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!

 

[michaeljpastor]

I don't really understand this comment?

In retrospect it neither do i. Just ignore it LOL

 

[michaeljpastor]

See, I view both Settings as ends rather than means: Spelljammer us for swashbuckling Space Adventure, Planescape is for Weird Urban Adventure. And the distinction is maintained, even if they are made compatible.

Our group never went to sigil I think except for our tavern group meeting in the first session. We spent all of our time in the outlands

 

[Faolyn]

If you want a taste of what Spelljammer in 5e will look like, check out their free spelljammer monster PDF that they released today. That preview alone is enough to sell me on the book. I don't care if it's shorter and more expensive than I would have preferred, the art and monster design in this PDF is amazing, and it will be well-worth buying for me just for the space combat, spelljammer races and monsters, and vehicle rules.

Ooh, monsters.

Huh. Asteroid spiders went from Int 1 animals to evil Int 17 monsters. I'm not sure I like that change. But I do like their ability to snare ships and power them down.

I imagine that the main book will have the rest of the clockwork horrors.

I'm surprised that fractines and gadabouts are still monsters and not hazards and objects.

Nightmare beasts should've had lair actions and regional effects.

Does the puppeteer parasite give anyone else weird Operation! Annihilate! vibes?

I kind of love the star lancers.

 

[michaeljpastor]

That wouldn't surprise me. If they're calling it the Astral Sea, rather than Astral Plane, it sort of implies that the other planes are "shores" that can be sailed to.

To me, they're saying that the Astral Sea is on the Astral Plane. It's like the phlogiston that flows from Crystal sphere to Crystal sphere.

 

[Maxperson]

To me, they're saying that the Astral Sea is on the Astral Plane. It's like the phlogiston that flows from Crystal sphere to Crystal sphere.

I don't think there's a difference. I think Astral Sea and Astral Plane are synonymous with one another. Even going back to 1e and 2e, the Gith sailed the Astral.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Two birds with one stone - Psionics for all of D&D is introduced and codified because of Dark Sun.

Would be great. All I'm saying is that until we start seeing some UA implying they're bulking up the psionic options, I'm tempering my expectations.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I don't think there's a difference. I think Astral Sea and Astral Plane are synonymous with one another. Even going back to 1e and 2e, the Gith sailed the Astral.

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.

 

[Faolyn]

I thought Ravenloft was great. I don't know exactly what the setting was like in previous editions, but from what I've heard, the idea of a "Core" is dumb anyways. The book is supposed to be a tool to running horror adventures in D&D, and from my experience, it does that really well.

It wasn't dumb. It was a continent. No different than in any other gaming setting. However, the problem is that having a bunch of countries right next to each other (as per the norm) and having a bunch of normal people around who don't want to live terrible lives full of fear and horror means that many of those people will end up working to make things better. Whether they do that out of the goodness of their hearts or because having relative peace makes for more efficient trading and better ways to earn money... well, that's not really important. It also leads to people (like Van Richten, the Foxgrove-Weathermay twins, and "S") being able to study the world and learn about the horrors that live within it. And knowledge overcomes fear. In both cases, it means that ordinary people would end up being able to, in effect, overcome the Dark Powers by making the world more normal.

Breaking it up into individual islands means that there's far less of a way for any of that to happen. I prefer it this way. It's easy to come up with Mistways that allow for some level of travel and trade between domains, but because these are paths through the Mists and not actual roads that are patrolled and maintained, it's also easier to have those Mistways go where they aren't supposed to.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It wasn't dumb. It was a continent. No different than in any other gaming setting. However, the problem is that having a bunch of countries right next to each other (as per the norm) and having a bunch of normal people around who don't want to live terrible lives full of fear and horror means that many of those people will end up working to make things better. Whether they do that out of the goodness of their hearts or because having relative peace makes for more efficient trading and better ways to earn money... well, that's not really important. It also leads to people (like Van Richten, the Foxgrove-Weathermay twins, and "S") being able to study the world and learn about the horrors that live within it. And knowledge overcomes fear. In both cases, it means that ordinary people would end up being able to, in effect, overcome the Dark Powers by making the world more normal.

Breaking it up into individual islands means that there's far less of a way for any of that to happen. I prefer it this way. It's easy to come up with Mistways that allow for some level of travel and trade between domains, but because these are paths through the Mists and not actual roads that are patrolled and maintained, it's also easier to have those Mistways go where they aren't supposed to.

That's . . . exactly what I meant. The concept was only dumb for the main purpose of the setting (being a horror setting). The idea that the Dark Powers would put the different Domains of Dread so close to each other that they were literally touching and people could fairly easily transverse between them had the opposite effect that the setting was supposed to serve.

 

[Faolyn]

That's . . . exactly what I meant. The concept was only dumb for the main purpose of the setting (being a horror setting). The idea that the Dark Powers would put the different Domains of Dread so close to each other that they were literally touching and people could fairly easily transverse between them had the opposite effect that the setting was supposed to serve.

It didn't start out that way, though. It became more like a normal world once people started thinking about it like that.