Keith posts these fun retrospectives about Dragon magazine on G+ and the latest one got me thinking about Spelljammer.

First Time: In Media Res

The players made up characters and picked a ship. One of the players mentioned that they didn’t have a Thief. I had just learned about in media res in English class.

“We’re starting in media res!,” I announced, proud of my ability to play 8th grade English to D&D. “You are chasing this fiery pyramid through space, trying to catch and kill the Sun Pharoah!”

“Why are we chasing him?”

Why? Huh.

“Because the Sun Pharoah killed your party’s thief!”

And off we went…

The Next Time: Bral Prison

I was in college and we had spent the day in Ithaca’s gorges but had gathered in the late afternoon at a friend’s house. We were perusing his milk crates of 2nd edition material. Someone said something about gaming and someone else said something about how off-the-cuff games never seem to work. Jason looked at me because he knew I’d take that as a personal challenge.

Jason was right.

I asked the players to make up anything they could make from the material in the crates – their characters had to be criminals who were imprisoned on the under-side of the Rock of Bral. “The only catch is that you were not framed. You did the crime.”

While they made up characters I jotted down a page full of names. We gamed out asses off and it was good fun.

Good times, Spelljammer.