Reaction: Shadowdark RPG

The first thing that struck me about Shadowdark is how readable it is. Clear, concise, to the point text. Larger font, easy to see. This spare style defines not only how it is written but also its rules. Shadowdark manages thread the needle of maintaining a gritty, dark feel with modern rules. 

The black and white art underlines a definite old school aesthetic, although the mechanics eschew that influence, focusing instead on how to capture the feeling of deadly and difficult play while remaining a rules-lite RPG with modern elements that will be very familiar to players and GMs with 5e play experience. (Also a bold move to make the cover your own beholder equivalent but not copyright infringing monster...much like Flee Mortals last year! I love it!)

The changes and emphasis are very much focused on the structure of dungeon crawling and hex crawling, with encounters generally resulting in combat or a social interaction with a monster. Changes to emphasis this gameplay structure include things like moving in initiative order in the dungeon (something which the GM in the first game I ever played did, but which I've never seen since). Truly making light matter by removing darkvision for all characters certainly helps ratchet up tension, particularly with the possibility that the light can go out, triggering a potential encounter.

The game is also easy to explain, built largely on the chassis of D&D, but also easy to pick up. As someone who has introduced eight players to 5e this year, I can see with one read-through that Shadowdark would be far easier on a GM to introduce to new players. The official character generator website enables you to create new characters for new players with just a few button presses, and export it as a .json if your VTT of choice supports imported character sheets. No need to take a half hour "building" a new character if one dies. Even doing it by hand according to the directions in the book should take less than five minutes to roll up. Additionally, the free quick start guide is all the rules your players need to get started, making it easy to freely share the materials even with digital players.

I'm looking forward to trying out Shadowdark, hopefully even just for a one-shot in the relatively near future. I'm not sure about the viability of the game for a long-term campaign mostly due to the fragility of the characters (a heroic fantasy game this is not). This issue is something Mike Shea of Slyflourish has noted repeatedly in his now six month long campaign. However, I do wonder if Shadowdark would be a good system to use for one of the mega-dungeon adventures, like Dungeon of the Mad Mage or the infamous Rappan Athuk. While deadly, they both seem like locations that would certainly draw new "crawlers" into the dungeon in search of riches. And they frankly suffer less from an inability to have long character arcs or much metaplot. After all, life seems to be short and cheap in the shadowdark. 

In order to have a long form, metaplot driven campaign it would probably be best to bind the group together via a patron or organization, enabling new characters to be interjected into the existing group when old ones die, but maintaining a largely consistent set of motivations (This system actually seems like the type of grittiness you would want to run a Black Company-inspired campaign. Although MCDM's Chain of Acheron campaign took much inspiration from that series, it was more heroic fantasy than the gritty, dark fantasy source). A healthy sense of self-preservation and creative problem-solving that avoids head-on approaches even into higher levels would probably be necessary to keep characters progressing through higher levels too.

The book and system are a tour de force as a creative and artistic work, with a bold and distinctive vision of play that I hope players and GMs will continue to support for many years. We need creative but accessible games like Shadowdark to strengthen and grow the RPG hobby and spur inventive design over the coming years.

Review: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle box cover art

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is the introductory box set that replaced Lost Mines of Phandelver. Tough act to follow, as Lost Mines has received almost universal aclaim and affection for both its adventure design and being a touch point for a new generation of 5e players first adventure experience. So how does Stormwreck Isle compare? I've recently completed a playthrough of this adventure and so I do consider this to be a true review based in my play and prep experience as a GM (Spoilers follow for the adventure)

Bottom line, Stormwreck Isle is a very easy adventure to run--perhaps even easier than Lost Mines. I say this for a few reasons. First, the structure of the adventure is simple and straightforward without being linear. Second, the smaller geographic bounds set by and island make facilitating travel easier. Finally, the encounters are balanced to a less deadly level that makes sense for players totally new to the game (rather than throwing four goblins that potentially TPK a new group at first level, this adventure starts with a much more manageable three zombies).

These positives are strong, especially for a new GM with new players. However, I also feel that the adventure lacks much of the charm of the previous starter set. Dragons Rest isn't as strong or memorable an adventure hub as Phandalin. It doesn't have as many interesting adventure hooks, and its NPCs are largely unmemorable. I say unmemorable because there are around a dozen NPCs in the adventure hub location. Nor is there character art for most of them, making a visual association even more difficult.

The campaign is built around three dungeon-crawls, making the structure simple for a new GM. They are also easily interchangeable with advice for modifying encounters based on the party being level one or two included. In my opinion the hook to the shipwreck is the stronger of the two, particularly because of the opening encounter with zombies. My experience running that portion highlighted a gap in adventure design with the party not exploring the deepest portion of the ship to retrieve the item bearing the curse of Orcus and creating new undead. The situation was salvaged in a more satisfying way than simply sending them back because they hadn't solved the quest in the way the designers intended because they killed or drove off two harpies, cutting off the supply of ships crashed on the rocks and thus halting the undead at least temporarily. 

The Seagrow mushroom cave was a more difficult sell for me though, with a hook as written of "hey, I'm worried about these sentient mushrooms that normally give me stuff. Can you go check on them?" from an NPC. The overall dungeon is pretty simple and straightforward once you get past the entrance fight with the octopus summoned by the myconids and the violet fungi fight in the fungus grove. I do worry that trigger-happy groups can see these encounters as license to take out the peaceful myconids. The tension really isn't there for me either I this dungeon, with a few steamdrakes and a glowing crystal firesnake egg blocking the outpipe for the gas under the island. The need to break the crystal isn't clearly telegraphed in the text either, so you kind of need to lead the players to that conclusion through your descriptions of the smoke and smell. It's not necessarily something a first time player of an RPG will think of. And then as a reward the myconids give the adventurers the ruby morsel that has been keeping their leader alive to be used to brew an elixer of health? Seems a bit odd to me that they'd give that item up and that it basically equates to a one-use rare magic item.

The Clifftop Observatory works better as an adventure in my opinion, offering guidance if the characters leave and then come back that maintains the pacing and easy to implement by directing you to have the blue dragon be conducting a ritual and immediately trigger a boss fight upon return. This also makes the dungeon more dynamic than both the previous ones and ensures that the characters will get to fight and slay the blue dragon wyrmling, definitely meeting the promise offered in the name of the game, Dungeons & Dragons. The dungeon design also generally works, although it's not obvious that the characters can approach some of the towers from the water. There aren't any real choke points other than unlocking the area where Aidron, the bronze dragon wyrmling, is being held prisoner. The characters may not necessarily find this, or solve the puzzle if they haven't explored the other towers.

Overall, again the adventure is simple and generally easy to run, with a few rough edges. It is quick and has much smaller travel scope, meaning that it really can be completed in three or four sessions for most groups. It ties into further adventures set on the Sword Coast, but can be easily transferred as an isolated island to your setting of choice without much modification (it's a bit like the bounded island tutorial area from Runescape, or any videogame tutorial area, if you're familiar, dropping you into the "real world" once you finish the introduction). The locations and maps can also be easily repurposed or reskinned, giving you some interesting locations even if you don't employ the story of the adventure as written. The pregen character sheets don't tie as tightly to the story as those in Lost Mines, and they're basically the same pregen characters, so don't get excited about any new there.

Would recommend if you are introducing a new set of players to the game, but be warned that it needs a light bit of work to knock the rough edges off for story consistency and pacing. I would use it again as an intro adventure for a group that has already played Lost Mines, but ultimate prefer that adventure as a starter campaign.

Offering New Character Options

Often although I’ve basically accepted the role of forever GM, I find cool character concepts or subclass options or what have you that I like and wish I could play. I recently discovered I’m not the only person who feels this way. In the KibblesTasty Discord server in the drafting room channel, there was an interesting discussion between several GMs about the character options they allow in there games and their lists of allowed content. One commented something to the effect of “I’m glad I’m not the only one with a list of things I’d like to see you play.” 

Most of my games so far have been either introducing new players or my first time GMing in the case of my game with veteran players. In both cases it made sense to stick with 5e options (our system of choice) that were relatively simple. In a few weeks though I hope to start up a new campaign with experienced players set in Midgard from Kobold Press. We plan to play through Empire of the Ghouls also by Kobold Press. In this game I want to restrict the players to subclasses from the 2014 Player’s Handbook and Kobold Press books Midgard Heroes Handbook and Tome of Heroes. I plan to also allow the Warlord and Occultist classes from KibblesTasty and the Pugilist by Benjamin Huffman on the DMsGuild. 

Why these particular resources? The Midgard character-focused book are written geared to the setting and provide some unique options, so they make sense. The Occultist actually provides some unique connections to the themes of the adventure, so I think it would be interesting if someone chose it. The Warlord and Pugilist though? Frankly, they’re only included because I really like them and want to see someone play them. 

I definitely have character concepts that I would love to play using these options. The solid and seasoned mercenary commander for the warlord or the chieftain of a remote tribe. The grizzled boxer or bruiser from the rough streets of a big city, searching for the underground pit fight or ring in every town they stop in to meet the local champ. Or the gambler who is a brawler out of necessity and “know[s] when to walk away and when to run.” 

Guess I’ll have to make them into NPCs that the characters may meet in passing—but make sure the spotlight stays on the players and how they interact with these creations of mine.

Don’t know if there’s really a point to this ramble, but the characters we create and that our characters create make our fantasy worlds vibrant. We get to experience a new world through their eyes and inhabit it to escape some of the problems of ours—or maybe learn how to face our own problems with more strength and empathy.

Arcadia 2 Reactions

Arcadia 2 arrives. This cover is by Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe. There are certainly elements of psychedelic style here that make my mind go to the beauty and distortion of the Feywild.

Arcadia 2 cover.

While the inaugural issue featured four articles, this issue settles down into the more normal three article composition for Arcadia. Due to this, it comes in about six pages shorter. James Introcaso writes the introduction and notes the effort placed upon the art in this issue that serves to enhance an article providing season-themed subclasses, new elemental monsters, and an adventure.

Subclasses of the Seasons, by Joshua Mendenhall serves up four subclasses (one for each season). These are the Order of Hibernation mage, College of Springtide Bard, Child of the Sun Bloodline Sorcerer, and the Horned One Warlock. The art by Marlowe Lune is reminiscent of very nice playing or collectable cards to me. My personal favorite of the four pieces is the image of the Horned One Warlock. I'll admit I was a bit confused initially that with the theming these were all subclasses for different base classes. Perhaps that's some unconscious bias caused by the season changing abilities of the eladrin ancestry option. I haven't had the opportunity to playtest them myself, but they seem to lean quite heavily on supplying additional spells as part of subclass features. Part of the reason I particularly enjoy the Horned One Warlock is that it dovetails nicely with a deity of the same name in Kobold Press’ Midgard setting. 

The Periodic Table of the Elementals, is by MaKenzie De Armas, another well-known 5e designer currently working for Wizards of the Coast. While I've noticed De Armas author and design credits several times now, I hadn't looked into her bio until finding the link to her website. Her work is impressive, and the first time she played D&D was in 2018. It's encouraging to see such success from someone who's essentially a contemporary of mine in both age and adoption of TTRPGs. There is room for the new generation. But enough soapboxing, how are the new elemental monsters in this section?

The Conducere by Grace Cheung.

The Comburo is a volatile burning elemental, with some interesting traits that can allow it to do damage to enemies that hit it within a certain range, among other things. It has both a slam attack typical of elementals, but also a unique recharging ranged attack. If I were to do my best Keith Amman impression, I’d note that this thing has the profile of a brute, and as a force of nature isn’t very smart. If we follow the fantasy, it’s a ferociously reacting elemental, likely to use its first volatile burst attack once it recognizes a threat, then probably uses slam attacks. As its reaction continues to burn, it doesn’t retreat or withdraw, instead fighting until it is extinguished. Next are Conducere, which are basically composed of conductive metals. The art for this one is by the talented Grace Cheung, MCDM’s on-staff artist (and I feel bad saying this, but the Conducere is probably my least favorite piece from her. The other elementals are alright, but something about the contrasts in the Conducere art just doesn’t do it for me). The ability scores reflect a strong, resilient brute, but there’s less interesting here than the Comburo. The most interesting thing is the Conducere’s reaction that will allow it to redirect a spell or magical effect at another creature once a round as a reaction (they “conduct” it through themselves, get it?) 

The next elemental is the Elektron, essentially electricity themed. Once again, essentially a brute with high DEX to model a highly maneuverable creature composed of pure energy. The real unique thing for this CR 4 monster is its lightning charge trait, which allows it to increase its size by one category each time it is hit with a metal weapon. There is some clever design here, as it gains multi attacks and a passive effect to demonstrate the increasing energy as it grows in size. This is balanced essentially by its lower hit points. This isn’t a smart or very wise creature, so it’s likely to focus on those adversaries attacking it, perhaps with its average WIS, it is capable of recognizing that being attacked with metal weapons increases its size and power.

The Noxa by Grace Cheung.

Finally the Noxa, made of the “toxic, odorless gases,” according to the flavor text. Because of this, the elemental is invisible. Once again, this creature is not very intelligent, meaning that based on it nature it may not even intend to engage with the party and simply wanders into the same space, beginning to suffocate them. In any case, I’d probably have the Noxa get a surprise round to use it Asphyxiation feature against one party member in its space, then calling for initiative. This elemental is particularly difficult because of the invisibility, and I wouldn’t use it unless your party has access to fire or lightning damage that causes it to glow, otherwise I see this very easily being a TPK. The Noxa also has my favorite art of the four.

Finally the article provides some unique additional rules on reactivities, basically giving Legendary Action-type powers to elementals working in combination. This is a really unique design and I quite like it as a way to turn an encounter with creatures relying upon their slam attacks into something more special. These don’t just use the new elementals, instead also enhancing the SRD versions of the four normal elementals too. Great theming for an Elemental Evil campaign, or dipping into the Inner Planes, or even exploring the reactions when bound elementals in a setting like Eberron get loose.

The final article is an adventure for eighth level characters, Well of the Lost Gods, by Rich Lescouflair, the lead creator and designer behind Esper Genesis. Art is from three different creators, Nick De Spain, Faizal Fakri, and Jason Hasenauer, with cartography by Diana Muñoz. Anomalies like green smoke and crystal is appearing and strange objects are falling out of the sky. Some other adventurers found a strange portal they’re calling a well in the mountains. The characters are contracted by leadership of the town to investigate. One thing I dislike about this adventure is the first puzzle included in it. My issue with the puzzle is that it amounts to "push all the buttons on this handout." Is there a specific order or pattern? Nope. The adventure just says "When the buttons are pushed along the linear pattern [it opens]." Did the author intend for something more robust? If so then it's unclear to me. Helpfully, the adventure also provides directions of your players decide to simply smash it open, triggering a battle with what is essentially a CR 10 robot. 

I don't know that the adventure overview outlines the adventure structure very well either. The beginning feels a bit disjointed to me. Although I do appreciate that two nodes were included in the initial investigation of the strange anomalies occuring in the town, allowing for a bit of player choice, even if it's ultimately circular in structure, looping the players between only two situations to ultimately direct them to a dungeoncrawl. However, the two dungeon maps are linked by a portal, taking the party to the second dungeon portion that in the tradition of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks seems to be a genre-bending lab from an ancient civilization or from an ancient spacefaring people of high technology or magic. 

Once again, we also have a puzzle--this one is better, involving exploring the dungeon and activating various panels (more like a Legend of Zelda dungeon design). However, it still has some clunky prose description on the feedback mechanism to tell that you're unlocking a door: "A 10-foot-diameter metal plate is set into the north wall.Three crystal orbs are embedded into its surface in a diamond-shaped pattern." Don't three points make a triangle, Dave? There are four rooms to explore, activating panels to light up these orbs, but the adventure notes that "only three need to be activated in order to open the door..." But perhaps this confusion is just personal. Once again too, if your characters fail their intelligence checks to activate the panels then the room seals and they get to fight more robots and what are essentially small lightning (electrical) Elementals, which then causes the light to come on instead of completely halting progress. Opening the door brings on a final boss fight with another robot and then a skill challenge or slugfest to break the labs generator and make all the weird anomalies that were the adventure hook to stop.

The enemies included with the adventure are interesting, but nothing crazy to write home about. They're use abilities similar to many monsters and are primarily brute-types. The maps are again a bit monochromatic and don’t have any dead space or looping in anyway, but understandable with space constraints.

That sums up Arcadia 2. Some interesting topics and monsters here, but overall not quite as heavy hitting for me as the first issue. Onwards to Arcadia 3!

Arcadia Reactions Homepage 

Arcadia 3 Reactions

Cubicle 7's Uncharted Journeys Reactions

Uncharted Journeys might be the best book other than the core rules you could buy for 5e. That’s my opinion, but there, I said it. It provides an actual system to make journeys narratively interesting and providing your players meaningful choices. Its encounters and advice go beyond anything available in the Dungeon Master's Guide or the Monster Manual, or any other 5e book that I've found. The journey system could even be grafted onto other skill-based systems with some modification and provides a robust framework for making travel and exploration the truly meaningful pillar of RPG play that many have long sought.

With that as my thesis, I'd like to showcase perhaps my favorite find so far of 2024 (although it was released in January 2023), Uncharted Journeys from Cubicle 7. 

Most of the 5e books I have (and I imagine you too) provide adventures or monsters, or perhaps setting material. This is awesome stuff that we all love. Then there are the core rules, detailing how to build a character and conduct combat, or providing additional rules and options. There still fewer that provide a wholly new structure, something that adds a new dimension and option of play to the game. Uncharted Journeys does exactly that for travel, refining the system Cubicle 7 created for Adventures in Middle-Earth for all of 5e.

The first step in the system is to set the journey, determining start and endpoints with the players. It cuts down on the bookkeeping and need to attempt to calculate exact distances by dividing journeys into short, medium, long, and very long. Example distances are provided, but it’s also noted that the system thus allows for abstraction of distance. You can apply the same categories to a continent spanning trek or to a long hike across Sharn, Ptolus, or Orden’s massive city of Capital (there’s even a great cities biome that has relevant encounters for that environment). I think it tends to work better for the former than the latter, but with some adaptation, I think it would definitely enrich a city-based campaign. You also determine the terrain and weather for the region to figure out a Journey Difficulty that will serve as your DC for a group check and the skill checks in the encounters later generated. This system is also great for facilitating a point crawl. 

Map of Faerun

Imagine throwing the 5e large map of Faerun in front of your players. They’ll see a number of cities connected by roads, as well as far flung locations not connected in this way. They may also want to go to a location that you place in one of the empty spaces on the map. With this system, you can determine journey lengths between each node of the pointcrawl, and offer meaningful differences in choice for your players. To get to Waterdeep from Phandalin you can go several ways, either up the trail to Triboar and down through the Dessarin Valley, out West to the Coast and down the High Road through the Mere of Dead Men, or you could try trekking through the Sword Mountains and brave the Kryptgarden Forest into the Southern portion of the Dessarin Valley, shortening the distance taken up towards Triboar. In the journeys system, each of these routes has a different Journey Difficulty. You might not outright tell your characters, but you can signal to them which route might be faster, or slower, or most dangerous based on rumors and discussion by travelers at an inn or tavern. Whatever the characters choose, their choice has real consequences in terms of the number of encounters and how likely they are to fail their checks along the way.

The journeys system, like other attempts at travel systems before it, provides party member roles. Where these succeed are their relative simplicity. They provide simple opportunities for players to make meaningful contributions to the party on the journey. It is easy enough to put these descriptions on an index card or pass the text to each player in a VTT so they can fulfill their party role. Each class or character build can fill roles in unique ways, incentivizing the use of certain skills and tool proficiencies that otherwise are rarely used. I think about the artificer in my previous Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign who had tons of cool tool proficiencies that also served as character flavor, but that I didn’t really engage with from the GM side. That character would have made an outstanding Quartermaster in the journeys system. There are ways that each class can contribute on a journey, but depending on party makeup there can be gaps in capability, which in my opinion simply serves to reinforce the power of player choice by providing real consequences for those decisions.

The preparations that players can take prior to the journey also provide similar opportunities to reward creative play ideas while resolving them within the familiar skill check structure. These are varied to allow many different types of characters to contribute and include doing research, hiring help, prepping a hearty meal for the party, and more. I really enjoy the flavor of these choices, and some of them like carousing offer both benefits and negatives for a failed check that really add to the storytelling.

Perhaps the largest departure from regular play is the restriction of resting while on a journey. I very much like this choice, as it imposes clear and real risks and forces the players to be strategic in when and if they choose to take their one short rest on the journey, incurring another encounter. Luckily except on an extremely difficult journey with very poor rolls the vast majority of encounters that will be generated are non-combat, and the hazards should largely be setbacks that increase the dramatic tension. This also breaks up and varies your encounters, meaning that you can have more than just combat encounters, but still have dynamic and interesting combat encounters. The book also suggests to insert scripted or set piece encounters that enhance your story as you will. So just roll for an encounter like normal in the journey system and insert an encounter that you think is necessary or relevant to your narrative.

Of less precedence, but still very interesting are the chapter about generating NPC encounters along the way, along with ancient ruins. Both are much less groundbreaker, but still provide utility for a GM looking to generate additional content. Between the two my personal favorite is the chapter on ancient ruins, which I think can both help create adventure locations or just for points of interest on a journey. Some other discussion of this section has suggested that it’s too bad that it doesn’t allow for dynamic dungeon generation, but I think this misses the intent. The ruins generated by a few rolls in the chapter don’t necessarily need to be dungeons. They can simply be described locations that provide narrative information or lore. If you are inspired by what is generated and draw up a map, all the better. I will agree though, that this chapter is best used to prompt inspiration during prep time, not dynamically create content during the game.

The encounters section provides many interesting and varied encounters to employ on journeys. Additionally, though it hasn’t been much focused on in examinations of Uncharted Journeys, taking encounters from adventure modules and using them when the appropriate category comes up isn’t hard and is a great way to reinforce your narratives and integrate existing content into the journey system. There are also encounters and journey rules for sea journeys. I prefer the simplicity of these rules to those of Ghosts of Saltmarsh for instance, but they can be combined with the combat rules from Ghosts or even Spelljammer. There are plenty of varied biomes or environments for encounters too (you’ll probably need to build your own for Wildspace or the Astral Sea—which I may do on the site if I feel inspired one day).

I plan on using the journey rules in my upcoming Storm King’s Thunder campaign, and to a lesser degree in my Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign too. If anything new stands out to me I’ll definitely write a follow-up. This system is well suited to any adventure that features significant travel, particularly optimized for overland travel, and I look forward to seeing how my players engage with it.

Piety Rewards

One focus area I’m working to improve as a GM on is providing rewards to my players for their efforts to role play and take their character in interesting directions of their own choosing. 

In my Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign I have a light cleric of Helm who does a great job roleplaying their devotion to their deity. In a recent session the party visited Helms Hold on their way to the ruins of Thundertree, and the cleric took the time to pray in the Cathedral of Helm...while of course the rogue pilfered from the offerings box. How can we reward great roleplaying like that?

Inspiration is a great way to reward players for roleplaying (when you remember to hand it out), but I think that the cleric's efforts deserve a more substantial (and more mechanical) reward.

I found the inspiration for how to implement this from a YouTube video by WebDM on the book Mythic Odysseys of Theros. They suggest that it almost acts as a sort of Deities & Demigods for 5e, just that you can “file the serial numbers off” and take the piety rewards for devotees of the various gods for use with the pantheon of your own world of choice.

As an example, I took the rewards for the god Helios and modified the flavor slightly so they could go to a follower of Helm. The powers from a couple appropriately themed gods became those of the wizard acolyte of Oghma.

I think this tip from WebDM is a great idea, especially to make use of the design work done for no fewer than fifteen gods in Theros. This also happily squeezes more value out of this book than it merely being a Magic the Gathering or a pseudo-mythic Greek setting (I will get around to a reaction post about Theros eventually). The mechanics for these gods effects also provide good templates to create additional ones for more specialized or distinct portfolios depending on your own pantheon. There are other similar systems, like Concordance from Strongholds & Followers, but I think the Theros implementation is particularly robust in terms of design that can reward a player throughout play. 

In the future I’d like to explore the theme of divine power in D&D, along with looking at various products and supplements that look at this topic. There are also only a few of these types of beings that have stat blocks, which is another area I’d like to explore, at the upper reaches of CR where reality and collective play experience start to get thin.

Spelljammer 5e Reactions

The big bearded holiday fellow with the tiny fey and sleigh pulled by animal familiars left me a copy of Spelljammer under my artificial tree this year. Let’s take a look. There will be spoilers about the adventure Light of Xaryxis and the monsters, so jump off the train now if that’ll put a pin in your future fun.

So what do I think of Spelljammer? First off, I’ll agree with one of the big critiques which others have already voiced of the slipcase set (which is beautifully produced with fantastic art). It’s a bit thin, and the material would’ve probably been better presented to the user as one larger hardback. Much as I love the cover art on each of these books, they are about as thick as my kiddo’s picture books, and that’s basically what they feel like when you read them with the heavy, almost card stock paper that’s obviously been chosen to fill out the books volume. It is much easier to sit and read one of these picture—I mean game books. 

The brevity meant that Boo’s Astral Menagerie is the only bestiary on my shelf that I’ve been able to read in an evening and only the second one I’ve read through completely, cover-to-cover (I went on a Monster Manual binge read early during my time in the hobby). Maybe at some point I revisit how the monsters play, but not having used them yet, I can’t necessarily speak to that. The random encounter tables are quite good though, and I would definitely use them. They aren’t organized into separate tables by CR though, only by environment, so they may not necessarily be balanced for your group (and the GM is forced to do their own encounter math if they want to balance it). The tables are however weighted to try to minimize encounters with the high CR monsters. The attitude roll to determine potential hostility or friendliness is a helpful tool though that I think can spur some interesting improvisation. I know it’s a bit low rent to include monsters from another source in addition to the Monster Manual or SRD, but wouldn’t have minded seeing some suggestions using Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse either (it has plenty of monsters that are native or work in the Spelljammer setting—I mean, an Astral Dreadnaught is on the cover!). The ship encounters table is very flavorful and offers some great inspiration for how to flesh out your own NPC Spelljammer ships. Captains’ names and full crews included.

As for the monsters included, I very much enjoyed their descriptions and saw some interesting abilities from some of the stat blocks I read. Most are concentrated in the 0-10 CR range, which is where most of your play happens. There tend to be a lot of low CR, NPC-type stat blocks for various ancestries of spacefaring creatures, which seems designed to allow you to populate a ship with a number of lower CR creatures. As we’ll get to, there’s not a ton of setting details presented in the set, but the monster descriptions do a lot of heavy lifting and might even redeem the product as far as usability. I like the Psurlons as a nasty group of aberrations that work with Mindflayers when convenient. There’s plenty of interesting creatures to populate adventures with as far as I’m concerned. If you need more, grab some wacky monsters from Kobold Press. Some of their weirder creations will gel better with the Spelljammer setting than they do in Kobold Press’ default Midgard setting (and I say that with affection for Midgard).

The adventure, Light of Xaryxis, takes the Astral Elves included in the monster book and as player characters and makes them morally ambiguous bad guys harvesting the light force from other worlds to continue powering their own dying sun that gives them great magic and power. Pretty dope. Even cooler because they give you that summary at the beginning instead of forcing the GM to read the end to actually figure out who the bad guys are. The adventure module is for characters of fifth to eighth level, and this brings up some advice in the book that I quite appreciate; how to set up higher level characters to start a campaign. The advice is to build up to fifth level as written in the Player’s Handbook and then to give them 625 gp to spend on additional non magical gear, and give each character an uncommon magic item of your choice (they suggest the latter if you are “running a high magic campaign,” but I don’t really think Spelljammer is for you at all if you’re into low magic. The magical flying ships and space whales have sailed on that—pun intended and no apologies). It also makes me wonder why no advice on starting at higher levels is provided in the core rules. Might have been helpful…

The adventure is episodic in the style of Flash Gordon (which the writers recommend you go watch to really capture the adventure style). It’s a fairly linear jaunt across Wildspace and the Astral Plane to multiple systems. The adventure’s descriptions of Xaryxis Space and the Doomspace systems does double duty, as according to the Astral Adventurer’s Guide they are intended to be examples for you to create your own Wildspace systems and locales. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them as examples, but the taste made me wish that this product included greater GM support in the form of more examples, or blank star maps that could be labeled with your own systems. That leads into my thoughts on the Astral Adventure’s Guide.

The Astral Adventure’s Guide again clocks in at 64 pages. It features sections on the unique rules of Wildspace and the Astral Sea. However, it omits rules on color pools, instead referring the reader to the DMG. The book also includes almost no setting information, instead acting mainly as a catalog of various deck plans and short descriptions of Spelljammer vessels. There’s also the character rules, but no additional subclasses, which feels like a missed opportunity. I also noticed that my set is one of the original printings without the corrected errata and changes to the problematic sections about the Hadozee (I’ll probably print a copy of the errata to stick in the book as a reference at some point). Finally it concludes with a very short section of the Rock of Bral that largely seems to be a rehash of the original Spelljammer accessory product of the same name (which is far more detailed). I do like the Rock of Bral as an adventure or almost extraplanar hub (it sits in Wildspace in whatever system you find most convenient), but the level of detail almost makes this a players guide, not a more detailed GM-focused product as it purports to be. This book could have been much more useful with random adventure seed tables and setting information included with random tables for non-combat encounters, like a Fizban’s or Bigby’s. As is, there is just not much support for the GM to create their own content or inspire creativity beyond the static examples provided by the adventure.

For those interested, the GM screen isn’t terrible in my opinion, at least for my style of play, but it does leave some important Spelljammer rules off. A lot of space is devoted to reprinting the random encounter tables from the monster book, which can be helpful for improv. Relevant rules like suffocating and weightlessness are also included, along with illustrations of the Astral plane and the way gravity works in Wildspace (I don’t know that I think the illustrations are necessary). What is missing is any sort of ship crew roles on the screen and the rules about how long air bubbles last (so basically most of the included new rules that you probably need to run aren’t there).

All in all, I don’t regret getting the set (I have it on good authority that bearded fellow found them for 38 bucks), but I wouldn’t grab them at full price. All that aside, while there’s some interesting details in the set, overall it really is lacking in detail, nor does it tie in will or include additional lore about the creatures to be found in the Astral Sea and Wildspace (you’ll have to find old copies of Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes and Volo’s Guide to Monsters if you want lore about some like Githyanki, Elves, and Beholders beyond their basic monster descriptions). You’ll need to do a lot of your own work to come up with adventure locations in the Spelljammer setting, but if you’re interested in gaining a little bit more information about the setting then picking it up with some of the older Spelljammer titles up from DriveThruRPG is probably worth it.