Re: Tech & SJ

From: "Matt Hoffman" <manta928@?????.com>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 1:59 AM


> You're forgetting the most significant drawback to steamships in SJ.
>
> How do you plan on moving a ship powered by a boiler fire through 
> phlogiston?
>
> Without the ability to pass between crystal spheres, there really is  no 
> point to having Spelljammer rules at all.

I don't especially want to stand up for the Techjammer crowd, but I feel 
forced to. There is no problem with creating helm types that can't be taken 
into the flow without exploding.

Assuming you could get past the big problems that Adam has already stated a 
steam powered ship would work as a "system ship". (I forget the exact 
reference for system ships, but they are in a TSR product.)

A system ship is *any* spelljamming ship that remains in one crystal sphere. 
System ships might stay in the sphere because they are powered by something 
that explodes on contact with phlogiston, but they might also stay in the 
sphere because they gain power from something unique to that sphere.

However, power source isn't the only reason for a ship to be a system ship. 
A ship could come from a culture that worships "groundling gods" instead of 
spacefaring gods, and the crew of the ship may dislike travelling to other 
spheres where their god might not get the respect they think he deserves. 
Clerics who have experienced the loss of contact with their god may decide 
to stick to their homesphere where their power is not interupted. Clerics 
worshiping local gods (groundling gods from a SJ point of view) create a 
pool of "local helmsmen" who prefer to work on system ships.

Finally a ship may be owned by an organisation (like the Knights of 
Krynnspace) that sees a specific crystal sphere as a territory they are 
dedicated to protect. These ships may occasionally venture outside their own 
crystal sphere, but usually only when business forces them to leave their 
sphere undefended. (The future loss of the planet Krynn, from the point of 
view of the SJ timeline, would be a good reason for the Knights of 
Krynnspace to send search parties outside their own crystal sphere.)

I actually like the concept of system ships. I believe that SJ needs three 
levels of commercial travel and exploration:

1) Planetary Travel - Either by surface ship or flying ship, planetary 
travel helps bring goods from various parts of a planet to its spelljamming 
ports. Those sea or sky ports would in turn be served by land based supply 
lines from smaller communities. And those smaller communities would each be 
the hub of small farming and mining communities that create basic supplies.

(If you plan planetary travel routes on a groundling world, you can actually 
put one or two spelljammer ports on it without causing any "contamination" 
to the groundling cultures. The main problem is choosing an isolated 
community that would not be damaged by general knowledge of spelljamming.)

2) System Travel - Either by conventional spelljamming helms or devices that 
don't work outside the sphere, system travel should be able to supply more 
than 95 percent of the commercial needs of the crystal sphere.

(If a crystal sphere is unable to be self sufficient then I think that it 
hasn't been designed well. Each crystal sphere needs a variety of groups 
that occasionally come into contact with each other. While multi-sphere 
groups have their place in conflice a sphere bound groups are more likely to 
meet each other and come into conflict. Sphere bound groups also serve an 
important role in SJ, as they give a very good justificaton for guides with 
detailed knowledge of the local area.)

3) Wildspace Travel - This can only be achived by fairly experienced 
spacehands. Ships sometimes get lost and sometimes never find their way 
home. It is unrealistic to have this as the major form of Spelljamming, so I 
think that only about 5 percent of ships should actually need to travel the 
flow.

(If wildspace travel is something that isn't universal the multi-sphere 
groups turn into groups with a monopoly on bringing goods and services into 
and out of crystal spheres. I believe this is what they were designed to do, 
and how they can best be used. Plus with travel turned into something that 
is less universal clerics of a god, like Celestian, get to have a role off 
of the spelljamming helm. They become memebers of a multi-sphere 
organisation that can provide insider information and charts that can help a 
captain travel through the phlogiston for the first time.)

Someone could probably dispute my percentages - I did after all pull them 
out of the air - but I do think that these three distinct travel patterns 
help keep a party of players in a SJ game in areas that are SJ aware, 
without having to give each sphere 2 million spelljamming ports. (They also 
give a good excuse for players to "land in the middle of nowhere" and have a 
"groundling adventure" based on a commercial adventure for another campaign 
setting.)

> This isn't to say there isn't a place for limited use of firearms, 
> bombards and even non-magical engines (the furnace golem comes to  mind). 
> But in terms of practicality there is a huge tradeoff to be  made, and 
> it's not one that the majority of spelljammer captains (nor  the major 
> fleets of space) find a worthwhile exchange.

I say make this sort of thing part of the local culture of one or more 
worlds within a crystal sphere. If several power groups in a specific sphere 
all employ similar fighting styles they will all enjoy the same advantages 
and suffer the same disadvantages. So however good or bad this sort of idea 
is, it doesn't damage the balance of power.

If, to avoid argument, we assume that Adam is right, and these advanced 
techniques don't work very well. Then you can use that as a good plot 
device. An isolated navy with high powered steam weapons might do well 
against the ships in its own sphere, but when faced by the Unhuman or Vodoni 
ships, they can find that their weapons overheat and fail half way through a 
prolonged battle.

> Still, the idea of a practical steamer using SJ mechanics is  intriguing. 
> It even has a Twain-esque sentimental appeal to it. I  wonder if it were 
> possible to design smokestacks such that they could  extend beyond a 
> ship's air envelope? I notice that the masts of most  vessels are often 
> included in a ship's air bubble, but is it possible  to extend something 
> beyond the bubble? That would, for a steam engine  at least, provide some 
> method to power a non-magical local-wildspace  civilian mode of transport 
> without fouling the air.

I'm pretty sure there is a disadvantage to this. You can't get something for 
nothing.

The steam that you throw out into wildspace is created by water on the ship. 
As that water is used up it is going to get smaller. This is going to cause 
the air in the ships air envelope to either contract to a smaller size or 
lower in pressure (I'm not exactly sure which rule applies in the SJ laws of 
nature.)

I'm not sure exactly how much volume of water would be lost, but the volume 
of air that wouldn't be available to the crew would be the same. If a ship 
had to take so much water that it displaced 3 tons worth of air, I think you 
should subract 3x4 man/weeks worth of air from the ships air supply. 
However, this is a random guess and I admit that efficient steam powered 
devices *might* use far less water and therefore be more viable and less 
problematic.

I'll play out each possiblity of "air loss" in turn:

*Contracted air*
The ships air envelope actually becomes smaller than it should be. Air 
pressure stays constant, so the crew don't suffer ill effects. However, the 
bubble of air is smaller than expected and spells and spell-like effects 
dependent on sound may not travel as far as expected. A crewman who falls 
overboard will fall out of the ships air envelope more rapidly and if air 
becomes highly contracted a region like the crow's nest might eventually be 
outside the ships air envelope.

*Thin air*
The ships air envelope stays the same size but the air becomes more spread 
out. Air pressure drops to ensure a constant air envelope size. Crewmen 
suffer the sort of effects that people suffer as they travel to high 
altitude areas on planets.

Another problem with a ship that uses something like a tall chimney to throw 
steam or other material into wildspace is that the contracted or thin air 
would need to be replaced when they next got to a source of air. Ships that 
did this sort of thing would "suck" air away from other air envelopes they 
came into contact with. Large planets would not be affected for thousands or 
millions of years, but small asteroids and ships might not like to have 
their air go "pop" everytime a low pressure ship docked with them.

On top of that the steam itself could eventually cause a navigation hazard. 
If we assume that SJ vaccum is a good insulator (and we can't really make 
any real world assumptions when it comes to SJ) Steamjammers could be 
causing small clouds of dangerously hot steam to be randomly scattered 
througout a crystal sphere. A ship flying into one of these clouds could 
experience boiling hot rain that causes burn injuries to crewmen on the 
deck. A single Steamjammer, wouldn't be an issue, but if you had large 
fleets of the ships you would transform a lot of surface water into scalding 
void clouds. This could suck small asteroids dry.

> But given the  costs that are likely involved in developing something like 
> that, it  might end up being cheaper to just hire spellcasting pilots  :-p

I find it ironic that every time we have one of these discussions where 
changes to Spelljammer are proposed, I appreciate the game-balance of "The 
Grubbmeister" more and more and become less interested in variant rules.

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/