Spelljammer Dark Sun confirmed? Or, the mysterious case of the dissappearing Spelljammer article...

[Shardstone]

I'm 46, so yeah. Plenty of people my age are fans of WotC's current direction, I know. I was riffing off of another poster's "old folks" comment, but basically those who aren't fans of the current state of vanilla 5e, whatever their age, really don't matter to them.

There's someone making old folks comments other than me?!

 

[overgeeked]

And as of a few hours ago the article is back. Athaspace is gone and Doomspace is back. There's now also a neat bit of art depicting the gravity plane. BTW, the original Athaspace art is still on the site.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/9/988/wildspace-astral-plane.jpg

The Spelljammer's Guide to Wildspace in Dungeons & Dragons

Looking to launch into Wildspace to find epic adventures, glory, and treasure beyond your wildest dreams? Our updated guide to Spelljammer will teach yo...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[JEB]

Eh, I don't think they've alienated many 2e Spelljammmer fans. The phlogiston was by far the least interesting facet of the setting, and very few are showing any signs of being upset that it's been replaced by the Astral. Beyond that, the changes seem fairly minimal...

We won't really know for sure until the book is out, honestly. A lot may also depend on how much old Spelljammer stuff can be used with the new setting and rules, without having to modify one or the other.

I suspect it may help that Wildspace still exists as a distinct thing from the Astral Sea.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm 46, so yeah. Plenty of people my age are fans of WotC's current direction, I know. I was riffing off of another poster's "old folks" comment, but basically those who aren't fans of the current state of vanilla 5e, whatever their age, really don't matter to them.

But that's how it's always been. There have always been people who wanted to play D&D in a way that the rules didn't cover, even back in 1e. You might as well say that WotC is deliberately ignoring anyone who runs a homebrew world because they produce setting books.

 

[Charlaquin]

Another possibility is that they're going to have random solar system generators with the idea that these Wildspaces are places for you to use them.

That would be cool!

 

[JEB]

If someone isn't interested in my product, I honestly wouldn't be worried about them and I would be spending my time with those who are.

That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: you won't know if they're not interested, if you never tried to reach them in the first place. (Assuming you're trying for wide appeal, of course; niche products are different. But Wizards clearly isn't trying to be niche.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

But that's how it's always been. There have always been people who wanted to play D&D in a way that the rules didn't cover, even back in 1e. You might as well say that WotC is deliberately ignoring anyone who runs a homebrew world because they producing setting books.

True, but when the way you want to play D&D becomes harder because the company and the public don't want to play that way any more, it can be frustrating. Nothing to be done about it, of course, but its still an uncomfortable adjustment.

 

[Faolyn]

True, but when the way you want to play D&D becomes harder because the company and the public don't want to play that way any more, it can be frustrating. Nothing to be done about it, of course, but its still an uncomfortable adjustment.

How is it harder? They haven't come and taken away your books. You can still game the way you've always done in your preferred version of the settings.

If you mean "it's harder to find new gamers who play the way I want them to do," that's a different thing--but again, that's something that's been around since shortly after the beginning, and that's entirely a matter of playstyle. You either learn to adapt to playstyles other than your own, or you don't play. But that has nothing to do with the way WotC is publishing books.

 

[Demetrios1453]

We won't really know for sure until the book is out, honestly. A lot may also depend on how much old Spelljammer stuff can be used with the new setting and rules, without having to modify one or the other.

I suspect it may help that Wildspace still exists as a distinct thing from the Astral Sea.

Wildspace was always the meat of the setting anyway. Spelljammer campaigns were either exploring your own system's Wildspace, or going to other Wildspace spheres to explore. The phologiston was just there, and no one really went there just to go there for itself, but to go through to get to somewhere else more exciting. It served no purpose other than to be passed through. Now they've replaced it with a much more interesting transitive space in the Astral, which is definitely a smart move in the design sense. And a change that's likely to ruffle a minimum of feathers outside the absolute Spelljammer purists, if such exist.

The only remaining question is if you can go from Wildspace to Wildspace without passing through the Astral? Is the Material Plane fully contiguous (meaning you can theoretically travel from system through system, presumably through a large void like our own interstellar space, although distances might be too long to be practical), or is it broken up into discrete and non-contiguous Wildspace systems floating in the Astral? The latter is a bit weird considering how the Material Plane has been consistently described in all editions up until now (as an unbroken infinite plane, or an infinite number of unbroken infinite planes).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In the fiction the bad guys can do a lot of horrible things, but in the real life we have to defend the respect for the human dignity.

The slavery is very wrong, and it is reported by NGOs to happen in some countries. But I doubt we have to face about slavery in D&D and not in the action-live teleserie of "Game of Thrones", or the novels of "Gor".

My suggestion is maybe there are "two Athas", one would be the original from 2nd Ed, and the second would be a "clon demiplane", something like Barovia from the material plane (where vampires are unknown) and the "copy" in the demiplane of the dread. Maybe in the same way than the dark domains in Ravenloft and domains of delight in Witchlight there are also a "third type". These are like the "dark domains", but not created by the dark powers, but by the "dark-lords" themself. How and why? These "sorcerer-kings" realises their domains are really dystopies, and a good reason for time-travels to go to the past to try to rewritte the timeline. To avoid this and saving their own selfish necks they created their demiplanes as a "backup" in the time-space continoum. Their plan work totally but a little detail. They travel to a new "neighbour" and they realises they don't like their new "neighbors". Now the sorcerer-kings have to defend their domains against the "invaders" who are also the same sorcerer-kings from an alternate timeline. And this type of conflicts is the reason because the chronomancers work as a D&D version of "Time Variant Agency" to avoid, or stop, the multiversal war. And Vecna is enjoying this multiversal war, and the cult of the elder elemental eye also finds here an opportunity to cause more chaos.