A few months ago, I had one of those cool, full-circle moments in life. I ran into an old friend—someone I’ve known for almost 30 years—at Con of the North, a local tabletop convention. He and his buddy had sat down at the launch table for PsychScape Historical, my TTRPG. They were among the first 20 people to ever play the game, and it meant a lot. We’ve kept in touch ever since, swapping ideas, talking games, and just staying connected.

Then last week, he reached out with a question:
“Would you run a Spelljammer campaign for us?”

My answer was immediate:
“Yes!”

Last night, we kicked things off with Session 0 of our new Dungeons & Dragons 5E campaign, set in the wild and wonderfully bizarre world of Spelljammer. If you’ve never played Spelljammer before, imagine Guardians of the Galaxy meets sailing ships in space, with just the right amount of pulp adventure, floating cities, and cosmic weirdness.

🧑‍🚀 Meet the Crew

We started by building characters, and wow—what a crew.

• Buff the Giff Warlock: A gun-toting hippo-man who serves (and also hates) his eldritch patron, Steve the Great. Buff destroyed his entire homeworld under Steve’s manipulation and now seeks vengeance against the very being who gives him his power. He casts spells only after shouting Steve’s name aloud, like some kind of cursed televangelist with a blunderbuss.
• Maldrik the Human Fighter: Maldrik is a pirate with dwarfism and a deadly temper. He’s haunted by amnesia he doesn’t even know he has, and if anyone calls him “short,” he has to make a Wisdom saving throw or attack them on the spot. He carries a massive claymore and a muzzle-loading pistol, and his past keeps finding him—in posters, rumors, and people who know more about him than he does.
• Hal the Autognome Artificer: Hall fled his creator in search of freedom, purpose, and something more than servitude. Built as a maintenance unit, he broke free and now struggles to understand emotions, identity, and what it means to choose your destiny. He’s being hunted—and possibly holds a dangerous secret even he doesn’t know yet.
• Glorp the Plasmoid Rogue (NPC): A gooey green mass of cheerful chaos. Glorp can squeeze through an inch-wide gap, pick locks with pseudopods, and refers to himself in the third person. He was rescued from a containment lab and now serves as the ship’s infiltration specialist and comic relief—until the knives come out.

🎓 Spelljammer Academy Begins

We decided to start the campaign with the Spelljammer Academy adventure series—a perfect prologue to Light of Xaryxis. The session opened aboard a Spelljammer training vessel high above Toril. The players were standing on the deck, watching the swirling gases of Wildspace when suddenly:

The mast exploded.
Half the crew was hurled into the void.
The cadets were no longer in training—they were in the fight of their lives.

And that’s where we left things: mid-crisis, staring into the cosmic unknown, with explosions behind them and destiny ahead.

More updates to come as we dive deeper into Wildspace. The players are ready, the dice are warmed up, and Steve the Great is always watching.

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R.

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