Classic Spelljammer and Dragonlance return to Dungeons & Dragons in a new-age form
Classic settings from old Dungeons & Dragons editions decades ago have been updated for today’s users.
Classic settings from old Dungeons & Dragons editions decades ago have been updated for today’s users.
D&D has long been one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games in the world.
First published in 1974, the popular game has gone through five numbered editions and several expansions and additions within those editions, particularly in the form of additional world settings.
The world settings have always been a large part of Dungeons & Dragons’ popularity, offering not only new locations for role-playing adventures, but also new weapons, magic spells, characters and in-game items, among many other elements.
The current edition of the game, Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition – known as “5e” to fans – was published in 2014 and uses a different ruleset to some of the previous editions, particularly the 1980s-1990s era Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This is a challenge because the earlier editions, particularly the second, had a large range of settings and optional rules
At the D&D Direct virtual event a few weeks ago, publishers Wizards Of The Coast announced the return of two classic D&D settings – Spelljammer, set for an August 16 release, and Dragonlance.
Spelljammer has created the most buzz, being a cross between traditional fantasy and science fiction-type spacefaring, although Dragonlance, a more traditional fantasy setting with its epic story which has been expanded upon in more than 190 novels, has also delighted many players with its return.
Of the settings, Spelljammer is perhaps the most unusual in that despite being very much part of the fantasy world that Dungeons & Dragons is best known for, it’s effectively set in space – giving it a very unusual but distinctive aesthetic, and a dedicated series of fans who have been clamouring for its return for more than 20 years now.
Dungeons & Dragons studio executive producer Ray Winninger explained the return of the spacefaring fan classic and its more traditional counterpart were part of the massive growth the game has enjoyed in recent years and a desire to expand D&D’s footprint.
“Our audience is quite a bit larger than really, it‘s ever been. As the audience gets larger and D&D gets larger, we know we need to serve a broader cross section of people, a broader cross section of fans with a broader set of interests,” he said.
Mr Winninger said the developers had been getting requests to bring back beloved settings from earlier D&D iterations for a long time – which had already happened with the Ravenloft and Eberron settings – and the team were pleased to announce the return of Spelljammer and Dragonlance too.
“To be quite frank, we‘re also bringing them back because we love them. They are special to us. They mean a lot to us as D&D fans and as D&D players.”
Spelljammer lead game designer Chris Perkins explained the popular perceptions of fantasy and science fiction as genres had changed since the setting first appeared in 1989, and 2020s audiences were more receptive to the setting’s mixture of science fiction and fantasy as a result.
“Where was science fiction at in the eighties, compared to where it is now? I think it‘s more broadly accepted now; there have been many, many sci-fi franchises that have kind of elevated science fiction,” he said.
“I think people are much more accepting now of fantasy science fiction than they might have been back in the day when Spelljammer was just like D&D in space and people thought, ‘Well, that‘s not really D&D, is it?’”
Mr Perkins said that contrary to popular belief, D&D had a long association with science fiction, stretching back to its earliest days.
“What we know is the very first D&D campaign, which is Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor (1975), was very much a fusion between fantasy and science fiction. It wasn‘t the pure high fantasy-esque thing that many people imagine when they think about D&D,” he said.
Given the original setting was developed more than 30 years ago, it has undergone some changes and improvements to update the gameplay experience and align it more effectively with the rest of the Fifth Edition content.
“Instead of smashing everything into a big book, like we‘ve done with some of our other campaigns recently, we split it up into three books with a Dungeon Master (game narrator/referee) screen and a poster map, all in a slip case,” Mr Perkins said.
“It was highly experimental for us to do that on our normal timeline, but I love the user experience. You can just have the adventure opened in front of you, and then you have the separate book of monsters with all the stack blocks that you can just sort of lay beside you and it minimises page flipping. The presentation is so stellar that I hope that we‘re able to do that again.”
Dragonlance has been a staple of the wider D&D universe for a long time – it was first published in 1984 – and Mr Winninger said it had taken a lot of thought and “percolation” to work out how to bring it back for D&D 5e.
“There was always a tension in Dragonlance between delivering a great story in the form of those novels and delivering a nice role playing game experience where you‘re creating the story yourself,” he said.
“The story of Dragonlance that everyone knows is very much based around the novels and those key characters from the novels.
“I think we did an excellent job [in this rule book] of kind of extending this broader story, this War Of The Lance, and turning it into something that, isn‘t just about those handful of characters.
“The role that you play in determining the fate of this war and the fate of the world [means] you‘re the stars of the story, which, to be honest, I think Dragonlance struggled with, for a couple of generations.”
While the Spelljammer and Dragonlance returns were already generating a lot of interest from D&D players, it has been confirmed there are other settings on the comeback quest too.
“We will be bringing back another one of the beloved treasured settings from D&D’s past next year. We‘re deep into working on that now and, it’s very exciting,” Mr Winninger said.
“And then of course, looking beyond that, 2024 is the 50th anniversary of Dungeon and Dragons, and we have a whole bunch of really, really interesting and cool things planned for that – not the least of which is brand new versions of all three of the core books.
“So yeah, it‘s, it’s, it’s a very, very exciting time for D&D right now.”
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