I'm going to be DMing a campaign which takes place on the spelljamming scale - Wildspace systems, the Astral Sea, spelljamming ships, the whole shebang. I should preface with the fact that I'm self-inserting a character for the party, since I only have two players. That may change, but oh well.

After some discussion with my players, we've decided to start the campaign off with the party being independent sell-swords who own their own spelljamming ship, a wasp ship to be precise if you have the sourcebook for reference. However, all we can agree on for the ship's name (because of course you have to have a name for your ship) is that it needs to have the word "bumblebee" as a part of its name. (This inspired me to slightly alter the wasp ship statistics for our ship, so it's slower but bulkier than a traditional wasp ship.)

Any and all name suggestions are welcome, as well as any suggestions for what direction to take the storyline. Happy dungeon delving!

Quote from Emperor_of_Ethorekoth>>

I'm going to be DMing a campaign which takes place on the spelljamming scale - Wildspace systems, the Astral Sea, spelljamming ships, the whole shebang. I should preface with the fact that I'm self-inserting a character for the party, since I only have two players. That may change, but oh well.

Just make sure you de-power your character to avoid stealing thunder from the PCs.

After some discussion with my players, we've decided to start the campaign off with the party being independent sell-swords who own their own spelljamming ship, a wasp ship to be precise if you have the sourcebook for reference.

Unless you homebrew something, Wasp Ships are a waste of time and money to manufacture and/or acquire, and the party will be better off trading or selling the ship to replace it with a strictly better and equal in cost Shrike.

However, all we can agree on for the ship's name (because of course you have to have a name for your ship) is that it needs to have the word "bumblebee" as a part of its name. (This inspired me to slightly alter the wasp ship statistics for our ship, so it's slower but bulkier than a traditional wasp ship.)

Wasps are already bad and you're slowing it down?  I approve, provided you use this as an excuse to make the ship cheaper as well - it means the PCs are starting with a bad ship and will be motivated to get a better one.  What do you mean by "bulkier"?

Any and all name suggestions are welcome, as well as any suggestions for what direction to take the storyline. Happy dungeon delving!

The Bumblebee Tuna.

It is worth noting that modifying a ship, even to make it worse is not a bad thing, despite what quindraco posted.  Spelljammer is very much the offspring of pulp science fiction and its more mainstream scions (like Star Wars, Firefly, etc.), and a classic component of those stories is "bucket of bolts that is vastly outclassed by others and stays together through equal parts the crew's ingenuity and blind luck.  Personally, if I were playing in a Spelljammer campaign, I would want my ship to be something a bit obsolete and clunky--it is part of the genera's charm. 

For some name suggestions, personally I would call it a Bumblebee-class ship (akin to the wasp-class ships), then choose a name that does not include Bumblebee in it.  A ship sharing the name with its class is fairly rare--you see it with inaugural ships in a class (Ex. the first Virginia-class submarine was the U.S.S. Virginia, but the other ships in the class are named after other states).  This would allow you to still affectionately call the ship by the class name--especially if it is designed to be an older model where there are not many others still in commission--while also having another name for the ship.  Personally, I would go with some kind of plant related to bumblebees--the Red Clover, for example, would be a decent name for a ship. 

However, that is not quite what you wanted.  If I were to use the word Bumblebee in the name, I would probably go with The Bumblebee Gyne--a gyne is a potential future queen--which fits well with the aspirational goal of a new D&D party that has lots of potential, but has not accessed its potential yet (you could also cut the word Bumblebee out of the ship name and just be The Gyne).  There's some other things you could do, like The Great Bombini (taking the tribe bombini bumblebees belong to and making a Great Houdini reference), or you could use other terms associated with Bumblebees, like the Yellow Bumblebee (referencing both its colour and the Beatles song), Pollinating Bumblebee (though that denotes a... shall we say, specific type of party some folks enjoy playing), etc. 

Thank you so much for your feedback! Replying on mobile, so not sure how to make those quotes, but I'll respond to your points in order.

• The insert character is a support caster, and the spelljammer to boot. I'm not worried about hogging my own spotlight, but I'll definitely keep your advice in mind.

• They'll already have the ship, so the cost for it at the moment is a grand and vast 0gp, not accounting for the ballista ammunition they'll have to buy - though I'm starting them off with 15 bolts, which I feel might even be excessive but I'm not willing to go any lower.

• The modifications I have in mind aren't huge differences, the speed reduction only being from 50ft to 40ft. And the "bulk" will be in the form of more hit points, I'm still working out what might be reasonable but I didn't want to increase the AC because the ship is still made of the same material, aka it's not any more armored. I also thought of increasing the damage threshold, but that falls under the same school of thought as the AC.

• I love the Bumblebee Tuna. Not sure if my players will, but I'll definitely run it by them.

Thank you again!

May I recommend calling it the Goldbug?