Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace 004: An Evil Undead Pirate Ship and Clive's Garden

Poul Anderson's "The Star Fox" has very little to do with barrel rolls, but I liked it. I think the book is pretty neat; it's old school sci-fi, and very fitting for Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace. I approve of it, and I also approve of Days of Knights back in Delaware. I don't know why my headset microphone is so much better than my desk microphone, but here we are.

The link I used to get my Spelljammer game running is on Steam here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2350550/discussions/0/3806156528941628171/

I did have to use the GoG version instead of Steam for some reason, but it seems like other people got it working just fine with Steam. Not sure what my problem was. This adventure takes us through a pirate ship and to Clive's Garden. He is not an octopus. This is actually a statement that must be made in relation to Realmspace and gardens.

One thing I dislike about this game is set backs are so costly; we reload because of the unresponsive ship commands leading to us ramming for 40 Hull damage. That's about 40,000 gold we'd need to raise -- which is multiple missions of ferrying things back and forth, which is eaten in to with taxes, including cargo taxes when I have no cargo. There are a lot of re-loads both here and in later videos just because "this set back is essentially a game over." It's a problem early D&D games have, especially later when we learn 50k gold isn't enough to restore one lost level, so who knows how much Raise Dead costs. If you're going to make your game so difficult to recover from, just add Fail States to crippling issues... or make recovery easier. This was the norm in 1992, because if you bought this, this was the game you'd play for a few months. I also miss modern conveniences like choosing how to deploy my team.

Black Bart is the fight where Eva permanently loses a point of STR, a setback there is no way to fix in the game I could find. Poor Eva.

Also, Umber Hulks and Neogis are just a "ha ha, reload," when it comes to melee. I'm not sure how you're supposed to defeat them. Later fights I hit Umber Hulk stacks for 80+ damage with lightning bolt, and nothing. So the Illithid Slaver fight basically required us to reset until we got rid of Umber Hulks. Then we learned how to deal with paralysis and control our own crew to beat them.

Crew of the Rocking Bear: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ziAt9_Noe9byBaGWpJr9vSYhc3MyxazK/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=110736438441790234073&rtpof=true&sd=true

This Google Drive ZIP contains our crew's AI generated portraits; it's AI generated, so use as you need: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DK7XHunepuJDMGL498-QMgKXM1MwTGoB/view?usp=drive_link

00:00 Explaining We've Got Things Working and Star Fox
02:00 The Adventure Re-Begins
03:15 Black Bart!
12:45 Black Bart, Take Two!
31:50 "How're the Kids?" -- Spelljamming for Fun and Profit
01:01:00 Meeting Clive's Representative
01:13:00 Don't Do That To Gun Hippos!
01:34:25 Clive's Garden
01:41:00 Defeating Slavers!
01:47:15 Different Slavers!
02:18:20 Slavers, Traffic Jam Try 2!
02:39:40 More Crew, More Problems
03:03:00 The Moment We Learn We Can Control Crew
03:06:40 Slavers, With Control!
03:30:45 Victory!
03:37:02 "4 Crew Gained A Level" --- Whatever That Means
03:41:05 Exploring and Finishing Up For the Session