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Thursday, July 23, 2020

Inspirations for A Revised Spelljammer, Annotated

Sailing ships in space. Like Disney's Treasure Planet or the Pandarve cycle of Don Lawrence's Storm.

An Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon sartorial base...

Julio Ribera
...garnished with 70s bande dessinée artists' science fantasy eclecticism.

Don Lawrence

Weird worlds and numerous micro-worlds. The Little Prince's B 612 would fit right in.

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps a dash of Lone Sloane too? He definitely encounters some rad space pirates on his voyages.

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  2. Perhaps a dash of Lone Sloane too? He definitely encounters some rad space pirates on his voyages.

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  3. Perhaps with a dash of Lone Sloane? He definitely encountered some rad looking space pirates on his voyages.

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  4. The original SpellJammer is so bland in comparison.

    It's so hard to make this stuff work as an RPG. For me, anyway, I'm drawn to the visuals of it, would love to gape in awe and wonder at it. But then you sit down to play and the PCs are just another band of adventurers "in spaaaace..." Blah. And comic books, even spectacular ones, only work with good stories (decent characters and plot etc.) which, many times, end up being knock-offs of earlier stories just transposed onto the spectacular backdrop.

    *sigh* I'm feeling jaded this morning.

    Is it sad that I am poo-pooing an idea even before it gets off the ground? That I am anticipating failure...failure by my players to appreciate (and function well) within a given setting; failure by me of providing the proper hooks that will turn the thing into anything more than either A) a cosmic railroad, or B) a dumb-ass treasure hunt or space hulk stalking?

    I SUPPOSE what I want is to PLAY in someone else's version of this: find me the GM who is so fantastically involved in his/her space-fantasy setting that she lives and breathes its cosmos like Barker did with Tekumel or Tolkien did with Middle Earth. Find me that person and let ME be a player there, exploring the thing. I promise I'll bring my "A" game, if you'll just let me hang out for a while and sail the cosmic trade winds with sword in hand.

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