Dungeons & Dragons is bringing back Spelljammer, but at least one part of the iconic campaign setting will not be used in the rebooted version. Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast announced they would release Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, a new boxed set containing three 64-page books designed to help set up a Spelljammer campaign. Two of these three books make reference to the Astral Sea, a plane of existence that acts as the “space” between other planes. Given that the original Spelljammer setting didn’t really use the Astral Sea, Dungeons & Dragons fans wondered how it would factor into the campaign setting.
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It turns out that the Astral Sea will replace the phlogiston, the gaseous flammable substance that players traveled through to get to different worlds. In the original Spelljammer campaign setting, planet systems were enclosed in crystal spheres surrounded by phlogiston, with ships utilizing current-like flowrivers to help navigate between crystal spheres.
In the new setting, planets will exist in “wildspace” which will gradually fade into the Astral Sea. In a press event held after the D&D Direct last week, D&D designer Chris Perkins noted that wildspace would gradually transition into the Astral Sea. Perkins confirmed that phlogiston wouldn’t appear in the 5E version of Spelljammer, and his comments about how wildspace and the Astral Sea interacted suggested that the crystal spheres surrounding planet systems would also not appear in the rebooted version.
According to Perkins, the removal of phlogiston allows the Spelljammer campaign to better “leverage” D&D’s current cosmology. While there were some creatures who can survive in the phlogiston, using the Astral Sea allows Wizards to bring in more D&D lore into the Spelljammer setting. The astral dreadnought seems to have a prominent role in the new Spelljammer campaign setting (with WizKids producing a $200+ figure of the astral dreadnought), and bring in other creatures and cultures, such as the githyanki and githzerai.
We’ll find out more about the Astral Sea and how it ties into the Spelljammer campaign setting when Spelljammer: Adventures in Space comes out in August.
