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D&D Ideas — Spelljammer Academy: Orientation

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is Spelljammer Academy: Orientation, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of Spelljammer one of the most dangerous threats in the Nerdarchyverse are the Vargarians, interdimensional arcanocybernetic conquerers who’d fit right in as ongoing antagonists for fantasy spacefaring adventurers. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Be a doll and revisit the week that was! Take to the field of battle with the best Hexblade feats, hack a system to create a new game and what’s with all the creepy dolls washing up on the beach? Plus our weekly hangout, a live chat with an industry pro and a new live play of Zoo Mafia RPG round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

With Nerditor Doug and Nerdarchist Ted talking about Spelljammer Academy: Orientation during the live chat I decided to do an Out of the Box style encounter inspired by Spelljammer.

The live chat took a closer look at more free stuff from Wizards of the Coast on D&D Beyond, in this case the Spelljammer Academy: Orientation adventure. If you don’t have an account you should create one — it’s free. It is worth it for the homebrew content and because it looks like WotC is going to continue to drop these teasers on D&D Beyond for the foreseeable future. So far all these free D&D Beyond drops have had useful content you can drop right into your game.

Falling Treasures and Shooting Stars

Introduction

You can get Monstrous Compendium Vol 1: Spelljammer Creatures for free. These Spelljammer monsters represent challenge ratings from 2-16. Reading through the different monsters in there the star lancers really intrigue me between the art and lore for the creature. I wondered what if adventurers encounter a group of githyanki mounted on star lancers. What would this look like?

The catalyst for the encounter is the loss and need to recover the Astral Vessel Beacon. Depending on what kind of encounter you as the Dungeon Master want and how the players initiate the encounter you can adjust the countdown and therefore how long it takes for whoever is on the other end of the Astral Vessel Beacon. If the encounter focuses on combat then less time means the githyanki are more desperate. For an encounter focused more on social interaction then the Astral Vessel Beacon can count down from the highest count.

If you’re excited to run this encounter in your next game and looking for a great map to use for the encounter then check out the Out of the Box Map Pack, which contains all the high resolution maps from Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition collected individually for use with virtual tabletops, digital display and printable in full color. I recommend the one from Phoba’s Bet, which includes a campsite perfect for this scenario. Check it out here.

Environment

Plains, fields, or roads near a town

Suggested Level

• Deadly for four 7th level characters
• Hard for four 8th level characters
• Medium for four 10th level characters
• Easy for four 12th level characters

Monsters

• 3 Githyanki Warriors
• 3 Star Lancers

Treasure

40 cp, 50 sp, 26 gp, 11 pp, a diamond worth 50 gp), four bloodstones worth 50 gp each, a carnelian worth 50 gp, two moonstones worth 50 gp each, an onyx worth 50 gp, spell scroll of produce flame, spell scroll of armor of Agathys, spell scroll of chromatic orb, two potions of healing, Astral Vessel Beacon

Description

While the party is traveling, making camp, breaking down camp or currently at camp they witness a strange occurrence. The character with the highest passive Perception notices a brightly glowing object falling from the sky. A moment later three leather scroll cases containing a spell scroll of produce flame, spell scroll of armor of Agathys and spell scroll of chromatic orb, a pouch of 40 cp and the Astral Vessel Beacon hit the ground very close to the adventurers. They can easily pick up the items. Perhaps they even land in the middle of the party or right beside a character, narrowly missing them.

Closer inspection of the glowing object reveals a pyramid of gray-white stone about 6 inches high with a rune engraved on each side. The glow of the pyramid pulses at a regular interval. Unbeknownst to the raider scouting party in the skies above one of their satchels was torn during their last raid. In their jostling flight from the raid for these items fell out and the pyramid — an Astral Vessel Beacon — activates. The scouts use this magic item to signal their raiding ship, currently flying through the Astral Sea, when an suitable target presents itself for a raid. In 1-100 minutes (your choice) an airship will plane shift in from the Astral Sea. A short countdown leans into combat since the githyanki desperately seek to deactivate the beacon as quickly as possible and they’ll aggressively pursue this course of action. A longer countdown allows the scouts more time to negotiate.

The githyanki raiders need to get the beacon back as fast as possible and deactivate it before anything gets plane shifted. They were on a scouting mission and took the opportunity to do some raiding while out. This goes against their mission orders and none of them want their disobedience discovered — especially the activation of the beacon. There will be military disciplinary actions taken if their commanding officers show up.

The raiders are in stealthy pursuit of these objects as they dive for it while invisible. Characters who succeed on a DC 19 Wisdom (Perception) check feel the rush of air caused by the githyanki warriors astride their star lancers under their Invisibility Cloak rapidly diving towards the fallen objects.

The githyanki warriors are equipped with shields and lances in addition to their normal gear. They have AC 19 when using their lances while mounted. If they find themselves dismounted they draw their greatswords.

The githyanki’s plan is for one of them to jump off its star lancer near the Astral Vessel Beacon, grab it and then remount the star lancer to get away, casting misty step if needed to make the quickest path possible for success on this plan. If one of the characters is holding the beacon the githyanki must use an action to grasp the beacon to separate it from them by making a successful opposed Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check against the character that has it in their possession.

Characters who notice the githyanki in time, either before or after one retrieves the Astral Vessel Beacon, can attempt to negotiate with the raiders with a successful DC 15 Charisma (Persuasion) check. This check is made with advantage if the characters indicate a willingness to return the lost objects. The githyanki are open to parley if the Astral Vessel Beacon indicates there’s time and they believe they’ll get it back before the plane shift occurs. This is their primary objective.

Complications

If the Astral Vessel Beacon isn’t turned off then a vessel or even an entire fleet connected to the raiding party could appear with questions for whoever has the object. They might view their arrival as an opportunity for a raid, too.

If combat ensure then any of the raiders who survive and get away aren’t going to be happy with the adventurers and might come back later looking for payback.

No matter what happens the Astral Vessel Beacon is a heavily sought after magic item and the adventurers may have to fight to keep it from other interested creatures following this encounter.

Astral Vessel Beacon

Wondrous item, very rare

An Astral Vessel Beacon is a gray-white pyramid 6 inches high and engraved with runes, carved from the petrified flesh of a dead god from the Astral Sea. When you touch an Astral Vessel Beacon in a specific sequence it sends a magical signal to a vessel or fleet to which the beacon is connected. Spelljammer vessels can use this signal to plane shift to the location of the beacon. When you use your action to activate the beacon it begins to pulse with a soft glow and shed dim light in a 10 foot radius, and a spelljammer vessel or fleet appears d100 minutes later. You can cancel the signal and prevent this arrival by using your bonus action to end the beacon’s signal. The pulsing light of the beacon quickens as the arrival draws closer.

Once the Astral Vessel Beacon sends its signal it can be used to do so again for 7 days.

In addition you can conduct a 10 minute ritual to connect the beacon to a new vessel or fleet. This ritual, as well as how to operate an Astral Vessel Beacon, is typically imparted to any creature given such an object to handle.

I added this encounter over at D&D Beyond too. Here is a link if you’d like to add it to your collection and run it for your next D&D game.

From Ted’s Head

Nerdarchist Ted is on the injured list this week. For those who don’t know Ted has been honing his swordsmanship skills every week with the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. During a recent session he suffered a pretty bad bone fracture that required surgery so he’s resting up this week. Incidentally if we produced a series wherein Ted traveled around the country to different medieval weapon masters to take a lesson and then fight an exhibition match using those weapons, would you watch it? (It’s an idea we’ve kept in the back of our minds for years now.)

In lieu of a fresh editorial we’re republishing one of Ted’s earliest posts from Nerdarchy the Website where he shares insights into running an RPG on the fly.

Winging It! Running a Roleplaying Game on the Fly

Nerdarchist Ted here and today I would like to talk about Game Master tips. There are many styles to running a game and each Game Master discovers the style that works best for them. Your GM style might be to over plan a roleplaying game, plotting out the adventure and anything you think the players might do. This is quite exhaustive and time consuming on the GM. Your GM style could be to plan your adventure bare bones and either force your players to work with the material prepared or deal with situations as they come about. The merit of this style is you have some material planned and only if the players go off track do you have to think quickly and come up with something. Then there is a GM style of totally allowing the players to do as they choose and come up with encounters and material completely on the fly. The advantage to this is it’s totally an improv situation and has zero time taken to write material.

As GM your conversations with players are rarely scripted and you never know exactly what the players will say so there is always a call for you to think on your feet. You might be surprised by their reaction and your own abilities. Running a session like this only asks you to take this GM style a little bit further.

I once ran an entire campaign in this fashion. I had a general scope of the game but the individual sessions were left open to the players and allowed them complete freedom in their actions. I gave them a world to explore; a path to walk and placed no restrictions on their exploration.

It was one of my most successful campaigns.

There are going to be downsides to this GM style as well. Unless you are a walking encyclopedia of the gaming material you are using you will need to reference the Monster Manual or appropriate reference for your game to have adversaries for characters to face. Some GMs might have some of these stats memorized but sadly that is not me. Looking up encounters as needed versus having them already planned can definitely detract from the game and it certainly slows down the action. Having a few such encounters marked with a bookmark or sheet of paper can minimize this time.

If you have watched our game play videos from my 5E D&D campaign, my second session the players totally wandered away from my prepared material. So I was required to either force the players down my path or run on the fly.

I could have had the players spend a few days out searching for clues and come back empty handed allowing them to do what they wanted, but only be sidetracked from my material for a few minutes. I could have inserted an NPC to guide them back to my prepared material, but I chose not to.

I like offering to my players the freedom and sometimes really great sessions come entirely from the GM’s imagination and players engagement. Some times not. I say offer out to your players a sample from each list and see how you do. Ask the players which style of game they prefer based on how you ran them.

With that, I am Nerdarchist Ted and until next time, stay nerdy my friend!

From the Nerditor’s Desk

I was 11 years old when Spelljammer originally released back in the days of second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Boxed sets were all the rage back then and Spelljammer: Adventures in Space far and away was my favorite. It changed the way I looked at D&D forever and elements of this wild and wooly setting pop up in games I’ve run ever since.

I understand how Spelljammer might not be everyone’s cup of tea although present day 5E D&D actually feels a lot more welcoming to these concepts. Current players and potential newcomers to the hobby can much more easily wrap their heads around and accept the grand scope and the game’s hard lean into pure fantasy. But even if you’re completely uninterested in my most favorite take on D&D you can still find tremendous value in Spelljammer: Academy Orientation. Go claim your copy then come on back to discover how.

The structure of this short adventure impressed me quite a lot. Maybe it’s because I see many of the elements I often incorporate reflected in this. For starters the adventure begins with a long sea voyage before characters arrive at the adventure destination. I’ve done this so many times it’s become something of a staple. Academy Orientation advises glossing over this part but I say thee nay! Instead you might try this technique. Ask each player a direct question about their character during this voyage. Bonus points if you include another character. Here’s some examples I’ve used:

• Tell me something amazing you saw from the deck during this sea voyage.
• Explain a moment where a fellow adventurer was in peril during the trip and how you saved them.
• Describe a memorable moment you shared with someone else on the vessel, either a fellow adventurer or an NPC

By the time the party arrives at their destination you’ve already helped create some connections and roleplaying opportunities for the players. More often than not these short scenarios created by the players become recurring elements of a campaign. This is also a great way to both frontload your campaign with some DM narration without it getting too boring because you’re including the players in the setup.

Academy Orientation then jumps right into some action, which I also find incredibly useful — even moreso after expanding on the narrative setup by including the players. In fact you shouldn’t be surprised to discover those little moments they described already paying dividends through their actions in the combat. Remember how the one character saved the other one during the trip? Now they’ve got to do it again, and maybe this becomes an ongoing arc for those two.

I won’t go into greater detail from here both to avoid spoilers and also because we did so during the live chat. But I do want to point out how if you strip away all the set dressing the Academy Orientation provides a wonderful framework for a campaign in which the characters are part of a larger organization. At first glance this adventure looks like a lot of walking around a facility talking to people but I am greatly impressed by the guidance it provides to make these things interesting.

There’s a lot of recommended skill checks with impactful results for one thing. Several of these emerge through NPC interactions and while I continue to feel bewildered by the design team never incorporating their own rules for social interaction they are nevertheless intriguing. The details provided for NPCs make them much easier to run too. This is an area I traditionally find challenging with prewritten adventures and these writers did a good job with them.

Overall the Academy Orientation adventure presents a solid campaign starter where the premise is characters joining a large organization. There’s a lot of different activities and opportunities on which to build further scenarios. And I still find it hilarious how it suggests, “this adventure takes approximately two hours to play.” I suppose if the players don’t really engage with anything and simply go through the motions this is maybe the case but with all the chances for player agency, DM guidance for enriching the experience along with some insights from good ol’ Nerdarchy I suspect you can get a heck of a lot more gaming out of this one!

*Featured image — Fall in cadets! It’s time for your introduction to Wildspace! Spelljammer Academy is a series of four adventures that will prepare you for your journeys into space, and it’s available to you at no cost with your D&D Beyond account. In the first adventure, you’ll undergo your orientation at the Spelljammer Academy, where you’ll learn whether you have what it takes to traverse the deadly expanse of the cosmos. Claim your copy here!

New videos all the time at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here