Dungeons & Dragons' weirdest setting, Spelljammer, then and now

polygon.com:

Spelljammer, Dungeons & Dragons weirdest experiment, is back. More than three decades after it was first released, publisher Wizards of the Coast is breathing new life into this classic setting of swashbuckling space pirates. We look back on its origin story, and connect its most important elements to this latest revision — due out in a three-volume set on Aug. 16.

In 1989, Dungeons & Dragons was already over one decade and two editions old. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons had multiple campaign settings — worlds like Oerth in the Greyhawk setting, Krynn in Dragonlance, and Toril in the Forgotten Realms. But where were enterprising adventurers to go when they tired of terrestrial worlds? Jeff Grubb and the team of TSR designers were tasked with creating a fantasy space setting that not only linked AD&D’s biggest landmarks, but also one didn’t violate or supersede any of those settings’ internal rules. They sat down at a diner in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and started brainstorming. And, like so many ideas conceived over bad coffee after too many hours in a diner, their solution was wild.

What they came up with was a wide-ranging pastiche of pulp science fiction space operas — everything from Buck Rogers to Planet of the Apes — plus steampunk, the Age of Sail, and some second-century Ptolemaic astrophysics. It had a little of everything — unknowable aliens, insectoid ships, living moons, and giant space hamsters. Wizards is taking that as a jumping-off point, keeping all the exotic elements that made the original so inspirational for fans and adding in some 1980s nostalgia and modern Star Trek for good measure.

Adventures in D&D usually take place on (or below) a single region of a single planet in a planetary system (whether a