I don’t know if you know this but Dungeons and Dragons is a very good game.
I played quite a bit D&D, spending entire Saturdays with friends as we worked our way through various campaigns. The 5th Edition ruleset, in many ways the most accessible ever, had allowed us to bring new friends and players to the group. There was always a game on the way.
That was, of course, all in the Ancient Times, which now feel like a lifetime ago. My last personal D&D game, sat around a table with friends, was set to take place at the end of 2019. January 2020 was a maelstrom of life milestones for many people I know. Jobs were changing. People were moving, some between states. Houses were under construction. Babies were born. The interference of adult life in our thirties had finally pooled against us. It would be hard to get everyone together for a while.
And then in March a pandemic broke out.
While we were all in quarantine and dragging on successive lockdowns, we tried to get games going through Discord. It worked, sort of. We could play, but it wasn’t the same. The spark that gives fuel D&D at the table, the directness and energy that emanates from Yes, And-ing a story with your friends, just wasn’t there online. The more we tried to play digitally, the less we wanted to play. Maybe your group is different and playing online isn’t a barrier – if that’s you, know that my jealousy runs deep.
In 2022 I hadn’t played any D&D at all. None, that is, until last week when I was invited to play in a session of the new Spell pity set.
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
Spell pity is an old one D&D institution. The Spelljammer: Adventures in Space campaign setting was first released in November 1989 for: D&D2nd edition ruleset. Though it spawned only a handful of adventures in its time, its space travel, scientific fantasy disposition has left an indelible mark on the game.
In recent years, such as D&D Publisher Wizards of the Coast began exploring campaign settings beyond the beloved Forgotten Realms, calls to resurrect Spell pity from within the game’s community became too loud to ignore. It was time to get the setting out of the drawer.
The new Spell pity kit is more than a standard release of campaign settings. Previous 5th edition campaign settings like Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Van Richten’s guide to Ravenloft have arrived in one volume. Spell pity is a set of three books that reflects the three core rules of the game. The first book, the Guide for Astral Adventurersis designed to give DMs and players everything they need to create characters and build stories in the Spell pity institution. The second, Light of Xaryxis, is a short but exuberant introductory campaign between the stars. The third and final book Boo’s astral menagerieis a Monster Manual full of new and returning creatures from the Astral Sea.
It’s clear what Wizards is all about: if you have friends who want to try it D&Dbut they don’t like fantasy, now you can tempt them with some juicy sci-fi.
If the goal of a new campaign setting is to offer a different flavor, the Spell pity easily finds the back of the net.
Role for initiative (in space)
I was invited for an evening, together with journalists from stores like GamesHub and PC Gamer Spell pity recently. Our after-hours competition was held on the top floor of the Melbourne Emporium in the Neighborhood Earth exhibit. There, surrounded by projected images of stars and planets, we explored a small part of the Astral Sea.
Our session was led by performer and DM Jesse Thomas, known to fans of the Dungeon Mastery and Tabletop Unknown podcasts. Since we only had a few hours to play before the center staff would have to kick us out, Thomas leaned against the Light of Xaryxis the fast pace of the adventure. This, in turn, informed the styles of play that came to the table. Immediate solutions to our problems were needed. Faced with escaping a world on the brink of destruction and blocked by pirates, our party used a combination of banter and creative spells to get what we were looking for. Safely aboard a Spelljammer, a sort of space-faring galleon, we made our way up into the Astral Sea. Thomas would later comment that we were extremely objective driven, pushing ourselves to the content of the adventure he was unprepared for us to achieve.
That’s where the best D&D comes from. When you blast through the material your DM has prepared, forcing them to wing it? That’s where the real magic happens.
“You’ve never been out of the world, have you?” Thomas laughed, with character. I realized no, I hadn’t. No character I’ve ever played in D&D had ever left the setting they were made for, let alone the world they were in. It was a strange and fleeting sense of scope. I could see the scene before me, our Spelljammer entering orbit, a lone lifeboat against the backdrop of a mysterious, crystalline creature consuming the planet below. We would later undermine a mutiny aboard our ship, followed by a few… Alienlike theatrical performances as we explored an abandoned Illithid ship. Spell pityIts gift is that it can bring you these kinds of adventures. Xaryxis is built to give you a taste of everything, and it makes the mind run wild. There is no other setting in D&D it can do that without significant homebrewing. Now you can construct that Flash Gordon campaign idea you’ve had in your head for years. You can build that slow-burning monster-on-an-abandoned-ship story. You have everything you need.
My character, a Leonid monk named Krios, was a force to be reckoned with. As a combination of class and background I cannot recommend it enough. Krios also rolled four natural 20s throughout the night, changing the course of the short campaign several times. The dice I used belonged to Thomas himself and I was hesitant to return them at the end of the evening. I hope he has them somewhere safe. They are very valuable.
This was ‘s first personal game D&D I’ve been able to play since 2019. Spelljammer has given me something new and exciting, that’s true, but it also gave me something back. It gave me back the spark I had been missing, the little thrill of laying the narrative tracks for the train together. It was exactly where I left it, at the table.
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