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!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

While Spelljammers can still be used in the planes, they would not be able to go to Sigil, Sigil is only assessable through it's own portals, if you go to the outlands in a Spelljammer you can't fly up the spire and reach Sigil.

 

[overgeeked]

Agreed. Which is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Planescape sometime next year.

Here's to hoping you get a fist-pumping-in-the-air moment next year.

 

[Parmandur]

If you mean ambiguous, sure. If you mean a deliberate attempt to be elusive or evasive, no.

Likewise, before Thursday, I’d never seen the “smash Planescape and Spelljammer together” version.

By equivocation, I simply mean "using the same term to signify different objects," with no moral element included.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Having "a fine art background" (which I'll add is vague enough to mean nothing) doesn't mean you've got special wisdom on whose edition's art is better.

I literally specified what it was in the parentheses! You cannot accuse me of being vague! Come on, that's extremely unfair.

I agree it means no special wisdom re: "better". That is subjective.

But it means I have some wisdom re: technical quality, and you claim was re: technical quality, not better. Technical quality is not subjective in the same way.

I don't even think you care too much about individual piece quality, as long as there is some sort of artistic consistency or style throughout books.

Alright Mystic Meg, nice attempt at mind-reading! Why not ask me if I feel that way instead of trying to psychically sense it? Particularly because you're wrong. I care about both, obviously.

And I guess I just think that having the same style of art across an entire book is just boring to me unless it's very distinctive (DiTerlizzi and Brom are the obvious).

I don't think we disagree lol. I'm asking for more Planescape and original Dark Sun level artistic distinctiveness.

Like, I think Elmore has a distinctive style, but I also don't like it much, so the lack of diversity has made much of Dragonlance's art suffer to me (there are individual piece of Elmore's I like a lot btw). Having a wider swathe of styles within a book doesn't make it worse than something more distinctive. I certainly don't think it makes it "mediocre."

Agree!

This is one of my major issues with 5E. There isn't much style variation. It's all "super-generic fantasy". It's not bad - let's be clear on that - there have been relatively few pieces in 5E where I've frowned at the quality of art (there have been some). But there have been countless where they're just so dull it's painful, and virtually all of them in this narrow, dull style-range. 5E in general has an issue where it's a picked a boring style and then very able-y stuck with that style. It's almost impressive how well they've stuck to this.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe Magic is making more money thanks the new online videogame, but as multimedia franchise D&D has got a better future with different types of products.

The crunch and the game mechanics are harder to be edited by housel rules, but if we talk about the lore or background, you can forget the canon in your tabletop. The sourcebooks are like books of recipes. In your kitchen you can cook with the ingredients you want. The phlogiston and the crystal spheres aren't been erasured really by a retcon, only they are not mentioned, that ambiguety is intentional. You can blame Vecna with all those troubles caused in Sigil during the transition to 2nd to 3rd Ed.

I like Dragonlance with a touch of fantasy retro 80's cartoon, because it is a feeling like to meet again an old classmate after a lot of years. And I would like the youngest generations felt the same I did when they discover Dragonlance in the first time. Can you imagine how did I feel when I showed my book of Dragonlance art to my niece?

 

[briggart]

While Spelljammers can still be used in the planes, they would not be able to go to Sigil, Sigil is only assessable through it's own portals, if you go to the outlands in a Spelljammer you can't fly up the spire and reach Sigil.

You can't fly directly to Sigil, but if you find a large enough portal you could still get a Spelljammer to Sigil. There was a small story in "In the cage: A Guide to Sigil" about a factotum that was asked by his factol to get some "squid" for an upcoming dinner with a visiting dignitary. The guy, not knowing what a squid was, ended up buying and having delivered an Illithid nautiloid ship (although it was not explicitly called that in the text).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The faction war shouldn't happen only in Sigil, Gatetowns have got potential, and the rest of the multiverse, for example agents in the Radiant Citadel.

I wonder if maybe Tony Diterlizzi's art returns to Planescape, but this time with realistic style, and digitally painted, or retouched, to hide the lines by pencil.

Maybe in Sigil Vecna created his own version of the Lady's Maze, or even a demiplane like a clone of Sigil, something like a "mirror pocket universe". And this could cause a Schöringer effect, a Sigil, ruled by the Lady of Pain, where the faction war ended, and the "evil twin" version, ruled by the "nerras" (humanoids from the plane of the mirrors) where only Aoskar can be publicely worshiped and the faction war continues, and let's add the guilds creating their own demiplanes within this "clone demiplane".

The adventure compilation could be about the infinite starcaise, and the kamarel, a xenophobic race, could appear in a new dark domain. The Infinite-Staircase could be redesigned to be something like the stairs in the last part of Jim Henson's "Labyrinth". I mean a simple line is more boring than a "knot path".

 

[Remathilis]

You can't fly directly to Sigil, but if you find a large enough portal you could still get a Spelljammer to Sigil. There was a small story in "In the cage: A Guide to Sigil" about a factotum that was asked by his factol to get some "squid" for an upcoming dinner with a visiting dignitary. The guy, not knowing what a squid was, ended up buying and having delivered an Illithid nautiloid ship (although it was not explicitly called that in the text).

An amusing anecdote aside though, I don't think there is a huge amount of evidence you can get something as big as a Spelljammer into Sigil, at least reliably. Portals are rarely bigger than doors, there are no docks or similar places to put one, and the fact the place is called "The Cage" is to imply it isn't exactly easy to get to. Heck, there is a similar quote in another book about riding out of Sigil being difficult because you'd first have to find a horse and then a portal big enough to fit it.

I think keep Sigil separate from Spelljamming and as an alternative to using a ship to move around.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

but this time with realistic style, and digitally painted, or retouched, to hide the lines by pencil.

Yeah let's "fix" the art of people with literally infinitely more talent, taste, and judgement than us lol, I'm sure that will end well. Woman Who Ruined Fresco Of Jesus Now Wants To Be Paid

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Digital painting is very advanced, and even there is special algoritms to paint imitating certain style. Tony Diterlizzi could draw the white&black sketch, and other would be the colorist. There software where your drawning becomes paints.