Wildspace is
the key environment in Spelljammer...that and the various celestial bodies on which a spelljamming ship can land for various adventures.
This is from
page 7 of
The Concordance of Arcane Space:
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Wildspace
All the celestial bodies within a crystal shell float in an airless void called wild space. Conventional (meaning "those that take place on the prime material plane") interplanetary journeys around a solar system take place within wildspace. It is the first obstacle that must be conquered by would-be space travelers.
As an adventurer moves higher (whether climbing a mountain or on the back of a roc), the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner until at last it becomes vacuum. The climber can still breathe, however, because as he moves upward, an envelope of air clings to him. When he reaches the point where the planet's air is no longer breathable, he is breathing his own air, held near him by his body's own gravity. This air envelope attaches to everything that passes through the atmosphere and allows normal survival in wildspace, at least for a short time.
[The section continues to explain the extent of the air envelope for different-sized objects, and this is what determines how long each ship can sustain it's crew before it must replenish it's air supply.]
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On
page 6 from the same volume:
Wildspace is what comes to mind when we talk of "space." It is the vast emptiness that lies between the planets and the stars. All space inside a crystal shell is wildspace. It is mostly vacuum. (More correctly, most regions of wildspace are vacuum. But the cosmos is a big place and there are exceptions to almost every rule, as shall be shown later.) Wildspace is not truly a void, however, even though it is often referred to that way.
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Within wildspace are the celestial bodies: planets, suns, moons, asteroids, and a host of other items collectively lumped together under the heading "planetoids."
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From
page 15:
Due to the activity of the planets, the spheres, and various gates to the plane of elemental fire, temperature in wildspace is not a problem for adventurers. The ambient temperature in most space is about the same as a moderate summer day in the temperate regions of most worlds.
Some crystal shells, however, have surprisingly higher or lower temperatures and those should be noted on any star chart worth reading.
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In short "wildspace" is the D&D
fantasy version of outer space.
My two cents: About thirty or so pages ago in this large thread, someone commented and rhetorically asked (I am paraphrasing because I am not sure how to efficiently look up this posting):
there would have to be changes made to Spelljammer, otherwise, what is the justification for publishing it in 5th edition? This comment was made in the context of that poster arguing for replacing the Phlogiston with the Astral Plane/Sea. If we aren't going to change the D&D cosmology, in other words, why publish Spelljammer now?
Such a change
could be fun, of course, but it adds all kinds of different connotations to the notion of space travel for D&D. I did not respond to this person, because I was thinking, "well, do you
need to alter the cosmology to publish it in 5th edition? Do we
always need to change fundamental elements to justify a new publication...why not simply publish a new adventure with new fun places to explore and new challenges to overcome?" But, I did not write that at the time.
Here we see what I think is a
much better reason for those of us who have had a blast with Spelljammer wanting to see it published:
many of the present generation of role-players do not know about it! So, what is an appropriate response? Publish a new collection of spelljamming adventures with some explanatory material about how wildspace, spelljamming, magic-based physics, and other stuff work. I think that is satisfactory justification for a (hopeful!) 2022 Spelljammer publication.
If we are
55 pages into this thread in which intelligent, articulate fellow role-players are participating and only
now there is a need to explain wildspace, and if Jeremy Crawford (as in the 2018 DragonTalk interviews which I have mentioned previously that had came out right before the forthcoming
Eberron: Rising From the Last War volume was published, and at least one of them was done in conjunction with Crawford and Keith Baker) is going to explain that the crystal spheres remain a fundamental part of D&D's understanding of the Material Plane, then
there is ly your justification for a new volume (or "new format") of Spelljammer: many people do not know what it is and have only heard about it through second, third, and fourthand explanations. And, many people are not going to try to dig up and acquire 32 year-old publications. So, there is the justification. Yay!
Cheers and happy role-playing, friends!
dnd.wizards.com
