SpellJammer Lamprey Ship

[madcowchef]

Bogie spelljams by the seat of his pant, then plays it down.

[Big Mac]

That is a cool idea using a transparent acetate sheet for the ship. Never thought of that.

If you ever print out anything like this, I'd love to see picture.

The SJ game I ran at Totalcon was one I created, but calling it an "Adventure" would be a stretch. " Prince Andru's wife and child have been kidnapped and are being held on this ship by a group of Vodoni. Attack the ship with your Lamprey ship, board it and try to rescue them." end of story, the time slot was only 4 hrs, So just a quick hack n Slash. I didn't even write it down just played it off the top of my head with nothing more than the map and a list of monster stats.

I suppose it is more of an encounter than an adventure, but I still would have loved to have played.

I'd love to be able to post your monsters over at the thread I created at The Piazza, so that other people could have a go at running your mini-adventure. Are they standard Vodoni monsters or did you make any specials? Did you give any of the breeders names?

[jugabyte]

Nice! Spelljammer, man that takes me back to the days...

[Bogie]

Thanks Guys, glad you like the maps.

Since you are interested Big Mac, here is a picture of the two ships (with figurines on them) about to start the battle.

Vodoni Battle.jpg

Here is a rough draft of how the game went:

the party are the strike team on board the lamprey ship. All the PCs are 7th lvl or multiclass 6/6 lvl.

I started by having them on the ship flying back to the Rock of Brall transporting some questionably legal cargo for some merchants.
Unknown to the merchant their cargo contains a couple of Yitsan eggs which hatch, quickly grow and then start feeding on the crew.
They are a lot like the predator on the first Alien movie, and the party gets thrown right into a fight.

When they dock in Brall the harbormaster quickly tells the captain that Prince Andru's wife and child were on a ship that was attacked
by a Vodoni warship. The crew was slaughtered and the wife & son were taken. A lone survivor was able to tell what happened.
All ships have been sent out to try to locate the Vodoni ship and rescue the royal family. A large reward is offered for who ever succeeds.
( not to original, but it is for a 4 hr con game )

The captain remember seeing an unusual shaped Vodoni ship near an asteroid field in the opposite direction that everyone else is searching.
He figures the Vodoni ship would go back there by a longer route to throw off the hunt and he thinks he can get there first.

So the Lamprey ship flies straight to the asteroid field, finds a large asteroid to hide behind and waits. The captain knows that the Vodoni
ship will come out of spelljamming speed due to the asteroids and won't be aware of them as quickly. He hope he can ambush the larger ship
before they know what is happening.

At that point I threw in a random encounter with Scavers, just to keep the players busy.

Of course the captain's plan worked, the Lamprey came up under the Wolf ship, and after some quick strafing with magic and missile fire,
the party boarded the Wolf ship. Big Fight ensues. like I said, pretty much Hack & Slash. I did have the players work out the strategy for the
ambush and the attack.

On the ship were 2 dozen Vodoni sailors, ( normal appearing men that I gave stats as 3rd lvl fighters ), 10 Vodoni Enforcers, and 6 Vodoni Conquerers.
The Captain/Helmsman was a Breeder/Mage, but they never encountered him.

Hope that is the info you were looking for, Big Mac.

[jtougas]

Just great Bogie !! I wish I had been able to make it to that event. I have always had a interest in spell/planejammer type ships and this one is wonderful.

[Big Mac]

Hope that is the info you were looking for, Big Mac.

This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Bogie!

I hope this can help someone who is running a campaign based around Under the Dark Fist.

[Bogie]

Under the Dark Fist is where most of my campaign ideas originally came from.

[xpian]

I ran that module in my campaign, as a DM, back in high school in the early 1990s. I loved that adventure. The Boucher brothers were responsible for a number of great modules I used, some of which appeared in Dungeon Magazine. They just had a great sense of building a fun adventure with lots of interesting touches and not much that was pointless and not useful.

[Big Mac]

The Vodoni Empire almost works like a subsetting of Speljammer. I certainly think you could run an entire campaign there.

It is a shame that the only product set there was SJA4 Under the Dark Fist. With 12 crystal spheres to flesh out, I think that a boxed set could have been devoted to this part of wildspace.

I would love to see more fans talk about SJA4.

[xpian]

I DMed "Wildspace", the first published SJ module, and many more adventures of my own design. The quality level of those TSR Spelljammer accessories was so hit-or-miss in those days. For every excellent "Under the Dark Fist" there was an abysmal "Astromundi Cluster". I think Spelljammer was just a bridge too far for many players--it was hard enough for them to wrap their heads around magic and fantasy, let alone moving it into space. But I'd have to say that no other setting published by TSR captured my imagination quite as completely as Spelljammer did. Those ships that Holloway designed are just gorgeous.