Base them on using the elemental planes as blocks for the planets. Chose number of planets for the solar system or roll 1 to 3 d4s. Chose or roll 1d4 for the number of elements and 1d4 for each element for planet composition combination. On a roll of 1 element 1 fire, role again for a second element combination, rerolling 1s. 1 Fire 2 Water 3 Earth 4 Air A combination of all 4 would be an earth like planet. What do you think the other element combinations could make?
They had rules for creating solar systems on 2nd spelljammer and I know be people have posted those tables or nearly identical ones so a quick Google search should find them as I know I downloaded a copy made in excell a while back when prepping for my spelljammer campaign back before they released Spelljammer Academy.
What you have suggested could work as a base, but the existing tables were a bit more robust as they also included determining planet shape number of moons number of objects in system. Their sizes...etc...
They had rules for creating solar systems on 2nd spelljammer and I know be people have posted those tables or nearly identical ones so a quick Google search should find them as I know I downloaded a copy made in excell a while back when prepping for my spelljammer campaign back before they released Spelljammer Academy.
What you have suggested could work as a base, but the existing tables were a bit more robust as they also included determining planet shape number of moons number of objects in system. Their sizes...etc...
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
I could see the desire for a random table to generate locations if you were running more of an episodic Planet-of-the-Week kind of game. Though I mostly agree that in my game I'd build out the planets I need.
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
I could see the desire for a random table to generate locations if you were running more of an episodic Planet-of-the-Week kind of game. Though I mostly agree that in my game I'd build out the planets I need.
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
That makes sense when you have an overall story that mandates that certain things happen. When you're building up the story or just doing old school Star Trek style story of the week adventures (excluding DS9 somewhat), then roll tables can be useful for people to at least start the creation process going without having to have pages and pages of different systems to copy or just make it up yourself. As an example, the roll tables for character creation like for PBIFs - you get a random collection for a PBIF and then you can use that to force yourself to come up with explanations of why this character has that PBIF, and after a few minutes you have a really nicely fleshed out character that's actually pretty unique with deep background.
I find roll tables helpful for that reason. I really suck at coming up with ideas on my own. But if I can start a few key features, I'm great at bouncing off of that to come up with fully fleshed ideas that can be interesting and make sense as well. Roll tables are great for creating those initial seeds because it means that I don't have to perpetually be coming to these boards looking for inspiration, cap in hand - I don't have to be completely babied through the creation process. The idea isn't that you use these roll tables as the session starts, but to help the creation process start. They're especially useful when creating large numbers of something (like a series of systems or an entire band of bandits) which can really tax my creative energies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Question - Is this solar system for Spelljammer? Or for a homebrew standard campaign? I sort of assume it’s for Spelljammer as why you would need rules for creating a single system is pretty much beyond me. If it’s for Spelljammer, in addition to the 2e rules you might want to look at rules in spacefaring games like Travellor where the GM needs to make up lots of systems so it’s got a robust set of rules.
Let's say a planet of one element is reministic of the elemental plane of that element.
What do you think the combinations of those elements would make?
Just some simple brainstorming:
Fire + Water: Either a steam version of a gas giant planet or maybe a natural Geyser planet. Fire + Earth: Your classic Volcano planet Fire + Wind: Your typical gas giant planet. Water + Earth: A swamp or muck planet Water + wind: A planet of storms, perhaps completely covered in water with constant storms. Or an icy planet depending on distance from the system's sun. Earth + Wind: I am instantly reminded of whatever planet it rains razor sharp diamonds on.
Tri-element would take some more brainstorming, but the above gives a decent basis to build off of I think
Question - Is this solar system for Spelljammer? Or for a homebrew standard campaign? I sort of assume it’s for Spelljammer as why you would need rules for creating a single system is pretty much beyond me. If it’s for Spelljammer, in addition to the 2e rules you might want to look at rules in spacefaring games like Travellor where the GM needs to make up lots of systems so it’s got a robust set of rules.
Let's say a planet of one element is reministic of the elemental plane of that element.
What do you think the combinations of those elements would make?
Just some simple brainstorming:
Fire + Water: Either a steam version of a gas giant planet or maybe a natural Geyser planet. Fire + Earth: Your classic Volcano planet Fire + Wind: Your typical gas giant planet. Water + Earth: A swamp or muck planet Water + wind: A planet of storms, perhaps completely covered in water with constant storms. Or an icy planet depending on distance from the system's sun. Earth + Wind: I am instantly reminded of whatever planet it rains razor sharp diamonds on.
Tri-element would take some more brainstorming, but the above gives a decent basis to build off of I think
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
That makes sense when you have an overall story that mandates that certain things happen. When you're building up the story or just doing old school Star Trek style story of the week adventures (excluding DS9 somewhat), then roll tables can be useful for people to at least start the creation process going without having to have pages and pages of different systems to copy or just make it up yourself. As an example, the roll tables for character creation like for PBIFs - you get a random collection for a PBIF and then you can use that to force yourself to come up with explanations of why this character has that PBIF, and after a few minutes you have a really nicely fleshed out character that's actually pretty unique with deep background.
I find roll tables helpful for that reason. I really suck at coming up with ideas on my own. But if I can start a few key features, I'm great at bouncing off of that to come up with fully fleshed ideas that can be interesting and make sense as well. Roll tables are great for creating those initial seeds because it means that I don't have to perpetually be coming to these boards looking for inspiration, cap in hand - I don't have to be completely babied through the creation process. The idea isn't that you use these roll tables as the session starts, but to help the creation process start. They're especially useful when creating large numbers of something (like a series of systems or an entire band of bandits) which can really tax my creative energies.
That makes a lot of sense, in terms of kick starting things. But you’re still left building an entire world. It’s orders of magnitude more complex than just an NPC or group of bandits. Even with a planet of the week, there’s got to be some overarching story for why the party is even in a given solar system. Even if it’s something like, they’re running out of air and need a pit stop, placing the system in a useable location is already a DM contrivance. So then it seems like you also just put the planet you want within that system, or just hand wave the whole thing. And if it’s too much to make the world (and I can sympathize with that) well there’s half a dozen(ish) official setting books, plus all the places in radiant citadel that could be fleshed out into a world. That work of making a world is done already if someone needs it. I just don’t get where random world building has a place.
First off the planet might not be naturally habitable. So the only place you need to build is the small area that is being investigated.
Not a whole planet needs to be habitable. It could be a desert world with only a small area with water. Or a water world with only a few islands.
The planet might not even be populated by more than a few colonists.
Or it could be exactly earth like but with all different people and whole new animals and monsters.
I just need enough to start describing the world. I do not need to have every NPC written up. Heck I write up a bunch of generic NPC;s long before hand and just change names locations and clothing.
They had rules for creating solar systems on 2nd spelljammer and I know be people have posted those tables or nearly identical ones so a quick Google search should find them as I know I downloaded a copy made in excell a while back when prepping for my spelljammer campaign back before they released Spelljammer Academy.
What you have suggested could work as a base, but the existing tables were a bit more robust as they also included determining planet shape number of moons number of objects in system. Their sizes...etc...
I did not know those existed. Link?
Here is one such link. There are others but I'd rather not try to do an exhaustive search on something when it probably isn't needed.
Taken from 2e, with a couple adjustments to be more in-line with current lore (namely the removal of Nested Spheres and replacing with multi-Primary systems, ie binary or trinary star systems)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
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Base them on using the elemental planes as blocks for the planets.
Chose number of planets for the solar system or roll 1 to 3 d4s.
Chose or roll 1d4 for the number of elements and 1d4 for each element for planet composition combination. On a roll of 1 element 1 fire, role again for a second element combination, rerolling 1s.
1 Fire
2 Water
3 Earth
4 Air
A combination of all 4 would be an earth like planet.
What do you think the other element combinations could make?
They had rules for creating solar systems on 2nd spelljammer and I know be people have posted those tables or nearly identical ones so a quick Google search should find them as I know I downloaded a copy made in excell a while back when prepping for my spelljammer campaign back before they released Spelljammer Academy.
What you have suggested could work as a base, but the existing tables were a bit more robust as they also included determining planet shape number of moons number of objects in system. Their sizes...etc...
I did not know those existed.
Link?
Why would you want it to be random? If you were building a world, would you let the dice tell you where to put a city, even if it didn’t make sense?
And then, what happens if you randomly roll there’s a planet there that’s able to support life as D&D knows it? Now you need to build an entire world, or at least enough of it for the players to interact with. Because if there’s a planet to land on, the players are going to assume you put it there for them to land on and explore. It’s a lot of work you end up making for yourself just because of a die roll.
Instead just decide what planets the story needs and put them in place.
I could see the desire for a random table to generate locations if you were running more of an episodic Planet-of-the-Week kind of game. Though I mostly agree that in my game I'd build out the planets I need.
It is choose or roll.
It is only random if you decide to roll for it.
Let's say a planet of one element is reministic of the elemental plane of that element.
What do you think the combinations of those elements would make?
That makes sense when you have an overall story that mandates that certain things happen. When you're building up the story or just doing old school Star Trek style story of the week adventures (excluding DS9 somewhat), then roll tables can be useful for people to at least start the creation process going without having to have pages and pages of different systems to copy or just make it up yourself. As an example, the roll tables for character creation like for PBIFs - you get a random collection for a PBIF and then you can use that to force yourself to come up with explanations of why this character has that PBIF, and after a few minutes you have a really nicely fleshed out character that's actually pretty unique with deep background.
I find roll tables helpful for that reason. I really suck at coming up with ideas on my own. But if I can start a few key features, I'm great at bouncing off of that to come up with fully fleshed ideas that can be interesting and make sense as well. Roll tables are great for creating those initial seeds because it means that I don't have to perpetually be coming to these boards looking for inspiration, cap in hand - I don't have to be completely babied through the creation process. The idea isn't that you use these roll tables as the session starts, but to help the creation process start. They're especially useful when creating large numbers of something (like a series of systems or an entire band of bandits) which can really tax my creative energies.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Question - Is this solar system for Spelljammer? Or for a homebrew standard campaign? I sort of assume it’s for Spelljammer as why you would need rules for creating a single system is pretty much beyond me. If it’s for Spelljammer, in addition to the 2e rules you might want to look at rules in spacefaring games like Travellor where the GM needs to make up lots of systems so it’s got a robust set of rules.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Just some simple brainstorming:
Fire + Water: Either a steam version of a gas giant planet or maybe a natural Geyser planet.
Fire + Earth: Your classic Volcano planet
Fire + Wind: Your typical gas giant planet.
Water + Earth: A swamp or muck planet
Water + wind: A planet of storms, perhaps completely covered in water with constant storms. Or an icy planet depending on distance from the system's sun.
Earth + Wind: I am instantly reminded of whatever planet it rains razor sharp diamonds on.
Tri-element would take some more brainstorming, but the above gives a decent basis to build off of I think
Either/or.
Thank you.
That makes a lot of sense, in terms of kick starting things. But you’re still left building an entire world. It’s orders of magnitude more complex than just an NPC or group of bandits. Even with a planet of the week, there’s got to be some overarching story for why the party is even in a given solar system. Even if it’s something like, they’re running out of air and need a pit stop, placing the system in a useable location is already a DM contrivance. So then it seems like you also just put the planet you want within that system, or just hand wave the whole thing.
And if it’s too much to make the world (and I can sympathize with that) well there’s half a dozen(ish) official setting books, plus all the places in radiant citadel that could be fleshed out into a world. That work of making a world is done already if someone needs it. I just don’t get where random world building has a place.
Its only as complex as you let it be.
First off the planet might not be naturally habitable. So the only place you need to build is the small area that is being investigated.
Not a whole planet needs to be habitable. It could be a desert world with only a small area with water. Or a water world with only a few islands.
The planet might not even be populated by more than a few colonists.
Or it could be exactly earth like but with all different people and whole new animals and monsters.
I just need enough to start describing the world. I do not need to have every NPC written up. Heck I write up a bunch of generic NPC;s long before hand and just change names locations and clothing.
Here is one such link. There are others but I'd rather not try to do an exhaustive search on something when it probably isn't needed.
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Making_a_New_Crystal_Sphere_(Spelljammer_Supplement)
The part within the () is part of the link so just copy paste it in a web browser.
Here's a series of tables for making your own wildspace systems. Spelljammer Wildspace System Tables
Taken from 2e, with a couple adjustments to be more in-line with current lore (namely the removal of Nested Spheres and replacing with multi-Primary systems, ie binary or trinary star systems)
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"