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!

 

[SkidAce]

Wildspace = Astral Sea would mean that every planet is basically in the Astral. There's going to be some separation for those two at least.

Haven't read entire thread so apolgies if redundant, however, Beyond's description says this...

The multiverse at your fingertips​

A key focus for Spelljammer is the ability for players to travel to other D&D worlds. Supposedly, every D&D world exists out in the ether of the Astral Plane. Those who brave Wildspace and beyond can journey to lands outside the boundaries of their universe that were inaccessible prior to the mechanics of Spelljammer.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Haven't read entire thread so apolgies if redundant, however, Beyond's description says this...

Hmm. That "ether of the Astral Plane" phrase kind of bugs me. It might just be that they couldn't find a better word for it, but shouldn't the "Ether that makes up the world(s) of D&D" be from the "Ethereal Plane," not the Astral?

I feel like the difference between the Ethereal and Astral Plane is kind of hard to distinguish sometimes. Especially with the Deep Ethereal existing.

 

[Parmandur]

Haven't read entire thread so apolgies if redundant, however, Beyond's description says this...

Oh, so...each "solar system" is a Cosmos.

Given that some, like Greyhawk, are Geocentric, that makes sense...

 

[Faolyn]

Spelljammer will be a future colab in Fortnite. Here a plasmoid as skin.

Do you really want to play with plasmoid PCs?

I called dibs on playing a plasmoid alchemist for when the game comes out. Although it likely won't look like this.

 

[humble minion]

Hmmm.

On the upside:

I'm glad we're getting spelljammer. I love what I've seen of the art, it looks bonkers and gorgeous. I never played it back in 2e so I'm not too wedded to the whole phlostigon thing and don't terribly mind if it goes away, or if we shift partially into the Astral. SJ is about going to weird places, and the Astral ain't short of weird. I'm actually genuinely happy that they're breaking it up into individual books - I like having player-facing material separate to DM-facing, like how the old AD&D boxed sets used to have a campaign setting description in a player-facing setting book and then a whole bunch of secrets of the setting in the corresponding DM book with the adventure/adventures etc. This is good, more of this please! They could probably even incorporate the monster book into the adventure book and save printing costs and space.

On the downside:

I hate the DM screen. Seriously, I've got a zillion of those, I don't need more. It's surely a very low value-for-money piece of the package. Again, a hell of a lot of pagecount devoted to adventures in a setting release. I've harped on about this endlessly on here, it's one of my pet hates, but it's clear that WotC disagrees with me on this, so it's not like it was a surprise. And more seriously, the campaign setting component of the package looks very, very slim and anemic. Just comparing to other setting books:

• Eberron: 44 pages player options. 77 pages setting (plus another 50 pages describing setting power groups/antagonists and how to run them in the EXCELLENT 'Building Eberron Adventures' section that every setting book since should 100% have emulated)
• Ravenloft: 20 pages player options. 118 pages setting.
• Wildemount: 42 pages player options. 147 pages setting
• Spelljammer: [drumroll] 64 pages of player options plus setting combined (and it's fair to assume that this 64 will include pages devoted to contents, introductions, maybe an index etc etc, so the real total will be less than this by as much as 10%)

That's ... not much. That's really not much at all. Compared to the other setting books, it's vanishingly tiny. I think we can safely assume that the Astral Adventures book will be where all the actual rules for spelljammers/spelljamming, air envelopes, navigation etc etc will be, so it might be even less. To be clear, we're looking at less than half of the space for setting material than there was in the SCAG, which is widely criticised (very rightly, in my opinion) for its limited coverage and scope, and general perfunctory, uninformative, and incomplete treatment of a big setting.

Now it's possible there'll be bleedover between books. Maybe setting details about the Elven Armada and the Scro empire etc (assuming they still exist) will all be in the (surprisingly large by comparison) monster book, maybe ships will be there too, and they'll probably try and shuffle some location descriptions/gazetteer stuff into the adventure book (heaven knows how, given how much they're cramming in there already).

But this still looks like an extraordinarily content-light release. I'm glad WotC is moving in the direction of slipcase collections and the separating out of DM and player material, and while I'm pretty cynical about the price rises, it's not unexpected and I can handle it. But It seems we're paying a whole lot of money for cardboard (in covers for very thin hardbacks and in the useless and unwanted DM screen) and getting a whole less paper (which is where the actual usable content is written) for our $.

 

[NaturalZero]

I get that inflation is a thing but they're specifically choosing a format that artificially inflates the price beyond that. Additionally, I don't want 3 full hardcovers taking up space in my condo with only 192 pages of content, regardless of price point. As a guy that takes his books with him to physical games, making 194 pages of content take up far more space than a single 304 page campaign book is an unnecessary pain in the ass.

On the other hand, I am hype for Spelljammer. I've been toying with running Spelljammer campaign for the past few years but always hated the phlogiston and replacing it with the Astral Sea is a exactly the idea I had been considering, so I'm glad we're thinking along the same lines.

The more I learn about people's preferred "version" of a setting, the more I believe people prefer the version they grew up with. Meaning, folks whose first experience with Ravenloft was THE OG Ravenloft, like that version. The folks who first started with the Core, like that. And then there's folks (like me) who started with Curse of Strahd and like that.

I bought the original Ravenloft boxset in the store back when it released and had a decent amount of 2e, 3e, and 3.5 Ravenloft material. I absolutely prefer the 5e version though, with its more distinct and evocative backgrounds and themes for each domain.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I haven't seen this posted yet:

(Ray Winninger confirms that the Astral Sea is replacing the Phlogiston, but says that there's some "nuances" to it. He does not elaborate on what those nuances are. Maybe the Phlogiston still exists, but is more of a river system or substance found in the Astral Sea?)

 

[darjr]

I love the Astral Sea

 

[Parmandur]

I haven't seen this posted yet:

(Ray Winninger confirms that the Astral Sea is replacing the Phlogiston, but says that there's some "nuances" to it. He does not elaborate on what those nuances are. Maybe the Phlogiston still exists, but is more of a river system or substance found in the Astral Sea?)

Maybe "Phlogiston" is still a name for stuff in the Astral Sea?

 

[Faolyn]

Hey, they brought back murderoids!

BTW, darjr, thanks for posting these. I don't do twitter and usually within a few seconds of trying to read a twitter thread it stops me and tries to get me to sign up. I wouldn't be able to see any of these thinks if it weren't for posts like yours.