Spelljammer Anglership
One of the weirder things to come out of AD&D was Spelljammer, Jeff Grubb’s idea of what space would look like in a universe powered by magic rather than science. I won’t get into all the details – I could go on for days about it, and you’d probably be better served by reading the Wikipedia entry on Spelljammer if you aren’t familiar with it – but trust me when I say that it was weird as hell. Oh, and fun as hell, too.
I always enjoyed the fact that so many of the ships were designed to resemble animals – particularly fish and birds. Lost Ships by Ed Greenwood has some really cool designs in it, and a lot of information that fueled many of my early D&D games. Today’s map is an homage to Spelljammer, and in particular that book.
[Click to enlarge]
The Anglership is a fighting vessel designed to play the long game. It lies in wait, its crew sustained on the supplies stored in two cargo bays, until its prey draws near. Once the lure has drawn in the fatally curious it lashes out, crippling the prey with lightning. With that done the lure can be whipped up and out of the way, both to protect the rear of the ship and to allow the jutting ‘jaws’ of the Anglership to ram their new conquest and crush any hope of escape.
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Yanecky
March 6, 2017 @ 5:55 pm
Awesome idea! Not only for Spelljammer – I’m going to use it for a Numenera game 🙂
loottheroom
March 13, 2017 @ 8:23 am
Awesome! I’d love to hear how that goes if you use it.
Yanecky
March 14, 2017 @ 6:14 pm
Will do! Meanwhile, I posted the link to this map on Cypher System FB group and guys there loved it. 🙂
loottheroom
March 14, 2017 @ 10:06 pm
Thanks so much! I’ve seen a lot of traffic coming from Facebook since this went up but couldn’t see where exactly on there it was coming from. Now I know!
Rob
May 15, 2017 @ 10:47 pm
I’m directing my ground-based campaign into spelljammer eventually, and I might use this. Crew it with goblinoids, and have them hunting in the outer darkness of the sphere, using the angler’s light to lure in prey. I’d add big dark “eye” windows to the bridge and make the outside of the hull super black (with maybe a darkness spell) to help it hide in plain sight.
loottheroom
May 16, 2017 @ 3:27 am
That sounds really cool. In my head I imagined it with big ‘eye’ windows but that didn’t really come across in the drawing (although they’re sort of there in the Uppder Deck part).
Wildspace Encounters – Loot The Room
April 22, 2022 @ 3:02 pm
[…] Spelljammer back for 5th edition. I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for Spelljammer and I’ve posted some stuff before. After the announcement I dug out Adventures In Space and Wildspsace and immediately got the urge […]