Voyagers & Venturers: 10 Cultures for Your Spelljammer Game
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In space¸ weirder is better." - from The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook (2e)
What makes Spelljammer so special are the myriad fantastical people populating Wildspace¸ and their otherworldly cultures. Strange alien life is what inspires us to look to the stars¸ after all. And many of us don't just want to encounter these people - we want to play out their stories! If you feel the same: this book is for you. We developed ten cultures that let you get real weird in Wildspace¸ from old favorites like the xixchil body-mod surgeons to completely new additions like the plantoid sylvark who worship their ancestor trees.
Voyagers & Venturers is a book for both DMs and players. At its core are the player options¸ but the lineage system we use instead of the classical race/subrace system ensures that each trait can also be used as a boon by the DM¸ to reward players in a truly memorable way.
The 10 Spelljammer Cultures in this book revisit and update some classics that did not make it into the official Spelljammer release¸ reinterprate a few old favorites and show them in a whole new light¸ and introduce you to people never before seen in Spelljammer - but who are just as quirky and weird as all the others!
Each culture comes with all the elements you need to bring it to life in your stories:
deep lore on history and culture roleplay and backstory prompts quest seeds for DMs lineage traits magic legacy items with mini-quests to evolve them feats subclasses
Now it's up to you: your journey into Wildspace begins - get weird with it!
Updated Classics. These cultures are updates of the original Spelljammer material from 2E to 5E. Some of them were expanded upon by us and developed in significantly more detail than the original versions.
Dohwar. Psionic space penguins who are both annoying and rampant capitalists - those two things may be connected. Grommams. Highly competitive simians who strive for godhood. Hurwaet. Heirs to an ancient fallen empire who follow the song carved into their hearts to recover lost glory. Xixchil. Mantis-like surgeons and crafters for whom the acts of creation and body modification are sacred.
Old Favorites¸ Reimagined. These cultures are our reimagined versions of old favorites - no cultures are monolithic¸ so we added variety and ideas to inspire your imagination.
Giff Anarchists. Rebels against the militarist hierarchy of mainstream giff culture¸ and lovers of artistic explosions. Githwyn. A new gith faction that strives for gith re-unification through peace with the mind flayers. Lizardfolk. The Szelle-Dracaena worship suns and can procreate by parthenogenetic self-cloning. Sepiidae Illithids. Empathic mind flayers who are free of the influence of elder brains.
Unique New Additions. The Spelljammer universe is vast and weird - there is always room for strange new worlds to explore¸ and interesting new people to meet! Here is who we dreamed up.
Sylvark. A race of mobile plants who go through three life stages and grow spelljammers from their ancestor trees. Vindexi. Ant-folk who destroyed their home world through over-exploitation and now fight to prevent the same from happening on other worlds.