#spacejammer

[missarchivistdoodles]

So I've started playing DnD with some friends. We're about two months and have started our big Spacejammer journey. My owlin rogue/fighter is not having a great time.

To be fair she and Fitz the fairy raided that broken ship and she stole like, a shit ton of expensive silks from the captains office so she has plenty of fabric for a new dress. She's just mad 'cause she lost her cult-robe-dress her first time wearing it out.

[s0ckpupp3t]

i just ran the most wonderfully chaotic dnd session yet, and i had the time of my fucking life.

for context, my party consists of;

a genderfluid purple monkey, who is known to eat things they don't need to be eating, such as suspicious fruit and extraterrestrial grass. they have a flying drink mixer named chauncey, and they pamper the hell out of that little guy.

their college roommate, a dragonborn who's best known for sarcasm and rolling 0's on wisdom saves. he is the reason the captain hates caramelized onions. aj you know what you fucking did.

the second dragonborn that the monkey adopted (an npc of mine), who is a dumb-as-rocks barbarian who hates shirts (stereotype-y, i know, but i love her)(and she's a lizard there are no drag-iddies), who has a crush on the other dragonborn and also the party's fairy.

the party's fairy, who has a thing for *both* of the dragonborns and is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad liar. fortunately for her, both the dragonborns are stupid. the monkey is aware of all of this, and they are loving it.

a warforged pirate who's been blown up a couple of times and uses his own skull from his original body as a puppet. his voice is that of skeletor.

the captain, a tall, pretty, stern elf woman with severe mommy issues and a hatred of caramelized onions. her and the fairy are the only two with positive modifiers on wisdom. (also npc)

the warlock, with a tome familiar whose only expression is casual contempt. he is down-bad for the captain lady with mommy issues.

and, starting this session;

a lore bard who they found in a random dark cave, singing about the most famous war of their home planet. they had been on a spelljammer for about a month.

last session, my party came to a cave with a stone barrier covering the entrance, with a riddle etched into it. around that cave, there were two trees at the entrance and a large pool of water, surrounded by a carpet of yellow flowers. the answer to the riddle was "reflection," and they figured out that if they passed a perceppies check on the pool, they would see a young man's reflection staring at them from the surface of the water. if they knew his name, the cave would open.

that young man's name was Narcissus.

long story short, my party solved several more riddles and ended the session about to crawl into a dark tunnel.

they started the game by doing so and falling down into a dark room, where they met our newest character. the barbarian did not trust him immediately because the first emotion he made her feel was sad. she lightened up quickly, and so did the rest of the party when they faced a couple of salamanders together, after the purple girlboy threw open a set of doors without care immediately got grappled and restrained

who they found at the end of it all? was, of course, Echo. a heartbroken shell of a girl, who nobody could understand because she had no voice until one was given to her. they earned her trust by first, feeding her, and communicating with her via telepathy. she was finally understood and sobbed, and they all made a new friend, and it was beautifully heart-wrenching.

however, she was literally in love with the og narcissist™

and her new friends had some hell to pay.

so, when they left the cave, they made a stop by the pond again. and the two dragonborns launched girlboy into they air to do a mega cannonball into the lake, to ruin his day. upon helping them out, the college roommate goes "oops" and drops a bottle of ink into the lake. and then. stands up, straightens out.

whips out his dragon dick and starts pissing in the lake, flipping the bird. while Narcissus cusses him out. with a shit-eating grin the whole time.

i, jokingly, amazingly, say,

"roll for dick size."

he does so. 1d6 + CON modifier

he rolls a 9.

the fairy and the barb lose their shit in silent, desperate rage. both of them, stupid. both of them, useless.

everyone else just regards him with a silent respect. however, the former two are unable to form words for the rest of the walk back to town.

the bard started singing, "the dragonborn comes"

and the pool was referred to as "the puddle of Narpissus"

the words "roll me pissuasion," were uttered

we were on fire with the stupid jokes, and we laughed until our ribs hurt and we couldn't breathe together.

it was unanimously voted as my best session so far, and this is my first time running a campaign.

anyways i would kill for my friends in a heartbeat love my friends a normal amount

[dusty-abyss]

🏆Van has a talent🥷

[prismbearer]

Losing my mind over all these companions now on a single playthrough. No hope of of a sense8-style psionic polycule? 🥺

[the-tomato-patch]

Art comm from @infernaldaydreams ✨️ They did such a beautiful job capturing this scene from a Durgetash one-shot I'm working on in which Wyll, Karlach and Cardinal ( my redeemed durge ) steal/find a spacejammer and break into Banehold to rescue Gortash. It looks so good! ✨️❤️ ahhhhhhhh!

[elkk-en]

a pantsless wife for a spacejammer campaign my friend is running!!! her name is Valor and she’s a tempest cleric.

[illusory-scripted]

I can't be normal about my spacejammer dnd guy i love him hes a fighter/paladin/artificer and hes so SILLY i want him BLENDED.

this was supposed to be a warmup but it got out of hand

[spacepiratebeatdown]

I'm going to go through thae submissions i got so far sometime soon, tomorrow is a busy day for me unfortunately. Keep sending your favourite space pirates if you'd like to see anyone else in the bracket! I'm considering adding the Spacejammers (x-men) myself since i haven't gotten them yet.

[8luevalencia]

Little bit of art from Broken Wheel! These are all in game moments here:

And then of course, some meme redraws:

Yeah not as much as Brightstone or The Destination Isle or even our Strahd campaign haha

But some!

I think I have one more blorbo left, which is for a game I have not yet started but I’ll tac it on here!

I made an Astral Elf for a Spelljammer campaign my friend is running (we loving call it spacejammer dvd)

He is a barbarian with path of wild magic!

There’s not much I can say about him just yet tbh but enjoy my first drawings of him lol

Tbh I might just tweak his design here and there later but for now, say hello to Eclipse!

He left his community and he has approximate knowledge of many things ahhsdhhfdjs but actually he is an idiot that knows nothing and gets everything wrong most of the time

[ffxivdailyquestion]

FFXIV Daily Question n°106 : As a DnD Afficionado and since it's baldur's gate 3 hype momentum ... May I ask what class (multi ?) or race would your character be in the Forgotten Realms or any other DnD settings ? Would you see them evolving in a spacejammer, dragonlance, ravenloft or faerie setting ? Feel free to ramble as much as you'd like about dump stat or build if any.

[kelpeaart]

lil headshot of my pc for a Spacejammer campaign, SEBA! I never really figured out her personality but I did have a lot of fun with her design!

[sweetside]

Welp, I bought the spacejammers book since the sales don't end until the 4th.

And I am once again angry at the new race descriptions.

[thedungeonboiz]

HELLO TUMBLRRRRR!

We are The Dungeon Boiz, thanks for checking out our page!

The Dungeon Boiz consists of Justine, Arland, Grant, Lynsee, Anthony, Elly, and Dillon (with an occasional guest star here and there). The team came together with a dream filled with passion, excitement, and extreme nerdiness to create this podcast (which has now been released into the wild). When putting all of us nerds together, you get 20+ years of DND experience, creative consistent homebrew content, a shit ton of magical art, and a group of amazing friends who want to create a fantastic new community... with you!

[waiting-for-autumn]

“Winter Song”

A quick colored face study of my Half-Elf Bard, Winter.

I’m having so much fun playing this character!

PLEASE DO NOT EDIT/CROP/RE-POST

[alesunlimited]

#instock @moonrakerbrewing @almanacbeer #spacejammer #ipa #hazyipa #craftbeer #sfbeer #pacificheightssf (at Ales Unlimited) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-iu6Ppps49/?igshid=1kxk4tlprue2e

[howtofightwrite]

What would the transition be like going from Longsword to rapier? I'm reading Gideon the ninth and I'm curious how accurately it handled it, Gideon is used to a longsword and for plot reasons needs to shift to a rapier quickly, she has a teacher, and she's not a master, but is 3 months believable to become passable with a rapier

Is it realistic? No, not really.

The problem with Gideon the Ninth’s training sequence is really the downplaying of Gideon’s opponent’s skills rather than Gideon herself. The irony is Gideon would be better off were she starting from zero rather than training over (or re-training) her current skill set. This is compounded by the novel desperately wanting to be realistic or, at the very least plausible, and leans hard into tropes from the martial arts genre (specifically anime and film) without really understanding those tropes or the purpose they serve within the narrative. Gideon tries very hard to escape the dreaded “You Trained for Five Minutes and Are Now Beating Seasoned Masters” while walking right into it.

We went over Gideon’s issues with the rapier at length in a previous post so I’m not going to cover it again. Gideon is a novel where you really need to keep your disbelief suspended. If you, the reader, can’t ride the Rule of Cool straight off into the sunset or insert yourself as Gideon into the narrative, the experience may not be enjoyable. There are a lot of aspects in the novel’s worldbuilding and the characters’ approach to their situations ultimately don’t make that much sense in context.

On the surface, Gideon the Ninth is high concept gold. The marketing hook is “lesbian necromancers in space” which perfectly sells itself. Everything after feels like a debut outing in execution (which is what the novel is) and, really, a “babby’s first.”

Necromancers in space may seem novel, but they’re really not. At least, if you’re familiar with the sci-fi, fantasy, and the science fantasy genre. The label for Science Fantasy is new, but the line between science fiction and fantasy has always been blurry. Any fiction chasing Star Wars regularly ends up straddling the two, along with martial arts and sword and sorcery genres. P&P RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons have their own science fantasy spin off worlds like Spacejammers, and tabletop strategy games like Warhammer 40k perfectly encapsulate that bleak, overly edgy to straight up edgelord, grimdark setting Gideon the Ninth is attempting to bring to life. Necromancers are all over science fiction in wide and varied fashion, from the flamboyant like Chronicles of Riddick’s Necromongers to the sinister like Dead Space’s Necromorphs, even when they’re spun as highly advanced, tech wizardry like The Borg from Star Trek. (Yes, The Borg are necromancers who practice space magic. Fight me.) To a very straightforward case in Babylon 5’s Soul Hunters. Warhammer 40k has at least four different necromancy variants from the sorcery practiced by the Eldar and Dark Eldar, to the more techy-magic done by the Imperium, and straight up borging by the Necrons where souls are uploaded into new robot bodies. There are more, a lot more, including Sith Sorcery, but if we sat around cataloguing every instance of necromancy and unnamed necromancy in sci-fi (before we move over to traditional fantasy) you’d be reading a full length encyclopedia.

You may wonder what this has to do with realism and Gideon’s training. Well, here’s the thing, the direction might make sense in a setting without necromancers, but we have necromancers. So, why is a living champion (especially a hastily retrained one who’d be subpar without the power of plot) necessary in the first place? I’m not suggesting they don’t need a champion to fight for them or a bodyguard to protect them while they cast lengthy spells. The question is: why does said champion need to be alive? Why go with a hastily retrained mortal champion who’d die from a little blood loss and you have to blackmail into serving you when you could have the greatest swordmaster of your house that’s been accumulating experience for the past thousand years? It’s not like there’s a shortage of highly trained, skilled, and successful warriors to choose from, especially when the barrier created by death is no longer a concern.

In a setting without necromancers, Gideon’s training creates a basic problem when fighting seasoned professionals and the problem results from being she’s already trained in a different kind of sword fighting. From a conventional wisdom standpoint, I’m sure this seems backwards. Writing advice will often hammer home that what a character needs is training and, often, writers with limited backgrounds misinterpret this as meaning any kind of training will do.

While it’s true that you’ll pick up on the basics faster, the minute details become the killer. It is actually more difficult to retrain the reflexes you’ve spent years developing than starting from scratch. The rapier and the longsword are both sword combat, they are just close enough to completely fuck with your brain’s trained understanding of how to hold the weapon, how to stand with the weapon, how to parry with the weapon, how to block with the weapon, how to counter and thrust, and the trained in reflexes associated with these techniques. The important thing to remember about training is that while your reflexes aren’t naturally automated, they become that way over time through arduous training. Teaching your body to react automatically to incoming stimuli to reduce reaction times is one reason behind that arduous technical repetition. When you’re transitioning from one similar skill set to another, these trained reflexes will conflict and compete over which fires first. In simplistic terms, the lizard portion of your brain goes, “a sword? I KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH A SWORD!” and proceeds on that trained trajectory until it is automatically stopped by your higher/conscious brain functions, or interrupted by the realization your body’s position is entirely off and it can’t execute the maneuver, or flies straight into the jaws of death. This isn’t so bad when you’re transitioning from karate to taekwondo and all you need to worry about is a slight variance in knee placement for a sidekick chamber. This is a real danger with weapons where you might accidentally suicide on a failed lunge.

Three months isn’t enough to prepare Gideon for a series of duels to the death with seasoned professionals who’ve made this type of dueling their specialty. Outside of a lucky first draw and YEETING into some beginners luck like a British soldier dueling a Frenchman in the after hours section of the Napoleonic War. (Yes, that actually happened. What, did you think Wellington’s ban on dueling served no practical purpose?) Beginner’s luck doesn’t survive the scrutiny of tiered competition, your future opponents are observing your fight and strategizing. For Gideon, the rapier training itself serves as back end narrative justification for Gideon’s presence in the story, even though it doesn’t address the basic question of why a living champion is necessary.

So, why risk it? Kill Gideon and import a more suitable, useful soul into her corpse. With enough practice, the rotting part becomes a question of aesthetics and nose tolerance to foul smells.

(And don’t give me that crap about the fear that other necromancers will interfere with the spells. There’s workarounds to interference. Gideon has no real defense or innate protections against magical interference from another necromancer, at least not as established by the novel prior to the tournament beginning and would be normal for cavaliers. And, in the grand scheme, when there’s bound to be cheating anyway, who suffers less from a spell to rot off an arm? A living person or a corpse that doesn’t feel pain? Necromancy affects living tissue too, energy, and also souls if souls aren’t classified as magical energy, depending on the rules. We know that the necromancers in Gideon’s setting can do some sort of permanent enchantments because most servants are the shambling dead, not alive. It doesn’t take much to jump onto the next step and it seems weird no currently practicing necromancer ever figured out how to make a phylactery, or a soul cage, or soul-swapping/body-hopping, energy leeching, reverse-decay, ascension to an energy being, becoming a licht, or any of the other methods the Average Joe necromancer uses to extend their life. Or, you know, all the sci-fi/space ways you can do it too like cryo freezes when travelling slowly between planets.)

And, you know what? Longswords are much better at dismembering corpses, especially ones that can't bleed to death. So, why even bother with a rapier in the first place?

-Michi

his blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you, and come join us on Discord.