Spelljammer D&D Direct Live Report: 9am PDT (5pm BST) SPELLJAMMER CONFIRMED! DRAGONLANCE!

D&D Direct, WotC's new video-format announcement show launches today at 9am PDT (5pm BST). If you aren't able to watch it, I'll be updating this article live. Feel free to comment below! Once it launches, you will need to refresh this page when you want to see new updates. The video is expected to last about 30 minutes.

If you CAN watch it, you'll find it on YouTube or Twitch at the above times. Otherwise, follow along below!

• 45 mins to go. Live updates incoming!
• 30 mins to go!
• 5 minutes to go!
• Here we go! Opens with a sea shanty.
• Forgive typos. They talk fast and I can't type.

• Spelljammer is confirmed!
• They talk REALLY FAST!
• Spelljammer Adventures in Space, project lead Chris Perkins, Trystan Falcone graphic designer
• Cities built on asteroids, dead gods floating in the ether
• 6 races---astral elves, autognomes, hedozi(?), gif, plasmoids, thri-kreen
• 3 hardcovers in a slipcase: Astral Adventurers Guide, Boo's Astral Menagerie, Light of Xaryxis adventure
• Prequel adventure in July
• Wizkids miniatures

Other stuff also discussed!

• Baldur's Gate 3 CRPG preview video (game is in 2023)
• Journeys Through Radiant Citadel intro video -- 3 of the adventures are: Wages of Vice (5th level), Caribbean; Orchids of the Invisible Mountain (14th level), feywild, far realm, Whistler new monster; Fiend of Hollow Mind (4th level), skeletons and spirits

• "Campaign Cases" -- Creature tokens! Terrain tiles! July!

D&D Movie directors now onscreen. The movie in March 2023 is called HONOR AMONG THIEVES.

• New D&D starter set. Comes with 'digital onboarding'. Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. We knew about that one.
• D&D digital monstrous compendium. Available to those with WoTC or D&D Beyond Accounts. Volume 1 has an eldritch lich and the 10 legged asteroid spider. And the starlancer. Might have misheard some of that!

• MMO Neverwinter video. Dragonslayer begins June 2022. (I wonder if they'll need a dragonance for that?)
• New D&D actual play video, Legends of the Multiverse. Lots of 80s cartoon style soft rock music. Boo is in it.

WIzKids skirmish game D&D Onslaught. October

Finally -- DRAGONLANCE WARRIORS OF KRYNN! SHADOW OF THE DRAGON QUEEN!

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Yeah, semantics. No Sigil? No walking from Heaven to Sigil to the Abyss? No Factions? No Modrons? Not Planejammer.

I definitely want a book detailing 5e’s take on Sigil and all the outer planes, whether it would be in a Planescape style book or a Manual of the Planes style book.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I suspect they are intentionally ambiguous to test the reaction by the fandom, and I don't blame them, maybe it is the best option.

My opinion is Planescape will arrive before Dark Sun because this needs more work. In the past I speculated about if it would be a player's guide, a bestiarium or an adventure, but now I gues it will be the three things, like Spelljammer.

I hope they tell about the Gate-towns, because it means more space for the faction war, and more PC races. Why not the mechanatrixes, the planetouched from Mechanix? And the spikers, paragenasis and bariaurs, of course, or how-are-they-spelled. And the paraelementals. They are too cool to be not summoned. And the planar dragons (with planar dragonborns?). Other theory is After Baldur's Gate III and DLC the next title will be Planescape 2.

The handicap is most of planes are too dangerous for low-level PCs.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I suspect they are intentionally ambiguous to test the reaction by the fandom, and I don't blame them, maybe it is the best option.

My opinion is Planescape will arrive before Dark Sun because this needs more work. In the past I speculated about if it would be a player's guide, a bestiarium or an adventure, but now I gues it will be the three things, like Spelljammer.

I hope they tell about the Gate-towns, because it means more space for the faction war, and more PC races. Why not the mechanatrixes, the planetouched from Mechanix? And the spikers, paragenasis and bariaurs, of course, or how-are-they-spelled. And the paraelementals. They are too cool to be not summoned. And the planar dragons (with planar dragonborns?). Other theory is After Baldur's Gate III and DLC the next title will be Planescape 2.

The handicap is most of planes are too dangerous for low-level PCs.

Planescape 2: Torment Harder. I could be down for that...

Reminds me I need to update my PC, though... Tried the BGIII Early Access a while back and my poor desktop struggled even in the menu.

 

[overgeeked]

The handicap is most of planes are too dangerous for low-level PCs.

Another baby they threw out with the bathwater from 4E. The World Axis cosmology made every aspect of the setting playable from 1st level. You would immediately die by simply going to the wrong place without high-level magics to keep you alive.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Another baby they threw out with the bathwater from 4E. The World Axis cosmology made every aspect of the setting playable from 1st level. You would immediately die by simply going to the wrong place without high-level magics to keep you alive.

Nothing stopping you from putting it back in.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, you travel through wildspace...then enter the astral sea, which is the astral plane...and you then travel the astral sea to get to other settings/systems. You travel through the planes...that's Planejammer. The distinction being made is that the original Spelljammer didn't work that way, that's been tossed. It now works like it basically did in 4E, which is to say Planejammer.

This. With the added possibility that you can actually fly to other planes as well, even if that portion doesn't get much word count.

 

[Maxperson]

For me, the biggest point of calling something "Planejammer" is mixing the actual genre content between them: but this specifically does not cover Planescape Races, Factions, Sigil, the Blood War, etc, etc, etc...

For me it's that Spelljammer allowed you to jam from one setting to another by use of spells and the phlogiston. Planejammer would allow you to jam from one setting to another by use of the planes, in this case the Astral. It's just the method by which you jam from setting to setting.

 

[Maxperson]

Another baby they threw out with the bathwater from 4E. The World Axis cosmology made every aspect of the setting playable from 1st level. You would immediately die by simply going to the wrong place without high-level magics to keep you alive.

2e Planescape was the first to make the planes playable from low level on.

 

[Parmandur]

For me it's that Spelljammer allowed you to jam from one setting to another by use of spells and the phlogiston. Planejammer would allow you to jam from one setting to another by use of the planes, in this case the Astral. It's just the method by which you jam from setting to setting.

See, I view both Settings as ends rather than means: Spelljammer us for swashbuckling Space Adventure, Planescape is for Weird Urban Adventure. And the distinction is maintained, even if they are made compatible.

 

[michaeljpastor]

Much as I would love Dark Sun, it'll be hard to do without either a robust psionics system in place or a LOT more psionic subclasses to work with... Distinguishing between psionics and magic can be largely handwaved for most settings, but it's central to the Dark Sun's themes, so I'm not expecting anything directly related to Athas anytime soon.

Keeping my finger's crossed for Planescape, though.

Two birds with one stone - Psionics for all of D&D is introduced and codified because of Dark Sun.