Campaign Jumping the Shark or “Did you know that Spelljammers exist?”

So, a little backstory. We're playing a pirate campaign with 8 players. We're meeting up weekly in our Discord (sometimes a player misses a session, but we've got 8). We've had 18 sessions at this point.

And our DM is struggling. Not with the workload, but with challenge. Challenging 8 players is getting difficult for him and he's a little disappointed. He's got a little bit of burnout and he's thinking of ending the campaign. We convince him not to, but he takes some time off over Christmas to relax.

Anyway, to the story.

We get a new boat (our previous one was rubbish)

We get this from a sorceress who's suspicious

We're debating where to sail to, and our captain unlocks the boat

The boat starts moving

…Upward

Straight towards the moon

Which is made of gold

Oh yeah err… Shenanigans earlier had turned the moon to gold. Also we stopped everyone from sleeping for a week. Chaos Bursts: Not even once

We're panicking as nobody has ever left the atmosphere and obviously we can't breathe

Questgiver sorceress teleports an apprentice onto the ship

Apprentice casts "create canopy"

"Oh, BTW you have like 12 hours of air, and it's a 4 hour trip to the moon."

…

We can't control the ship (it's a prototype)

We're forced to go to the moon while the apprentice tries to figure out why the ship went wrong

The DM tells us that in the olden days, there was an idea called Spelljammers. It's an old D&D thing from like, second edition. He read the lore. He read the rules. He adapted them as he saw fit.

We arrive at the moon

We get rings of… atmosphere? That allow us to breathe on the moon for brief periods by having our own air supply (also stops us getting depressurised)

We assess our situation:

1. We've got 8 hours of air, 4 hours trip back to the atmosphere, and currently no option to make new air. That's enough to get us to panic.

2. We're on a ship that can apparently fly. If it was working. It's not working, so we're stuck on the moon.

3. The moon is made out of solid gold. Not a thin layer of dust. It's all gold.

…

DM tells us to figure out a plan to get home. He has a few ideas, but he wants to hear our plans.

First, moon adventure. We find some space aliens, figure out that our crazy warlock was actually the daughter of a renegade space marine

Fight golden moon elementals (they turn armour to gold)

Get back to the ship

The session ends there, but we're told we have to figure out a way off the moon. The DM's wanting to figure out what we do.

So, let me tell you about my plan.

My plan was to polymorph me (the barbarian) into a Giant Ape. Then to have the artificer cast Enlarge to make me a Gargantuan Ape. Then to lift up the ship, use the lower gravity, and yeet the ship towards the planet.

I dubbed this plan the "Monke Space Program".

Other plans involved causing a volcanic eruption, exploring the ship… Lots of stuff. Our Warlock was trying to apply the idea of instantaneous momentum creation by firing a rat out of a catapult and then polymorphing it?

Anyway, the Warlock missed the next session because of IRL stuff and we couldn't Polymorph

We find a less impressive way than yeeting a ship from the moon to the planet. We get an airship. The world's only airship.

We head back to the starting town and hand in the very first quest we got, about 15 sessions later than expected

"…Why is there a flying ship above my manor?"

"Hi, we're from the moon. We've got the chest of papers you wanted."

"…What."

From this point onwards, when people ask "where did you come from" I will always respond with "the moon".

I'm going to tag /u/EMFBowstring , /u/Adwins , /u/shadowyote , and our crazy DM /u/Saikar22

I might write up what has happened due to chaos bursts and the d10000 table we're using. Aside from the moon turning to gold, we've had some… Crazy times.