Of Rules And Language, With Space Pirates

Of Rules

Spelljammer is by no means a realistic setting. I have no trouble with open-decked sail ships flying in space, dragging their atmospheric air bubbles along with them. But there are a couple of details that I've never liked.

The first thing is that the speed of a space ship (spelljammer) is determined by the type of the magical helm power source and the level of the spellcaster at the helm (spelljammer). Therefore any fleet would put the more powerful helms and helmsmen on the biggest ships, and therefore the bigger the ship, the faster it is more likely to be.

That's fine, except I want to see space battles between big, heavy capital ships and fast, light ships employing hit-and-run tactics. So I changed the rules so that the speed of a ship, or ship rating (SR) is calculated based on helm, helmsman, ship size, ships maneuverability class (MC, reflecting better ship designs being inherently faster) and also crew skill because I want them also to be more important.

The SR is calculated as follows: 1-10 points for helmsman and helm or furnace, etc., as per the official SR-tables + 1-6 points for MC + 1-10 points for tonnage + 1-4 points for crew status for a total of 4-30 points then divided by 3, rounding down, for the SR.

Helmsman Caster Level Minor Helm Major Helm 1 +1 +1 2 +1 +1 3 +1 +1 4 +1 +2 5 +1 +2 6 +2 +3 7 +2 +3 8 +2 +4 9 +3 +4 10 +3 +5 11 +3 +5 12 +4 +6 13 +4 +6 14 +4 +7 15 +5 +7 16 +5 +8 17 +5 +8 18 +6 +9 19 +6 +9 20 +6 +10

Tonnage SR Points 91 – 100 +1 81 – 90 +2 71 – 80 +3 61 – 70 +4 51 – 60 +5 41 – 50 +6 31 – 40 +7 21 – 30 +8 11 – 20 +9 1 - 10 +10

Crew Status SR Points Green +1 Average +2 Trained +3 Crack +4

MC SR Points G +0 F +1 E +2 D +3 C +4 B +5 A +6

Secondly, I think the ships were just too fast in tactical speeds. 1 SR is now equal to ~3 knots (12 movement rate) with 1 hex  being ~100 yards instead of 500 yards. Ships are now noticeably slower, moving at 5.5 – 55 km/h as opposed to the speeds of 30 – 300 km/h of the official SRs. 

Now with speeds still above that of sail ships but closer to them, and smaller distances in combat, it’s not quite as absurd to hit a boat moving at 55 km/h with a ballista bolt from the distance of 800 m than a boat moving at 300 km/h from a distance of 2 km with no negative modifiers to the shot. Also, very importantly, even the slowest ships can no longer easily outrun any attacking monsters, so dragons and such are once more a threat.

My third issue was with the non-magical engines mentioned in the Spelljammer rule book. The problem was that they were very sketchy. How do they work? Do they need fuel? How much? What would the fuel cost? Why isn’t every groundling nation using fleets of these steam-punky things?

My solutions was that now ships designed and built for space travel can use their sails to move in zero gravity environments at tactical speeds, using the solar winds or vacuum energy or some such thing. Still pretty vague, but it eliminates the "engines" and adds the sights and sounds of small boats setting off along the gravity plane from an asteroid city before the break of dawn to return with their catch of space fish.

Yes, with monsters like this, there are bound to be smaller fish swimming around in the void.

Note that beating gravity requires a magical power source, so helms and furnaces are still a must for planetary landings, as well as for interplanetary travel.

Unpowered ships are of course slower, naturally getting no points for the helm and helmsman with an additional MC -1 affecting the total SR raw points recalculated without the helm points, an additional -1 to the recalculated SR, and an additional +1 penalty to initiative.

Example: A 18 ton, MC D Wasp with a minor helm, a level 6 wizard as helmsman and a trained crew gets +2 points for helmsman and helm, +9 points for tonnage, +3 points for crew status and +3 points for MC for total of 17 points for a SR of 5. Their initiative is -1. If they lost their helmsman, they could still sail with +9 points for tonnage, +3 points for crew status and +2 points for their MC-1 of E for a total of 14 points for a SR of 4-1 = 3. Their initiative would be +0.

For now I'm happy with the system, but I realize there some issues. It is a bit complicated as it requires calculations in advance to keep the game flowing. Also, I still haven't thought of ships bigger than 100 tons nor of the inevitable situation where the helmsman wants to go in a different direction than the crew..

Of Language

In case there are some Finnish speakers reading my game reports I'd like explain some of my word choices. I aim at running the game as much as possible in Finnish and avoid using obviously English words. The main reason is, that we hear and read English all the time (and I'm writing in English now, obvs.) so, while being a foreign language it is no longer foreign enough to my ears and using English words breaks the flow of language without evoking the sense of the exotic.

So it's 'haltia' instead of 'elf', but in some cases I would be cool with the related German word 'Alb', because it's less familiar to me.

The big problem was the word 'spelljammer', used to refer both to the spaceships as well as the spellcasters guiding and powering them. The word is obviously derived from 'windjammer' but in the dictionaries the Finnish translation for 'windjammer' is literally 'large sailship', not very useful.

As for the etymology of 'windjammer', the explanations I found were that it refers to multitude of sails on a windjammer 'jamming' the wind (like jamming a radar, not like jamming strawberries). So I came up with the word 'loitsukaappari', (lit. something like 'spellseizer') for how the ships seize magic to power their movement. It has added benefit of evoking piratey imagery because the Finnish word for 'privateer' is 'kaappari'.

I did find one alternate translation, 'tuulennaukuja', literally 'windmeower' (you know, how a cat sounds), explained to be a reference to the sound of the wind in the large area of sails on a windjammer. When talking these terms over with my players, the word 'loitsunnaukuja' also gained some support, so I've been using both terms interchangeably.

For the people spelljammers, I just went with the word 'ruorimies', lit. 'helmsman'.

Another problematic word was 'demi-human'. AD&D uses 'demi-human' to refer to the core human-like-not-human races, i.e. elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings. Strictly it would translate to 'puoli-ihminen', lit. 'half-human'. But then you also have half-elves, who are by definition also half-humans. And I thought it would be useful to have a blanket term for both humans and demi-humans as opposed to other groups, such as goblinoids, podocephalic humanoids, hippopotamus bipedalis or sphaira polyophtalmos. Eventually I settled for a dialectic word for human ('ihminen'), 'ihmoinen' (I don't know, 'humon' in english?).

One word that was particularly fun was the space fish 'scavver' -> 'scavenger' -> 'haaskaeläin' -> 'haaskakala' -> 'haaskala'.

Of Space Pirates

For those of you who don't like too much text on blogs and would just like to see pictures, finally, here are some space pirates:

I took a break from painting pirates to paint some space pirates. Who are just like regular pirates. Except in space. Go figure.