The new spelljammer is on its way and lots of folks are very excited about it,
but also there are a lot of speculations flying around and I thought a short video clarifying
what changes have been made to the classic game setting would be some help, so here goes!
First, Spelljammer 5E aims to preserve the spirit and fun of the original setting, while at the same
time evolving and incorporating it into the modern cosmology of the Dungeons & Dragons Multiverse.
Spelljammer has always been intended to be light hearted, escapist and zany with a lot of
weird space fantasy elements. In the D&D world, it is possible
to construct magic artifacts called Spelljamming Helms, which are basically magical engines that
power the ships they are installed into, the pilot then attunes to that helm and this allows them
to sense what is going on all around the ship and to levitate and fly the vessel beyond the planet.
In the previous spelljammer setting, this was much more involved and taxing on the pilot,
where they had to spend spell slots to fuel the helm engine, but, not any more.
Another major change is the nature of space close to star systems and what
happens when your vessel travels to the very edge of those systems and beyond.
Previously, the interplanetary space, called Wildspace, was much more like Star Wars space..
you may notice in star wars, sound travels through space, and big capital ships can be heard arriving
out of hyperjumps outside a planets atmosphere, even from the surface of that planet. Some sort
of special medium therefore exists in that galaxy far far way that is very different from the hard
vacuum of space around our planet, so, this is fantasy space, this is not science fiction,
its science fantasy, its not based on reality as we know it. The wildspace rules used to include a
lot of stuff about a bubble of atmosphere that objects sort of drag into wildspace with them,
but in new Spelljammer, all the helms provide basic life support for the vessel and we don't
have to concern ourselves much with the boring prospect of the crew of adventurers running out
of air and dying out in space... because that just sucks, nobody wants to end a character like that.
The exact details on ship speeds and navigation and combat are not revealed to us just yet,
but I imagine they will be streamlined, focused on tactical miniature play with
the mass of objects having a limiting factor on how fast other objects can travel around
or past them. Again, this is one of the aspects of hyperspace travel in Star Wars,
flying into a star at hyperspeeds is really not a great idea. Its also an excuse for
the Dungeon Master to throw an encounter location into a journey because the ship
will drop out of high speed when it gets too close to any massive objects in it's path.
There are lots of different types of helm in the original game setting, and we may see some
of them in the new spelljammer, I predict this will include the Spelljamming helm,
the dwarven citadel, the mindflayer series helm and perhaps even the specially evolved
Spelljamming Beholder pilots. We shall see. I do wonder if they will include the helms
that are powered by sacrificing magical items, or draining the life force from living beings.
There are no more crystal spheres and there is no more Phlogiston gas that separates and yet
connects all the star systems together, instead, at the edge of wildspace, everything becomes
silvery and spectral and the vessel passes into the Astral Plane, within the astral plane there
is the Astral sea, there is subjective gravity and you don't have to worry about getting hungry,
thirsty, running out of air or freezing to death, in fact in the astral plane, you don't even age.
You will find there are countless star systems, its just a matter of passing through the astral
sea and navigating to the right place, because star systems do move around in the astral flow,
some are fairly close, forming navigation networks I believe, and some are relatively far away.
A ship approaches a star system and hey it might look like a stupendously huge crystal sphere
from the astral side of things, but there is no hard barrier, again, a ship just flies through
and into some other star system's wild space. It may be that the ships have a means to accelerate
enormously within the astral plane, but it's more likely that it's just a matter of navigating and
ignoring a lot of the vast nothingness, so star systems are effectively much closer together in
game terms. The astral plane is also packed with a lot of pre-existing things such as dead gods,
Githyanki raiders and red dragons, astral dreadnoughts and every wildspace will have its own
unique blend of flora, fauna and cosmic features. Planets can be very oddball in traditional
spelljammer, and there is a lot of variation, such as some star systems where the star and
planets orbit around a non-central axis or the whole space is solid aside from planet-sized
caverns connected by enormous tunnels, some stars can be titanic glowing crystals,
others moons that are covered in portals to the heart of the elemental plane of fire.
We have a number of reintroduced species such as the hippo-like Giff, the insectoid Thri-kreen
which are actually based on the Vrusk race from the old Star Frontiers campaign setting, but
effectively the same as the Thri-kreen from the world of Athas because they just repurposed that
race for the Dark Sun campaign setting, we have some astral elves, there's an amoeboid ooze race
called the plasmoids, these are based on the old Dralasite race from Star Frontiers
but are much more humanoid looking in this iteration and look pretty cool to play, oh and
the gliding ape-like race called the hadozee which are the Yazirian from Star Frontiers,
except they may have gotten rid of their sensitivity to bright light with the Hadozee.
I have not seen any sign of the Scro space orcs but there is already a 10 monster instalment
of the new monster compendium which has a nice mix of different spelljammer critters,
including the reworked Clockwork horror, now more like a Stargate SG-1 Replicant
but with the attitude of a Dalek from Dr Who. The product is initially available as a box set
with three, compact 64-page hardcover books contained in a slipcase, a DM screen and
double-sided map are also included, one side of the map is the Rock of Bral, an asteroid
port from the original spelljammer, the other side is, I suspect, an empty
star space for staging encounters out in the ether. No dice set with this one, but that's fine,
I have so many dice I suspect I could fill a small ball pit with them, I can be fairly
confident that the D&D Beyond website will be selling special dice sets, character sheets and
other graphic resources for the setting though. This endeavour has been the baby of Chris Perkins
and Ray Winager during the covid lockdown and I am looking forward to the episodic adventure path
included in the book set. So, you have a players and DM's book titled 'Astral Adventurer's Guide'
with all the stuff about the setting and the new races, a book with lots of monsters,
called 'Boo's Astral Menagerie' and the adventure book titled 'Light of Xaryxis', because light of
Susan and Light of Gary were already taken. Oh, I almost forgot, there is also a construct race
called the Autognomes, which are directly based on the Mechanons from Star Frontiers.
These books will most likely be available for individual purchase as digital content via D&D
Beyond in the future, perhaps even as print copies, details yet to be confirmed, also,
it looks like Wizards of the Coast is being a little coy about future resources and releases in
the spelljammer setting because they are not sure exactly how popular the box set is going to be.
I think it's going to be well received and achieve excellent sales, as it's certainly
what a lot of players wanted to see, it's what they have been asking for quite some time.
My name is AJ Pickett, I make videos about roleplaying game lore and monster ecologies,
as always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.