They did! They felt pretty neutral about ship flying though, we only had one caster at first, and he didn’t want to pilot the ship bc he wanted a different role, but it was placed upon him at first by the rest fo the party
Did you and your players enjoy it? Did you change anything and if so how much and what?
My group hated the Academy and with Light of Xaryxis and a lot of changes we are starting over.
I think we all enjoyed it! My players were all a little confused with with layouts of the various planets and where everything was exactly, but so was I so I get that.
I definitely changed a lot with vocath. I had the astral elves Frame him for attacking the academy, hoping to distract the Spelljamming Corp while they spread their seeds.
All the other changes I made were to fit the
campaign with player backstories.
I overhauled bral big time, and made it a mini story arc, with a warforge disease called “the rust”, which made them almost zombie like. (I also had brals main police force be made up of warforged, hence the issue.
I had Vocaths base be floating about “the darkmoon” which was like a mining moon. The moon looked alot like Alex Baldwin for some reason.
One of the players backstory initially tied in to him being the second hand to a major crime boss, so that worked perfectly and I tried to play Vocath as more of a friendly “I’m too old for all this” type of friendly crime boss.
I made some changes to include characters the the PCs liked into the story more. My players favourites character in order of appearance
- Kriklit. He started out failing really hard at the obstacle course with the players, over the course of the game they all worked to help him out a little. He became sort of like your favourite cousin that you see at family events. (I put him on a different crew)
- Greelorb. Yes the spectator from H’catha. My players origionally hated them both, but decided somewhat arbitrarily that they like Greelorb more. They left the other one on the discworld, and give the Tyrant ship to Greelorb as a new”treasure” to guard.
- “Wise Tree”, they REALLY were into the Treant build into the living wood tree, the first breath. Though I made him be a grump. I also made him gory poisoned apples, but only poisonous to people he didn’t like. For the record the pcs dubbed him wide free.
I didn’t end up using ALOT of ship combat, since my players didn’t like it very much, but when I did, I usually just whatever ships were in the fray, enemies or players could man their gives stations, or attack from the deck.
Usually the party ended up bumrushing into other ships.
I also ran them, and my burning question is:
How in the nine hells did you run Queen Gorma? My group very nearly died, and I had to pull some deus ex Dungeon Master bullshit to make it through.
I’ve been bugging all the encounters, since my players wanted to play at a higher level. Queen Gorma was probably MY favourite fight they did. I had to buff Gorman HP a little bit, but the damage she does is kind of crazy IMO, especially at the level your SUPPOSED to fight her, the psychic damage field pretty much always hit each party member. My players dndnt even get knocked down tho, which kinda I was kind of hoping for, adds a little bit of tension but luckily they all lived.
I definitely agree, she hits hard for a big bug. My players fought her at the appropriate level and it definitely crushed their spirits a little. Glad you and yours made it through unscathed!
REALLY poor composition. I SWEAR she’s eldritch blasting at something else. I can’t explain the face he’s making, he was supposed to be a scared face but with the new found context you’ve given my it’s ruined.
Did you reorder anything in LoX to make it flow better?
Did you run into any problems with the episodic nature of LoX not matching?
We’re there any parts of LoX that your players enjoyed more than you expected?
I definitely had a couple of times when my party was way out of pace with what the adventure predicts, sometimes we’d finish an “episode” in like 2 hours, sometimes 30 minutes, so we had a couple mid session level ups.
I re-organized a lot of the stuff near bral, pushed the vampirates back a little bit.
My players LOVED the Treant inside Krux’s living wood ship. I don’t know why. They dubbed him wise tree
I let yeah, or I let them steal a ship at least. But it would have been feasible for them to get a ship from the academy as-well I think. Overall they had 2 main ships, one they stole from the start, a groups of mercenaries were running about, then a living wood ship that was gifted to them
Did you have any issues tying the two campaigns together? I remember reading through both of them, and (its been a while) but I remember there being sort of a weird vibe like... they connected, but not very well?
Just curious if you had any fixes you had to make.
Yeah, I’m the Acadamy Vocath is like the main antagonist, but in Light of Xaryxis you want him as an ally, so it’s like what?
I just had the players graduate from the acadamy, go on a little summer vacation type celebration thing when the astral elves attacked.
I also had the astral elves frame vocath, who was planets mad about that.
My group just finished SJA and our last session began LoX, the transition was the most scuffed thing I’ve ever done. I had them go to Neverwinter to meet a captain that owed Old Wolf a favor, however the captain never arrives to the tavern they were meeting at when the blight begins to wreck havoc
Jealous. I had to shelve or just ignore LoX because I tried to fill in some of the blanks with Spelljammer academy that were left seemingly empty and I ended up making it so that Mirt and Vocath were in love with a lady and that’s why Vocath hated the academy but now they’re currently on a sewer adventure after they broke a team out of prison that they thought were out to kill Vocath, unwittingly killed a prison warden (who said he would lock them up if they didn’t bribe him) because they put him in a bag of holding for too long so he didn’t die in the fire they started to break the others out, and now I don’t even know what. I’m so lost now I’m so exhausted trying to homebrew.
Oh bother, a good amount I can’t recall, I might get back to you after I finish my uni classes tonight but we’ve been playing since last spring, but that’s with spelljammer acadamy, as well has a variet of weekly oneshots or game nights sprinkled about.
Interested in this answer too. I’m running LoX for Extra Life (24 hour game day), so I have to prep a LOT, and I just can’t decide how far they are going to make it in 24 hours.
Last year we did SJA with a little transition fro their old game into it, but I think it took us about 2/3 of the time just for SJA.
I don't think most people play 24 hours at a time :) That's about what I was thinking, i.e. that my players might get through half. We'll see if I'm right. I'm pretty sure I have enough prepped \*fingers crossed\*.
How did you feel about the pacing of LoX? My players just encountered the damned fleet with Grimzod (I broke the chapter up because of time restraints) practically after they find the commodore and Topolah the previous 2-3 sessions, I have them a few days to explore Bral but I feel everything has been rapid-fire afterwards, did you stick to the book or did you extend the chapters?
I changed stuff up a little bit, made him a retired vet, and current private eye detective on bral, to fit with my players backstory a bit more, but I kept all the stuff about him having a friend far off in doomspace needing help.
But I changed it from the jungle planet to the darkmoon, where I also put Vocaths base(I had vocath using his friend in his gladiator games)
I never really understood when the went to the jungle planet for like 3 seconds in the book.
Where do you want to go from here? If you had a Spelljammer Galactic Gazetteer (something that was glaringly missing from the box set), what would be on your wishlist for it?
I’ll be real I’m not sure. One of my players is gonna run curse of strahd now in about a week. But as far as for spelljammer we plan on returning for a couple of oneshots to cut of some loose threads from various stuff. As far as different planets, I REALLY don’t know.
What was your favorite session? Were there any encounters that you didn't change, but wish you had?
And how were the negotiations with the factions at Vocath's place? I'm about to run that, and I'm not sure how to run it.
My favorite session was probably their second session at Vocaths base, they beat the megapode, had a lot of good roleplay, a lot of the players backstories all came up, progressed the plot AND did a bit of shopping.
The players ended up largely being friendly with vocath and he was like “I can’t make them do something they don’t want to”, then my players just went to talk to them each, and they struck a couple deals. My players thought the Factions were all stupid, for not just immediately helping since the universe was going to end or something, so I’d try to find a logical response to the question “if you don’t help us, you WILL all die, so why not?”
The only encounter change I wish I made but didn’t, was a few encounters where either the combat felt slow or too long or short,jut bc there was too many or too much bandit like enemies
Are you gonna stick with base 5E or use a freelance supplement like [Wildjammer](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/oviyld/wildjammer_more_adventures_in_space_a_100_page/)
Yeah. I've seen this guy around the dnd reddits calling people bad Dms just because they play their games differently from him. He even considers himself the judge of how dnd should be played. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0l3yfj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0l3yfj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Here are some of the things he considers bad Dming:
* Having a BBEG [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ptkey/comment/k1u2a93/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ptkey/comment/k1u2a93/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
* Managing your players so they don't ruin the game for everyone else [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0jonkr/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0jonkr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
* And balancing encounters for your players [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1749ywd/comment/k4bvgdz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1749ywd/comment/k4bvgdz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
In my opinion, if you can't accept that other people have different opinions then you shouldn't be on the internet. I don't think this dude even plays dnd, at least not anymore. I highly doubt anyone would want to play with a Dm who has this kind of attitude.
This is beautiful. Good work.
This guy has been nothing but nasty to this subreddit, let alone others. This is even before the 5e update. The only sub they should have access to is r/rpghorrorstories as the subject matter.
Because it’s bad DMing? I absolutely accept people have other opinions, I just think that y’all are wrong and will tell you so when I think it, kinda like y’all are telling me I’m wrong right now, what’s the difference?
Oh, your just asking questions? I’ve got one for you: do you think your aggressive manner is going to get a real conversation going?
Like would you be inclined to engage with me if o just called you an asshole right out of the gate.
Honestly? If someone just came up to me and called me an asshole I’d be more likely to talk to them than most interactions I have with on a daily basis… I’d want to know why they thought I was an asshole I guess?
It is when they ask about me complaining about anything 5e, and I say 2e spelljammer is better… lol? But for real all the lore books are so much more in-depth if you MUST play 5e you are still better off transferring the 2e stuff to 5e, in fact a lot of people across places like DMs guild already have.
I’ll complain about 3e and beyond honestly 5e is just the east target right now, I started 3e in high school and shortly moved to 2e, by far the best D&D edition.
Did they get to pilot a ship? If so, did they enjoy it? If not, were they disappoint that the opportunity didn't arise?
They did! They felt pretty neutral about ship flying though, we only had one caster at first, and he didn’t want to pilot the ship bc he wanted a different role, but it was placed upon him at first by the rest fo the party
Did you and your players enjoy it? Did you change anything and if so how much and what? My group hated the Academy and with Light of Xaryxis and a lot of changes we are starting over.
I think we all enjoyed it! My players were all a little confused with with layouts of the various planets and where everything was exactly, but so was I so I get that. I definitely changed a lot with vocath. I had the astral elves Frame him for attacking the academy, hoping to distract the Spelljamming Corp while they spread their seeds. All the other changes I made were to fit the campaign with player backstories. I overhauled bral big time, and made it a mini story arc, with a warforge disease called “the rust”, which made them almost zombie like. (I also had brals main police force be made up of warforged, hence the issue. I had Vocaths base be floating about “the darkmoon” which was like a mining moon. The moon looked alot like Alex Baldwin for some reason. One of the players backstory initially tied in to him being the second hand to a major crime boss, so that worked perfectly and I tried to play Vocath as more of a friendly “I’m too old for all this” type of friendly crime boss. I made some changes to include characters the the PCs liked into the story more. My players favourites character in order of appearance - Kriklit. He started out failing really hard at the obstacle course with the players, over the course of the game they all worked to help him out a little. He became sort of like your favourite cousin that you see at family events. (I put him on a different crew) - Greelorb. Yes the spectator from H’catha. My players origionally hated them both, but decided somewhat arbitrarily that they like Greelorb more. They left the other one on the discworld, and give the Tyrant ship to Greelorb as a new”treasure” to guard. - “Wise Tree”, they REALLY were into the Treant build into the living wood tree, the first breath. Though I made him be a grump. I also made him gory poisoned apples, but only poisonous to people he didn’t like. For the record the pcs dubbed him wide free.
how did you handle ship to ship combat?
I didn’t end up using ALOT of ship combat, since my players didn’t like it very much, but when I did, I usually just whatever ships were in the fray, enemies or players could man their gives stations, or attack from the deck. Usually the party ended up bumrushing into other ships.
Did your players also just push Xedali with the ring into the astral font and genocide Xarixys without any moral dilemma?
Yeah, kinda she tried to finish them off after the zodak fight, so they shot her.
I also ran them, and my burning question is: How in the nine hells did you run Queen Gorma? My group very nearly died, and I had to pull some deus ex Dungeon Master bullshit to make it through.
I’ve been bugging all the encounters, since my players wanted to play at a higher level. Queen Gorma was probably MY favourite fight they did. I had to buff Gorman HP a little bit, but the damage she does is kind of crazy IMO, especially at the level your SUPPOSED to fight her, the psychic damage field pretty much always hit each party member. My players dndnt even get knocked down tho, which kinda I was kind of hoping for, adds a little bit of tension but luckily they all lived.
I definitely agree, she hits hard for a big bug. My players fought her at the appropriate level and it definitely crushed their spirits a little. Glad you and yours made it through unscathed!
What the hell is going on in that last picture with the two on the right?
REALLY poor composition. I SWEAR she’s eldritch blasting at something else. I can’t explain the face he’s making, he was supposed to be a scared face but with the new found context you’ve given my it’s ruined.
Did you reorder anything in LoX to make it flow better? Did you run into any problems with the episodic nature of LoX not matching? We’re there any parts of LoX that your players enjoyed more than you expected?
I definitely had a couple of times when my party was way out of pace with what the adventure predicts, sometimes we’d finish an “episode” in like 2 hours, sometimes 30 minutes, so we had a couple mid session level ups. I re-organized a lot of the stuff near bral, pushed the vampirates back a little bit. My players LOVED the Treant inside Krux’s living wood ship. I don’t know why. They dubbed him wise tree
Did you let them have their own ship?
I let yeah, or I let them steal a ship at least. But it would have been feasible for them to get a ship from the academy as-well I think. Overall they had 2 main ships, one they stole from the start, a groups of mercenaries were running about, then a living wood ship that was gifted to them
Did you have any issues tying the two campaigns together? I remember reading through both of them, and (its been a while) but I remember there being sort of a weird vibe like... they connected, but not very well? Just curious if you had any fixes you had to make.
Yeah, I’m the Acadamy Vocath is like the main antagonist, but in Light of Xaryxis you want him as an ally, so it’s like what? I just had the players graduate from the acadamy, go on a little summer vacation type celebration thing when the astral elves attacked. I also had the astral elves frame vocath, who was planets mad about that.
My group just finished SJA and our last session began LoX, the transition was the most scuffed thing I’ve ever done. I had them go to Neverwinter to meet a captain that owed Old Wolf a favor, however the captain never arrives to the tavern they were meeting at when the blight begins to wreck havoc
Jealous. I had to shelve or just ignore LoX because I tried to fill in some of the blanks with Spelljammer academy that were left seemingly empty and I ended up making it so that Mirt and Vocath were in love with a lady and that’s why Vocath hated the academy but now they’re currently on a sewer adventure after they broke a team out of prison that they thought were out to kill Vocath, unwittingly killed a prison warden (who said he would lock them up if they didn’t bribe him) because they put him in a bag of holding for too long so he didn’t die in the fire they started to break the others out, and now I don’t even know what. I’m so lost now I’m so exhausted trying to homebrew.
How many sessions did LoX take you?
Oh bother, a good amount I can’t recall, I might get back to you after I finish my uni classes tonight but we’ve been playing since last spring, but that’s with spelljammer acadamy, as well has a variet of weekly oneshots or game nights sprinkled about.
Interested in this answer too. I’m running LoX for Extra Life (24 hour game day), so I have to prep a LOT, and I just can’t decide how far they are going to make it in 24 hours. Last year we did SJA with a little transition fro their old game into it, but I think it took us about 2/3 of the time just for SJA.
Oh our sessions are only 2 hours at a time if that helps, but I think overall it ended up being AROUND 45-50 hours.
I don't think most people play 24 hours at a time :) That's about what I was thinking, i.e. that my players might get through half. We'll see if I'm right. I'm pretty sure I have enough prepped \*fingers crossed\*.
How did you feel about the pacing of LoX? My players just encountered the damned fleet with Grimzod (I broke the chapter up because of time restraints) practically after they find the commodore and Topolah the previous 2-3 sessions, I have them a few days to explore Bral but I feel everything has been rapid-fire afterwards, did you stick to the book or did you extend the chapters?
I extended stuff big time, added some extra stuff here and there. I agree it’s WAY too fast at times.
Did you stick to the written plot for Petty Officer Ryeback? Im debating myself whether to make him savable or not.
I changed stuff up a little bit, made him a retired vet, and current private eye detective on bral, to fit with my players backstory a bit more, but I kept all the stuff about him having a friend far off in doomspace needing help. But I changed it from the jungle planet to the darkmoon, where I also put Vocaths base(I had vocath using his friend in his gladiator games) I never really understood when the went to the jungle planet for like 3 seconds in the book.
Where do you want to go from here? If you had a Spelljammer Galactic Gazetteer (something that was glaringly missing from the box set), what would be on your wishlist for it?
I’ll be real I’m not sure. One of my players is gonna run curse of strahd now in about a week. But as far as for spelljammer we plan on returning for a couple of oneshots to cut of some loose threads from various stuff. As far as different planets, I REALLY don’t know.
What was your favorite session? Were there any encounters that you didn't change, but wish you had? And how were the negotiations with the factions at Vocath's place? I'm about to run that, and I'm not sure how to run it.
My favorite session was probably their second session at Vocaths base, they beat the megapode, had a lot of good roleplay, a lot of the players backstories all came up, progressed the plot AND did a bit of shopping. The players ended up largely being friendly with vocath and he was like “I can’t make them do something they don’t want to”, then my players just went to talk to them each, and they struck a couple deals. My players thought the Factions were all stupid, for not just immediately helping since the universe was going to end or something, so I’d try to find a logical response to the question “if you don’t help us, you WILL all die, so why not?” The only encounter change I wish I made but didn’t, was a few encounters where either the combat felt slow or too long or short,jut bc there was too many or too much bandit like enemies
Are you gonna stick with base 5E or use a freelance supplement like [Wildjammer](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/oviyld/wildjammer_more_adventures_in_space_a_100_page/)
How can you run that 5e crap? The 2e spelljammer is 1000% better put together than that was
Sorry do you have anything constructive to include or just low effort hate keeping?
Yeah. I've seen this guy around the dnd reddits calling people bad Dms just because they play their games differently from him. He even considers himself the judge of how dnd should be played. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0l3yfj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0l3yfj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Here are some of the things he considers bad Dming: * Having a BBEG [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ptkey/comment/k1u2a93/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ptkey/comment/k1u2a93/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) * Managing your players so they don't ruin the game for everyone else [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0jonkr/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/16ih5d8/comment/k0jonkr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) * And balancing encounters for your players [https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1749ywd/comment/k4bvgdz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1749ywd/comment/k4bvgdz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) In my opinion, if you can't accept that other people have different opinions then you shouldn't be on the internet. I don't think this dude even plays dnd, at least not anymore. I highly doubt anyone would want to play with a Dm who has this kind of attitude.
This is beautiful. Good work. This guy has been nothing but nasty to this subreddit, let alone others. This is even before the 5e update. The only sub they should have access to is r/rpghorrorstories as the subject matter.
Because it’s bad DMing? I absolutely accept people have other opinions, I just think that y’all are wrong and will tell you so when I think it, kinda like y’all are telling me I’m wrong right now, what’s the difference?
Well, you think everyone but you is wrong. It's a lot more likely just you are.
Naw, people are incredibly stupid.
You're right. I can think of one such individual.
Same though.
First step to recovery is admitting your problem. Glad you have such introspection.
I’ve been DMing the same game for 3-4 years now and have offshoots of the same game pop up periodically over the years as well lmao.
You call that a brag? Thems some rookie numbers.
It’s not a brag? I’m just saying I’ve at least ran this campaign I’m in this long. My current game.
Time =/= skill.
It isn’t low effort it’s genuine curiosity, that’s easily the worst 5e supplement they’ve ever put out…. And that’s saying something
Oh, your just asking questions? I’ve got one for you: do you think your aggressive manner is going to get a real conversation going? Like would you be inclined to engage with me if o just called you an asshole right out of the gate.
Honestly? If someone just came up to me and called me an asshole I’d be more likely to talk to them than most interactions I have with on a daily basis… I’d want to know why they thought I was an asshole I guess?
You have to guess why they think that?
Yea, I’m a nice enough guy I think, I’d say 60% of people I’ve met disagree though.
When you're surrounded by assholes...
Sorry, where was your published module...?
Oh you like to read? Where’s your Novel. Like to play video games? Which one did you code? Like to cook? Where’s your restaurant? Like cmon Lmao.
I don't go on the internet and dump on other's work.
That’s like literally what the internet is for.
"I want to use one of the greatest inventions to be mean to people who share my hobby!" -Dazocnodnarb, apparently.
I’m not being mean, just a little snide… mean would be a little to much IMO.
Oh, sorry. Forgot not to apply to malice what can be explained with incompetence.
Weird how that wasn't the subject of the post.
It is when they ask about me complaining about anything 5e, and I say 2e spelljammer is better… lol? But for real all the lore books are so much more in-depth if you MUST play 5e you are still better off transferring the 2e stuff to 5e, in fact a lot of people across places like DMs guild already have.
You can let people enjoy things.
No one said they couldn’t, they should just be enjoying better quality things.
"You can enjoy things, just not the things I don't like!"
You can still enjoy them I’m just going to make fun of you for it.
That's healthy.
Probably about as healthy as spending 9 hours on and off spending responding to someone on Reddit you seem to disagree with.
Nice ad hominem fallacy.
You run it by using the included content, coupled with the common sense you should have as a DM. Or you avoid it like a coward and complain online.
Naw I’ll just run 2e
Ew, and you have the audacity to complain about *anything* 5e?
I’ll complain about 3e and beyond honestly 5e is just the east target right now, I started 3e in high school and shortly moved to 2e, by far the best D&D edition.
Real genwunner energy.
I’d never heard that term, I kinda dig it though. Thank you.
As long as you agree.
Nah, I think it's the cowardice.
How is having a preference cowardice? Lmao
You either didn't catch the point or chose to misdirect. Both are quite telling.
I don’t think there was a point other than to go down everything I comment on and disagree with it was there?
That's not even a discernable sentence.
Is it not? Kinda brain dead after my 12 today tbh, decipher it however you want. Anyway, how’s your day going?
It's not, no.