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!

 

[Malmuria]

In terms of the format/length, I feel the target audience might be players with plenty of money to spend on hobbies, but not a lot of time.

From the other thread:

Perkins mentioned that Spelljammer first came out at the height of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he was a big fan of both. He added that Boo's Astral Menagerie, one of the books in the slipcase, gives a lot of fodder for creating episodic adventures akin to ST:NG where the players can travel, visit cities on asteroids, and explore locations in wildspace and the astral sea.

So the adventure book provides 12 episodic adventures with cliffhangers, making up one “season” of content. Then the monster book will have enough hooks, possibly lairs, to continue with more seasons into higher levels.

This might be part of the strategy to provide more “bite sized” adventures that they mentioned some time ago. I think the feedback was that most people play 2-4 hour sessions, increasingly online for obvious reasons, and that campaigns might not last more than 10 sessions before of scheduling or wanting to try something new. Along with that, they are releasing more products now. Early in 5e, one adventure book was the theme for 4-6 months, so it needed to provide at least 30 sessions of play. But now, if they are releasing more adventures, and new players have the entire 5e catalogue to go through, each adventure book can be fewer sessions worth of play with the idea that by the time they are done with that they will be ready to buy the next adventure book, or one of the old ones. You also feel more a sense of accomplishment and value if you play through the entire adventure, vs if your campaign falls apart midway through a longer AP and you end up not being able to finish the story arc. And of course shorter content works well for streaming, etc.

I think it makes sense as a strategy, though I can see how it would not work as well for players who play more regularly or for longer periods of time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

DiTerlizzi was talking about the MtG set for D&D and said it on social media. I’d dig up the comment but it’s buried so deep and I’m not that savvy with it but it was all art for that set.

Yeah I assumed something would have come out by now, so that makes Dark Sun seem more likely and Planescape distinctly less. Which is a huge pity for me, ironically with Dark Sun I'd almost rather see a full ground-up reworking of the setting, with similar basic concepts but really different specifics than what I suspect we'll actually see, which is a VRGtR-style sort of "cautious reboot", which incorporates a ton of the old lore and stuff and just sort of modernizes things a bit. I suspect we'll end with a rather safe/dull take on Dark Sun with anything short of a rework, because they'll be trying to preserve specific setting elements rather than thinking about the overall meaning and vibe of the setting. Like, it won't have anywhere near as much to say (despite the key concepts of 2E DS being more relevant than in the '90s even - environmental destruction through greed and apathy, backed by elites who are essentially beyond reach, and whose bizarre and nigh-inscrutable and in some cases transhuman goals are at odds with the survival of humanity (like "I would like to be a dragon"!), entrenched oppression and acceptance of brutality), because it'll likely dial everything back to "safe" levels (not really talking about slavery even - if you swap out chattel slavery for routine long-term indentured servitude it doesn't fundamentally change the setting). And they'll likely forget about the psionic elements beyond some basic wild talents which people can have or can have a Feat instead of (guess how many people will choose the latter - I suspect a lot). I think just abandoning what we have and thinking about what Dark Sun says, and making a modern, relevant take on that might work better. But I think we can be sure it'll merely be a reboot.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I assumed something would have come out by now, so that makes Dark Sun seem more likely and Planescape distinctly less. Which is a huge pity for me, ironically with Dark Sun I'd almost rather see a full ground-up reworking of the setting, with similar basic concepts but really different specifics than what I suspect we'll actually see, which is a VRGtR-style sort of "cautious reboot", which incorporates a ton of the old lore and stuff and just sort of modernizes things a bit. I suspect we'll end with a rather safe/dull take on Dark Sun with anything short of a rework, because they'll be trying to preserve specific setting elements rather than thinking about the overall meaning and vibe of the setting. Like, it won't have anywhere near as much to say (despite the key concepts of 2E DS being more relevant than in the '90s even - environmental destruction through greed and apathy, backed by elites who are essentially beyond reach, and whose bizarre and nigh-inscrutable and in some cases transhuman goals are at odds with the survival of humanity (like "I would like to be a dragon"!), entrenched oppression and acceptance of brutality), because it'll likely dial everything back to "safe" levels (not really talking about slavery even - if you swap out chattel slavery for routine long-term indentured servitude it doesn't fundamentally change the setting). And they'll likely forget about the psionic elements beyond some basic wild talents which people can have or can have a Feat instead of (guess how many people will choose the latter - I suspect a lot). I think just abandoning what we have and thinking about what Dark Sun says, and making a modern, relevant take on that might work better. But I think we can be sure it'll merely be a reboot.

I really see Planescape as the next logical leap, since it can be used with ongoing home Campaigns as a modular add-on, just like Spelljammer.

Given that the initial point of Dark Sun was to provide a Battle System showpiece, if the Dragonlance mass combat game is successful I think they will take the same approach and provide a Dark Sun Adventure that ties into another "Battle Game" box.

 

[Maxperson]

I was convinced that Tasha's Cauldron of Everything would simultaneously be a Manual of the Planes and Xanathar's 2.0. I also thought that Dragonlance was just a relic of the past that grognards liked and that WotC would never publish because most new players have never read the books.

I've been right about a few predictions about future products (I was right about Spelljamme and Ravenloft), but I've been extremely wrong just as often. Wait, let me correct that. I've been wrong more than I've been right.

So, while I do think that Dark Sun is probably the next classic D&D setting coming because of the fact that we're getting Thri-Kreen, recently got psionics (even if they are controversial), and how it has a niche to fill in 5e, I also recognize that I have a far greater chance of being wrong than correct about this prediction. Planescape is probably just as likely, if not more.

You know what I get from this? Birthright confirmed!

 

[VelvetViolet]

So in Spelljammer 5E you fly out from your home planet, into wildspace (like real-world space), but you eventually come to the edge of wildspace and find the silvery mists described in the various tweets. Which is the Astral Sea. You enter the Astral Sea and travel between systems. When you arrive you exit the Astral Sea and enter local wildspace...eventually finding a planet or other body to stop at.

So they removed the crystal spheres, phlogiston, and breathing in space that defined Spelljammer cosmology?

 

[teitan]

Yeah I assumed something would have come out by now, so that makes Dark Sun seem more likely and Planescape distinctly less. Which is a huge pity for me, ironically with Dark Sun I'd almost rather see a full ground-up reworking of the setting, with similar basic concepts but really different specifics than what I suspect we'll actually see, which is a VRGtR-style sort of "cautious reboot", which incorporates a ton of the old lore and stuff and just sort of modernizes things a bit. I suspect we'll end with a rather safe/dull take on Dark Sun with anything short of a rework, because they'll be trying to preserve specific setting elements rather than thinking about the overall meaning and vibe of the setting. Like, it won't have anywhere near as much to say (despite the key concepts of 2E DS being more relevant than in the '90s even - environmental destruction through greed and apathy, backed by elites who are essentially beyond reach, and whose bizarre and nigh-inscrutable and in some cases transhuman goals are at odds with the survival of humanity (like "I would like to be a dragon"!), entrenched oppression and acceptance of brutality), because it'll likely dial everything back to "safe" levels (not really talking about slavery even - if you swap out chattel slavery for routine long-term indentured servitude it doesn't fundamentally change the setting). And they'll likely forget about the psionic elements beyond some basic wild talents which people can have or can have a Feat instead of (guess how many people will choose the latter - I suspect a lot). I think just abandoning what we have and thinking about what Dark Sun says, and making a modern, relevant take on that might work better. But I think we can be sure it'll merely be a reboot.

What artist they’ve used haven’t been indicative of what they’re releasing. They didn’t have Elmore work on Dragonlance or Easley working on Spelljammer and DiTerlizzi wasn’t exactly known for Forgotten Realms art when they contracted him for the Forgotten Realms set. The art style has been pretty generic across all the D&D products released for 5e and there is much stronger indications of Planescape than Dark Sun.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

WotC has been intentionally ambigous about that. If you want crystal spheres, phlogiston and breathing ether, you can do it in your game, because we don't need special game mechanics. Maybe the phlogiston was clouds os cosmic dust, but the movement of the solar systems within the galaxy caused the known spheres got out that zone.

If there is plans for a mass-battle board game set in DS, then the lore could be retconnected to explain the "everybody against the rest of factions". or how new factions to be added, for example necromancer lords from the death-lands. DS not only needs a lot of work for the psionic powers, but also artistic design with its special style as one of the marks of the identity. Maybe this was the reason WotC would rather to publish its own graphic novels. If there is mass battles in Athas, then a strategy videogame would be possible, but everybody with some idea about strategy, even a simple gamer, should realise about the importance of the economy and sources of suppliers. If you spend too much the victory can become Phyrrhic, and too burnt or worn out to face the next enemy. If survival is a true challenge, then managing a complete army will be harder. Napoleon could be defeated in Spain because the guerilla discovered the weak point was the suppliers points. One of the reasons of the first Spanish victory against Napoleon in the battle of Bailen is because Frenchs didn't have got enough water, for July in Mediterranean weather, warmer than the north regions.

 

[overgeeked]

So they removed the crystal spheres...

Unknown, but seems likely. Most are hoping for an "optional" rule call out box.

phlogiston

Explicitly stated that it's gone, so yes.

breathing in space

No, that's still in. Explicitly stated as still a thing.

that defined Spelljammer cosmology?

It depends on what you liked about Spelljammer and how much you think those aspects defined the setting.

As it stands, the only thing of interest to me is WotC explaining how putting everything in the Astral Sea/Plane doesn't lead to various pantheons simply wiping each other out. The phlo kept the crystal spheres separated and prevented gods from nuking other planets. Now that the phlo is gone, and it's all ported into the Astral Sea, a logical consequence would be a divine free-for-all.

 

[Greg Benage]

The phlo kept the crystal spheres separated and prevented gods from nuking other planets.

Can you expand on that? How did that work -- was phlogiston toxic to gods or something?

 

[EthanSental]

I dont miss the term phlogiston being done away with….never thought it described what it was applied to…like other terms Gygax used in the game that just didn’t have a good ring to them.