Monday, October 24, 2022

Astral Space, The Final Frontier


The cosmological setup of the 5e Spelljammer where spelljamming ships fly into Astral Sea after passing through something like normal space combined with the Astral Plane's (or Sea's) traditional roll of connecting the Material Plane with various afterlifes (i.e. Outer Planes) makes me think this new setup would be good for doing something similar to the comic Outer Darkness (which I wrote a post about before).

I fell off Outer Darkness the comic but the setting still has a lot of appeal. A magitech future with a starship (like the Enterprise in a universe with magic and less noble authorities) can fly out into a magical space and encounter demons inhabiting stars and storms of ghosts.

Without upping the horror factor, D&D space with the appropriate emphasis could be pretty darn horrific to a crew from a relatively sedate wildspace (really "normal space") like the one we appear to inhabit. Not unlike how standard dungeons would be places of horror if they popped up in the real world.

They makes me think it might be most interesting to play this not in D&D but in a science fiction game and just use the D&D cosmology as setting. Then again, having the ship's doctor actually be a cleric (so the Chaplain, I guess) has a certain appeal, too.

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