Spelljammer and New Starter Sets: Everything Announced at Today’s D&D Direct

Dungeons & Dragons, the popular tabletop roleplaying game published by Wizards of the Coast, held its first D&D Direct on Thursday, a livestream similar to those put out by video game companies to share announcements about upcoming projects.

Here’s everything that was announced during the presentation.

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

The presentation began with a short video showing a tabletop party on a skyship floating through space, announcing the upcoming release of a new campaign setting. Spelljammer was described by D&D designers as “deep space meets deep sea.”

Players can look forward to cities built on asteroids, dead gods floating in the ether and a host of new content, including six new playable races:

• Astral Elves: space elves with starlight eyes
• Autognomes: gnomish automatons
• Hadozee: flying monkeys
• Giff: hippo-headed adventurers who don’t know where they came from
• Plasmoids: playable oozes
• Thri-Kreen: telepathic, camouflaging insectoids

The Spelljammer campaign setting slipcase product will include three, 64-page hardcover books: an Astral Adventurer’s Guide, similar to a player’s handbook; Boo’s Astral Menagerie, detailing the monsters of the Spelljammer world; and Light of Xaryxis, a 12-episodes adventure for Spelljammer players.

Enemies in Spelljammer include space clowns, “vampirates,” giant space hamsters, and solar and lunar dragons.

A prequel adventure will be available in July before Wizards of the Coast releases Spelljammer in August. Icons of the Realms miniatures for Spelljammer will be available this summer.

Baldur’s Gate 3

The presentation also showed a sizzle real of Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay and behind-the-scenes production. The game being developed by Larian Studios is currently in early access, with a full release set for 2023.

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel

Journeys is a new anthology of D&D adventures, written by “16 Black and brown writers” who created 13 adventures and 15 new locations based on their lives cultures, and myths. The presentation showed images from the anthology, which included pastel colors, bright landscapes and new monster types. 

The presentation highlighted the Fiend of Hollow Mind adventure, which appears to be based on a Day of the Dead-style celebration. In “the Night of the Remembered” festival, the dead come back to celebrate with their loved ones. 

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel will be available June 21.

Campaign Cases for DMs 

The direct also showed off two versions of its new campaign cases, a product for dungeon masters: Creatures and Terrain. These cases are filled with modular tools for the tabletop and miniatures elements of Dungeons & Dragons. The Creatures case features circular tokens with reusable monster stickers, while the Terrain case gives DMs double-sided terrain tiles with reusable stickers. Both versions of Campaign Cases will be available in July.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

The writers and directors of the forthcoming D&D movie showed up to announce that they had just wrapped filming and said, “It’s a dream to bring Forgotten Realms and the Sword Coast to life. We set out to capture the spirit of fun and surprise that we all love about D&D.”

They announced that the movie is scheduled for a March 3, 2023 release date. No trailer yet, just a logo for the movie.

New Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle

One of the most exciting announcements, particularly for new players or anyone thinking about getting started with D&D or tabletop gaming, was the brand-new starter set. Unlike the current starter set, which is still focused on paper-and-pencil gaming, the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle set features digital onboarding tools, which should make it easier for new players to learn the basics of the game.

D&D didn’t break out a separate video snippet for this announcement, but the announcement starts at 18:30 in the D&D Direct.

We also caught signs of integration with D&D Beyond since it was bought by Hasbro (which owns Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons). The presentation announced that a digital library will available today with a Wizards account. The D&D Direct also announced a digital Monstrous Compendium: Volume 1, featuring 10 monsters from Spelljammer, which will be available to anyone with a Wizards or D&D Beyond account. Featured monsters include nightmare fuel like an eldritch lich, a 10-legged asteroid spider and a brand-new monster called the Starlancer.

Wizards is also expanding the books available in European languages. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Monsters of the Multiverse, Curse of Strahd and the new starter set will be available later this year in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Neverwinter: Dragonslayer

We caught a quick glimpse of the new expansion to the action MMORPG from Gearbox (makers of Borderlands). 

Legends of the Multiverse Trailer

We also got a peek at the new D&D actual play series, Legends of the Multiverse, set in what appears to be Spelljammer. The cast includes D&D personalities like Deborah Ann Woll, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar and many (many) more. Legends of the Multiverse premiers April 27 on D&D’s Twitch channel.

D&D: Onslaught

The Direct showed off a new tactical skirmish miniatures game called D&D: Onslaught. This combat board game seems to be inspired by other tactical minis games like Warhammer and will be available at local game stores in October. 

Dragonlance

The presentation concluded with the first look at new Dragonlance content, including a new adventure book — Shadow of the Dragon Queen — and new battle game Warriors of Krynn. The adventure will be released in June, and the game is slated to come out in “late 2022.”