The much-anticipated Spelljammer announcement has flown in from Wildspace! This new collection, titled Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, will contain three books and will be available on August 16th, 2022. If you're looking for a taste of Spelljammer before then, the prequel adventure series, Spelljammer Academy, will be available at no cost to all D&D Beyond users until the book's release.
The contents of the Spelljammer: Adventures in Space collection will include:
- Astral Adventurer’s Guide will give players and Dungeon Masters everything they need to use the Astral Plane as a campaign setting. This includes backgrounds and races for player characters, spells, magic items, information on spelljamming ships, and more!
- Boo’s Astral Menagerie provides Dungeon Masters a bestiary of over 60 spelljamming friends and foes, including space clowns, “vampirates,” murder comets, giant space hamsters, solar and lunar dragons, and much more!
- Light of Xaryxis contains an adventure designed for characters of levels 5–8 that will allow Dungeon Masters to take their players into the realm of the Astral Plane and beyond!
What Is Spelljammer?
Spelljammer is a setting that has garnered a lot of hype over the years. It was initially introduced as a campaign setting in the second edition of D&D, where it got a name for itself as a fun, quirky, and downright bizarre sci-fi/fantasy crossover.
There hasn’t been any official content released for the Spelljammer setting in the third and fourth editions of D&D, so this announcement is huge because it means that the current generation of D&D players will get to take their adventures into the beloved realm of Wildspace.
One of the biggest draws for Spelljammer is its unique and accessible take on interstellar travel. Adventurers seeking treasures and glory in Wildspace use “spelljamming” vessels—which closely resemble nautical ships—to set sail out of their planet’s atmosphere and across the Astral Sea. This open-air approach is certainly an interesting take on spacefaring vehicles but allows for magnificent views, interesting mechanics, and the potential for swashbuckling battles against space pirates.
Speaking of space pirates, Spelljammer is also known for its colorful cast of creatures that you’ll meet in your adventures across the cosmos. We’ve seen a number of these creatures teased in the upcoming Spelljammer: Adventures in Space collection, like the giant space hamsters.
Play With Spelljammer Creatures Today!
You can access 10 new Spelljammer monsters today by checking out Monstrous Compendium Volume One: Spelljammer Creatures, which is now available on D&D Beyond! This compendium contains five new and five returning creatures, including the asteroid spider and the eldritch lich. These creatures won't appear in Boo’s Astral Menagerie and are available to all D&D Beyond users. Sign up today to start using them in your combat encounters!
The Multiverse at Your Fingertips
A key focus for Spelljammer is the ability for players to travel to other D&D worlds. Supposedly, every D&D world exists out in the ether of the Astral Plane. Those who brave Wildspace and beyond can journey to lands outside the boundaries of their universe that were inaccessible prior to the mechanics of Spelljammer.
This can open up endless opportunities for groups looking to get a fresh take on their campaign. Has your party completed the events of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist? Perhaps they are given a spelljamming vessel as a reward (Easter egg alert: there is a spelljammer somewhere in Waterdeep) and plans to blast off for the techno-magical setting of Eberron.
Maybe you want to live out some of your favorite sci-fi movies with a fantasy twist? A Prometheus-style adventure can pit your party against puppeteer parasites in a horrifying psychological thriller. Or, you could lean into a nautical-inspired treasure hunt à la Treasure Planet. The boundaries of what Spelljammer can provide are about as vast as the multiverse itself; the only limit is your imagination!
If you’re looking to dip your toes into Spelljammer, definitely pick up your copy of Spelljammer Academy, a free introductory adventure series available on D&D Beyond.
Preorder Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space will allow your players to journey beyond the stars to visit alien worlds, encounter unique creatures, and plunder loot from across the cosmos. You can preorder Spelljammer: Adventures in Space before it lands on August 16th, 2022, to receive exclusive perks, including digital dice, when the book releases.
What is D&D Beyond?
D&D Beyond is the official digital toolset for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Players who join D&D Beyond can quickly create characters and take them on the go with the D&D Beyond App. You can even roll dice directly from your character sheet using the app or from your browser. The toolset handles all of the math to make playing the game easy. DMs will find tools to build and run combat encounters, manage their campaigns, and create and discover homebrew content.
D&D Beyond is free to join, but if you sign up for a subscription, you'll be able to create unlimited characters and even share books you've purchased with players in your campaigns (Master-tier only).
Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.
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Posted Apr 23, 2022If you were one of the fans that used Spelljammer : Beyond the Moon website, you may have read the Eternal Wanderer stories. In the last few stories the authors had the villain using plane jumping helms. The Arcane were going all in on the technology for them. So years later you have Spelljammers using the Astral plane for travel. You can have the original style right beside the new.
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Posted Apr 23, 2022How do I play I'm very confused
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Posted Apr 23, 2022Check out Spelljammer : Beyond the Moon website. Alot of info on the setting.
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Posted Apr 23, 2022Look, I'm an old-school SJ fan myself. But let's be honest here: the phlogiston, as executed in 2e, was a bad design choice. As were many of the other mechanics of the setting, like helms draining a spellcaster of all their spells. These things introduced needless complications and hurt the play experience, which contributed to SJ being the worst-selling of the classic campaign settings.
I'm totally OK with retconning the phlogiston with the Astral Sea, especially if they keep crystal spheres. I'll be REALLY disappointed if they don't keep crystal spheres, fantasy physics, and many other flavor aspects that made the setting unique. But, I'm seeing a lot of new images of things I loved about the original, so I'm willing to give Wizards the benefit of the doubt here.
I'm more concerned by this article's description of SJ as "sci-fi/fantasy crossover." THAT is completely wrong; it's fantasy, full stop. No sci-fi in the setting at all. So many people misunderstood the setting because of this.
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Posted Apr 23, 2022It's very important to get this right, lest you incur the wrath of Woolly Rupert, the Giant Space Hamster Of Ill Omen.
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Posted Apr 23, 2022I don't know that I agree with this assessment. AD&D2 Spelljammer was loaded for bear with sci-fi pop-culture tropes and even out-and-out references. The elves had Guyvers, for crying out loud. It's fantasy, yeah, but it's fantasy by way of space opera. It's just a little short on rocket engines and lasers.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Spelljammer
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Posted Apr 24, 2022Fair enough. But sci fi doesn't evoke tropes in an audience so much as an aesthetic. The phrase MEANS "lasers, robots, computers, rockets, etc." to a lot of people. The absence of said props from the original SJ is one of the things that made the setting distinct IMO. It is also one of the things that made it so misunderstood. Readers see the word "space" and immediately think of Star Wars, Star Trek, The Expanse, etc. Which is why the opening sentence of the original boxed set was so important: "Everything you know about space is wrong." I've had to explain to every single player in my SJ campaigns that it is not science fiction, because they're expecting all of those thing from the word "space." Some are reluctant to try SJ because of those expectations, and other are excited by them.
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Posted Apr 25, 2022Science fantasy is the genre, sword and planet and similar.
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Posted Apr 26, 2022No one touched spelljammers for decades so i had complete freedom to pick and choose from TSR and anything else that made sense in a fantasy setting. So when we started SKT and had a player wanting to play a Neverwinter warforged, i said cool but i get to reveal how you ended up in Faerun and why you think you're a Neverwinter native. Then made whole class of prewarforged artificial bodies using magic jar banks to pilot wildspace ships, convert the Arabella of Mars space physics, worked out a couple light frigate classes and why Eberron factions are fighting all Master and Commandery over Faerun, drop backstory clues for a year, and then bam, get to compete directly with the revamped spelljammer books. Stupid official material. Literally the day after I mentioned the wildspace port outside Waterdeep too.
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Posted Apr 26, 2022IM SO EXCITED AA
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Posted Apr 26, 2022The original setting, Greyhawk, had a sci-fi influence. Arneson Blackmoor had robots, crashed spaceships, ray guns, you name it. It gradually grew away from that but the origins did have a core of sci-fi influences.
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Posted Apr 27, 2022Boo’s Astral Menagerie provides Dungeon Masters a bestiary of over 60 spelljamming friends and foes, including space clowns, “vampirates,” murder comets, giant space hamsters, solar and lunar dragons, and much more!
Space clowns... *shudder*, why did it have to be space clowns...
Getting mad phineas and Ferb vibes; "The inexplicable giant floating space hamster!"
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Posted Apr 29, 2022Nope. it is WOOLLY RUPERT, THE GIANT SPACE HAMSTER OF ILL OMEN.
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Posted Apr 30, 2022With all due respect, sir: no, sir. Spelljammer was a fantasy setting. No ray guns, etc. It was a setting extrapolated from medieval European ideas about space -- crystal spheres, geocentric solar systems, wooden open deck vessels sailing to worlds on wind currents in a gaseous medium, and so on. In modern genre categories, you could probably classify it as flintlock fantasy, since black powder weapons were a part of it. But science fantasy? Nah.
Spelljammer is not science-anything. I will die on this hill.
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Posted May 14, 2022Spelljammer is back
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Posted Jun 14, 2022Do we know when Spelljammer Academy will be released, other than in July?
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Posted Jun 17, 2022Thank you for saying this. The way Wizards has been handling the legacy of D&D it quite disgusting if you ask me.
I do think spelljammer might have some merits though, just not worth my hard-earned cash.
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Posted Jun 17, 2022Agreed, thank you!
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Posted Jul 28, 2022I have to agree with this. I am still excited for the product, but I am going to absolutely ignore the astral plane thing out and put phlogiston back in.
I will however say that I didn't the idea of the crystal spheres when it was first presented backing 2nd edition, but it did grow on me, and at least it explained why people on planets in the system would see stars. Based upon the new description of how wildspace exists, night skies on planets would be absolutely blank except for whatever moons orbit the planet, or maybe a few reflections off the atmosphere is of other planets in the system, but that's about it.
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Posted Sep 8, 2022JorenB, I agree with you. The new spelljammer is nothing compared to the old 2nd edition boxed set. There is no cosmology creation. It is as if they have done what they have been doing for every book since they started producing 5e and that is half ass it. Half ass it to get people to buy more and more half assed products. They list it as 69.00 but I have seen the set of three books for 49.00. What is up with that? Sales so slow they reduced the price or just bad because people know 5e is half assing their products? Personally I believe 5e needs to go the way of 4e, out without any ado. 5e has literally forced me to go to other versions of D&D. I stopped playing with my old D&D group as soon as they decided to play only 5e. AS a result I only play in a Castles and Crusades game at the moment that has been running for over a year. Much better than any 5e product.