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!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So, a shade shy of $4 in 1981, or $12 today. How was the paper quality?

I'm not a great expert! The paper feels thick and course, and the interior printing is three-colour, like a comic book of the period.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not a great expert! The paper feels thick and course, and the interior printing is three-colour, like a comic book of the period.

Just curious: looking at other products on the market today, like RPGs and glossy full color comic trades, about $25 for a 64 page hardcover seems about average now.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just curious: looking at other products on the market today, like RPGs and glossy full color comic trades, about $25 for a 64 page hardcover seems about average now.

Oh, I'm sure it's not an unreasonable price for that product. But it's an expensive way to produce something that could be produced much cheaper as one book. At time when the basic cost of living is shooting up, I can't afford more expensive luxury items.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh, I'm sure it's not an unreasonable price for that product. But it's an expensive way to produce something that could be produced much cheaper as one book. At time when the basic cost of living is shooting up, I can't afford more expensive luxury items.

That makes sense. Perkins hinted they will break out the contents in some way in the future, but we'll see how this format experiment shakes out.

 

[Malmuria]

The planescape boxed sets were $30 at the time, which would be upwards of $50 now. Softcover books but with full color pages and poster maps. That said, it should be noted that the boxed set era drove TSR out of business...

I think the price for this spell jammer set is fine. Out of a table of 5, only one person (the dm) needs to purchase it. If they get 25 sessions out of it, that's a whole year of dnd for many groups.

 

[overgeeked]

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

The gods were limited to their crystal spheres. Clerics could not access their magic while in the phlo or in other crystal spheres where their god did not have worshipers. I think there was an exception for similar deities, like one sphere was Greek but another was Roman, a cleric from either would have a rough equivalent to draw magic from, but that could be a house rule or me misremembering the particulars.

 

[overgeeked]

I think the price for this spell jammer set is fine. Out of a table of 5, only one person (the dm) needs to purchase it. If they get 25 sessions out of it, that's a whole year of dnd for many groups.

The group chips in $5-10 bucks. Most groups I know play once a month, so that's 2 years of gaming...just from the included adventure. The joy of Spelljammer is you can bring in anything and it makes sense. Just cut scene and you're in the Forgotten Realms. Have your crew visit the port in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Spend time exploring the jungles of Chult. Visit the Candlekeep library. Take a trip to the Radiant Citadel. You can go anywhere and do anything. Spelljammer is as much a framework as it is a setting unto itself.

 

[Greg Benage]

Thanks. So maybe deities are limited to their "wildspace" instead?

 

[VelvetViolet]

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.

Sure, I can agree with removing the term "phlogiston." The original term meant the substance released by combustion, whereas in SJ it was a highly combustible substance.

I recall at least one fan suggestion that it could have been folded into the deep ethereal, since that shared the most similarity. At least compared to the astral plane anyway. "Etherspace" sounds neat, I guess.

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

If you're removing key aspects of the cosmology then it doesn't make much sense to call it Spelljammer. They could've just called it Astraljammer or something else more accurate.

This also raises the question of where the inner planes are located relative to wildspace and makes the already convoluted and retconned great wheel cosmology more confusing.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If you're removing key aspects of the cosmology then it doesn't make much sense to call it Spelljammer. They could've just called it Astraljammer or something else more accurate.

I mean . . . it wasn't named "Phlogistonjammer" or "Phlojammer". It was named "Spelljammer" after the types of ships that were the main mode of transportation in the setting. A "spelljammer" is a play on a windjammer. Windjammers could move because of its sails and a Spelljammer could move because it consumes spells. So changing the name to "Astraljammer," "Starjammer," or "Planejammer" really wouldn't make much sense.

And the Phlogiston really wasn't that important to the setting before. There were barely any creatures native to it (mostly just those undead that were people who died in the Phlo), most combat and adventuring happened inside of the Crystal Spheres, and it really only served as a boring "hyperspace" to connect the worlds together. The Astral Sea has more creatures native to it, is more open to having adventures and combat encounters take place there, and can also serve as a hyperspace connecting the worlds together. And, yes, getting rid of the Phlo does simplify D&D's already overcomplicated cosmology a bit, which is probably a good thing (depends on who you ask). Also, taking a Spelljamming ship to the petrified corpse of a dead god is just awesome.

So, the ships still run on spells, you can still travel to other settings using magical hyperspace, it still serves the purpose of being a combination of nautical and space adventures, and has most of the same creatures (from what we've seen so far). It's still Spelljammer, just like Ravenloft is still Ravenloft after getting rid of the Core, and Eberron is still Eberron after changing how Dragonmarks worked. Changing a few fairly minor parts of the setting doesn't make it not be that setting anymore.