Spelljammer Is Spelljammer Coming To D&D 5E?

Thanks to Stan Shinn over on Google+ for this scoop! WotC held a presentation at the GAMA trade show today, in which they covered both recent D&D performance (best year ever!), some previews of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and a small hint towards... Spelljammer?

spelljammerbox.jpg



Here's Stan's report, direct from the trade show:

"Interesting Spelljammer and market news from the GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association) WOTC Seminar on March 13 in Reno (I’m there now).

Mark Price talked about D&D and showed some pictures from inside the upcoming Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes book. I have a few pictures (attached) prior to the Mordenkainen’s slides, but they asked us not to take or share pictures of the Mordenkainen’s book interior. They did show us a picture of a ‘Giff’ — a Spelljammer creature, which will be in the book. He looked like a steampunk hippo with a blunderbuss. Regarding why the creature was in the book, he said “I’ll let you speculate wildly about what that may mean.”

There was look of a wink in his eye so I’m pretty sure the hint was that Spelljammer is coming soon!

Other news from the seminar:

— 2017 was the best year for D&D ever in terms of sales
— Year 3 of D&D sales is stronger than their first year
— Actual play streaming is a key driver of D&D’s success, with 9 million users watching D&D on Twitch
— 8.6 million Americans have played D&D in the last 12 months (they did not give stats for overseas)"


It seems Xanathar's Guide was the fastest selling product in D&D history!

Wondering what Spelljammer is? Imagine D&D (2nd Edition) in space, except the ships are magic flying sailing galleons, and space is a "phlogiston" they can sail in with magical helms, and each world is in its own "crystal sphere", and all of D&D's settings exist in the same universe, and you can fly between them. Image above is of the AD&D 2E Spelljammer boxed set.

Of course, it might not be that. It might just be a monster entry Mordenkainen's Tome, and nothing more.


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Ath-kethin

Elder Thing
HELL YEAH! I'll take my space hippo guy with a side order of giant space hamster and a topping of space whale, please.

All day long.
 
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jgsugden

Legend
As long as it works with the established cosmology for 5E and doesn't intrude unnecessarily into games where we do not want to see it, fine.
 

Nikosandros

Golden Procrastinator
So, D&D is now selling better than in the "golden age" of the early eighties. That's quite an amazing result. Well, so much for a dying market, I guess... :)
 

Rygar

Explorer
So, D&D is now selling better than in the "golden age" of the early eighties. That's quite an amazing result. Well, so much for a dying market, I guess... :)

I need some hard numbers on this. I'm struggling to believe that in the 80's it was so popular that there were cartoons, toys, and the books were everywhere and video games. Today it is selling better with almost no market presence outside of a very small number of books. Then in the 3rd edition era it was popular enough to spawn a movie (Which may be happening now to be fair). I suspect strongly that they're playing fast and loose with their metrics, I suspect that they're comparing non-inflation adjusted revenue to a sub-set of 80's products to get "Best ever!".
 



TerraDave

5ever, or until 2024
They have hinted many times that the multiverse has some spelljammer in it. This doesn't tell us anything beyond that.

As for the numbers, they are consistent with what some of us have been reporting from other sources.

They are big: 9 million watching and 8.6 million playing. Way back when the number you would here for D&D players playing in a year was closer to 1 million.
 


timbannock

Adventurer
Supporter
I need some hard numbers on this. I'm struggling to believe that in the 80's it was so popular that there were cartoons, toys, and the books were everywhere and video games. Today it is selling better with almost no market presence outside of a very small number of books. Then in the 3rd edition era it was popular enough to spawn a movie (Which may be happening now to be fair). I suspect strongly that they're playing fast and loose with their metrics, I suspect that they're comparing non-inflation adjusted revenue to a sub-set of 80's products to get "Best ever!".

Here are some hard numbers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3655627.stm

So, in 2004 it was about 3 million people playing per month in the US. According to this seminar, "8.6 million Americans have played D&D in the last 12 months" and "9 million users watching D&D on Twitch."

I'm sure you won't find harder numbers than this, given how surveys are done and how "users" are measured.
 

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