D&D: 8 Spelljammer Story Ideas

When I call these Spelljammer ideas, I don’t mean that they are literally tied to the Spelljammer game setting.  I mean that they are fantasy / sci fi ideas for D&D that might involve some kind of planar travel in space or on the Astral Sea.  As it happens, I’ve been struggling to come up with ideas for a campaign like this, so I thought maybe laying some down would help jog something loose.  

And anyway, I’m way too tired to do any real writing this morning.

1. Gnomish Spelljammers discover Silver on the Moon.  This one would actually make an interesting low-level setting were one to take a town like Fallcrest and put it onto an asteroid over the silver mine colony.  Build traditional style adventures with space themes from there.

This is maybe my favorite cover art in D&D history.

2.  Something Terrible.  “DM Briefing: The PC's, having ventured into Spelljammer Space encounter the Starship Warden, a fifty mile long, twenty five mile wide, 8&1/2 mile thick derelict (and potential Dungeon) adrift in the Phlogiston.”

3.  Killjoys.  The party are a bunch of bounty hunters, and their bounty is somewhere out in space.

This never happened.

4.  A derelict dwarven citadel is discovered floating in space.

5.  A farmboy longs to visit space.  He gets his wish when pirate slavers from space come and raid his hometown.

6.  The Dark One’s Prison.  Eons ago, the elder gods locked their Nemesis away in an extra-planar prison.  Then the old gods fell and Nemesis was forgotten--until the day that the PCs accidentally discover the key.  Now the minions of Nemesis pursue them across the galaxy in their never-ending quest to friend their lord and master.

7.  Borg.

8.  Privateers.  Tensions are rising between the Aquarian Empire and the Free States of the Transverse Confederacy.  Finally, the Emperor of Aquarius issues a Letter of Marque against Transverse shipping.