Spelljammer 5e, battlemaps and shipcombat
The excitement
I preordered the new and updated 5e version of Spelljammer. I ordered it many months ago, and finally got delivered friday the 24th of September. I was so excited. After reading the books this weekend, I’m still hyped but had way too many questions.
I got the alternate art, because I think it is really pretty 😊
Unfortunately..
I was stuck with a feeling that there were too many details missing for how to run ship encounters. It was like the books were not completed. Like many chapters where missing.
I went on to look for vehicle mechanics in Descent into Avernus and ship mechanics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I thought of cooking something up myself to make ship combat mechanics more interesting for my players.
Did a bit more research and found that Atrus on DMsguild.com had gone ahead and fixed it, where Wizards of the Cost had not. Atrus have made a great and simple rule addon that you can use to make combat, and crewing the Spelljammer ship much, much more interesting. He even made handouts to players, describing different roles onboard a Spelljammer ship. I’ll link to the PDF in the bottom of this post.
One of my largest unknowns where how to successfully run a battlemap where you get the feeling of how huge space is when navigating the battle, but also letting players see and move around on their Spelljamming ships. Atrus suggests to do this with a “Hybrid Map”
Hybrid Map
The hybrid map, is an excellent idea where you basically have ship miniatures on a hex grid, and next to it (or maybe even next to the battlemap) you can have the ship layout with the different decks, so players can orient themselves. All this is of course easier using some sort of VTT.
I personally use ArkenForge with a 50” tv on my dining table. My players sit around the the table, all with good viewing angles for the map and placing/moving miniatures on top of the screen.
An example setup, here in Arkenforge with 2 decks of a Spelljammer ship and 3 small Spelljammer tokens in space. I plan on using HEX grid for Ship against ship encounters in space aprox 100ft. pr. hex. When boarding another ship I will switch to square 5ft grid
Using Midjourney AI for battlemaps
For the example above, I used Midjourney to create some amazing star photos. I was using a variants of the following prompt to make them.
outer space, stars, black hole, galaxy --testp --creative --ar 16:9
Here are a few examples
You can get those images for free including more here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zdOH4B47BLF-RtpF-chmUIdpsKf9B1ZS?usp=sharing
Animated battlemaps for you TTRPG tv screen?
Dynamic Dungeons just launced a couple of awesome Spelljammer ships. I will definetly be using those. I love the space-whales and the space-squids “swimming” in space. Dynamic Dungeons also create very nice and atmospheric dungeons. I recommend you go check them out. https://www.patreon.com/dynamicdungeons/posts
Another good source for animated battlemaps is Cze and Peku. They have not made any spelljammer battlemaps yet though. They have this handdrawn look and I really love these. Check them out here:
Thank you for sticking to the end. Here’s the link for the Spelljammer guide:
DMSGUILD Spelljammer Combat Expanded by Atrus - Get it for 1$.
I am not affiliated, I just highly recommend it.