Spelljammer is being rebooted for 5th edition and I'm so excited by this news.

I'm here to show all my inner nerd peeps. I apologize in advance, and this post is going to be about Dungeons & Dragons which is the nerdiest of things to do with one's free time. So as your eyes glaze over, and say..."I just...can't with this D&D stuff..." that's okay. I'm going to geek out here on my blog for this Friday and try to return to a semblance of normal blogging next week.

Without further ado...Wizards of the Coast (which is the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons) held its first ever D&D Direct web conference. This is a digital news release/conference/presentation meant to illuminate all things Dungeons & Dragons that are coming out in 2022.

First off, the biggest news was that they are bringing back the Spelljammer setting. If you don't know, Spelljammer came out during second edition, which had its heyday in 1990...so thirty years ago. I own all the supplements for that game, and as they are getting kinda faded and yellow with time, I was wondering if we'd ever see a modern ruleset (D&D is currently on its very amazing 5th edition). So, you might ask: why has Spelljammer got me so excited?

The Spelljammer setting had ships like this.

Well, the most popular D&D settings for games and stories are ones inspired by European folklore. They are kind of "Lord of the Rings" knock-offs if you will. Spelljammer was way different. It involved traditional sailing ships that had been empowered by magic so that they could fly through the void of space. You could explore different worlds, have space battles, and "space" itself was filled with all kinds of magical wonders. It also allowed your characters to travel from one setting to another that was akin to traveling to different universes. You could have space pirate adventures too.

Furthermore, Wizards of the Coast is going all-in on this product. The Spelljammer campaign setting is going to be a three-volume set complete with a handsome slipcase and a double-sided map and a screen to use while gaming. And the whole thing runs just $70.00. That seems like a lot, but it isn't for three full-color books, a map, and a screen. That's less than $25.00 per book, which is peanuts these days given how it now takes me $75.00 to fill up my truck with gas.

The first of the three volumes is titled the Astral Adventurer's Guide. This is going to be the main book and contain everything a DM (Dungeon Master) would need to run a campaign as well as tons of options for playable characters. The second book is called Boo's Astral Menagerie, named after a giant space hamster from one of the D&D video games. We're going to get evil space clowns, vampirates, sentient comets, and space dragons. 

The last of the three volumes is called Light of Xaryxis. Set in the astral sea (an even more magical place in the setting than normal magical places) it includes 12 adventure hooks, each of which end in a cliffhanger. This thing ships in August, and I'm so excited to get my copy.

All of that being said, there was other news mentioned in the webcast. For one, the Dragonlance setting from famous fantasy writers, Weiss and Hickman, is coming back as a board game that will include some kind of campaign module that you can play called Shadow of the Dragon Queen. A board game sounds intriguing, especially if it has cool miniatures. A module (as well) is extremely exciting as Wizards of the Coast has been knocking things out of the park with their modules in the last few years. These are fully integrated adventures that generally take characters from level 1 to level 10 and have enough playable material to last six months or more. And the Dungeons & Dragons movie that is in Hollywood and stars Chris Pine now has a title: Honor Among Thieves.

Anyway, there's a lot to be excited about regarding my hobby.