Drafting An Adventure: Setting Sail In The Astral Sea
Your adventures are awesome, just getting that out of the way. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about spelljammer, due to rewatching treasure planet most likely, and I’m curious how you would handle it
Drafting an Adventure: Setting Sail in the Astral Sea
Forgive the break from my usual format for this prompt, but as it deals with past versions of d&d and how I implement some of these ideas in my game, I figured I needed to change up my authorial voice for this one.
For those who might not know, Spelljammer is d&d’s answer to starwars style planetary adventuring, and is both its own setting as well as an “addon” to other campaigns involving a magical means by which adventurers could fly out from their homeworld into an version of space modelled on archaic views of the universe as a way of explaining why their wooden spaceship didn’t have to worry about things like gravity or vacuum pressure.
I was never into Spelljammer myself, as it was primarily a 2nd edition thing and i started playing the game with 3/3.5. While the idea of fantasy spaceships was always intriguing, I felt that Spelljammer itself was a bit silly, with its space hamsters, British hippo gun fetishists, and reliance on “ D&D trope, BUT IN SPACE” to prop up much of its material.
That said, we can all agree Treasure Planet, and the idea of fantasy space pirates is SICK AS SHIT, so I’d be doing a disservice to myself and the campaigns I run if I didn’t have that sort of thing running in the background.
So lets talk first about how I run the astral sea, as I use that as my backdrop for such adventures:
The Astral Sea is an expanse of starry void, filled with glittering mists and nebulae and aurora, as well as the occasional field of crystalline coral. It is the raw canvas of creation upon which the gods ( and other great powers) paint their myriad creations. This morphic quality is also utilized by powerful arcanists to create their own worldlets and mind-palaces, making their dreams into physical domains of impossible wonder. When these arcanists die or otherwise move on, these realms endure, slowly drifting together into ruinous archipelagos that provide habitat for astral denizens.
There is no such thing as distance in the astral plane, more of a notional geography of one landmark in relation to another. Part of the reason this great expanse is referred to as a "sea" is that navigation in such a realm requires either the following of particular " currents" that follow predictable routes through the expanse, or by the charting the relative position of various landmarks in relation to one's desired destination. One could also make use of the vast network of portals to get about, trace the boughs of the cosmic trees, or take a walk on the infinite staircase.
Its bad to be out in the astral sea for too long, as that primordial chaos can either unweave one's being or make some unwanted "Creative additions". This necessitates an astral ship for a long journey, or sheltering in a crystalline reef or other structure.
The Shallows of the astral sea reside in the realms of mortal dreams, and the phantasms of imagination and flotsam of fantasy spill over into the starry expanse.
Running Astral Adventures:
Since the Astral plane is by definition so far removed from the "grounded" state of traditional fantasy adventuring, I like to think of it as a sort of secret/background/bonus lore that's never touched on in most games, until the party starts having dealings with high level wizards and the like. A wonderous thing they get to discover when they cross over the threshold from practical heroics into the realm of the fantastical. That threshold is likely an unintentional one, as an unknown portal or teleportation mishap sends the party hurtling into the unknown, only for them to have to struggle through a strange world and find their way back to reality.
The construction, reclamation, or chartering of an astral ship is then a later benchmark where the party has taken control over their destiny, allowing them to travel between the realms by their own agency.
Adventure Hooks:
The diaspora of innumerable dead worlds spread out through the astral cosmos, survivors of realities that collapsed under their own weight or the mismanagement of their gods. These Starry pilgrims can find new homes among the reefs, or travel from world to world as astral nomads. Such an existence is a hard one, and it's not unusual for some of these peoples to turn to interdimensional raiding and piracy as a means of survival. Often the loot of these raids ends up in the markets of Leng, where the treasure of a thousand worlds flows through wicked hands of that world's miasmic masters.
In the most twisted and surreal expanses of the dreamscape, the Quori hold sway, formless tyrants incapable of creation themselves and so desperate to claim the minds of mortals to give shape and order to their nightmare realm.
The ruins of civilizations beyond count float in the astral sea, just waiting to be explored. Expeditions to these dream palaces can be great undertakings, but can provide campaigns without frequent dungeon crawls a chance to get their delve on without having to leave an important central location of a campaign.
Art 1
Art 2
More Posts from Post-maester and Others
Lorn's Lure is a sci-fi free-climbing adventure scale a massive megastructure in search of a glitchy ghost owl!
Lorn's Lure is out now on Steam
Gameplay Video:
HEY YOU!
Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?
Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?
That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.
The spreadsheet currently has 400+ entries spread across the following categories:
Books
Manga
Memoirs and non-fiction
Movies
TV Shows
Graphic novels / Comics
Webcomics
Audio dramas
Books and movies are also sorted by:
Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)
If the trans character is POC
The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)
If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)
It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.
If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.
If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags
I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!
Today’s recent budget commander sleeper is one that made a bit of noise on release with the latest set precons, but ended up drowned in the constant noise of magic these days.
Ramp is good in commander. That’s not news. And it’s hard to come by in white, at least cheaply. Knight of the White Orchid is still the gold standard of white (catch up) ramp, able to fetch nonbasics, and coming on a solid body on turn 2, it’s a white Rampant Growth that sometimes doesn’t work.
This is similar. It’s a turn slower, because it has a tap ability, the land enters tapped and the body it’ll leave behind will end up being a 1/1. However, that’s where the downsides end and the upsides start. Just like Knight of the White Orchid, it can fetch nonbasic Plains, which is even important on a budget nowadays with the two cycles of common typed duals in Kaldheim and Dominaria United.
Scholar of New Horizons also works even if you’re not behind. Granted, it only tutors to hand and doesn’t ramp you then, but hitting every land drop is oftentimes more important than ramping, since you don’t have to spend resources on it. It can also be used cheekily with this with the cycling typed duals (and triomes) to draw a different card. Oh, and the ability can be activated at instant speed which most of the time won’t matter, but will be very appreciated when it comes up that you’re going first and an opponent ramped on turn 3 and suddenly unlocks your own ramp instead of the land draw you’d resigned yourself to.
Beyond that, Scholar, by itself, can be used multiple times for no extra cost, as long as you have counters in your deck, which most decks do, even if incidentally. Have a cathar’s crusade? A Felidar retreat? A luminarch ascension? You’ll have a plentiful supply of counters to feed this turn after turn then, and those are just for mono-white.
In some cases, removing counters might even be an upside, if you expect -1/-1 counters, or, much more importantly, have any saga in your deck. Having the scholar out with the saga allow you to not only keep ramping or making your land drops and keep the saga forever, it also allows you to repeat any chapter from that saga every turn, even the last one should you so wish. It gets absurd with many of them, from Urza’s Saga tutoring every turn and sticking around to the Cruelty of Gix being a free tutor or reanimation every turn. With a Luminous Broodmoth, it’ll make any creature be able to die every single turn and come back.
Don’t get me wrong, this card doesn’t NEED synergies to be good. I’d play it in any white deck as ramp even if no other card in the deck ever had counters, right behind Knight of the White Orchid and in front of Loyal Warhound. On a budget or not. But it does much more than it would in a vacuum, and basically any deck will have some tools to synergize with it. It might actively up the number of incidental sagas I include in white decks just by existing. (But I’m mostly looking for an excuse, I love sagas.)
The card currently retails for under $1 (with the extended art version where you can read the name and artist for half of that), and I’d encourage you to snag one as soon as you find the occasion, in case this doesn’t get reprinted. It’s just staple-level good, much more than any other card that has been featured on here so far.
The classic betrayer
This is where everyone subtly knows that this guy's going to turn the other way.
The betrayer puts on a show for our heroes - kind, compassionate and supporting at first.
it just so happens that the villainthinks the heros are the bad guys.
make them actually likable.emotionally ruin the hero upon betrayal.
The remorseful traitor
whether he had bad intentions from the start or was deceived by others, the betrayer regrets his choices.
when he realizes his mistakes, it's too late to stop the evil, which introduces guilt.
throw the guilt and shame on the character.
even the protagonist can be a traitor! will others forgive him?
The Double Agent
this type of traitor will keep the readers wondering whether this guy is truly on your side.
keep your readers guessing. is that an evil smirk or a genuine smile? does he really love drinking, or is he just trying to get the hero drugged?
Snape in Harry Potter is a great example.
The guy can be good or bad - just keep balancing the two
Unrealiable narrators
these characters are not entirely betrayers, but horribly misinformed. they can make others appear like traitors - when in truth, they just have it wrong.
pit your narrow-minded narrator against his allies.
these characters are great for misunderstanding plots.
have your narrator do irreversible damage to the hero. would they forgive him?
Tragic betrayers
these are characters, due to their past wounds and trauma, cannot help but betray the group.
they confess the hero's secrets under physical/mental torment and doesn't have the backbone to do otherwise.
these characters can either be pitiful or frustrating would the hero still fight for the betrayer?
Play around with pov
you can have the readers know about the upcomong betrayal by switching points of view, building up anticipation to the moment of realization.
on the flip side, you can change povs in a way that the reader doens't see what's happening at the hero's back.
If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸
I'm stuck in a bit of a pickle at the moment. I've been a little kinda sorta completely fucking gutted by the election results. I feel so utterly saddened for 2SLGBTQIA+ people, BIPOC, women, people with disabilities who now have to live beneath that man's shadow.
Among the sadness is an ache.
An ache to do something. An ache to take action of some kind. I have no idea what kind yet, but I can't stop thinking about it. I am brewing. Do I mean to create something? I don't know yet. I'll figure it out. But I mean to do something.
Community.
I've been reading lately. A book called "How To Think Like A Woman," by Regan Penaluna. The book tells the author's personal memoir, as well as the stories of 4 Early-Modern philosophers (who were women). I'm not a particularly smart person, sometimes I needed to read a paragraph or even a passage multiple times to really 'get it,' but some things stuck with me.
These philosophers were steadfast in their beliefs that women were deserving of education, asylum from abusive husbands, that they shouldn't need to hide their sexuality, that they should be allowed to pursue their intellectual desires just as a man could. But in these demands they each were specific. These freedoms were not meant to enable selfishness in women, as they often did in men. They believed that these freedoms, for all people, also came with the duty to better one's community - to give back. That embracing the people, valuing the people, fostering each individual, would further the community.
This point of community is where I've been stuck all day long. We all need community right now. We need shoulders to cry on, we need friends to laugh with, we need wise folk to tell us what the fuck to do now.
I don't know what I'm going to do - or make - but community needs to be a central theme.
Queerness & Transness.
I also feel like I've created nothing inherently queer. I've abandoned writing for some years now, my projects are old. Older than my realizations about identity. Older than my epiphanies about transness. I want to do something fuckin' gay as hell. I want to pour energy into something that may in some small way counterbalance the hate being screamed into the universe, infecting the pretty space-dust that I wanted to use to highlight my blush. I want to create something that whispers with a forked tongue: "Fuck. You."
Fact or Fiction.
Will it be fact or fiction? Do I want to search for beautiful, real stories to tell and help spread them? Or do I want to create something entirely new? I'm not a documentary producer, but should I be? My heart is in crafting stories, but maybe it's time to set that aside for a while in order to spread true stories that inspire good and justice. Maybe I'd better stick to what I know and make something up.
Abilities // Restrictions.
I am one person. Alone I can write, but that is difficult without an idea. I have the tinder and plenty of firewood, but I need a fucking spark. Once I have the spark I can do more.
I'm a filmmaker, I produce and edit. That's what I enjoy doing best. Not shit I can do without the idea. So for now those sit on the backburner.
I also have a(n admittedly small) rolodex of lovely queer individuals who may also feel a little distraught at the moment. Might be time to meet with them to discuss working on... something?
Budget is zero. Don't know what the project is so right now necessary funds are also zero, which is great. But nobody's getting paid for whatever the fuck comes of this, unless I can be smart.
Ending For Now.
This is all I can bear to write and word-vomit for now. I have been so full of energy and stress thinking about this all day long. I needed to get my thoughts out. If you feel the same ache I do, if there's any way I can help you make your "Fuck. You." project, or if you want to contribute to mine, please DM me and I'll be so happy to discuss and talk.
Please be safe, please be there for your fellow human beings, please be good to each other.
Artwork by Gina Iacob
This kind of slaps.
Writing Resources
My main thesaurus website which is up while I write:
My favorite Random Name Generator: There are so many ways to tweak the settings and generate names to choose from:
If you have spare credits/moolah/kruge, these are awesome:
Translations: Nothing beats having a native or fluent speaker's help, but DeepL tends to do better than Google Translate:
I don't heed even a third of its suggestions, but the Hemingway Editor is good for finding stupidly long run-on sentences that I otherwise skim over. It encourages me to rework some things, make them more succinct:
VTM character concepts that I am compelled to share as they have completely taken over my brain: Part 2, Electric Boogaloo!
So since my last VTM character concept post BLEW UP and my brain is once again back on its bullshit, here are some more ideas! As usual, feel free to use these to your heart’s content! I’d love to hear about your characters too, so feel free to message me about them! Now, on to the main event: 1. A Malkavian researcher obsessed with statistics who hunts down “statistical outliers” in order to make sure their data is “pure and untampered with.”
2. A Ventrue who has created an up and coming adult toy empire (pun fully intended). They currently are in the midst of a fierce battle with the local Setites over who can cash in on the pleasure business the most.
3. A Brujah who was a successful athlete pre-embrace. Unable to participate in their sport and driven by extreme bitterness and jealousy, they now strive to turn the public against this particular as a whole by ghouling athletes and ordering them to discover, leak, and in some cases create, scandals. All the while, they rage against the sport they once loved under the thin disguise of false activism. 4. A dance instructor and head of a renowned academy known for producing performers who constantly seem to be breaking the limits of what the human body can do, much to the delight of audiences. What these audiences (and many newer students) don’t know is that this instructor is a Tzimisce and the performers have been carefully tweaked and trained during “private lessons” using a combination of Dominate and Vicissitude. Additionally, the Tzimisce is in search of a prospective childe worthy of being their dance partner, and has been carefully monitoring select students. 5. A Gangrel cryptozoologist who aims to be able to eventually master Protean to the point where they can turn into mythical beasts. 6. A Gangrel veterinarian who was embraced after attempting to transport what they thought was an injured dog to their hospital, only for it to have actually been their hurt and very annoyed future sire. 7. A fledgling Baali abandoned after their embrace who thinks they are just some weird Caitiff. 8. A Banu Haqim who was traumatized after they were almost diablerized by a Sabbat vamp. Thoroughly disgusted by the practice, they now hunt diablerists, all the while attempting to ignore the cravings and habits of their bloodline. 9. A Hecata “fixer” who makes their living by disposing of bodies, whether turning them to ashes through the use of Oblivion or by adding them to their collection of undead servants. I’m a little tired, so these are all I have for now, though I plan on dreaming up some more. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these!
Fun fact: the skitarii are so radioactive that every organic lifeform that they "save" will end up dying of terrible cancers sometime later!
I'm still new to Warhammer 40k, and I have gotten attached to two unit types that seem to be very prone to death (kriegers and skitarii), and I'm not sure if it's just coincidence and I have the tastes of a factually inaccurate lemming, or if it is so that everyone in the 40k universe is very prone to dying.
-
degeneratekilljoy1 liked this · 1 month ago -
sigil22 liked this · 2 months ago -
katosaures-rex liked this · 2 months ago -
leapofdoom liked this · 2 months ago -
thoughtful-archivist reblogged this · 3 months ago -
angrycrabeyes liked this · 5 months ago -
spacesfangs liked this · 5 months ago -
shiniestmathrock liked this · 7 months ago -
donuts-multifandom-hellhole reblogged this · 8 months ago -
donuts-multifandom-hellhole liked this · 8 months ago
-
thearchiveofthedamned liked this · 10 months ago -
chocoloom liked this · 1 year ago -
bibaleen liked this · 1 year ago -
filkovaariik liked this · 1 year ago -
cyberstrangerreview reblogged this · 1 year ago -
cyberstrangerreview liked this · 1 year ago
-
serpentes0 liked this · 1 year ago -
the-age-of-lo liked this · 1 year ago -
gmbbulldog liked this · 1 year ago -
fromhalterswonba liked this · 1 year ago -
sasukebutmorebratty liked this · 1 year ago -
xxtraceyxx reblogged this · 1 year ago -
trunirvefinsand liked this · 1 year ago -
ragnarok112299 liked this · 1 year ago -
chara-baskerville liked this · 1 year ago -
absortio liked this · 1 year ago -
thecollectorofawesomethings liked this · 1 year ago -
vigilantsycamore liked this · 1 year ago -
vermin-lord reblogged this · 2 years ago -
vermin-lord liked this · 2 years ago
-
undecidedddd liked this · 2 years ago -
theimpossiblescheme liked this · 2 years ago -
squirtleeatsgulaabjamun reblogged this · 2 years ago -
jstald liked this · 2 years ago
