Now I know it's supposed to be named after the Spelljammer, the city-sized flying manta ray, but c'mon they could have called it anything. Why spelljammer? I mean Dark Sun, Ravenloft, even the Forgotten Realms, all have names that evoke something important about the setting, but I'm not sure I understand what "spelljammer" is meant to evoke. The setting that comes the closest to having an equally hard to explain name is Eberron, which is as near I can tell just a made up word, but at least it's completely made up, you know. I mean when I told my wife it was called spelljammer she thought it was a game about a spelling bee. Then she asked what exactly is being jammed?
I don't know how to answer questions like that. I might be tempted to just dismiss it as her not "getting it" but honestly I'm not seeing what there is to get. Why is it called spelljammer?
Thank you.
and it sounds good :p
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammer>
After all, spelljamming are propelled by the spells of the pilot operating the helm.
-Nate
Damn...reminds me of something in Alan Dean Foster's "Icerigger" books...can't recall it...on tip of my tongue!! :p
My thought is that the title takes the word windjammer, a type of ship, and substitutes in the word spell.
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammer>
After all, spelljamming are propelled by the spells of the pilot operating the helm.
-Nate
I think you have it. I didn't even know about Windjammers. That's got to be it. Now I can tell my wife the answer. Thank you.
Well, how about this.
JAM - "The verb 'jam' meaning 'press tightly together,' first appears in the early 18th century (the earliest-known unequivocal example of its transitive use is in Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' 1719: 'The ship stuck fast, jaum'd in between two rocks') It is not known where it came from, but is generally assumed to be imitative or symbolic in some way of the effort of pushing." "Dictionary of Word Origins: the Histories of More Than 8,000 English-Language Words" by John Ayto (Arcade Publishing, New York, 1990). Page 306.
and
"In 1899 steamship sailors, sailors without sails, men whose seagoing fathers had once clamored for berths on clipper ships, derisively began to call any merchant sailing vessel a windjammer, referring to the high spread of sails need to 'jam' or capture enough wind to move." From "Listening to America" by Stuart Berg Flexner (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982). Page 164.
So, if we put these two things together, I think the original Spelljammer authors' intent was the conversion of "Windjammer" to "Spelljammer", and by extension through the origin of "Windjammer", we have a meaning as such:
Spelljamming: the arcane process by which spell energy (or other similar energy source, that substitutes for wind energy captured by nautical sails) is used to "push" or propel a vessel across vast distances.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness, and your home for tactical Spelljammer ship models
Edit: Ok, after I posted this message, the thread appeared again in the forum list. Wierd.
...and the game always reminds me of Bob Marley...What game we playing tonight?
We're Jammin', hope you like jammin' too
Now I know it's supposed to be named after the Spelljammer, the city-sized flying manta ray, but c'mon they could have called it anything. Why spelljammer? I mean Dark Sun, Ravenloft, even the Forgotten Realms, all have names that evoke something important about the setting, but I'm not sure I understand what "spelljammer" is meant to evoke. The setting that comes the closest to having an equally hard to explain name is Eberron, which is as near I can tell just a made up word, but at least it's completely made up, you know. I mean when I told my wife it was called spelljammer she thought it was a game about a spelling bee. Then she asked what exactly is being jammed?
Thi is a brilliant question. One that somebody should ask Jeff Grubb. With "Dragonlance" you have a lance used to attack dragons. With "Planescape" you have a range of planes. But with "Spelljammer" it is all supposed to be named after an old legend.
But even that old legend doesn't make sense. The Spelljammer was originally something else. It transformed itself into a large creature with a city on its back to save some people. It is just possible that it spread some races around the universe, but that would clash with the legends in Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, so with the SJ products not specifically saying that is what happened, I would say that it didn't.
The legendary ship has a "Hotel California" effect that keeps people onboard. So if people don't leave it, how are they supposed to have spread the name? In fact the Cloakmaster Cycle books have various people calling it different names.
I would say that "The Spelljammer" is the name given to the ship by a single culture. I would say that is one of the early human cultures that spread across The Known Spheres. My guess is that culture would originate within Greyspace, Realmspace or Krynnspace.
I'd suggest that the major population leaving Krynnspace was gnomes, so would rule Krynn out. And I'd suggest that the major populations leaving Realmspace were the Netherese (who got beaten back by the elves and may have had little effect on human culture) and the Shou Lung (who would not be speaking common). So if I needed to create a back-formation to "invent" an explanation, I would be tempted to make this term something invented by the Celestians on Oerth.
I don't know how to answer questions like that. I might be tempted to just dismiss it as her not "getting it" but honestly I'm not seeing what there is to get. Why is it called spelljammer?
Please do not dismiss this as your wife not "getting it", because she has actually shown an interest in the setting. Most of us have listened to Jeff Grubb saying "pay no attention to the tinker gnome behind the curtain" and just "bought into this".
What you could instead do, is tell her that the name is tied in with ancient legends (the truth) and tell her that her PC can try to dig out the truth, if she really wants to know.
Have her PC get told a dozen different answers from a dozen different sources and (especially if her PC is a groundling) have someone laugh at her and tell her she is going to need to speak to someone like The Seekers if she actually wants to know the truth.
From an out of game point of view, I'd guess that it is the windjammer thing. A windjammer is a ship that can capture a lot of wind to sail fast. Change that for a ship that can capture spells to move and you get a spelljammer.
But the big question is: how did people looking at The Spelljammer from the ground (I'm assuming that the legends pre-date space travel - I might be wrong) find out that the ship could absorb spells to move.
Maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe that means that people (as in people speaking common) must have had spelljamming helms first and then applied the name to the legendary ship as a "back-formation". If that was the case, then people would forget that the helm was not really named after the ship.
You could just tell your wife that nobody knows. Or you could actually give your RPG group the chance to dig out old ship's logbooks (or find other ways to look into the past) and make the answer to this simple question into a quest that sends them across the Known Spheres and makes them bump into NPCs like Estriss.