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!

 

[overgeeked]

I agree with this. From all the info we have gotten through tweets such as the Githyanki, the fact that they have dead gods floating in the Astral Sea (which was always something describe as existing in the Astral Plane), the ability to travel to other planes (which was also attributed to the Astral Plane) and that both are call the Astral seems to heavily imply they are one in the same.

The DMG describes the Astral Plane as synonymous with the Astral Sea. They're likely one and the same.

"The Astral Plane is the realm of thought and dream, where visitors travel as disembodied souls to reach the Outer Planes. It is a great silvery sea, the same above and below, with swirling wisps of white and gray streaking among motes of light like distant stars. Most of the Astral Sea is a vast, empty expanse. Visitors occasionally stumble upon the petrified corpse of a dead god or other chunks of rock drifting forever in the silvery void. Much more commonplace are color pools--magical pools of colored light that flicker like radiant, spinning coins."

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.

 

[Quickleaf]

I do think that they have worked out some "Grand Unified Theory" of the multiverse, but for genre purposes I doubt it will come up. I expect a Planescape product next year.

Hah! Wanna be--

looks at his new avatar, and falls strangely silent

Covering the two transitive planes – Ethereal and Astral – on our journey to explore the multiverse is probably pure coincidence, certainly not a tormenting marketing move.

 

[JEB]

@AdmundfortGeographer I don't think that screenshot really tells us one way or the other on the crystal sphere question. Those could be spheres, or individual planets, or star systems bordered by the Astral Sea.

Maybe someone should ask directly, as was done with the phlogiston.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Realmspace (and the Rock of Bral) would be covered during the adventure, as would the bestiary.

Using VRGtR as an example, they'll give like 3 - 4 pages for the other crystal spheres they would want to give some detail (probably the other three you mentioned as well as maybe a couple more), and then a page or two on other crystal spheres that get a paragraph or two each (like the other Domains in VRGtR). And a page or two of tables to create your own crystal spheres. So, about 25 pages overall for crystal spheres. Give about 10 pages for races, and that leaves 15 pages for ship descriptions and travel/combat rules. So, about 50 pages. I guess you could have a few extra pages for magic items, so I'll go up to maybe 60.

256 page book: 60 pages for setting, 50 pages for bestiary, 146 pages for adventure. Strixhaven only need 142 for a full 1 - 10 adventure (and that was with 20 pages of rivals/relationships/extracurricular stuff, so it really only had 122 pages for the adventure). Bulk it up to the Icewind Dale/Eberron 320 pages, that gives room for 210 pages for adventure, although some of that could be moved back to setting stuff if they wanted.

Edit, well, VRGtR actually uses about 5 pages for each of the Domains, but it still doesn't move the needle much.

Just to bring up what I said in the conjecture thread before the announcement (WotC - D&D Direct--Learn About Upcoming D&D On April 21st!). 60 pages for the setting and 50 for the bestiary were actually quite close in the end! Only missed out on the adventure size, but that was when we expected a full book and not 3 in a slip cover...

 

[humble minion]

I'm giving Dark Sun an underdog chance, but yeah Planescape seems like the likeliest classic setting to show up next.

Lol, I confidently stated this time last year that Planescape would obviously be the next setting because it could be a useful surrogate Manual of the Planes type supplement in an era when WotC is clearly not doing that sort of supplement any more. Dragonlance was clearly a relic of the 80s and there wasn't a great deal of modern demand for it, Spelljammer was unquestionably a weird niche thing and a 5e version of it was more meme than legit possibility. And a year before that I was 100% certain that it'd be many years before a Ravenloft setting book because WotC had already covered that ground in Curse of Strahd.

I've given up making predictions when it comes to settings. WotC aren't marching to the beat of the same drummer as the rest of us.

 

[Parmandur]

Just to bring up what I said in the conjecture thread before the announcement (WotC - D&D Direct--Learn About Upcoming D&D On April 21st!). 60 pages for the setting and 50 for the bestiary were actually quite close in the end! Only missed out on the adventure size, but that was when we expected a full book and not 3 in a slip cover...

The "new formats" have actually surprised me with how much they open up the possibilities of future offerings. I can see Planescape or Greyhawk fitting the slipcase model very well, and Dark Sun or Birthright fitting the board game mixed with Adventure model very well.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Lol, I confidently stated this time last year that Planescape would obviously be the next setting because it could be a useful surrogate Manual of the Planes type supplement in an era when WotC is clearly not doing that sort of supplement any more. Dragonlance was clearly a relic of the 80s and there wasn't a great deal of modern demand for it, Spelljammer was unquestionably a weird niche thing and a 5e version of it was more meme than legit possibility. And a year before that I was 100% certain that it'd be many years before a Ravenloft setting book because WotC had already covered that ground in Curse of Strahd.

I've given up making predictions when it comes to settings. WotC aren't marching to the beat of the same drummer as the rest of us.

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 Spelljammer 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 than being right. Planescape is probably just as likely, if not more.

 

[teitan]

Yeah I'm really conflicted on my bet here myself.

DiTerlizzi said some stuff a year or two ago that seemed very much like he was doing some Planescape work properly, or about to. But apart from that, I think we've heard zero to support Planescape, and this version of Spelljammer, whilst seemingly woefully underdeveloped (unless the 64-page "setting and player rules" book is a masterpiece way above anything seen in 5E so far) fills a very Planescape-like role, potentially. Plus with the Radiant Citadel and the Rock of Bral we have two extraplanar hub cities already. But personally, I'd kill for Planescape. done right.

Whereas with Dark Sun, they've got no psionicist class, and only a spotty array of psionics-themed subclasses, but they have got Thri-Kreen.

Neither of them actually seem terribly likely at this point. If I was very hopeful I'd say Dark Sun next and Planescape as part of DND2024, outside the predicted settings.

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.

 

[teitan]

Just to bring up what I said in the conjecture thread before the announcement (WotC - D&D Direct--Learn About Upcoming D&D On April 21st!). 60 pages for the setting and 50 for the bestiary were actually quite close in the end! Only missed out on the adventure size, but that was when we expected a full book and not 3 in a slip cover...

I mean those three are combined one full, small book.

 

[teitan]

I think we have a far greater chance of seeing Greyhawk before Dark Sun myself. Planescape will be out after the first of the year, probably summer next year. Greyhawk will be after the revision comes out. Forgotten Realms will come before Dark Sun too. Gut feeling. I just do not think Dark Sun is a priority at all. They aren’t going to do much more with Psionics. We won’t see any more rules expansions until after the revision. It will be settings and adventures because they require limited conversion now that MotM is out and I feel I’ve been wrong on the extent to which the conversion will change things and that MotM is the top end of the changes. The MM will change to match it, the PHB will have the racial rules from MotM with suggested ASI based on “traditional sources” and they will have slightly reworked classes and added subclasses and they won’t be reprints. They’ll add the tiefling subtypes from ToF and update the Dragonborn to Fizban. The DMG will be the least changed except for tweaks to CR and encounter building. Minimal conversion material from here on. Mark my words. Dark Sun 2025 after the next expansion book.