In case you didn't know, Dungeons & Dragons (sometimes known as D&D or DnD ) has been around since the 70s, although the current version, known as "5th Edition", was released in 2012.
Whilst it's still possible to play the older versions (and a lot of people do), the fifth edition is the most popular, mostly due to its accessibility and versatility. Sadly for veterans, however, new editions mean new rulesets, and new rulesets make a lot of settings from the older versions unplayable (at least without extensive homebrewing).
This is where the hype for Spelljammer comes from - Spelljammer had its heyday from 1989 to 1993, when D&D was running under the second edition rulesets. For almost the last decade, Fifth Edition fans have been begging for a reincarnation of the setting that they could play, and they have been doing this the only way gaming nerds know how - memes.
"Spelljammer Confirmed" memes have been around for a long time, and although Christopher Perkins did his best to assure us that the memes weren't the driving force behind the creation of Spelljammer, it's hard to deny that their prevalence didn't have some kind of influence in at least letting the team at Wizards of the Coast know how badly fans were yearning for some spacefaring content. Their wish has finally been granted (and it didn't need a 9th-level spell slot ), with Spelljammer: Adventures in Space.
Wizards have played with the form factor this time around, so instead of one long book, you get three smaller ones, alongside a DM Screen, and a map of the asteroid city, Rock of Bral. They've done this essentially so they can break it down into more digestible components, and they're confident this is a format that will appeal to DMs.
The three books are short but sweet (64 pages in length each), and comprise a Setting Book (Astral Adventures Guide), a Monster Book (Boo's Astral Menagerie), and an Adventure (Light of Xarxis). The adventure is for players of level 5 to level 8 and aims to ease players into the concept and setting, with NPCs showing players the ropes bit by bit.
In total, these books make up the 192 pages fans will be used to, however since they're separated there will be no more flipping back and forth in one book - if you're running the Adventure and you need a monster stat block, you just pull out Boo's Astral Menagerie without needing to lose your place in the Adventure book.
As always, the set comes with the Standard Cover or an Alt Cover, both of which are absolutely beautiful. This stands to reason since Spelljammer has the highest art budget of any Fifth Edition release to date.
Although Spelljammer is a classic D&D setting, it's been revamped for Fifth Edition with some new additions and concepts. The basic idea is a simple one and is something that inadvertently brings some level of clarification to the cosmology of the D&D multiverse.
If you begin on a planet, say Toril, home of the Forgotten Realms, and you jump into a Spelljammer and travel up into the skies, you'll find yourself in Wildspace - a new environment in the multiverse. If you continue on from there, Wildspace gives way to the haze of the Astral Plane (also known as the Astral Sea), and from there it's possible to enter the wildspace of any other realm, for example, Oerth or Eberron.
The wonders of Wildspace and the Astral Sea are ones of a fantasy setting, with the designers very keen to ensure that the setting is more ocean-like than space-like. This is because they wanted to ensure that D&D kept to its fantasy roots and didn't stray into the world of sci-fi, even though it's inspired by a lot of 80s Sci-Fi and fantasy films. It also carries a lot of Cosmic Horror themes, for example, the Killer Klowns from Outer Space which make an appearance in the form of Space Clowns.
This idea is sold even more convincingly with things like Gravity Planes and Air Envelopes, which apply to anything that can travel in space. A Spelljamming ship has a gravity plane, allowing the creatures on it to wander around as normal, and an Air Envelope that follows it.
The creation of a Spelljamming ship is just as fantastic - you need a Spelljammer Helm to travel, and if you don't have one you can make one using a spell. By "helm", we're talking the helm of the ship and not a helmet - it's essentially nothing more complex than a magical chair.
The core idea is that it's not science that lets creatures traverse the skies, but rather magic.
Ship-to-ship combat has been considered, but it isn't a completely key and new mechanic. Instead, things have been kept simple, with the ships acting as platforms for the encounters to take place. Ship-to-ship combat essentially looks like two groups on two islands.
Although the ships have weapons fitted to them in a lot of cases, the parties' secret weapons will always be the Barbarian and the Mage, with the main threats coming from the inhabitants of the enemy ship rather than the ship itself.
Spelljammer adds six playable races, some old and some new.
Astral Elves are elves who have left their home planet and traveled to the Astral Plane, where they no longer age. This leads to exceptionally long lives and is seemingly inspired by Spock of Star Trek fame.
For the first time, players can also play a genuine construct, the Autognome, a construct made by gnomes in their own image. They're not "living" constructs like Warforged, which apparently led to some interesting design challenges - particularly around magic and healing since many spells and effects don't actually affect true constructs.
Hadozee, monkey-like folk with flaps under their arms that let them glide around, come from a world with massive trees the size of skyscrapers. Playing as one gives you the ability to glide, save yourself from a potentially deadly fall, and manipulate things with your feet.
Giff (also known as Hippofolk) makes a return to fifth edition Spelljammer, which will likely come as no surprise to anyone given how absolutely iconic and synonymous they are with Spelljamming. They've appeared in Fifth Edition before, but they're now completely playable.
If you were to take a praying mantis, scale it up to 10 feet and give it humanlike intelligence and a spacefaring mentality, you'd basically have something called a Thri-kreen, another Spelljamming classic which appears as a playable race in the Fifth Edition iteration.
The sixth and final playable race in Spelljammer is the Plasmoid - a playable ooze. Plasmoids are a fun addition, able to absorb dyes in through their skin, leading to many brightly colored Plasmoids. Unable to hold their shape while unconscious they fall into a pool on the floor, and can alter the forms of their bodies at will, for example growing extra limbs or squeezing through small gaps.
In addition to the new races, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space also adds two new Wildspace systems never seen before - Doomspace, and Xaryxis Space. Although not much is known about them at this point, Doomspace doesn't sound like a great place to be, and Xaryxis space is likely linked to the Adventure - Light of Xaryxis.
Since it consists of many rocks floating in space, it's a very inclusive and homebrew-friendly setting. Races from all over the multiverse may gather on asteroids floating in space, and players may meet all kinds of creatures there, both exotic and familiar. If a creature can breathe without air, it can exist in the Spelljammer world, however, that even might not be necessary, with new spells giving creatures air bubbles around their heads.
Also featured is the iconic Giant Space Hamster, which is around nine feet tall and can fit a gnome in its cheek pouch. This race has a variant, which is smaller, regular-sized hamsters. Boo, whose name appears in the Monster Book, is one of these smaller variants, although it's not clear at this point whether they are all as aggressive as him.
In total there are over sixty new creatures, including cosmic horrors, lunar dragons, solar dragons, space clowns, and murder comets.
It's clear at even the quickest of glances that this rebirth of the Spelljammer setting has been a real labor of love for its creators, and I think they hope as much as the fans that they're able to do it justice, and deliver something special. No doubt fans are waiting with starry eyes for this long-awaited release.
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space releases in North America and Pacific on August 16, 2022, with the release in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa coming on September 13, 2022.
