Julian Meynell's Reviews > Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

This box set has three books. The first is the setting, the second is a bestiary and the third book is an adventure. The adventure is perfectly fine. It explicitly claims that it is inspired by the 1980 Flash Gordon film and it very much has that feel. It has a few problems and I would not run it quite as written, but if you enjoy a very campy adventure (which is not for everyone) it's pretty good. The second book is a bestiary. It does the job in getting a good set of creatures specific to the setting, although their mechanics can be a bit bland.

The real problem is the setting book. It is overly concerned with having double spread layouts of the different spelljammer's (which, to be fair are often very nice), but it has shockingly little information. There is very little information on how spelljammer's are meant to work and to use them, I think you have to pay attention to the adventure to see how they are meant to work. There are no space combat rules, which is extraordinary. There is little on the culture and dynamics of wildspace and the Astral plane and very little to use to detail these planes. For instance, Ghosts of Saltmarsh's information on aquatic adventures and sailing ships is far far better, even though it is not the main point of that book. Overall, if we compare the Spelljammer boxset to say the Eberron book, which is much much cheaper, it is substantially worse.

The primary problem with the spelljammer box set is that is a setting box set, that neglected to put the setting in it. I'm planning on running some spelljammer adventures, so if I had to buy it again, I would, but I would do it nashing my teeth. The DM should expect to fill in a lot of details. Clearly the worst of the 5e books that I have read.