My Spelljammer campaign recently moved online. Since this is my first time running any RPG online, I figured it would be good GM exercise to debrief each session here on Schistostega. I’ll structure each reflection by summarizing a beat of the session, then commenting on what went well, what didn’t, and any other GM wisdom I have to add.
Alright, that’s the preliminaries. Let’s get started.
After the end of their prior adventure, the party has spent the last 3 weeks drifting through deep wildspace towards the nearest star — and hopefully, the nearest outpost. Aboard their Wasp class spelljammer, the meditative ambiance of the phlogiston is interrupted by the voice of their Ship Ghost1. It tells them that a large astral body has been on their tail for the last 15 minutes and that it seems to be matching pace with the Wasp. As the party considers what to do, they receive a transmission from the unknown astral body—it’s another spelljammer, and they’re in trouble, something is aboard their ship…
I had just finished binging the Alien prequel series (Prometheus, Covenant, Romulus) and wanted to pay homage with this session’s hook. I think the hook was intriguing and the players bought in; however, they had just spent 3 weeks travelling through deep wildspace and I should have started the session off by having them fill in that blank with crew roleplay. Three weeks is a long time in an rpg. Luckily I’ll have an opportunity to catchup next session, since their destination is another week’s journey. But the theme here is to have your bases covered before jumping into something new.
Being the heroes they are, the party turns around and guns it towards the source of the transmission: a massive bronze spelljammer sculpted in the likeness of a bullfrog perched on a lily pad. As they approach, the frog-ship opens its mouth and attempts to snag the Wasp with a giant spelljammer-snagging tongue, which the party’s pilot2 rolls very well to avoid. The party boards the ship through the hangar and quickly notice two things: the frog-ship’s interior is covered in a barnacle sprouting, tar-like corruption 3, and there are many more wrecked spelljammers inside the hangar—the Wasp isn’t the first to receive the call for help.
I let the pilot roll to evade the tongue, and BOOM first he rips over a 20 on the first roll of the arc. The voice of Matt Colville and Relg echoes in my GM brain. The session might have been more interesting and rewarding if they had just gotten snagged in the first place. Then not only would they be fighting through the ship to defeat the psurlons, but to free the Wasp from the bullfrog’s clutches. I gotta stick to my guns.
They search the ship, and after battling some Grell in an elevator shaft, they reach the bullfrog’s head and find the spelljammer snagger spooled up on a massive wheel. Robotic arms line the walls. This room was used for snagging and processing deepspace insects for their carapaces.
The fight up the elevator shaft was great, grell are fun to play as. I get really excited whenever I get to run monsters with beaks, they’re so entertaining to describe. Going back to my recent binge of the Alien movies, I homebrewed the grell to have acidic blood that melted away at the elevator floor whenever they were killed. This facilitated a tense moment where a grell paralyzed and grappled the fighter 4 before dropping him in a hole created by its recently slain ally. The paladin used his reaction to make the save, creating a highlight of the session. I definitely failed to highlight the story of the room at the top of the elevator though, mostly for the sake of pacing. Again, if I had just snagged them with the tongue at the beginning…
The party explores the room and finds ghosts of the autognomes that once controlled the ship. They have a brief conversation with one of them about what happened.
I think the autognome encounter missed the mark. It’s original intent was to introduce the mystery of the corruption on the ship but again, as a result of not snagging them at the start, it didn’t serve much purpose. Original sin or whatever.
As the approach a second elevator to go deeper into the ship, they notice that it has already been called to their current room. They prepare for the worst, but when the door opens they are met with a single elf — the woman who sent the distress signal. The party quickly deduces that she’s under the influence of whatever is corrupting the ship and are able to free from from its clutches. The elf introduces herself as Lillin. She claims she’s on a diplomatic mission as a member of the Hedge Court5 , that she doesn’t remember sending a distress signal, and that whatever is causing the corruption is building something terrible in the engine room. These things are true.
I enjoyed roleplaying as Lillin! She’s a subdued authority figure that will be a major player in the story of this arc once reunited with her allies. While the party knows she’s a Hedge Court representative, they don’t know that she is acting field commander of the “diplomatic” team. Her lines were fun to deliver as she was trying to rebuild her memory after being cleansed of the psurlon’s influence.
The party leaves their kenku retainer behind with the elf and starts towards the corruption’s source. Soon they arrive in the engine room they discover that psurlons have been using this massive ship as a base for their far realm bullshit. They’ve crept aboard and have been using the organic matter of other spelljammer crews to construct a portal and summon greater far realm abberations. The party eventually defeats the psurlons, save for their leader who draws the corruption back into the portal and escapes to the world beyond starlight.
This fight was a success. The theme was wisdom saving throws and I think I executed it well. The enemies were: 2 Psurlons (BAM p44) and 1 Psurlon Leader (BAM p45) as the main Psurlon party, 1 Neh-thalggu (BAM p39) as a Far Realm abberation summoned by the Leader, and a handful of Goon Balloons (MCv16 p9) since the name is funny and to zone people out of the paladin’s aura. The center piece of the fight was a heart sculpted from the black-tar corruption that had consumed the ship’s engine. The heart would beat at the top of each round and give the party disadvantage on wisdom saving throws, which all of the monsters utilized for their nasty abilities. To stop this effect, the party had to target three veins extruding from the heart, which they eventually did. For effects like this, make sure to include the weak points in your description to guide the players towards the solution—remember each attempt to “solve” the issue takes a portion of their turn, which they may be waiting upwards of 10 minutes for.
The highlight of this fight for me was when the Neh-thalggu mind blasted the fighter who was riding on the paladin’s found steed. The steed ran out of the creature’s range on its next turn, so the brain-spider cast suggestion to convince the steed to bring the incapacitated fighter to it! It was great.
The session ends after the fight with the party hatching a plan to explore the rest of the ship, assess the damages, and potentially take it as their own. I felt good ending the session here after the victory. They still have some ship to explore, which gives them something to look forward to next game. Also, I can’t wait to bring back the psurlons as a reoccurring villain. They are so strange.
This was my first session running online DnD, so of course there were technical difficulties. This slowed down the session a lot at the start, and may have contributed to me letting the pilot roll against the tongue. Thankfully my group is awesome and has played numerous online sessions, so they were able to help me out. In hindsight, I should have definitely budgeted more time to prep. I underestimated how different online would be from in person. I spent much more time than usual preparing maps and statblocks, since usually I can draw them on a whiteboard or just flip right to them in the source books.
Overall, I think this session was a success. It got me acclimated to prepping for online games, introduced a new key NPC, and gave the party two successful combat encounters that avoided slog. The pacing wasn’t the best, but it’s something I’ll be more dialed in on next session now that I’ve got my groove back. For next session I’ll need to: flesh out some areas of the ship to make them more interesting to explore, play with Lillin’s character to refine my roleplay, and hone in on the bullfrog’s cargo and how it can tie in with the factions to be introduced next session.
All spelljammers are haunted in my setting. Each has their own ghost that acts as the onboard “computer”, radar, and intercom system. ↩
Which is also the spelljammer? i.e. in the Spelljammer setting there are magical ships called spelljammers which are piloted by spell…jammers… ↩
In my setting, this means Far Realm shit ↩
Both conditions are applied by the grell’s tentacle attack, pretty gnarly! ↩
The wildspace government with representatives from all major players. Since the party is effectively in the Outer Rim, it’s strange to see her here. ↩
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1 Spelljammer Creatures ↩
published to SCHISTOSTEGA on: 9/6/2025