With Spelljammer Confirmed, Another Look at the Travelers of the Multiverse

I've had Spelljammer on the brain.

It's crazy, but the Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana, which was our first very clear hint that we'd be getting a 5th Edition Spelljammer release, came out all the way back in October - we're closer now to the actual release than that UA was to the announcement.

And now, I'm basically just waffling on whether I want to switch my order from the alternate cover version of the books to the standard version (I think I like the cover art better on that one - but I've often found the soft-finish books hold up better - my local store doesn't charge more for the alternative, so I've just got to make up my mind some time in the next four months).

My Sunday group has been playing a Spelljammer campaign, using lore from the older version of the setting with anticipated updates coming when the new books come out. It's been slow-going - we've only had maybe four sessions in possibly as many months - hoping this gets ramped up with some real-life issues resolved. Anyway, two of our players are playing as Astral Elves while one of us is playing a Plasmoid (with a gnome and myself as a human filling out the team).

On a conceptual level, humanoid races in fantasy and alien species in sci fi often fill the same roles. I mean, you look at the people in Star Trek (particularly the Next Generation era) and you can very clearly draw parallels between Vulcans and High Elves, Romulans and Dark Elves, Klingons and Orcs (indeed, I think Next Gen Klingons were a huge inspiration for the more nuanced, not-automatically-evil orcs we got in franchises like Warcraft,) and you've even got the Borg as a kind of sci-fi version of the undead - a cybernetic zombie plague.

I think that you could easily imagine the Giff or the Hadozee in any other D&D setting, but things like the Autognome, the Thri-kreen, and particularly the Plasmoid really feel like they're stretching out into that "anything goes" world of "cantina" sci fi.

So, I want to look at these playable races from both a flavor and mechanical perspective. We've got stuff that's already six months old, and has probably been iterated upon significantly, so I don't really want to get deep into mechanics that might change. We're going to approach these more on a kind of philosophical level.

Astral Elves:

I don't know what the ultimate plan for sub-races is going to be moving forward in 5th Edition, or perhaps more accurately 5.5/6th Edition. On one hand, given that they're coming out before the 2024 Player's Handbook, you'd need to basically reprint the Elf itself to then apply this as a sub-race, and much as we saw in Monsters of the Multiverse, they're just making these sub-races into full races of their own, though perhaps with a creature type tag. I do wonder if they're just going to make everything independent, given that the Githzerai and Githyanki were published as full races in MotM.

In the UA, you get a bonus cantrip (dancing lights, light, or sacred flame,) which is fine, and Radiant Soul, which has you actually heal for a bit on a successful death save once per day - I'm trying to remember if our cleric forgot to use that or just failed on all their death saves.

Of all the races here, though, this one feels the least exciting on a conceptual level. Elves are everywhere, and there's not a ton that makes these folks feel different than other elves, except that they can be even older. Obviously, especially if Spelljammer is developing the Astral Plane as a core part of the setting, there will be some fleshing out of that plane, but I feel like there's a lot more that's interesting about the Githyanki if I want to play a native to the Astral Plane.

Autognome:

I'm a little heartbroken that they didn't make Warforged a setting-agnostic race in Monsters of the Multiverse. What I find sort of amazing about the Autognome is the commitment (at least in UA) to something the Warforged get around - namely, that the race is a construct.

In the UA for the gothic lineages that were eventually published in Van Richten's, they played with the idea of making an undead or construct playable race, but they had to sort of jump through hoops and use unintuitive rules to allow healing spells to work on them. Here, though, they have a different way of dealing with that. Autognomes are constructs, but they can be affected by Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and Spare the Dying.

It's an interesting kludge, but I also think that, especially at higher levels of play, this isn't going to cut it. A blanket "spells that restore hit points that would normally not affect constructs nevertheless do affect you" would probably be a better solution.

On a philosophical level, though, what does it mean for a character to be a construct? Are constructs inherently, for example, soulless? Warforged in Eberron explicitly have souls just like any other humanoid race - and they are considered a humanoid race even though they're made of inorganic material (well, also sometimes wood and leather). I wonder if this will make the cut in the final version of the books.

While I might like a science-fantasy setting to more generally have a "robot" playable race, these feel very much in keeping especially with the idea of gnomes as the culture built most around mechanical tinkering.

Giff:

On a mechanical level, there's just not enough here - especially given that one of its two features (well, three given the swimming speed - which can be very important in some situations) only works for melee combatants - it does help on melee spell attacks, but much like how when the air force is using rifles, things have gone seriously wrong, when my wizard is in melee, things are not going great.

What I want to know more about is their culture. As presented in Mordenkainen's (actually both books, come to think of it) the Giff have that sort of "gentleman soldier" vibe like a 19th Century British explorer in a pith helmet. I think they're probably going to flesh out and nuance that a bit (maybe pull back on the colonialist imagery,) which we got a little hint of in the Spelljammer presentation when Chris Perkins referred to them as a people "looking for home in all the wrong places."

Fundamentally, they're hippo people, which is great. I think the association with firearms and explosives is probably going to depend on how much the setting book emphasizes those elements.

Hadozee:

So, after the Astral Elf, this is the one that inspires me the least, but I kind of feel like that means that I will find myself thinking about them a lot later down the line and decide that I must make a Hadozee character. There's nothing that's screaming sci fi over fantasy with this race, but I suppose there is some bit of the old "planetary romance" genre in their design.

The ability to both climb and glide actually sets up some very fun scenarios.

Plasmoid:

The real break-out star here, these are, I think, straight-up, the weirdest playable race in all of 5th Edition, and that weirdness really fits in with the gonzo sci-fi world that Spelljammer represents.

The Amorphous trait occupies a central place in my mind, and the difficulties of playing a character who isn't wearing or carrying anything - I think basically a Monk is the only such character who would be fully effective (our Rogue is going to go Soulknife so that they're always armed). Still, even if you want to play a heavily-armored character, there's tons here, mechanically, that you can make use of.

In our game, we're treating the plasmoid character as something of an anomaly - they're very friendly, and most of the player characters (mine especially) have an established friendship with them (my artificer constructed a sort of bowl/bucket for them to sleep in). But I'm curious to see what sort of society and civilization they might have.

Thri-Kreen:

Man, I feel like the Thri-Kreen are just beaten out for weirdest alien by the Plasmoids, and that's a shame given how cool the Thri-Kreen are.

Indeed, though they were established in more "fantasy" settings, the idea of bug-people feels like a very sci-fi trope. Mechanically, like the Plasmoid, these have a lot going for them - for one thing, you could be both a dual-wielder and use a shield, or you could be a very effective martial/melee hybrid, able to use your main hands for weapons and your secondary hands for somatic spell components.

Thri-Kreen Telepathy is also fantastic, though I'd like to see if we can get some clarification as to whether this is two-way telepathy or more like the Great Old One's Awakened Mind.

Interestingly, like the Autognome and Plasmoid, at least in the UA, the Thri-kreen is neither humanoid nor fey (the two creature types used by established playable races) and is listed as a monstrosity - which is especially weird given that they're humanoids in the Monster Manual (where Centaurs are monstrosities but the playable race is fey.) Like Oozes, aside from immunity to "X person" spells like Charm Person, Monstrosities don't really carry a ton of mechanical baggage, so I think there's plenty of room for making playable races these other creature types. (Really, undead and constructs are the ones that have the big issue re: healing spells).

I hope that we're going to see a lot of players pick these weird guys, as I think they're quite cool.

Gleaned Details About Spelljammer 5E

 So, what is "space" in D&D?

Traditionally, Spelljammer in D&D has, despite being otherworldly and strange, still taken place entirely in the Prime Material Plane. The crystal spheres and phlogiston (the region between the spheres that contain the conventional settings and their solar system-like nearby planets) were basically the structure of the Prime Material Plane. Some settings, like Dark Sun's Athas, were sort of locked away - their crystal spheres impenetrable to preserve the bleak "trapped" feeling of such a rough world (otherwise one would assume most people from Athas would do whatever they could to just leave).

The language WotC has been using to describe Spelljammer with the upcoming box set, however, seems to imply that big changes are coming to the way that the setting works, and that a good portion of it will take place within the Astral Plane.

The Astral Plane is one of the "weird" planes in D&D. It's a "transitive plane." While the "Great Wheel" cosmology kind of treats the outer planes like a big cookie, with the Outlands at its core and the other outer planes forming the rim, they're also kind of afloat in the Astral Plane.

The Astral Plane is a realm beyond time - the Githyanki, who make it their home, have to send their young to the Prime Material just in order to let them mature to adulthood. It's also a place where gods go when they die - their corpses floating as decaying titans on the endless expanse.

Travel to the various Outer Planes is potentially easy in the Astral Plane, as there are portals adrift there.

Given this, Spelljammer is actually positioning itself to be an even broader setting than it previously was. As before, you can sail your spelljammer between prime material worlds like Toril or Krynn, but if you're sailing into the Astral Plane, that means you could technically take a portal and wind up flying around Mount Celestial or the Nine Hells.

This also seems to imply that travel between worlds of the Prime Material will also involve the Astral Plane, which sort of makes the Prime Material into less of one contiguous realm and more a kind of scattering of plane-particles. And that, honestly, feels like it could tie into the mythos of the "First World" mentioned in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.

"Astral" of course means a connection to stars, so I sort of wonder if Spelljammer is going to present Wildspace as "nearby space" and the Astral Plane as the weird "outer space" of aliens and odd monsters. Certainly the Star Lancer shown in the Monstrous Compendium is an Astral Plane denizen, but I wonder if the kind of asteroid fields where we might encounter an Asteroid Spider would be in Wildspace or in the Astral Plane.

Revised Heroes of Krynn UA

 While the cat wasn't ever quite stuck in that bag in the first place (it's hard to misidentify hints coming from something called "Heroes of Krynn" if you know just a little about the Dragonlance setting,) the cat is now completely out of the bag and flying around on a Spelljammer with D&D Direct's confirmation that a Dragonlance product - a kind of hybrid D&D campaign with a war-game component - is going to be coming out some time this year (or, I'd hazard, some time next year).

Now, there's a second version of the "Heroes of Krynn" UA for us to pore over.

Anyway, Jeremy Crawford sat down with Todd Kenreck to talk about this second iteration of the UA. Notably, the Moon Sorcerer is something they feel is good enough to progress in development, so no fear if you liked that and were worried that it didn't show up in this 2.0 showing - the Moon Sorcerer is more or less confirmed at this point.

But, the main thing they were playing with is the backgrounds: Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery. Essentially, these backgrounds came with extra, free feats. The new version, however, now establishes that for anyone in this campaign, you'll get a curated list of feats that you get at levels 1 and 4. Essentially, these backgrounds funnel you into certain feat choices, but if you pick any other backgrounds, you won't be left behind power-wise.

It's not the full feat list, but while Knights of Solamnia get the Squire of Solamnia feat at level 1 and Mages of High Sorcery get the Initiate of High Sorcery feat, any other backgrounds get to choose from the following list:

Divinely Favored (found in the UA), Skilled, or Tough.

Divinely Favored gives you a cleric cantrip and both Augury and a 1st level spell from a class list based on the deity that favors you - clerics for good gods, druids for neutral ones, and warlocks for evil ones. You also get to use a holy symbol as a spell focus for these.

So, basically, these are all relatively straightforward feats that don't add too much complexity to the character, and I think are solid level 1 choices.

At level 4, the list expands, granting the following:

Adept of the Black Robes, Adept of the Red Robes, Adept of the White Robes, Alert, Knight of the Crown, Knight of the Rose, Knight of the Sword, Mobile, Sentinel, and Warcaster.

The various Adept and Knight ones are all somewhat complex and I don't really have the time to write them all out here, but obviously these start to get a bit more advanced.

So, regardless of what this means for Dragonlance - other than that characters in this setting will be significantly more powerful - I do sort of wonder about the future of feats in D&D, especially regarding the 2024 5.5/6th Edition that will be coming out.

Most classes only allow a total of 5 ASIs over the course of a character's journey from 1-20. Aside from variant humans and custom lineages, feats are always competing with ASIs, and while I think a lot of the time those feats can be a better choice, it can make character building agonizing.

Looking at Starfinder - the most D&D-like RPG I've read the rulebook for - that game treats feats as a fundamental part of how you build your character. Honestly, I think it maybe overdoes it - and it turns a lot of things that could just be class features into feats (there's no "extra attack" because Starfinder does its action economy a bit differently, but imagine if Extra Attack was a feat that all Barbarians, Fighters, Rangers, Monks, and Paladins automatically got at level 5).

Still, I do sometimes think it would be fun if feats weren't competing as much with ASIs, and I wonder if this might model a way to do that moving forward.

We'll see.

How Important is Godrick in Elden Ring?

 Godrick the Grafted serves as the first "Shardbearer" boss in Elden Ring. While not exclusively, the Shardbearers are kind of the "key" bosses to the game, most of them demigods, and tend to come at the end of one of the game's "legacy dungeons."

As the first, we spend a lot of the game's earliest parts seeing him as a sort of primary antagonist, but when he falls, most people talk about him in a dismissive, disrespectful way. He is, after all, the "distant relation," and we're given to understand that his strength was almost entirely due to the grafting of others' limbs onto his own body. When we kill him, his own body - really just a head and a torso - is miniscule (well, just kind of "normal human" sized).

It also looks like Godrick didn't really enjoy any success in the Shattering War - but not for lack of effort. He besieged Leyndell and we see evidence of his forces at work on Mt. Gelmir and in Liurnia. Indeed, Godrick's army might even be the largest one we encounter, but this seems to be a case of quantity over quality.

Unlike the other demigod bosses we fight, who are all the children of either Marika or Radagon (to the extent that there's a difference,) Godrick appears to be descended somewhat distantly from Godfrey, aka Horah Loux, who had been Marika's Elden Lord prior to Radagon (it's not clear to me if that role involved being quite as close as Radagon and Marika were).

Stormveil seems to have been conquered in the distant past by Godfrey, and Godrick clearly traces his legitimacy to his relation to Godfrey. In the great grafting hall, where the castle's Grafted Scion lurks, we see a massive portrait of Godfrey.

Clearly, Nepheli is also some relative of Godfrey, given that her last name is also Loux, and if we complete her questline (which I haven't actually done yet) she becomes the ruler of Stormveil Castle. I even wonder if the "conquest" of Stormveil by Godfrey might have been a little more metaphorical - Godfrey took that name when he was "civilized" in his marriage to Marika, having been Horah Loux beforehand. Might this conquest actually simply been his one persona replacing his old one?

(Also, I feel it important to point out that Godfrey, with his massive strength and lion spirit hanging over him like a cloak is a clear reference to Herakles/Hercules, the greatest of the Greek heroes who is usually depicted with the hide of the Nemean Lion on his back. Radagon, by contrast, shares visual aspects of Thor, like the red hair and hammer weapon. It seems that part of the story of Elden Ring involves an older, Greco-Roman mythological world being replaced with a newer, northern-European Norse mythos. Not sure what it means, but just throwing it out there).

Regardless of the history of Stormveil Castle's owners, Godrick seems to be a pretender. But let's also look at a few other elements.

First off, the grafting he does is, in true From Soft fashion, horrific and creepy. But I also think it's notable that, while grafting human limbs is pretty rare (typically just used to replace amputated limbs,) the process is actually quite common in tree husbandry - plants are very often grafted to one another. And indeed, Godrick's form, with all the arms coming off of his massive shoulders, is somewhat reminiscent of a tree covered in branches.

Also, Godrick's Great Rune is the very center of the Elden Ring - a piece that one would think is imbued with some special prominence among them. Now, it could simply be that this was Godfrey's and that it was passed on to Godrick through his family line, or that Godrick somehow stole the rune, having closer access to it.

Ok, now let's take things a step farther: Marika's and Radagon's children all seem to be tainted in some way. Marika's children with Godfrey are, I believe, Godwyn, Margit and Mohg. The M twins were born as "omens," those ogre-like creatures with weird horns growing out of them. Margit is actually quite noble, if a bit haughty toward us, while Mohg is a classically diabolic evil who is all about blood (and seems to be dedicated to a different Outer God). Godwyn appears to have been kind of universally beloved, but his soul was slain and now his bloated body seems to be the source of living death - a kind of "hollow undeath." Radagon's children with Renalla are Ranni, Rykard, and Radahn. Radagon himself is likely descended from the Fire Giants, given his red hair (which kind of mashes up Thor and Loki, the latter of whom is actually a frost giant adopted into the Aesir family) and thus likely carry some of the Fell God's essence in them. Marika and Radagon's children (which... don't want to think about how that worked - unless it was before the two shared a body) are Malenia and Miquella, the first of whom is a vessel of the Scarlet Rot and the latter of whom has been perpetually stuck in a child's body (which might have died in that weird sphere where Mohg is summoned).

Anyway, is it possible that Godrick is actually a descendant of Godfrey, but not Marika? (He is a "distant relation," after all, and thus might even just be a cousin or great nephew or something). Wouldn't it be interesting if Godrick is actually the only surviving would-be lord who is not tainted by Marika or Radagon?

In our quest to find Godwyn's body, we actually find a huge, distorted head in the depths of Stormveil Castle - which is odd. What connection does he have to Stormveil? It's also clearly not his "real" head, as that is, theoretically, found in the roots of the Erdtree.

Though now he's a source of Deathroot and the living death that seems to fly in the face of the Golden Order, Godwyn also seemed to be kind of "pure," at least before then. Might Godrick have had some kind of kinship with Godwyn?

We're still just scratching the tip of the iceberg on the lore of this game.

Spelljammer's Spelljammers Will Be The Key

Spelljammer seems really freaking cool, and I love the monsters we've gotten in the first volume of the "Monstrous Compendium," suggesting we're getting a lot of very freaky aliens to encounter in our journeys across the stars.

One thing I noted when looking through these monsters is that some are described as profoundly huge - a gargantuan creature is anything that fits in a 20x20 foot space on a battle map, but it can be much larger than that as well. The Tarrasque, for instance, is described as 70 feet from head to tail.

And the three gargantuan creatures in the Monstrous Compendium are described as being much bigger than 20x20. The Asteroid Spider, for example, has a 30-foot diameter body and 30-foot legs, meaning that, with legs spread out, it could be 90 feet wide.

Thus, it seems pretty clear to me that some of these monsters are meant to be threats not just to a party of adventurers, but to an entire spelljamming ship.

This makes me wonder about how the game is going to handle ship combat. Clearly, part of the fantasy of Spelljammer is to have players fight in starship battles against other ships and giant space monsters.

But I think you always run the risk in such an endeavor of alienating players if the rules for ship combat are too different. Ideally, combat on or off their ship should feel like the same kind of gameplay, only perhaps giving more options when on your ship (such as firing ship-mounted weapons) and raising the stakes (you have to protect the terrain you're standing on, which is your ship).

I'm really hoping we can get a preview of some of the mechanics of ship mechanics, because they seem so central to Spelljammer as a campaign setting.

I'll admit this is fairly conservative, but the way I'd probably go about this is to have whoever in the party is attuned to the spelljamming helm (which seems to be treated like a magic item) will control the ship if they stay in the pilot's position. The rest of the party should be able to act as normal, fighting on the deck of the ship, but perhaps if the ship has things like cannons or other weapons, they might be able to use their action to fire that weapon if they get to its location on the deck.

Thematically, I think it makes perfect sense for ranged characters in particular to be able to use their normal abilities on the ship's deck (which has its own air pocket and gravity well, so it should work just like the deck of a normal ship, as seen in the announcement trailer). Indeed, the image I'm getting right now is of an Artillerist Artificer setting up their Eldritch Cannon(s) and firing a barrage at some monstrous Yggdrasti or the like.

But the ship, presumably, could have its own weapons that might be more effective against other ships or enormous targets. Or perhaps they're just there to give melee-based characters something to do in a naval engagement.

Part of the promise of Spelljammer is, of course, the opportunity to go to strange and alien places (and also to hop between D&D settings,) but I think that getting the feeling for the ships right will be really important.

I cannot wait to get my hands on these books.

Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1

 While we have to wait until August to officially get our Spelljammer book set, today a digital release of the Monstrous Compendium, available to anyone with a Wizards or DnDBeyond account (which are both free to make,) came out with 10 Spelljammer-appropriate monsters, ranging in CR from 1/8 to 16.

Wildspace seems like it's a dangerous place, and the monsters here are not messing around. Let's get into them.

I'm going to change the order here to build up to the really crazy stuff, so we'll start with the lowest-CR monsters.

Gadabout, CR 1/8:

This is an unaligned plant creature that is honestly closer to a magic item than a creature, though it does have a stat block. Used primarily by the elves, Gadabouts are plants that can attach themselves to a humanoid and function essentially as a space suit. They create a bubble of air around the creature's head and also provide nourishing leaves that can keep a creature fed in space. It can also propel them using butterfly-like leaf-wings.

Goon Balloon, CR 1/8:

So, if you ever actually read H. P. Lovecraft, his monsters sometimes come off less as pure gooey, tentacled horror and sometimes fall a bit more into the 50s B-movie monster vibe (which were likely inspired by Lovecraft, after all). The Goon Balloon fits right in with those "scary" creatures like the Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith that... well, maybe seem a little more Jim Henson than Rob Bottin. Anyway, these are evil beach balls with bird-like legs and eyes covering their surface. They're more mischievously meanspirited than profoundly evil, but they can both bounce like a beach ball as a bonus action and also have vulnerability to piercing damage, popping and a poisonous explosion when killed.

Clockwork Horror, CR 2:

One of the classic concepts of Sci Fi is robots run amok, and in this case, these constructs are dedicated to nothing but building more of themselves, and will slash anyone who gets in their way with their dual buzz saws. Most worrying, they can take over the Spelljamming Helm of your ship. The art on this one I think is really fantastic, feeling both high-tech and also fantastical.

Star Lancer, CR 2:

So, we're not just going to be in Wildspace in Spelljammer adventures, but also the Astral Plane (which I gather might be taking the place of the Phlogiston in 5th Edition - that's not confirmed, mind you). And the Astral Plane has the bodies of dead gods floating in them. Some of the souls of people who worshipped those deities become these odd four-winged shark-like celestials, and the Githyanki have made an effort to ally with them and use them as mounts. Most excitingly (and terrifying for anyone fearing Githyanki raids) is that Star Lancers can cloak themselves and their riders, becoming invisible to allow them to strike from out of nowhere.

Puppeteer Parasites, CR 3:

Now we're getting into that real cosmic horror dread. These are basically brain slugs - they attach to a humanoid creature and can either drain the victim or cast Suggestion on their host.

Yggdrasti, CR 7:

These gargantuan plant monsters are broken-off branches of Yggdrasil, the world tree. They look like gnarled, twisted dead trees covered with barnacles. Yggdrasti will attack pretty much any other living thing, but it can also hide in plain sight as a tree if it buries its roots in soil. But the massive creature is also capable of spaceflight, and has its own gravity plane and air pocket, along with hollows where hitchhikers can stay while traveling across wildspace.

Fractine, CR 9:

So, I didn't immediately guess the pop culture reference, but these are essentially constructs that act similarly to the Phantom Zone portals from Superman II. Appearing as Large 2-dimensional mirrored surfaces, these can capture creatures small enough to fit within them, which are displayed on their surface. Many damage types will split the Fractine into shards, which are smaller versions of the same basic monster, but this also will free any monster trapped within it. As a mirror, they also have the ability to reflect damage.

Asteroid Spider, CR 15:

Ok, warning to all the arachnophobes out there, this one might be a bit much for you. Imagine you're traveling through an asteroid field, and you pass one big rock about 30 feet in diameter. And then it unfolds eight 30-foot long spider legs and starts shooting webs at your ship, revealing it's actually a spider that disguises itself as a crater-pockmarked rock. Oh yeah, and its webs? They can shut down a Spelljamming Helm.

Eldritch Lich, CR 15:

So, let's say a wizard or warlock starts studying the forbidden magic of the Great Old Ones, and decides that they've figured out a shortcut to the eternal unlife of lichdom. All they need to do is let this eldritch abomination implant a tentacled parasite into their body. The parasite can now infect the lich's foes with a poison that can potentially transform them into a Gibbering Mouther, and the lich is resurrected in the Far Realm should it ever be destroyed (though if you interfere with that process by killing the lich in a Magic Circle, well, the resurrection isn't going to look so pretty, as they come back as an Otyguh. The Eldritch Lich, also, to be clear, puts out a TON of damage - on average if everything hits, you're looking at 100 damage per round.

Nightmare Beast, CR 16

Technically a monstrosity, this massive, 40-foot-long quadruped are living siege engines, and beyond their powerful claws and tusks, they can also disintegrate targets with their gaze.

So, there you have it. I highly recommend checking out the Monstrous Compendium. These are some very cool monsters, and I cannot wait to see what we get in the Spelljammer box set. Just four months, right?

Spelljammer, Dragonlance Officially Confirmed in Today's D&D Direct

 Spelljammer Confirmed! For real!

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is going to come out in August of this year. Interestingly, it will be three books in a slipcase.

The Astral Adventurer's Guide will be for DMs and players, with playable races (as seen in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA - all of them made it in) along with magic items, spells, as well as deck plans for different kinds of ships to sail the stars on.

Boo's Astral Menagerie is the monster book, with 60+ space-based monsters. Examples cited were space clowns, vampirates (vampire pirates, natch), as well as solar and lunar dragons.

Finally, Light of Xaryxis is an adventure book set in the Astral Plane.

Interestingly, the mention of the Astral Plane makes me think they might have changed up the general setting for Spelljammer. Each of these books is pretty short, only 64 pages each, which actually means that in total, this will probably be one of the shorter campaign setting sourcebooks. But I'm still very excited to pick it up.

Now, we got far fewer details about Dragonlance - it was the stream's kind of "parting shot." The trailer, narrated by Shoreh Aghdashloo (whose voice is always a pleasure to just listen to) depicts a war-torn world in which haggard heroes fight back against an endless tide of evil. So, honestly, not exactly the vibe I always assumed for Dragonlance - a bit darker and grittier.

Unlike Spelljammer, we didn't get a deep dive into the nature of the product, though it looks like it might be another multi-book slip case.

Anyway, there were some other announcements, but those were the ones I felt were the most important.