krynnspace". (I'd also have liked to have seen a ship 
like The Unquenchable documented in Krynnspace.) There was very little 
mention of gnomish ships and other gnomish SJ equipment in that book. You 
would hardly realise that this crystal sphere was the homesphere of the 
tinker gnomes.

> Armada (not supposed to capture)

Again, I feel that if SJ had continued for longer we would have had a SJR 
book about the elves or wildspace, that would have had stuff about all the 
ships used by the Elven Imperial Navy, detailed information about the 
Sindiath Line, several variant races of elves and possibly a homeworld for 
elves. I would love to have seen something that gave us posters of an armada 
as well as Kapri, Lionheart and a couple of land based EIN bases.

Even though you are not supposed to capture an armada it would be good for 
PCs, who are on good terms with the elves, to be able to land on an armada 
during an adventure related to the EIN.

The Armada (like The Spelljammer - see below) is really too big for a card 
to do it justice.

> Citadel (dungeon in space, use dungeon maps like
> Illefarn)

Every citadel should really be different. It would be nice to see a few 
dedicated maps up on Beyond the Moons at some point.

Given that dwarven forges can't be used in wildspace, individual citadels 
should be treated as system ships and dwarves that live on them should be 
treated as inhabitants of that particular crystal sphere. I think that 
citadels should pretty much be treated as mobile trading posts selling all 
the sorts of goods that dwarves can make and buying other supplies from PCs 
on freindly terms with the dwarves. Some citadels could even have a regular 
fixed trade route within a crystal sphere and could travel the length of 
known asteroid fields.

It is a real shame that Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace didn't all give 
us a list known dwarven citadels and the clans living in them. I wouldn't go 
as far as to suggest they were included in a spheres "additional 
astronomicals", but I do think that they should be listed as local 
organiations. Most spacefaring dwarves should be able to trace their clan 
back to a dwarven citadel. It is also a shame that we didn't get a SJR book 
about dwarves of wildspace that could have given us variant races of dwarves 
and a possible homeworld for dwarves.

Again a citadel is too big for a card to do it justice. But a poster could 
do the job well.

> Spelljammer (too danged big)

There is a poster in the Legend of the Spelljammer boxed set that does the 
same job as the ship cards, so I consider this ship as "done" by TSR. 
However, considering that The Spelljammer can be destroyed and replaced by a 
Smalljammer, I would like to see variant designs of The Spelljammer that 
don't have that same iconic city on its back.

An elven Spelljammer (from the past) with a forest on its back could be fun. 
Or better still make it a beautiful irda crewed Spelljammer and have them 
get drunk on power and use the ship in a corrupt way that dooms their race 
to get turned into ogres!

A Spelljammer with a single wizards tower could also be fun as could a naked 
Spelljammer that has no "crew" except for the Shivaks. It would be great if 
The Spelljammer could somehow take on the personality of the races living on 
it.

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/