Re: Mosquito A4 card?

--- David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
wrote:
> 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.

Deckplans are what's missing, not a picture ;)


> A4 is a UK standard paper size. None of TSRs
> products were printed in A4. 

Ah, I see.  In US, its probably 8 1/2" by 11" :)


> 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.

At 20' x 5', I figure it to be comperable to a bus or
RV, just with a low roof.  Practically a house for a
halfling or gnome ;)


> > 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.

Probably right.  

 
> > 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.

Heh, that's be interesting...treating ships as mook
mobs...(although that's how I did the goblin ships)
>:D


> > Damselfly (use dragonfly)
> 
> Again it would be great to see this done.

We do have a deckplan for this one, from Artist's
Errant in Dungeon.  Actually much smaller than the
dragonfly, IIRC.


> > 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. 

I doubt it, simply because the SJ line wasn't really
planned, more they threw out products almost at
random.  Although they did learn from their mistakes,
and planned the PS line much better from the start :)

Not saying it wouldn't have been an excellent product,
though.  A book about the neogi/illithids/beholders in
space would have been nice (although we do have that
now in the Races(?) of Madness book ;) ).


> 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.

We do have beholder-kin, although I think you're
looking for variations of true beholders, such as
crab-eyestalk beholders vs. snake-like eyestalk
beholders ;)


> 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.

Realmspace, section on H'Catha.  

 
> 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.

The most likely place something like that would be
developed would be as part of an adventure.  A whole
sphere-guide might be a bit much :)


> > 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.

Bah, as Paul noted in his reviews, NONE of the
sphereguides have any real flavor for the primary
worlds that supposedly occupy them.  Some are good for
SJ, but not good sources for FR/GH/DL.


> > 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.

THAT I can believe, simply because TSR had an elf-love
fetish. ;)  I too would love to see the EIN given a
full sourcebook treatment :D


> > 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.

There is one.  No reason someone couldn't make up
another ;)

 
> 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.

That's a really good idea, actually.  


> 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.

Interesting.  Let me address this elsewhere.


> 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.

That'd be interesting, although difficult to actually
impliment in a single sourcebook.


> 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!

Heh, could really accomplish much the same with
asteroid settlements ;)


> 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.

Again, an asteroid or say a Cuttle Command can work as
well, and be less a pain to flesh out.

Adam


 
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