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!

 

[JEB]

OK, that sounds reasonable. And sounds like it could easily be modified back to a crystal sphere if one wanted...

Maybe I missed it, but do we know yet if 5E Spelljammer still has crystal spheres? (The description @overgeeked referenced doesn't acknowledge them.)

 

[Demetrios1453]

Maybe I missed it, but do we know yet if 5E Spelljammer still has crystal spheres? (The description @overgeeked referenced doesn't acknowledge them.)

That's what we're discussing. From what @overgeeked said, it sounds like there will be a misty zone instead of solid crystal sphere. But they might sidebar crystal spheres as an option (since it would be easy to make the switch...)

@overgeeked can you re-link the quote, or at least the post you mentioned it in?

 

[Tonguez]

Oh ship scale wargames!

 

[Azuresun]

So you're saying that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all? In no way realistic for any conversation, let alone one on the internet.

If you have nothing nice to say, maybe spend some time meditating on if it's worth saying, verses simply moving onto discussion of something that does bring you happiness. I know, Internet fandoms, ENWorld culture and all, but trust me, a right to be negative is not automatically a duty to be negative.

Anyway, this is probably where you respond with a glib one-liner, something about toxic positivity, something WOTC cheerleader, something something stifling free speech. That's how the script usually goes, right?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So you're saying that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all? In no way realistic for any conversation, let alone one on the internet.

I already dropped this. If you want to see what I said, read my other posts on the matter.

 

[JEB]

That's what we're discussing. From what @overgeeked said, it sounds like there will be a misty zone instead of solid crystal sphere. But they might sidebar crystal spheres as an option (since it would be easy to make the switch...)

@overgeeked can you re-link the quote, or at least the post you mentioned it in?

Perhaps it's this from @brimmels ' post:

While talking about wildspace and the astral sea Perkins said, “If you travel out far enough from the star in your system wildspace gets silvery and hazy, and you transition into the astral sea where dead gods are trapped, githyanki live there. It's an ageless silvery void. Travel far enough in there you can reach wildspace again and encounter other worlds of the D&D cosmology in a different way than a plane shift spell would go.”

Perkins added later that you “can travel between material planes through wildspace.”

That definitely sounds like crystal spheres are gone, but I guess we'll see. (My bet at this point is that they are, and with it the remaining meta-structure of 2E Spelljammer. Not a deal-breaker for me, but I dunno about others...)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm not sure about 5e specifically, but there have always been more classifications of true dragons besides the standard Chromatic, Metallic, and Gem. Solar and Lunar Dragons do have breath weapons and go through the typical dragon age categories. I suppose they would technically become part of the Planar Dragon classification now that the Astral Sea and Wildspace seem to be merged in some capacity. I hope we get Stellar and Astral Dragons somewhere down the line.

As far as their connection to the First World though, I'm not sure. I have typically contribute dragons existing outside of the Material Plane either due to being created by Io or some other deity (draconic or otherwise), or evolving from the standard three dragon types after thriving in one of the other planes for long periods of time (kind of like the Shadow Dragons but even more so).

To me, Fizban's made it sound like previous editions Planar Dragons (at least the ones connected to the Outer Planes, which the Astral Plane is technically a part of in 5e) won't exist at all this edition. The whole "Humanoids are Material and Spiritual because they're connected to both the Inner and Outer Planes, but Dragons are purely Material so they're only connected to the Inner Planes and are the true inhabitants of the Material Plane" thing makes me think that stuff like Styx Dragons, Astral Dragons, Celestial Dragons, and so on just don't exist in D&D 5e's Multiverse.

My guess is that Solar/Lunar Dragons will probably end up being Chromatic or Metallic Dragons that migrated to space and evolved to live in those extreme environments, rather than a whole new class of True Dragons in D&D 5e.

 

[teitan]

No Eric's a Paladin. the Pregen character sheet on the Target website shows somebody is a Paladin. Meaning not only is Eric "fearless" now (bout dang time) but also possesses Lay on Hands to pass around the healing to everybody.

Eric is a Cavalier not a Paladin and the cartoon predates the UA cavalier by two years so it’s not yet a Paladin subclass either.

 

[teitan]

By the by, I think the price/page math people have thrown about is a bit off, since we're getting the regularly scheduled Tier 1 Intro Adventure and at least 14 pages of additional monsters, just free and digital and not actually printed on the page. Death House was 10 pages; A Great Upheaval was 17 pages. I imagine the Intro Adventure will be something in that range. If we average that at 14 pages - much like the Monstrous Compendium additional creatures supporting the Monster book, we get 220 pages, a similar count to Volo's Guide (222pp) and Ghosts of Saltmarsh (250pp).

Yes but they aren’t part of the book being purchased. They are releases before and sure they are “free” but they aren’t part of the package itself. I’m not paying for them, I’m paying for the slip case and the 192 pages it contains plus IF I choose the $40 to $50 on DDB vs 20-30 for a similar page count on other products because they chose to use a less economical format for this release thus inflating the price of the digital content reducing its value in relation to similar products with the same page count. It better be absolutely spectacular to justify the digital cost across DDB and Roll20 etc.

 

[teitan]

You can always mute me if you don't like reading my complaints.

But I like your complaints.