Major Spelljamming Races

Dracon

A race of herd-dwelling reptilian humanoids with a centaur-like body-structure, the dinosaur-like Dracons have a highly ritualized society built around loyalty to the group above all and dominated by formalized rites of interaction, giving them a reputation as clannish, weak, and snobbish amongst humans, who are often surprised at how effective dracons can actually be at acting once the herd has made up its mind.

Fantastic Racism: Dracons privately look down on any sapient creature that has fewer than six limbs, referring to them as "the deformed".
Horned Humanoid: Dracons sport prominent horns and flanges of bone on their heads.
Lizard Folk: Dracons are highly reptilian in appearance, combining aspects of lizard, dragon and certain dinosaurs; they have a lower body similar in shape to a sauropod, a head called out as "draconic" due to its horns, a whip-like tail, and a pronounced thumb-claw.
Our Centaurs Are Different: Dracons are essentially Lizard Folk with a centaur-esque body structure, having a bipedal reptilian humanoid's upper torso replacing the head of a large quadrupedal reptile.
You All Look Familiar: Due to their regarding any bipedal humanoid as a deformed freak, dracons are notoriously terrible at actually being able to identify specific humanoid races, which leads to a notorious proclivity to making racial faux pas or bad mistakes when they do things like confuse an elf for a dwarf, or forget the distinction between a halfling and an ogre.

Giff

Bombastic humanoid hippos who serve as mercenaries, the giff are scattered across the furthest reaches of Wildspace. None know where their homeworld is, and a persistent rumor is that they accidentally blew it up. Whilst their love of ostentatious military costumes and medals may seem comical, giff are tremendously strong and durable, and have a pronounced love of gunpowder.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Giff in their initial 2e incarnation could have skin "ranging from black to gray to a rich gold", but more modern sources tend to limit them to hippopotamus skin tones found in nature.
Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Giff will usually do anything they are ordered to do by their superiors, but they will never fight another giff. If anyone is stupid enough to make the order, the giff regiments will usually just spend some time chatting and catching up, and then mutually abandon their former leaders.
Beast Man: Humanoid hippopotomi.
Beware the Silly Ones: A giff may look comical with its ostentatious uniform, overabundance of medals and generally silly appearance, but they are ridiculously strong and tough. Also, a giff may regard brawling as a friendly activity, but the second a weapon is brought to play, that immediately changes the situation from "friendly brawl" to "serious life or death struggle", and the giff won't hesitate to switch things up to full combat mode.
The Big Guy: Giff are massive in every sense of the word, with incredible strength and durability to back up their stature.
Bling of War: They often wear colorful, 19th century-style military uniforms, complete with epaulets, medals and assorted details.
Boisterous Bruiser: Giff are generally extroverted, jovial, and fond of a good brawl.
Death of the Old Gods: According to 5th edition, as a consequence of the giff homeworld being lost to time and the rituals of worship forgotten, the giff pantheon floats dormant and "unrecognizable" on the Astral Sea. They have only enough power left to grant their creation a small, innate "spark" of their own, which the giff channel, uncomprehending, into firearms.
Does Not Know His Own Strength: Giff can sometimes have problems remembering that other races are smaller, softer and squisher than they are, which can be a problem given their love of roughhousing.
Does Not Like Magic: Because of their lackluster mental capacities, giff have very little skill with magic, and most of them find it rather disturbing.
Dumb Muscle: Giff are unimaginative and just generally not very bright, and this even manifests itself as penalties to Intelligence (2e, 3e) and Wisdom (3e). 5th edition drops the stat penalties and minimizes the inference of this trope.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: They're essentially a parody of Age of Sail British army troopers, especially with their childish fixation upon ridiculously ostentatious military garb, proper maintenance of said garb, and complicated military hierarchies.
Gun Nut: Giff are absolutely obsessed with firearms of all sorts. In 5E, this goes all the way to the point of them having an innate understanding of guns to the point that they are automatically proficient with all firearms regardless of their character class, ignore the Loading property of firearms, and also ignore the penalty for shooting targets that are at long range. These are not trained skills, these innate abilities common to all giff.
Just Following Orders: The giff "religion", such as it is, basically asserts that the purpose of the giff in the multiverse is to obey orders. This is partly why they're a culture of mercenaries.
Made of Iron: Giff are tough. In general, a giff is considered to be an adult amongst its kind when it can shrug off having an arquebus explode in its hands.
More Dakka: Giff love gunpowder weaponry; they're obsessed with firearms, and paying them in gunpowder is one of the best ways to secure their loyalty. Because spelljamming involves traveling through the Phlogiston, a place where the local atmosphere is highly flammable, most other races think they're nuts.
Perilous Old Fool: Giff do not age gracefully. Because of the exclusively militaristic bent of their society, giff have a general abhorrence to admitting they cannot fight, which means that as a giff ages and starts slowing down, it tends to push itself harder and act even brasher than normal in an effort to convince itself and others that it can still keep up with the younger generation. Invariably, few giff survive their full 70+ year lifespan, and most are cut down violently around their 40s to 50s.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Like the Duthka'gith, they play with the trope; whilst taller than a normal human being, their strength matches that of creatures even larger than they are.
Private Military Contractors: Giff are in high demand as warriors for hire, renowned for their martial training and their love of explosives.
Stout Strength: Giff are massively strong, easily comparing to ogres or small giants.
Stuff Blowing Up: Giff love explosions almost as much as they love guns. They tend to make heavy use of black-powder grenades, gunpowder kegs, and any other explosives they can get their hands on.
Too Dumb to Live: The giff obsession with firearms can lead to very dim decisions. For starters, they've been known to try and use their firearms in the Phlogiston... where the air is flammable. The downside of that should be obvious. For another, the iconic (if not only) giff-designed spelljammer is the Great Bombard, which can more accurately be described as an enormous cannon mounted on a ship that is just big enough to carry it. It's slow, it's clumsy, and it has almost as much a chance to explode and kill everybody aboard when it fires a shot as it does of doing the same thing if somebody else hits it — especially in the Phlogiston.
Use Your Head: A giff's head is heavily reinforced with bone and muscle, so it makes a formidable weapon in a pinch, a practice aided by the fact that a headbutt is the traditional giff method of exerting authority. A giff can very easily kill a man even by accident if they get carried away and try this on humans.
You Can't Go Home Again: None of the giff know where their homeworld is, and a persistent rumor is that they accidentally blew it up. Another disparaging story is that the giff sold their planet to the arcane/mercane in exchange for spelljammer helms that the magically-inept giff couldn't use.
You Say Tomato: Do you pronounce the race name with a hard or soft G? Even the Giffs themselves cannot reach a consensus.

Grommam

A peaceful, highly religious race of humanoid gorillas, the grommams live in clan structures consisting of several family units united under the lead of one of the grommam's demigod rulers.

Beast Man: Humanoid gorillas.
Does Not Like Magic: As magic is highly unreliable around grommams, the grommans do not trust or respect magic. Despite spelljammers gaining their motive power from magic.
Exotic Extended Marriage: A grommam family unit is based on a gorilla family unit; a single adult male, 2-4 adult females, and any kids they have.
Walking Techbane: Grommams are a magical variant, in that magic items are highly unlikely to misfire or simply not work if a grommam attempts to use them.

Hadozee

Sometimes disparagingly called "deck apes", these simian humanoids are natural sailors and explorers, whether they're charting new waters or voyaging through Wildspace. Hadozee are a race of humanoid apes with patagia — rudimentary wings made from folds of skin that link their limbs together into natural gliding surfaces. The combination of ape-like climbing skills and the ability to glide makes them highly desirable as spelljammer crew. The Hadozee were actually recycled from an earlier TSR game called Star Frontiers, having appeared there as the Yazirians. In Spelljammer canon, hadozee hail from a now-lost world, where they suffered greatly from raids by spacefaring goblinoids. When the Elven Imperial Navy launched the First Unhuman War, they accidentally saved the hadozee homeworld, and the grateful apes allied themselves with the elves to bolster their military forces. The elves kept quiet about the fact that they had originally thought the hadozee were a previously unseen goblinoid species and they had been preparing to exterminate them too before diplomatic contact was made. Serving in the First Unhuman War gave the hadozee a collective fascination with space travel, and they spread across the known spheres so profusely that they don't even remember where their homeworld was anymore — nor do they care, because they love sailing so much. They later reappeared in the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition sourcebook Stormwrack, which reinterpreted them as a groundling race who were still culturally associated with sailing ships. 5th edition brought them back, albeit with considerable lore rewrites.

Boisterous Bruiser: Hadozee aren't warlike, but they do enjoy "a good scrap and a friendly brawl," and will jump into one with gusto. They still prefer nonlethal fights to bloodbaths, and won't hold a grudge afterward.
Born Under the Sail: Zigzagged. Hadozee love traveling by ship, whether sea-ship or spaceship, and are known for making excellent crewmembers. But they have no natural knack for making spelljammers, in part because they have no affinity for arcane magic use in 2nd edition, so they instead hire onto the ships being captained by other races.
Canon Immigrant: The hadozee, as Yazirians, debuted in TSR's Star Frontiers setting five years before being ported to Spelljammer.
Handy Feet: Like less sapient apes, hadozee's feet have prehensile toes, which aid in climbing and can even use items.
Hands-Off Parenting: In their 3rd edition lore, it's noted that hadozee culture is spread across various port towns, which maintain specialized buildings where hadozee women leave their children once they've been weaned so they can go back to sailing the seas. Thus, a young hadozee is typically reared alongside a gaggle of other, non-related hadozee youngsters by elder hadozee who probably have no biological relation to them, and will likely only see their mothers rarely (if ever) and their fathers even less. This is a notable contrast to their 2nd edition lore, which notes that hadozee only breed when they've aged out of being able to sail effectively, allowing them to focus on staying home and rearing their kids until they are of age to go sailing for themselves.
Hot-Blooded: Hadozee are known for their intense and exuberant personalities, whooping excitedly when enjoying themselves, baring their fangs and snarling when angered, etc.
Killer Space Monkey: Humanoid chimpanzees. With patagia. But despite being literal apes from space, they're generally friendly and upbeat guys. They're notorious grumblers and their love for profanity could make an orc blush, but they're widely regarded as loyal, dependable, and amongst the best crewmates you can get, whether on the seas or in space.
Luke Nounverber: Hadozee take pride in serving aboard ships, and will incorporate the vessel's name into their own. So, a hadozee who serves aboard The Lady of the Pearl might go by Kalla Pearldaughter, another who sails with The Sword in the Storm may be known as Bansh Swordstorm, and so on.
Mythology Gag:
- Their third edition lore notes them as being very friendly with elves, an homage to the ties the races shared in the original Spelljammer lore.
- Their fifth edition lore described them as having originated on the planet Yazir, an homage to their Star Frontiers origins.
Not Quite Flight: Hadozee have patagia, allowing them to glide horizontally a set distance each round and avoid falling damage, but not ascend. It's not uncommon for a hadozee in a ship's rigging to just glide back down to the deck.
Odd Friendship: Hadozee collectively love elves, and are one of the only non-elf races that will happily sign up to work on an elf-majority vessel, despite the notorious elfin arrogance and the contrast between the aloof, stoic, highbrow elves and the coarse-mouthed, common-as-muck attitude of the typical hadozee. The hadozee consider serving alongside elves to be the highest honor, whilst elves privately still consider hadozee an inferior race, despite acknowledging their skills and loyalty.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Hadozee are infamous for their love of using profane language in their Spelljammer lore, though 3rd edition and 5th edition both tone this trait down.
Slave Race: In their 5th edition lore, the hadozee were initially uplifted by a wizard hoping to use them as slaves. However, errata has written that aspect of their lore out due to the Unfortunate Implications of a race of ape-like people being slaves.
Uplifted Animal: In their fifth edition rewrite lore. Originally, the Hadozee were non-sapient creatures. Then a wizard came with his apprentices to the Hadozee's home planet and had the latter capture as many creatures as possible, whom he fed an experimental elixir of his invention that boosted their intelligence to human-like standards. He had intended to use the Hadozee as his private army, but the apprentices became fond of them and fought the wizard along with the uplifted Hadozee, who then escaped with all that remained of the elixir to give to their non-uplifted brethren, while those born from uplifted Hadozee were also intelligent. Within a few decades, all living Hadozee were of the uplifted variant. All that said, errata has written that aspect of their lore out.
Wandering Culture: The one thing that has remained consistent in hadozee lore throughout the editions is that they love to travel, and they are happiest joining sailing ship and spelljammer crews so they can travel far and wide, founding new enclaves in the cities of any race willing to host them — especially elf cities.

Hurwaeti

A strange race of reptilian humanoids who look like a bizarre crossbreed of lizardman and gnome, the "Wiggles" are the impoverished remnants of a once-great spelljamming empire that once held colonies across Wildspace, only to be destroyed in some unknown catastrophe. Many hurwaet colonies have degenerated into primitive, swamp-dwelling tribals. The race is generally considered accommodating and non-aggressive, but it is also pretty infamous for its covetousness and mercenary attitude - nobody gets anything from a hurwaet for free, in stark contrast to their former culture, which championed discipline and altruism.

Beware the Silly Ones: Despite looking like gnomes, a race largely characterized as weak and silly, hurwaeti are actually fierce warriors and surprisingly strong for their size — under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition rules, a hurwaet's minimum possible Strength score is 8, whereas a forest gnome would have a minimum Strength of 3 and a rock gnome would have a minimum Strength of 6.
Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Subverted. Hurwaeti are about as sexually dimorphic as real reptiles, which is to say that males and females are impossible to tell apart visually by the inexperienced observer.
Expy: Hurwaeti may have been inspired by the Ferengi of Star Trek — specifically, on the original interpretation of Ferengi put forth by Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had presented them as fierce, warlike space goblins. Ferengi did debut on TV in 1987 and Spelljammer did launch in 1989...
Fantastic Racism: Hurwaeti hate neogi, beholders, and illithids. Well, any sane person does, but hurwaeti really hate them. A common theory is that their empire collapsed because they tried to wage war on all three empires of powerful spacefaring aberrations simultaneously.
Girls with Moustaches: It's implied that the visual similarities between male and female hurwaeti extends to females growing beards as well.
In a Single Bound: Hurwaeti are capable of making prodigious leaps.
Lizard Folk: Despite looking more or less like gnomes or goblins, hurwaeti are actually a kind of reptilian humanoid, with scaly skin and a reproductive cycle that revolves around laying eggs.
Mr. Seahorse: Male hurwaeti actually incubate the eggs of their kind inside of brood pouches on their abdomen.
Non-Mammalian Mammaries: Subverted. Female hurwaeti don't have breasts at all, which makes it all the harder to tell the sexes apart.
Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Despite having a face called "gnomish", complete with oversized noses and long beards, hurwaeti are actually a kind of Lizard Folk, with frog-like legs, scaly skin and egg-laying.
Pregnant Reptile: A "pregnant" hurwaet carries its eggs inside of a brood pouch on its abdomen. Also, they grow hair on their head and face.

Rastipede

A ten-limbed insectile race with a centaur-like body structure, the enigmatic rastipedes are found throughout Wildspace, often working alongside the Arcane, a race of magic-loving traders. Like their closest allies, Rastipedes are renowned for their skill at trading. The Rastipedes were actually recycled from an earlier TSR game called Star Frontiers, having appeared there as the Vrusk.

Insectoid Aliens: Rastipedes functionally resemble ten-legged beetles with a centaur-like body-structure.
Proud Merchant Race: Rastipedes are known as one of the great mercantile races of Wildspace, alongside the Arcane, neogi and dohwar.

Scro

Descendants of spelljamming orcs defeated during the First Unhuman War, scro forsook their traditional lifestyle and reverence for Gruumsh, instead rallying around the visionary leader Dukgash and restyling themselves so as to transcend their former weakness and defeat the elves.

Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. Firstly, the default alignment for Scro is Lawful Evil. Secondly, there is a large underclass of scro who just can't hack the strictures and intense demands of their society, usually in being unable to live up to the Lawful aspect, but sometimes not being Evil instead or in addition to.
Bare-Fisted Monk: In 3rd edition, Monk was their racially favored class.
Defector from Decadence: Aside from scro forced to team up with the party for plot-related reasons, this is the main source of scro player characters; the harsh strictures and intense demands of scro society leads to a large underclass of failures and dissidents, many of whom flee their home spheres and will willingly team up with anyone, even humans.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Scro society has a very Prussian (or Nazi) overtone to it; warlike yet disciplined, demanding physical perfection and adherence to a strict code of conduct, as well as dedication to the greater goals of their race.
Genius Bruiser: The scro's culture and breeding have paid off, making them as strong as normal orcs, but much more intelligent. In 2nd edition, they do start the game with a -2 Charisma penalty, just like normal orcs, but can reach maximums of Intelligence 17, Wisdom 16 and Charisma 18 (orcs, by comparison, have maximums of 16/16/12 respectively). In 3rd edition, they have no mental penalties at all and receive a +4 to Strength and a +2 to both Dexterity and Constitution (orcs only get a +4 to Strength and suffer a -2 penalty to each mental stat).
Our Orcs Are Different: In contrast to ordinary orcs, scro are strictly disciplined, regimented, perfectionist, and driven. They are also highly educated and expected to control their emotions, whereas regular orcs in D&D tend to be emotionally driven Dumb Muscle.
The Red Mage: Scro culture dictates that those who learn magic at all multiclass as both arcane and divine magic-users. This grants them a much greater versatility in magical ability.
Sdrawkcab Name: Their racial name is "Orcs" written backwards because they are the opposite of normal orcs, being much more regimented, educated, and less prone to emotional actions.
Underground Monkey: Scro have a lot of overlap with hobgoblins, which hasn't really helped the race distinguish itself.
Wicked Cultured: Scro are expected to hold themselves to high standards of discipline, conduct and education; in many ways, they act with the kind of tact and decorum (and arrogance) normally expected of elves, which they view as as demonstrating their superiority by not lowering themselves to the level of other beings. They also regularly learn Elvish so they can more eloquently mock and taunt their racial enemies.

Xixchil

A race of humanoid praying mantises with an innate affinity for arcane and alchemical body modification, the xixchil are renowned as some of the greatest doctors, surgeons and bio-modders in Wildspace. Fiercely independent, in comparison to the pack-centric mindset of the Thri-kreen from Dark Sun, xixchil freely use their talents on themselves, with an almost religious belief that customizing the body to showcase one's individuality is sacrosanct.

Bio-Augmentation: Xixchil believe thoroughly in altering an reshaping their own bodies for reasons from the aesthetic to the practical, and frequently install secondary arms outfitted with integrated weaponry.
Biomanipulation: Xixchil have an instinctive talent for shaping and restructuring flesh, bone and even plants through alchemy, surgery and sorcery.
Insectoid Aliens: Xixchil resemble giant, semi-humanoid preying mantises.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Even moreso than their thri-kreen counterparts, xixchil can be whirling dervishes of destruction, with two bladed primary arms and as many implanted weapon-limbs as they can afford.
Sapient Eats Sapient: They're carnivorous and not especially choosy about what they, especially when it comes to non-Xixchil races.
Social Darwinism: Xixchil culture emphasizes individuality above all else; their hierarchy of priorities goes Self first, Family second, Race third.
Underground Monkey: Xixchil are very easy to confuse for thri-kreen, who ironically are also a spelljamming race, according to the adventure compilation "Skull & Crossbones". 5th edition's revival of Spelljammer as a setting even dropped all mention of the xixchil and replaced them with thri-kreen.

Characters / Spelljammer

Major Spelljamming Races

Dracon

Giff

Grommam

Hadozee

Hurwaeti

Rastipede

Scro

Xixchil

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Major Spelljamming Races

Dracon

Giff

Grommam

Hadozee

Hurwaeti

Rastipede

Scro

Xixchil

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