The beauty of D&D is I can watch this and go “okay, neat, think I’m gonna stick with phlogiston and crystal spheres for my table though”. Definitely using that Astral Sea art though
The only problem is spelljammer ships can not enter the Astrial plane . They took the origional Spelljammer and twisted it until it's something that doesn't resemble spelljammer execpt remotely . Their addition of evil space clowns was just stupid and makes no sense at all . Look up the origional Spelljammer to see how cool it was compaired to this week version
I have a couple theories : • Each wildspace system possesses its own ethereal shore, fey echo and shadow echo. • Instead of the Astral Sea, these respectively float in the Deep Ethereal, the Positive and the Negative.
In the 4e Feywild book said you could physically walk from (my example) Greyhawk to FR via the Feywild if you could navigate its whimsy. Which is . . . whimsically different from the scattered islands of the Material plane.
@@egrettacaerulea I would interpret that as finding a "domain of delight" that shifts between the fey echoes of the two material worlds. Like the Shadowfell's domains of dread, they are part of the echo plane yet also their own demiplanes.
Maybe have the Ethereal plane and Deep Ethereal more like the canvas that everything else is painted on. The Deep Ethereal is like the dark matter to the Astral Planes space, one cannot exist without the other, and thr regular Ethereal is the counterpart to Wild Space, more defined, alive and explorable because of the density of the planets. Can easily go with the idea that space travel happens on the astral sea because traveling thru the Deep Ethereal is near suicide.
@@Michael-du2fv I have what I call the "rule of four". The great all-encompassing planes are the psychic Astral, the radiant Positive, the pure-force Ethereal and the necrotic Negative. Then the Astral contains planes of Law, Good, Chaos and Evil, while the Ethereal contains planes of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Nobody knows for sure what the Positive and Negative might contain. Maybe the quasi-elemental planes that 5e removed. Anyway, I see wildspace systems existing at the juncture of all these influences.
Put me down as one of the long time SJ fans that loves this change. I was never a huge fan of the phlogiston, and the idea that it's a transitive plane like the Astral that permeates the space between systems makes sense in the overall setting. Nice work!
my players HATED the phlogiston they refused to enter it at all, and if they HAD to they insisted we skip the travel time and just arive. I had players flat out say they would quit the game. so I had 2 choices, end the campaign (no players no game) or just ditch the phlogiston all together. I didnt use the astral or anything as a replacement. we just called the space inbetween the sphears "the intersteller"
@@Anisozygoptera the rub is it's an 18th century idea this concept of the phlogiston. It's not high-fantasy it's more like steam punk so for me it never worked.
@@AuntieHauntieGames Ok - wiki said 18th century, but it's far removed from typical high fantasy was my primary point and I'd say 17th century is similarly removed and it at a minimum has the combustible trait in common
@@sylvnfox Such whiny little shits. Somehow a dangerous multiverse has to cater to a whiny group so it restructures itself to be more pleasant for travelers LOL Sorry, that's just how I see it. There's a reason the phlogiston is the way it is. That's what's wrong with D&D, entitled PCs that want the game to always go their way for their characters
What about the crystal spheres tho? It was the best part of spelljammer, with the portal and their massive scale and players having to figure out how to get inside
This takes away one of the unique things about the Spelljammer ship itself, which was that it could naturally create portals in crystal spheres anywhere it travelled, which meant it could potentially go to systems that other ships couldn't enter.
Mmmm, I do feel like you should maybe keep Crystal Spheres as a thing, to denotate when one is transitioning between Wild Space and the Astral. A Kuiper belt sort of thing, or a naturally occurring Dyson sphere.
I did when running the Light of Xaryxis module, and the addition of the Crystal spheres not only didn't interfere with the module, but actually ADDED to the mystery and concern when they arrived in Doomspace.
Okay fine, some folks didn't like the phlogistan. It's too dangerous and my characters can't go without lighting a ciggy for that long, oops boom. What I'm wondering is if WotC will be able to keep the flows & rivers from 2e? Like how there was a specific flow between Oerth, Toril, and Krynn spheres? And some worlds were practically off the navigable charts like Eberron or Athas?
I think even Earth was on the map off to one side but with no way to get there on a spelljammer. Makes me think wildsapce is a pocket dimension to realspace and Pops any ships out into true-void around the dark side of the moon where they loose what atmo they have.
I'm a big fan of this. Having Wildspace transition to the Astral Plane makes a lot of sense and leads to a lot of potential adventures compared to the old crystal spheres and Phlogiston. I know many people are highly against any kind of change to old lore, but this is a case in which I think it's changed for the better. I've been homebrewing Spelljammer and Planescape elements into my 5E game for years and I was actually doing something quite similar to this already, so having it be an official change suits me just fine.
I'm of two minds. I like the simplification, but we lose a few things I really value: 1. The Astral Plane is no longer setting-constrained. If I want to let my players go there in a game that is intended to be constrained to one setting, I can't now without artificially limiting their choices. 2. Creatures and concepts native to the Astral Plane now work the same way in every setting. There's no universe now where the Gith are actually the ones who oppressed the Illithid (or some other crazy thing), because things that happened in the Astral Sea are now universal. 3. The lower barrier to entry/specialization of knowledge makes isolated settings stop making sense. Previously, the most powerful wizard in Eberron wouldn't necessarily know ANYTHING about the Forgotten Realms. Now if you know about the Astral you know about other universes (I almost said Crystal Spheres, but that doesn't apply now). Hard to see how in high-magic settings that knowledge wouldn't have fully proliferated at least among magical academics, and if it did hard to see why there aren't more invasions. Would you stay on Athas in Dark Sun? 4. Related to the above, it sort of feels like now ALL gods are necessarily multiversal. The phlogiston was a barrier before, but we know gods can hang in the Astral Plane.
I will miss the Phlogiston. I really loved the absolute weirdness of the space between the crystal spheres. Also, there's an NPC in one of the games I play who is a pyromaniac and whoo boy I would love to see the RP that came out of that. (For those who didn't play it, the Phlogiston is very very flammable.)
@@warmwaterpenguin I'd point out that, as a DM, you've only ever existed to put fun and interesting yet artificial constraints on player choices that give them game-ified meaning. I nor my players are going to lose sleep just sticking to classic Eberron lore and their planes of existence. If your players are itching THAT hard to go to another setting (at near max level no less)... take a hint? In that same vain, I highly recommend adding back in complexity you want. I do this all the time if I run Forgotten Realms games, because there are lots of aspects to the cosmic lore I don't like that much (e.g., supposedly transcendentally intelligent gods act like squabbling middle school kids and no deific profiles and Ao aren't interesting), but it's not that hard to add more complexity without changing how the OG lore would shape the normative perceptions of these things.
@@warmwaterpenguin all of the things you say were both true with old spelljammer lore AND with old planscape lore. Literally none of the things you mentioned changed now Like gods were multiversal before too, and planeswalking characters met each other in sigil for tea. And dark sun was literally explicitly writen to have a spelljamming shield for this exact reason
@@monsieurdorgat6864 I don't disagree that I can run it off the old lore, and I probably will. I wish that didn't mean I'll have to bootstrap the new modules in the setting, but so it goes. Still certainly a lot to like here, and I'm happy Spelljammer is back
I kinda like it, admittedly I think I’ll miss the crystal sphere’s since there was just so much mystery surrounding them, where did they come from, how do they work, what’s with the people who walk across the inner surface of them forever, but the idea the astral sea and the astral plane being connected raises new possibilities so it’s not like there’s isn’t potential for cool stuff in area of “ancient secrets about the very mechanics of the universe”.
@@steveaustin2686 this could even be used to set up a great mystery: there used to be those 2e crystal spheres but now something has disintegrated them into nothing but silvery mist. Why? How? How does it affect the wildspaces? Maybe something blew up the entire phlogiston and astral started pouring in and there was a chemical reaction between astral and crystal or something.
I mean... it kind of points out how the old "astral" plane was pretty shoddily named. Honestly, the old one had nothing to do with stars at all. Old DnD lore was OG and set up for better things down the line, but it's like comparing bronze to steel. Couldn't have gotten to steel without bronze... but let's not kid ourselves on what we'd rather use.
It was shoddily named, very likely due to the New Age practice of "astral travel," which in essence is the idea that folks can leave their body through meditation and fly/travel around in the world. You will also see this in WoD and CoD Mage games. World of Darkness used "astral travel," but the realm you were traversing was called the Umbra, a dimension of spirits, reflections of the real world, concepts, even high thought, whereas Chronicles of Darkness separated the spirit realm (now called the Shadow) from the mental travel realm (called the Astral Realms). I actually kind of like that they connected D&D's astral plane to that star/space aspect. Not sure I so much like the loss of the crystal spheres and phlogiston, but we'll see how it goes: I might add in phlogiston in pockets, like nebulas or the like.
Here's an idea. Sticking with the concept that there is positive and negative, good and evil, things having a natural counter balance to them in D&D. Have the entire universe sitting in the Astral Sea, the area around planets (solar systems) being Wild Space, it's more defined and set due to the proximity to the planets kind of like gravity giving it more concrete rules unlike the turbulent Astral Sea. Now give it a counter part, The Deep Ethereal is the counter or dark matter that underlines the Astral Sea, equally chaotic and changing and turns into the Ethereal Shores where Wild Space is because of the planets giving it more definition to its state. It would be possible to travel thru the Ethereal planes to other planets but the idea of going thru the Deep Ethereal to another system would be near suicide so most technology for travel is on the Astral Sea. Having this newer version of the Astral Sea also brings it more in line with universes like Marvel where people also live on and mine dead god like beings floating around in space.
I've been playing since The First Time, and I'm really looking forward to this. I think this cosmology change makes good sense, although it does mean you can't incinerate a crystal sphere by leaving the portal open too long.
So now instead of one Material Plane there are many. If there are many Material(Wildspace) Planes now within the Astral Sea then do they each now have their own Shadowfell and Feywild counterpart planes? Making the Material Planes reside within the Astral Sea like the Outer Planes opens a can of worms.
Wasn’t that confirmed in Fizban’s too? I might be misremembering, but I feel like something very similar was said in the song of origin and the greatwyrms sections.
so every crystal sphere was their own cosmology. they had their own elemental and higher/lower planes. and the shape of those planes was differnt in every sphere. the gods of that sphere and other powers only had power in that sphere, to the point that high level clerics and warlocks lsot their connection to their benefactor and when entering a new plane had to petition an analogue or even set up a new church or establish their patrons connection to that realm to recieve higher level powers. the phlogistan sep[erated spheres. and blocked any teleporting, dimensional travel, and some other stuff. the phlogistan was jsut the phlogistan. (of course there where creatures and travelers and civilizations in it. it wasnt jsut endless clouds of explosive gas. )
So here are some of the things we seem to have lost. 1) All the lore surrounding different deities and their power being restricted unless they had followers inside a crystal sphere. 2) The flammable phlogiston thing, which meant ships had to be lit by eerie phosphorescent lichens and you couldn't cook hot meals or boil water without magic. 3)The preservative aspect of phlogiston, where if you fell off a ship in the Flow, you would just go into a suspended animation when you ran out of air. 4)Currents in the Flow that made it easier to travel from certain systems to others, in effect mimicking the real world trade routes caused by trade winds. They also let you speed up the travel times between systems and act like a sort of "hyperspace" fast travel system. 5) Githyanki ships that acted like submarines or cloaking devices by phasing out to the astral plane and popping back in. Now instead of the Astral being "next door," you apparently have to sail over to it. 5) Different crystal spheres having different rules for how you could get through them, which gave the DM an easy to limit access to certain worlds until the PCs acquired the necessary magic or knowledge. I feel like that's a lot of cool stuff! What have we gained in exchange? I'm skeptical.
The first sucked mechanically, the second is mere window dressing, the third is irrelevant and never came up and the fourth you can still have just fine Crystal spheres on the other hand are a massive loss
@@DimT670 The first may have been very incovenient for clerics, but it gave you lots of good roleplaying and storytelling hooks. The second is definitely more than window dressing the first time a mage tries to cast burning hands or fireball in the phlogiston! The suspended animation was also a good plot hook thing. There was at least one if not more than one adventure that centered around encountering a floating person who had been suspended in space for a hundred years or something and was basically a time traveler. Or, if an evil villain got knocked off a boat into the Flow, it gave you a convenient method for them to get revived and brought back. I definitely think you could have currents in the Astral Sea; I hope they do have them. I'm definitely interested to see how they incorporate Githyanki ships. And hopefully each bubble of Wildspace can have its own rules; i.e. some are filled with air, some are voids, some are cold, some are hot, some have lower gravity, some don't have access to fire magic, whatever.
D&D for an outsider: Oh. It's like Lord of the Rings with improv. D&D for veterans: I'm a ninja, my friend turns into dinosaurs, and now we're fighting demons in space
I am planning a epic spelljammer campaign tons of planets adventure plots monsters and wizards of the coast thank you for making this a reality I am over the moon excited. Also wizkids I’m a coming to get that full spelljammer set.
My main question is about settings with different planes of existence (like Eberron for example), maybe they explain this in the book or in this small video series they're doing. If not I like the idea of them being in a nebula cloud or line that contains the great wheel.
Eberron specifically is tucked away in the Ethereal plane, rather than the Astral, hidden from the gods by its dragon creators (5e information). If you wanted it in the Astral sea instead, you could position its moons/subplanes in its Wildspace. It could also be in the middle of that Ethereal squall next to the Radiant Citadel, instead.
The dead gods in the Astral are usually gods that have lost all of their followers and died because of their obscurity, but I could easily see that being a thing as well
I really am not sure how I feel about this. It's being claimed that it simplifies the setting but it really doesn't. Canon until now is that the spelljammer setting was a single expansive prime material universe just using fantasy concepts like phlogiston and crystal spheres. Now it's been intermixed with cosmology in a much more brain-stretching way and it's getting harder, not easier, to reconcile how d&d cosmology is supposed to work. Also I am simply over the "multiverse" fad - it doesn't mean anything in particular; it's just an excuse to not hold yourself accountable to cohesive storytelling.
Well wizards owns dnd now, and mtg is all about the multiverse. Now that marvel is also using it yet it is just a cliche and a little too convenient, you can literally do any damn thing you want and it’s all fine
@@MrKongatthegates this is literally wotc treatment of DMs, by telling players "whatever, do what you want, and heres a bunch of variant rules to support you in arguing with your DM that doing whatever is offical d&d... also were taking everything that made races individual and unique away, do whatever you want, we dont care" so spelljammer is getting the same treatment sadly
@@Sakurafire1 actually, by putting it in a book you're giving player fodder to argue that "you're running it wrong" all the retcons wotc keep making arent just going to DMs running the game. Also what's the point in the book of you're just going to take it all out and not use it? The old "you don't have to use it" arguement is as dumb as these changes. I don't have to use the rules in the DMs guide but if im not using the fundamentals I'm also not running d&d.
@@marti5420 I didn't say "you don't have to use it", I'm saying for y'all to use your adult sized human brains to make your adventure unique and fun for both you and your players. These books are just guidelines, where you can pick and choose and be creative. Don't segregate yourself to the type of thinking that limits your possibilities (y'know, like saying "you're running it wrong").
Gonna miss the crystal spheres as they helped keep the settings still feeling independent of spelljammer. Don't mind losing the Phlogiston tho as long as there's an explanation as to what happened to it. If it was burned off in the Spellplague or something, and maybe there's pockets of it in the astral sea that make fire dangerous in those regions.
@@vapormations7282 Sure, but that doesn't excuse any criticisms or gripes. Which is all that my sentiment is, a gripe. But enough grips could make a potentially useful product useless to someone as they'd have to put more effort into making it work for them than it's worth. You can't just ignore them. By that logic, the best possible product is a blank page that says "you're the DM, make it up" which isn't actually helpful. Edit: Sorry if that came off as defensive. All too often I see people using rule 0 as a defense against legitimate criticisms as if being able to change something means it was never something to be critical of.
@@vapormations7282 I never said the creators were putting in less effort. Just that I don't like the decision to remove an element I considered central to the structure of the setting. And I suspect I'm not the only one. And for people like me, it's effort to make it how we want it, undoing the effort they put in to change it. Not much in the case of just the crystal spheres, but effort that could have been saved and would have made the book more appealing imo. I've yet to be sold on how changing it from a crystal sphere to a wall of mist improves it, so to me, it's just wasted effort. The phlogiston changing to the astral sea I'm fine with as I'm already sold on that change (the phlogiston though cool just punishes fire using spell casters, the astral sea works fine as an aspect of the deeper astral plane for the prime worlds to "float in"). The crystal spheres, I consider too central to change without good reason. Maybe they'll give that reason and there will be a good explanation of what happened to them. But if not, I'll have to spend effort changing it, or inventing my own explanation, cause I've run spelljammer for some of my players before and they're familiar with the setting, so they're going to ask what happened to those things. And if the book doesn't justify its decisions, it falls on my shoulders as the DM.
@@Greco412 You're not alone in your complaints. The version of the Realms I've been running in has taken the spheres and phlogestion into account already, so when my preorder arrives, I'll ignore anything I'd have to ret-con and focus on the rules for ship combat and whatnot.
I can understand, and also in a way expected, the removal of crystal spheres. However, the loss of the phlogiston is really going to take away one of the more fun parts of spelljammer. That's always provided a way to map and collect these distant worlds and instead just placing everything in wildspace seems less material. It is nice that they'll be giving some more attention to the astral sea in the process. Just doesn't feel like that change was truly necessary.
SJ was great because it didn’t have to rely on blurring with the planes and making it more Planejammer, which it unfortunately is now. Spelljammer ONLY involved the Material Plane and that’s one of the things that made it stand out and apart from Planescape. Now it’s more “Planejammer” than anything.
Its literally the opposite. The phlogistron added nothing other than keeping everything in the material but the crustal spheres were the most integral part of thw setting
@@DimT670 ... and providing shipping lands for which everything existed instead of spreading everything thin over vast galactic planes negating everything WOTC are trying to do with these changes, adding an element of danger to every single travel, connecting the dots of inhabited spheres so people had focus when they travelled, proving a reason to cut off these bubbles from the rest of inhabited space and adding plot hooks for reconnecting lost spheres, giving direction to jammer on jammer combat encounters, proving a "down" and an "up" within a tube to aid in descriptions, giving galaxy maps "roads" so you could understand what youre doing a little better rather than just a bunch of labeled dots on an empty map, creating lanes that were one way only thus providing further plot hooks about one-way trips and finding a way home, forcing some classes to adapt and overcome... but yeah, other than a whole bunch of stuff, it doesnt add anything at all
@@marti5420 none of the things you said were added by the phlogistron or can only achieved with it. Ive played 2e spelljammer. The phlogistron is the loading screen of the setting. It adds nothing
What happens if you cast Etherealness in wildspace? Are you still sufficiently close to material worlds for the spell to work, or is the place already too astral for that?
Definitely up for debate. The distance between the shallow and deep ethereal aren't explicit. But I can see arguments for it being restrained to atmospheres, or go as far out as the border
It's so confusing being newish to DnD and there are two versions of the space between worlds (wild space and the phlogiston) and now two versions of the astral sea
So if I'm understanding this Wild Space is what used to be the Crystal Spheres (individual solar systems) and the Astral Sea is what we used to call the Phlogiston (the space between) and the border between the two isn't physical anymore. I'm going to need some time to readjust. Fortunately I haven't played in the old version so at this point it's just lore to me. Although this does invalidate some of my crazy world building so I'll have to start that over. I really liked the resources and suggestions for creating your own Domain of Dread in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft so will there be resources and suggestions in that vein for making your own wild space systems and stuff?
@@Newnodrogbob That's possible, but I didn't experience the original version of the setting so I wanted to hear some opinions on the changes. After all being able to just sail from the prime material plane to the astral plane is a big change.
@@andrewtyrell4795 I’d love for him or someone else to elaborate, but he’s all over this section just being salty, so good luck. Your planar observation is true. The concept of Planes and the barriers between them is pretty strange, in all the versions of the game. I read a lot of the 2E spelljammer rules when they came out, but never played a campaign. (I remember a computer game of piloting your ship around space). I know the phlogiston between crystal spheres was perilous and tended to explode, which seems like a pain in the keester. “Spelljammer” was the name of a kind of Flying Dutchman-esque mythological ship in game. The magical helms that power ships get their names from that ship. The mo story’s compendium featured lots of stuff about the elven empire and their war against “scro” space Orcs. The giant space hamsters of various flavors created by gnomes were standouts in my head. The neoghi were kind of he standout race of villains, although mind flayers and beholders had a big presence in the game. That may all be stuff you know already, but that’s the best I can do.
More likely than you think, fam! Honestly, it’s most likely going to happen at this point. They’ve stated in the past that anything that shows up in Unearthed Arcana hints at a new product in the pipeline, and our most recent UA had a looooooot of Planescape…
An informative discussion as always! One thing I noticed, per the said discussion, is that there was no mention of the phlogiston, that iridescent and very volatile substance ever swirling beyond the Crystal Spheres enclosing the various game worlds. Has the Astral Sea supplanted or somehow evolved from the phlogiston? Moreover, I hope the 2022 version of Spelljammer does dedicate some text to the Elven Imperial Navy i.e. reiterating or even redefining the importance (or lack thereof) of the said organization. What does it mean to be an Immortal elf in Wildspace far removed from the familiar arboreal surroundings of Krynn or Toril or Oerth? I have not read too deeply into this with the game supplements, DC comics and so forth, but I presume the elves who formed the Imperial Fleet took their immortality and their mystical connection to nature into the stars. These two things should have an important if not overwhelming impact on the elven civilizations in Wildspace (i.e. deep forests growing within the bowels of elven imperial vessels, and found in great profusion on their colony worlds, if they have colony worlds).
@@razzelmire2008 Wow, you're whiny. If you don't like the game the way it is now, then don't play it. Play other games, or play the old stuff. Plenty of people like the game the way it is now and the direction it is going in, if you don't then maybe you should start realizing that the game isn't for you, and move on.
I'm worried that they won't like the optics of the Elven Imperial navy fighting space orcs and will see it as "too colonial," and so they'll eliminate that part of the setting entirely.
@@dereknolin5986 but even in the old spelljammer they aknowledged that the elvish imperial navy were essentially space nazis, with the main characters stopping collaborating with them in disgust after they commited literal actual genocide, and then they proceeded to turn to full on villains after
Everyone saying "oh this cool return of 4e i hate Phlogiston", meanwhile when you realize only the 4e terms are carried over with the phlogiston+rainbow flow to the Ethereal (which makes logical sense as the border plane) being flipped to the Astral (which makes little sense even in 5e cosmology because you would have to crash RIGHT THROUGH THE ELEMENTAL PLANES/ELEMENTAL CHAOS to get to the astral plane) and from thus far said material not being extremely flammable yet otherwise identical to 2 and 3e phlogiston and crystal shells/spaces around realms.
I think the choice to not include Crystal spheres is a bit of a poor one on the side of the writer’s, to me it’s always kind of made sense that there was a physical barrier between the realm where you adventure and The realm were gods even can’t go. It kind of loses the scale that it used to :(
So if the Astral Plane now connects every game world, do all the gods of all the worlds wth a Great Wheel cosmology live on the same outer planes, or does each game world have its own unique set of outer planes? (For example, when Drizzt from Faerun dies, could his soul go to the same afterlife as Tasslehoff Burrfoot from Dragonlance? If so, I pity him.) And what about worlds like Eberron that do not use the Great Wheel? Are their cosmologies now conformed to this new system?
Given each campaign is centered around what that DM deems is reality, it doesn't matter what the game designers say is or isn't. The new system simplifies the ruleset that's all. Content is still up to the DM, Story is still up to the DM. If a DM wants to use 2e content or even put a space whale in their game that's up to them.
So..I'm confused...if one uses say, "Astral Projection" or something like that to visit the astral plane, are they then in outer space? Can you reach the "astral plane" by piloting a spelljammer ship?
What was the logic in replacing the Prime Material Plane with the Astral Sea? The Universe & Galaxies are gone and now replaced with random systems floating around in the Astral Sea?
eh, i miss the phlogiston, you can already do all this stuff in 2nd edition spelljammer, now it feels more or less "were not giving you rules on travel or guides on anything, because everything and nothing exists here, so just do whatever" which seems to be a prevailing thought in wotc rule changes atm, "just do whatever, who cares, we dont" also putting things over a wider area instead of restricting it to what were effectively shipping lanes, isnt going to populate space more, its going to spread things out and do the opposite to what theyre to go for. the thing that made spelljammer so different from a traditional planet side world map, was those shipping lanes in the phlogiston, now its just a world map by a different name with more stars in the background. and finally, so space is just a space ocean now pretty much.... ok? this is just a sea-based expansion book but reskinned from a nautical theme to an astral theme
and less anoying. back in 2e I nearly lost my players because of the phlogiston I had to ditch the whole thing to keep the campaign alive. I started calling the space between the sphears "the intersteller" and dumped the "problematic" mechanics
More like “We continue to water and dumb down the legacies of D&D to make it easily digestible to a weak minded, ADHD crowd of youngsters who can make us a ton of money unlike our older loyal customers.”
i love spelljammer. but there is no way im replacing the phlogistan with the astral plane and im definetly not gettign rid of the crystal spheres. you coudl have doen EVERYTHING you wanted to do int eh astral sea inside the phlogistan without upending the entire lore behind how differnt crystal spheres are actually differnt and disconnected from eachother by more than jsut another plane.
Where’s my phlogiston! You’ve ruined Spelljammer! Curse you WotC! - jk, actually these changes make a lot of sense and I’m looking forwards to checking it out
One year later: Now we are all playing two characters each, We ditched the original intro adventure because it caused some blow out arguments, acquired passage on a ship, explored the rock, got hired on to a ship, discovered ranged attack suck in ship combat, fought space clowns, explored wrecked ships and fought asteroid dwelling monsters, finally got a Hammerhead ship, hired to pick up cargo, attacked by floating clumps of undead, saved asteroid miners from undead, hired to chase down necromancer responsible for floating clumps and now just took space mummy necromancers pyramid ship. Waiting on experience and treasure from said space mummy. Hope everyone ells is having fun too.
I wonder if you can adventure at all in the Elemental Chaos. 5e made it the place where the uninhabitable reaches of the Elemental Planes blend together into something that even elemental creatures find uncomfortable.
Astral Plane = Prime Material Plane? If all planets within every wildspace, AND the Astral Sea beyond both are part of the the Astral Plane, is that not just the Prime Material Plane but replacing the old Phlogistan Expanse with The Astral Sea?
@@diedrachenklatscher Well, for one thing, Astral Projection is a 9th level Spell, meaning it can only be cast by characters at 17th level or higher in Classes that can learn it. Secondly, the Astral Plane is inhabited Githyanki and Astral Dreadnoughts, both of which have methods of cutting the silver cord that tethers you to your physical body. If that cord is cut, your character DIES!
So, looking at the great wheel, the outer planes are in the astral sea, so presumably you can get to them in a spelljamming vessel via the astral sea, so, where are the elemental planes and the elemental chaos? Do they no longer exist?
I distrust anything he says about wildspace when he compares it to Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan. The obvious link is Star Trek V, The Final Frontier given he references Thought, and a kaleidoscope of colours, of going between states/world barriers.
The one thing I don't like about this change is that I was really into the idea of Spelljammer taking place entirely on the Prime Material Plane, which turns out to be a really weird place. But I liked the Astral Sea in 4th Edition so I'll learn to love this.
A good change overall. But if you are going to gut the Material Plane like that (it is more a collection of material planes now) at least let it count Wildspace as a material region. 😛
I still think they have lost the enormity of the prime material plane. The travel to other planes is planescape, it takes more powerful magics to travel there.
@@Millstone1985 in 2e each crystal sphere which is the corollary of a 5e wildspace system is also finite but all the spheres are imbedded in the phlogiston which is part of the material plain and is infinite. 5e demotes every prime material plain to the status of overgrown demiplain
So, infinite disjointed material planes separated by the Astral fish tank. What about the Outer Planes? Are they other material planes (planets) now? What is Oceanus, or the Styx here now another fish tank between planets (outer planes)? Doesn't this transform the Multiverse into a Universe?
@@BusCrashBoy that is nonsense there was a lot of transitions through the ethereal and astral to get between the inner and outer plains not to mention any interaction with the githyanki especially there cities. Plus there is the A Guide to the Astral Plane source book and the adventure dead gods which both focus on the astral and i am sure there are others.
I'm not a fan of this. I don't care for making the Astral Plane physically accessible by just flying to it. I'm keeping the crystal spheres in my game.
In old SJ, the ship has an atmosphere envelope so if you fall off you're still carried along bobbing up and down on the ship's gravity plane you're not just immediately left miles and miles behind. Should also note that if you leave the bubble you still have a small personal bubble around you for a time so if you leave the ship's envelope you still don't immediately die. Not sure in 5E :)
the ethereal plane is basically a weird reflection of the real world. you can see things on the material plane but theyre all foggy and you cant touch them. closest example, if you've ever watched lord of the rings, the world frodo goes to when he puts on the ring is pretty close to the ethereal plane. the astral plane is empty and time moves funky. thats all. its the dimension between dimensions.
@@hmad898 is correct also the ethereal plain connects to the elemental plains and not the outer plains where as the astral is the other way round the negative and positive material Plaines are inner in 3.5 and before and outer in 5e 4e broke the distinction more or less totally. in older editions the plane of shadow (basically the shadowfell was not connected properly to either and was mostly only accessible on the prime and the old implicit fea realm was similar though that was not codified until 4e and is one of the few good things they did in that edition imo)
So they burned down the phlogiston ground the spheres to mist and put the prime into the outer plains with no boundary smashing planescape into spelljammer. On the plus side this dose on some level help justify speljamming as opposed to plane hooping as inter prime travel but id dose it by making them the same thing.
It’s only understandable from a profit motivation. D&D needs to go back to the days where they cared more about making an expansive and deeply immersive game and not just care about the money
@@razzelmire2008 strangely, the company that produces these products does, in fact, do it for money. Nothing’s stopping you from making all of the sense, crunchy lore that you want. Have at it.
@@razzelmire2008 you do realise the literal reason they were making so many expansions in like the 80s was to sell em for money? There is no pure era, this is simply a decision some of us don't like. I dont like them getting rid of crystal soheres either but i dont pretend that makes em creatively bankrupt
Hmpf... I really like this idea of wild space, exploring with my players... but seriously, 3 books? Of course all of them needed to run that game properly? 64 pages per book and a price of 70 euro? I mean come on! DnD has been growing so much in the last years - is it really neccessary to let us bleed out our money, for the excuse of a little bit more (truly really goog) artwork? In total not even 200 pages, but nearly double the price of a rormal book? Don't know if I want to support that shitty price politics!
Wow the guy completely confuse wildspace and astral sea , 2 totally different things Not even mentioning the phlogiston. Next time better interview someone understanding the Dnd lore.
But why shoudl i have to? By this logic we don't need this if you like spelljammer just make it yourself Not to mention this ruins the old lore with thoughtless retcons that don't fit and makes people have to do extra work
Spelljammer is wAaaaaay too Sci fi. It also kinda takes away the fantasy and makes both the Feywild and Shadowfell kinda redundant. Can I just say that spelljamming doesn’t exist in my game
It takes a special kind to see it. Our games always had it as soon as it hit years ago. In our games Spelljammer ships docked in Waterdeep. Mostly though we used a Mirror of Mental Prowess to travel from our villa in Waterdeep to our small fleet. Sorry is that too much? Think Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek and Steampunk. It's a big D&D universe so don't be afraid.
I made a mistake. I looked at the old lore and spoiled myself, imagining the crystal spheres and the phlogiston and how I might use them. Won't make that mistake again
@@serjoerickii3262 I got excited for the old lore then they removed a lot of stuff I was excited over. If I do it again, they'll do the same thing. I'm sure 2e dragonlance was great(never looked into it and now I never will), but its probably gonna look nothing like 5e dragonlance will
Astral Sea/Flogiston = Nebula. Crystal Sphere = Dyson Sphere. The next question is... which Nebula is the D&D multiverse in? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's the Horse Head nebula, because that nebula is cool!
The beauty of D&D is I can watch this and go “okay, neat, think I’m gonna stick with phlogiston and crystal spheres for my table though”.
Definitely using that Astral Sea art though
The only problem is spelljammer ships can not enter the Astrial plane .
They took the origional Spelljammer and twisted it until it's something that doesn't resemble spelljammer execpt remotely .
Their addition of evil space clowns was just stupid and makes no sense at all .
Look up the origional Spelljammer to see how cool it was compaired to this week version
@@williamlee7482 Weak*
I'm loving that Spelljammer's release is kinda aligned with NASA's Webb telescope. Getting photos of the real wildspace
I have a couple theories :
• Each wildspace system possesses its own ethereal shore, fey echo and shadow echo.
• Instead of the Astral Sea, these respectively float in the Deep Ethereal, the Positive and the Negative.
In the 4e Feywild book said you could physically walk from (my example) Greyhawk to FR via the Feywild if you could navigate its whimsy.
Which is . . . whimsically different from the scattered islands of the Material plane.
@@egrettacaerulea I would interpret that as finding a "domain of delight" that shifts between the fey echoes of the two material worlds. Like the Shadowfell's domains of dread, they are part of the echo plane yet also their own demiplanes.
Maybe have the Ethereal plane and Deep Ethereal more like the canvas that everything else is painted on.
The Deep Ethereal is like the dark matter to the Astral Planes space, one cannot exist without the other, and thr regular Ethereal is the counterpart to Wild Space, more defined, alive and explorable because of the density of the planets.
Can easily go with the idea that space travel happens on the astral sea because traveling thru the Deep Ethereal is near suicide.
@@Michael-du2fv I have what I call the "rule of four". The great all-encompassing planes are the psychic Astral, the radiant Positive, the pure-force Ethereal and the necrotic Negative. Then the Astral contains planes of Law, Good, Chaos and Evil, while the Ethereal contains planes of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Nobody knows for sure what the Positive and Negative might contain. Maybe the quasi-elemental planes that 5e removed. Anyway, I see wildspace systems existing at the juncture of all these influences.
Put me down as one of the long time SJ fans that loves this change. I was never a huge fan of the phlogiston, and the idea that it's a transitive plane like the Astral that permeates the space between systems makes sense in the overall setting. Nice work!
my players HATED the phlogiston they refused to enter it at all, and if they HAD to they insisted we skip the travel time and just arive. I had players flat out say they would quit the game. so I had 2 choices, end the campaign (no players no game) or just ditch the phlogiston all together. I didnt use the astral or anything as a replacement. we just called the space inbetween the sphears "the intersteller"
@@Anisozygoptera the rub is it's an 18th century idea this concept of the phlogiston. It's not high-fantasy it's more like steam punk so for me it never worked.
@@kirkj101 Phlogiston is a 17th century concept, and Spelljammer only really used the name.
@@AuntieHauntieGames Ok - wiki said 18th century, but it's far removed from typical high fantasy was my primary point and I'd say 17th century is similarly removed and it at a minimum has the combustible trait in common
@@sylvnfox Such whiny little shits. Somehow a dangerous multiverse has to cater to a whiny group so it restructures itself to be more pleasant for travelers LOL Sorry, that's just how I see it. There's a reason the phlogiston is the way it is. That's what's wrong with D&D, entitled PCs that want the game to always go their way for their characters
What about the crystal spheres tho? It was the best part of spelljammer, with the portal and their massive scale and players having to figure out how to get inside
gone. along with some of the best parts of the phlogistan. like no dietys, no alternate dimensions or teleporting, no fire, etc
This takes away one of the unique things about the Spelljammer ship itself, which was that it could naturally create portals in crystal spheres anywhere it travelled, which meant it could potentially go to systems that other ships couldn't enter.
Mmmm, I do feel like you should maybe keep Crystal Spheres as a thing, to denotate when one is transitioning between Wild Space and the Astral. A Kuiper belt sort of thing, or a naturally occurring Dyson sphere.
I did when running the Light of Xaryxis module, and the addition of the Crystal spheres not only didn't interfere with the module, but actually ADDED to the mystery and concern when they arrived in Doomspace.
Okay fine, some folks didn't like the phlogistan. It's too dangerous and my characters can't go without lighting a ciggy for that long, oops boom.
What I'm wondering is if WotC will be able to keep the flows & rivers from 2e? Like how there was a specific flow between Oerth, Toril, and Krynn spheres? And some worlds were practically off the navigable charts like Eberron or Athas?
If they're not specific about it, it'd be a pretty easy thing to implement. If you already know what it is, then you already know what you want.
I think even Earth was on the map off to one side but with no way to get there on a spelljammer. Makes me think wildsapce is a pocket dimension to realspace and Pops any ships out into true-void around the dark side of the moon where they loose what atmo they have.
I'm a big fan of this. Having Wildspace transition to the Astral Plane makes a lot of sense and leads to a lot of potential adventures compared to the old crystal spheres and Phlogiston. I know many people are highly against any kind of change to old lore, but this is a case in which I think it's changed for the better. I've been homebrewing Spelljammer and Planescape elements into my 5E game for years and I was actually doing something quite similar to this already, so having it be an official change suits me just fine.
I'm of two minds. I like the simplification, but we lose a few things I really value:
1. The Astral Plane is no longer setting-constrained. If I want to let my players go there in a game that is intended to be constrained to one setting, I can't now without artificially limiting their choices.
2. Creatures and concepts native to the Astral Plane now work the same way in every setting. There's no universe now where the Gith are actually the ones who oppressed the Illithid (or some other crazy thing), because things that happened in the Astral Sea are now universal.
3. The lower barrier to entry/specialization of knowledge makes isolated settings stop making sense. Previously, the most powerful wizard in Eberron wouldn't necessarily know ANYTHING about the Forgotten Realms. Now if you know about the Astral you know about other universes (I almost said Crystal Spheres, but that doesn't apply now). Hard to see how in high-magic settings that knowledge wouldn't have fully proliferated at least among magical academics, and if it did hard to see why there aren't more invasions. Would you stay on Athas in Dark Sun?
4. Related to the above, it sort of feels like now ALL gods are necessarily multiversal. The phlogiston was a barrier before, but we know gods can hang in the Astral Plane.
I will miss the Phlogiston. I really loved the absolute weirdness of the space between the crystal spheres. Also, there's an NPC in one of the games I play who is a pyromaniac and whoo boy I would love to see the RP that came out of that. (For those who didn't play it, the Phlogiston is very very flammable.)
@@warmwaterpenguin I'd point out that, as a DM, you've only ever existed to put fun and interesting yet artificial constraints on player choices that give them game-ified meaning. I nor my players are going to lose sleep just sticking to classic Eberron lore and their planes of existence. If your players are itching THAT hard to go to another setting (at near max level no less)... take a hint?
In that same vain, I highly recommend adding back in complexity you want. I do this all the time if I run Forgotten Realms games, because there are lots of aspects to the cosmic lore I don't like that much (e.g., supposedly transcendentally intelligent gods act like squabbling middle school kids and no deific profiles and Ao aren't interesting), but it's not that hard to add more complexity without changing how the OG lore would shape the normative perceptions of these things.
@@warmwaterpenguin all of the things you say were both true with old spelljammer lore AND with old planscape lore. Literally none of the things you mentioned changed now
Like gods were multiversal before too, and planeswalking characters met each other in sigil for tea. And dark sun was literally explicitly writen to have a spelljamming shield for this exact reason
@@monsieurdorgat6864 I don't disagree that I can run it off the old lore, and I probably will. I wish that didn't mean I'll have to bootstrap the new modules in the setting, but so it goes. Still certainly a lot to like here, and I'm happy Spelljammer is back
No crystal spheres any more. No more phlogiston. It's more like Treasure Planet now, which is fine, just different than what we had in Spelljammer.
I kinda like it, admittedly I think I’ll miss the crystal sphere’s since there was just so much mystery surrounding them, where did they come from, how do they work, what’s with the people who walk across the inner surface of them forever, but the idea the astral sea and the astral plane being connected raises new possibilities so it’s not like there’s isn’t potential for cool stuff in area of “ancient secrets about the very mechanics of the universe”.
That's a comparison I never thought of, but I love it.
I mean there is nothing stopping you from introducing crystal spheres into your campaign
The Phlogiston is gone, but Crystal Spheres are still there. They just have a fuzzy transition from Wildspace to the Astral Sea. See 0:59.
@@steveaustin2686 this could even be used to set up a great mystery: there used to be those 2e crystal spheres but now something has disintegrated them into nothing but silvery mist. Why? How? How does it affect the wildspaces? Maybe something blew up the entire phlogiston and astral started pouring in and there was a chemical reaction between astral and crystal or something.
Wildspace,
you make my heart race,
you make everything groooovy!
The art is so cool!!
I'm so excited for spelljammer
Mentioning how 'Astral' means 'of the stars' immediately made the changes to the setting click into place in a whole new way.
I mean... it kind of points out how the old "astral" plane was pretty shoddily named. Honestly, the old one had nothing to do with stars at all. Old DnD lore was OG and set up for better things down the line, but it's like comparing bronze to steel. Couldn't have gotten to steel without bronze... but let's not kid ourselves on what we'd rather use.
It was shoddily named, very likely due to the New Age practice of "astral travel," which in essence is the idea that folks can leave their body through meditation and fly/travel around in the world. You will also see this in WoD and CoD Mage games. World of Darkness used "astral travel," but the realm you were traversing was called the Umbra, a dimension of spirits, reflections of the real world, concepts, even high thought, whereas Chronicles of Darkness separated the spirit realm (now called the Shadow) from the mental travel realm (called the Astral Realms).
I actually kind of like that they connected D&D's astral plane to that star/space aspect. Not sure I so much like the loss of the crystal spheres and phlogiston, but we'll see how it goes: I might add in phlogiston in pockets, like nebulas or the like.
Here's an idea.
Sticking with the concept that there is positive and negative, good and evil, things having a natural counter balance to them in D&D.
Have the entire universe sitting in the Astral Sea, the area around planets (solar systems) being Wild Space, it's more defined and set due to the proximity to the planets kind of like gravity giving it more concrete rules unlike the turbulent Astral Sea.
Now give it a counter part, The Deep Ethereal is the counter or dark matter that underlines the Astral Sea, equally chaotic and changing and turns into the Ethereal Shores where Wild Space is because of the planets giving it more definition to its state.
It would be possible to travel thru the Ethereal planes to other planets but the idea of going thru the Deep Ethereal to another system would be near suicide so most technology for travel is on the Astral Sea.
Having this newer version of the Astral Sea also brings it more in line with universes like Marvel where people also live on and mine dead god like beings floating around in space.
I've been playing since The First Time, and I'm really looking forward to this. I think this cosmology change makes good sense, although it does mean you can't incinerate a crystal sphere by leaving the portal open too long.
As an old 4e fangirl, I appreciate how much 5e SJ seems to be riffing on the excellent 4e Astral/planar books!
There was absolutely nothing excellent about 4e 😂 That abominable trash of an edition should have never existed and WotC employees agreed
Todd, I did like this video and I love seeing your wonderful face with a smile that shines brighter than a star found in the Astral Sea or Wildpsace
So now instead of one Material Plane there are many. If there are many Material(Wildspace) Planes now within the Astral Sea then do they each now have their own Shadowfell and Feywild counterpart planes? Making the Material Planes reside within the Astral Sea like the Outer Planes opens a can of worms.
Wasn’t that confirmed in Fizban’s too? I might be misremembering, but I feel like something very similar was said in the song of origin and the greatwyrms sections.
@@MarineS0n2 it said that the first world was broken and the fragments are what we call the material plane
Planes always had their own feywild and shadowfell, those are the mirror planes
so every crystal sphere was their own cosmology. they had their own elemental and higher/lower planes. and the shape of those planes was differnt in every sphere. the gods of that sphere and other powers only had power in that sphere, to the point that high level clerics and warlocks lsot their connection to their benefactor and when entering a new plane had to petition an analogue or even set up a new church or establish their patrons connection to that realm to recieve higher level powers. the phlogistan sep[erated spheres. and blocked any teleporting, dimensional travel, and some other stuff. the phlogistan was jsut the phlogistan. (of course there where creatures and travelers and civilizations in it. it wasnt jsut endless clouds of explosive gas. )
So here are some of the things we seem to have lost. 1) All the lore surrounding different deities and their power being restricted unless they had followers inside a crystal sphere. 2) The flammable phlogiston thing, which meant ships had to be lit by eerie phosphorescent lichens and you couldn't cook hot meals or boil water without magic. 3)The preservative aspect of phlogiston, where if you fell off a ship in the Flow, you would just go into a suspended animation when you ran out of air. 4)Currents in the Flow that made it easier to travel from certain systems to others, in effect mimicking the real world trade routes caused by trade winds. They also let you speed up the travel times between systems and act like a sort of "hyperspace" fast travel system. 5) Githyanki ships that acted like submarines or cloaking devices by phasing out to the astral plane and popping back in. Now instead of the Astral being "next door," you apparently have to sail over to it. 5) Different crystal spheres having different rules for how you could get through them, which gave the DM an easy to limit access to certain worlds until the PCs acquired the necessary magic or knowledge. I feel like that's a lot of cool stuff! What have we gained in exchange? I'm skeptical.
The first sucked mechanically, the second is mere window dressing, the third is irrelevant and never came up and the fourth you can still have just fine
Crystal spheres on the other hand are a massive loss
@@DimT670 The first may have been very incovenient for clerics, but it gave you lots of good roleplaying and storytelling hooks. The second is definitely more than window dressing the first time a mage tries to cast burning hands or fireball in the phlogiston! The suspended animation was also a good plot hook thing. There was at least one if not more than one adventure that centered around encountering a floating person who had been suspended in space for a hundred years or something and was basically a time traveler. Or, if an evil villain got knocked off a boat into the Flow, it gave you a convenient method for them to get revived and brought back. I definitely think you could have currents in the Astral Sea; I hope they do have them. I'm definitely interested to see how they incorporate Githyanki ships. And hopefully each bubble of Wildspace can have its own rules; i.e. some are filled with air, some are voids, some are cold, some are hot, some have lower gravity, some don't have access to fire magic, whatever.
Any DM can keep or add any of those things as they like, or not. They're just streamlining things, I don't see any harm
D&D for an outsider: Oh. It's like Lord of the Rings with improv.
D&D for veterans: I'm a ninja, my friend turns into dinosaurs, and now we're fighting demons in space
I am planning a epic spelljammer campaign tons of planets adventure plots monsters and wizards of the coast thank you for making this a reality I am over the moon excited.
Also wizkids I’m a coming to get that full spelljammer set.
Phlogiston - This is the way!
Personally, even though I just learned, I like the concept of the phlogiston more
My main question is about settings with different planes of existence (like Eberron for example), maybe they explain this in the book or in this small video series they're doing. If not I like the idea of them being in a nebula cloud or line that contains the great wheel.
Eberron specifically is tucked away in the Ethereal plane, rather than the Astral, hidden from the gods by its dragon creators (5e information).
If you wanted it in the Astral sea instead, you could position its moons/subplanes in its Wildspace.
It could also be in the middle of that Ethereal squall next to the Radiant Citadel, instead.
Dragons.
Is there a "God's Graveyard" that is littered with countless corpses of decimated gods left over from a long forgotten holly conflict?
The dead gods in the Astral are usually gods that have lost all of their followers and died because of their obscurity, but I could easily see that being a thing as well
I really am not sure how I feel about this. It's being claimed that it simplifies the setting but it really doesn't. Canon until now is that the spelljammer setting was a single expansive prime material universe just using fantasy concepts like phlogiston and crystal spheres. Now it's been intermixed with cosmology in a much more brain-stretching way and it's getting harder, not easier, to reconcile how d&d cosmology is supposed to work. Also I am simply over the "multiverse" fad - it doesn't mean anything in particular; it's just an excuse to not hold yourself accountable to cohesive storytelling.
Well wizards owns dnd now, and mtg is all about the multiverse. Now that marvel is also using it yet it is just a cliche and a little too convenient, you can literally do any damn thing you want and it’s all fine
@@MrKongatthegates this is literally wotc treatment of DMs, by telling players "whatever, do what you want, and heres a bunch of variant rules to support you in arguing with your DM that doing whatever is offical d&d... also were taking everything that made races individual and unique away, do whatever you want, we dont care" so spelljammer is getting the same treatment sadly
Nothing is stopping y'all from running it how you wanna run it.
@@Sakurafire1 actually, by putting it in a book you're giving player fodder to argue that "you're running it wrong" all the retcons wotc keep making arent just going to DMs running the game. Also what's the point in the book of you're just going to take it all out and not use it? The old "you don't have to use it" arguement is as dumb as these changes. I don't have to use the rules in the DMs guide but if im not using the fundamentals I'm also not running d&d.
@@marti5420 I didn't say "you don't have to use it", I'm saying for y'all to use your adult sized human brains to make your adventure unique and fun for both you and your players. These books are just guidelines, where you can pick and choose and be creative. Don't segregate yourself to the type of thinking that limits your possibilities (y'know, like saying "you're running it wrong").
I don't know what to think about all this huge lore changes, especially removal of crystal sphare.
I truly hope that Jeff Grubb is given his credit in these books; he's the genius behind Spelljammer
They did not even have Jeff or Nigel Findley even a consultation call on the new product and given what they did with dragonlance it is unlikely.
After butchering this setting already, I doubt they would.
Never played much spelljammer, but always appreciated it and kept tabs (see…I found girls and social parties and didn’t have time for D&D, anymore).
Gonna miss the crystal spheres as they helped keep the settings still feeling independent of spelljammer. Don't mind losing the Phlogiston tho as long as there's an explanation as to what happened to it. If it was burned off in the Spellplague or something, and maybe there's pockets of it in the astral sea that make fire dangerous in those regions.
@@vapormations7282 Sure, but that doesn't excuse any criticisms or gripes. Which is all that my sentiment is, a gripe. But enough grips could make a potentially useful product useless to someone as they'd have to put more effort into making it work for them than it's worth. You can't just ignore them. By that logic, the best possible product is a blank page that says "you're the DM, make it up" which isn't actually helpful.
Edit: Sorry if that came off as defensive. All too often I see people using rule 0 as a defense against legitimate criticisms as if being able to change something means it was never something to be critical of.
@@vapormations7282 I never said the creators were putting in less effort. Just that I don't like the decision to remove an element I considered central to the structure of the setting. And I suspect I'm not the only one. And for people like me, it's effort to make it how we want it, undoing the effort they put in to change it. Not much in the case of just the crystal spheres, but effort that could have been saved and would have made the book more appealing imo. I've yet to be sold on how changing it from a crystal sphere to a wall of mist improves it, so to me, it's just wasted effort.
The phlogiston changing to the astral sea I'm fine with as I'm already sold on that change (the phlogiston though cool just punishes fire using spell casters, the astral sea works fine as an aspect of the deeper astral plane for the prime worlds to "float in"). The crystal spheres, I consider too central to change without good reason. Maybe they'll give that reason and there will be a good explanation of what happened to them. But if not, I'll have to spend effort changing it, or inventing my own explanation, cause I've run spelljammer for some of my players before and they're familiar with the setting, so they're going to ask what happened to those things. And if the book doesn't justify its decisions, it falls on my shoulders as the DM.
@@Greco412 You're not alone in your complaints. The version of the Realms I've been running in has taken the spheres and phlogestion into account already, so when my preorder arrives, I'll ignore anything I'd have to ret-con and focus on the rules for ship combat and whatnot.
Spellplague only happened in the Realms. Doesn’t explain how it happened in the entire multiverse
I can understand, and also in a way expected, the removal of crystal spheres. However, the loss of the phlogiston is really going to take away one of the more fun parts of spelljammer. That's always provided a way to map and collect these distant worlds and instead just placing everything in wildspace seems less material. It is nice that they'll be giving some more attention to the astral sea in the process. Just doesn't feel like that change was truly necessary.
SJ was great because it didn’t have to rely on blurring with the planes and making it more Planejammer, which it unfortunately is now. Spelljammer ONLY involved the Material Plane and that’s one of the things that made it stand out and apart from Planescape. Now it’s more “Planejammer” than anything.
Its literally the opposite. The phlogistron added nothing other than keeping everything in the material but the crustal spheres were the most integral part of thw setting
@@DimT670 ... and providing shipping lands for which everything existed instead of spreading everything thin over vast galactic planes negating everything WOTC are trying to do with these changes, adding an element of danger to every single travel, connecting the dots of inhabited spheres so people had focus when they travelled, proving a reason to cut off these bubbles from the rest of inhabited space and adding plot hooks for reconnecting lost spheres, giving direction to jammer on jammer combat encounters, proving a "down" and an "up" within a tube to aid in descriptions, giving galaxy maps "roads" so you could understand what youre doing a little better rather than just a bunch of labeled dots on an empty map, creating lanes that were one way only thus providing further plot hooks about one-way trips and finding a way home, forcing some classes to adapt and overcome... but yeah, other than a whole bunch of stuff, it doesnt add anything at all
@@marti5420 none of the things you said were added by the phlogistron or can only achieved with it. Ive played 2e spelljammer. The phlogistron is the loading screen of the setting. It adds nothing
What happens if you cast Etherealness in wildspace? Are you still sufficiently close to material worlds for the spell to work, or is the place already too astral for that?
Good question.
Definitely up for debate. The distance between the shallow and deep ethereal aren't explicit. But I can see arguments for it being restrained to atmospheres, or go as far out as the border
It's so confusing being newish to DnD and there are two versions of the space between worlds (wild space and the phlogiston) and now two versions of the astral sea
So if I'm understanding this Wild Space is what used to be the Crystal Spheres (individual solar systems) and the Astral Sea is what we used to call the Phlogiston (the space between) and the border between the two isn't physical anymore.
I'm going to need some time to readjust. Fortunately I haven't played in the old version so at this point it's just lore to me. Although this does invalidate some of my crazy world building so I'll have to start that over.
I really liked the resources and suggestions for creating your own Domain of Dread in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft so will there be resources and suggestions in that vein for making your own wild space systems and stuff?
Sometimes Crystal Spheres were entire universes. They varied in size. Right now it’s sadly not really Spelljammer but Planejammer 🙄
@@razzelmire2008 How so?
@@andrewtyrell4795 He’s just being dramatic. Some people feel like this any time changes are made to an IP.
@@Newnodrogbob That's possible, but I didn't experience the original version of the setting so I wanted to hear some opinions on the changes.
After all being able to just sail from the prime material plane to the astral plane is a big change.
@@andrewtyrell4795 I’d love for him or someone else to elaborate, but he’s all over this section just being salty, so good luck. Your planar observation is true. The concept of Planes and the barriers between them is pretty strange, in all the versions of the game.
I read a lot of the 2E spelljammer rules when they came out, but never played a campaign. (I remember a computer game of piloting your ship around space). I know the phlogiston between crystal spheres was perilous and tended to explode, which seems like a pain in the keester. “Spelljammer” was the name of a kind of Flying Dutchman-esque mythological ship in game. The magical helms that power ships get their names from that ship. The mo story’s compendium featured lots of stuff about the elven empire and their war against “scro” space Orcs. The giant space hamsters of various flavors created by gnomes were standouts in my head. The neoghi were kind of he standout race of villains, although mind flayers and beholders had a big presence in the game.
That may all be stuff you know already, but that’s the best I can do.
I'm so excited to get these books!
Please do Planescape next! (I know that's unlikely)
More likely than you think, fam! Honestly, it’s most likely going to happen at this point. They’ve stated in the past that anything that shows up in Unearthed Arcana hints at a new product in the pipeline, and our most recent UA had a looooooot of Planescape…
@@hannahbecton9209 OH for real? I hope so!
An informative discussion as always! One thing I noticed, per the said discussion, is that there was no mention of the phlogiston, that iridescent and very volatile substance ever swirling beyond the Crystal Spheres enclosing the various game worlds. Has the Astral Sea supplanted or somehow evolved from the phlogiston? Moreover, I hope the 2022 version of Spelljammer does dedicate some text to the Elven Imperial Navy i.e. reiterating or even redefining the importance (or lack thereof) of the said organization. What does it mean to be an Immortal elf in Wildspace far removed from the familiar arboreal surroundings of Krynn or Toril or Oerth? I have not read too deeply into this with the game supplements, DC comics and so forth, but I presume the elves who formed the Imperial Fleet took their immortality and their mystical connection to nature into the stars. These two things should have an important if not overwhelming impact on the elven civilizations in Wildspace (i.e. deep forests growing within the bowels of elven imperial vessels, and found in great profusion on their colony worlds, if they have colony worlds).
The Astral Sea has replaced the Phlogiston entirely. It has been pretty controversial lately.
It’s gone just like all the dignity of the game itself.
@@razzelmire2008 Wow, you're whiny. If you don't like the game the way it is now, then don't play it. Play other games, or play the old stuff. Plenty of people like the game the way it is now and the direction it is going in, if you don't then maybe you should start realizing that the game isn't for you, and move on.
I'm worried that they won't like the optics of the Elven Imperial navy fighting space orcs and will see it as "too colonial," and so they'll eliminate that part of the setting entirely.
@@dereknolin5986 but even in the old spelljammer they aknowledged that the elvish imperial navy were essentially space nazis, with the main characters stopping collaborating with them in disgust after they commited literal actual genocide, and then they proceeded to turn to full on villains after
Everyone saying "oh this cool return of 4e i hate Phlogiston", meanwhile when you realize only the 4e terms are carried over with the phlogiston+rainbow flow to the Ethereal (which makes logical sense as the border plane) being flipped to the Astral (which makes little sense even in 5e cosmology because you would have to crash RIGHT THROUGH THE ELEMENTAL PLANES/ELEMENTAL CHAOS to get to the astral plane) and from thus far said material not being extremely flammable yet otherwise identical to 2 and 3e phlogiston and crystal shells/spaces around realms.
"please stop trying to map things, we dont care anymore and neither should you"
-WoTC
@@ANDELE3025 im agreeing with you btw
I think the choice to not include Crystal spheres is a bit of a poor one on the side of the writer’s, to me it’s always kind of made sense that there was a physical barrier between the realm where you adventure and The realm were gods even can’t go. It kind of loses the scale that it used to :(
Thanks.
Great stuff just wish there was even more
So if the Astral Plane now connects every game world, do all the gods of all the worlds wth a Great Wheel cosmology live on the same outer planes, or does each game world have its own unique set of outer planes? (For example, when Drizzt from Faerun dies, could his soul go to the same afterlife as Tasslehoff Burrfoot from Dragonlance? If so, I pity him.) And what about worlds like Eberron that do not use the Great Wheel? Are their cosmologies now conformed to this new system?
Why does it feel like even Wizards of the Coast doesn't even know what Wildspace and the Astral Plane/Sea are?
All the better. Don't fence us in.
*starts feverishly writing the Kingdom Hearts campaign of my dreams*
Given each campaign is centered around what that DM deems is reality, it doesn't matter what the game designers say is or isn't. The new system simplifies the ruleset that's all. Content is still up to the DM, Story is still up to the DM. If a DM wants to use 2e content or even put a space whale in their game that's up to them.
So..I'm confused...if one uses say, "Astral Projection" or something like that to visit the astral plane, are they then in outer space? Can you reach the "astral plane" by piloting a spelljammer ship?
Thank you Todd
Shut up and take my money 😂
Pre-odered yesterday. F*ckin psyched. I'm going to make it an expansion of my homebrew setting 🤘🏻
What was the logic in replacing the Prime Material Plane with the Astral Sea? The Universe & Galaxies are gone and now replaced with random systems floating around in the Astral Sea?
Is ti coincidence that NASA just published first pictures from James Webb telescope? :D Unfortunately no space whale detected ... yet
Hell yes.
eh, i miss the phlogiston, you can already do all this stuff in 2nd edition spelljammer, now it feels more or less "were not giving you rules on travel or guides on anything, because everything and nothing exists here, so just do whatever" which seems to be a prevailing thought in wotc rule changes atm, "just do whatever, who cares, we dont"
also putting things over a wider area instead of restricting it to what were effectively shipping lanes, isnt going to populate space more, its going to spread things out and do the opposite to what theyre to go for. the thing that made spelljammer so different from a traditional planet side world map, was those shipping lanes in the phlogiston, now its just a world map by a different name with more stars in the background.
and finally, so space is just a space ocean now pretty much.... ok? this is just a sea-based expansion book but reskinned from a nautical theme to an astral theme
In short, we changed Spelljammer to make it simpler and more colorful.
and less anoying. back in 2e I nearly lost my players because of the phlogiston I had to ditch the whole thing to keep the campaign alive. I started calling the space between the sphears "the intersteller" and dumped the "problematic" mechanics
I think you just described 5th edition in a sentence.
@@sylvnfox Why did they dislike it?
Can you elaborate a bit more? How is it possible to loose players about something so insignificant?
More like “We continue to water and dumb down the legacies of D&D to make it easily digestible to a weak minded, ADHD crowd of youngsters who can make us a ton of money unlike our older loyal customers.”
i love spelljammer. but there is no way im replacing the phlogistan with the astral plane and im definetly not gettign rid of the crystal spheres. you coudl have doen EVERYTHING you wanted to do int eh astral sea inside the phlogistan without upending the entire lore behind how differnt crystal spheres are actually differnt and disconnected from eachother by more than jsut another plane.
Except for starting fires without blowing yourself to bits, to be fair.
So are meteor showers raining god corpses now
Very cool! When will we know mechanics so I can play in it?
they have a liveplay here called "heros of the multiverse" you can kind of get a bit of a feel for the mechanics
@@sylvnfox somewhat, but I would love more definitions rather than vague feels that we still have to guess on.
@@Wizo062991 d&d beyond has the first chapter of the prequil adventure avalable. it doesn't realy give much insight yet but it is cute
@@sylvnfox I totally agree with this!
When the boxset of books comes out next month.
Where’s my phlogiston! You’ve ruined Spelljammer! Curse you WotC! - jk, actually these changes make a lot of sense and I’m looking forwards to checking it out
my players back in 2e threatend to quit the campaign if I diddnt scrap the phlogiston
One year later: Now we are all playing two characters each, We ditched the original intro adventure because it caused some blow out arguments, acquired passage on a ship, explored the rock, got hired on to a ship, discovered ranged attack suck in ship combat, fought space clowns, explored wrecked ships and fought asteroid dwelling monsters, finally got a Hammerhead ship, hired to pick up cargo, attacked by floating clumps of undead, saved asteroid miners from undead, hired to chase down necromancer responsible for floating clumps and now just took space mummy necromancers pyramid ship. Waiting on experience and treasure from said space mummy. Hope everyone ells is having fun too.
I wonder if you can use a Spelljammer in the Elemental Chaos.
I wonder if you can adventure at all in the Elemental Chaos. 5e made it the place where the uninhabitable reaches of the Elemental Planes blend together into something that even elemental creatures find uncomfortable.
Anyone know the artist of that Acererak portrait behind Chris?
It's different from what I know... The astral sea is supposed to be- but... *Inner screaming*
Astral Plane = Prime Material Plane?
If all planets within every wildspace, AND the Astral Sea beyond both are part of the the Astral Plane, is that not just the Prime Material Plane but replacing the old Phlogistan Expanse with The Astral Sea?
So... can I get to the astral sea using astral projection?
That's my question too.
and where is the need for SJ ships in that concept then?
@@diedrachenklatscher Well, for one thing, Astral Projection is a 9th level Spell, meaning it can only be cast by characters at 17th level or higher in Classes that can learn it. Secondly, the Astral Plane is inhabited Githyanki and Astral Dreadnoughts, both of which have methods of cutting the silver cord that tethers you to your physical body. If that cord is cut, your character DIES!
Hmm so are elder evils like hadar in wild space or astral sea or far realm?
So, looking at the great wheel, the outer planes are in the astral sea, so presumably you can get to them in a spelljamming vessel via the astral sea, so, where are the elemental planes and the elemental chaos? Do they no longer exist?
I ask because I have player who wants to be a horizon walker pirate with an extraplanar background
I distrust anything he says about wildspace when he compares it to Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan. The obvious link is Star Trek V, The Final Frontier given he references Thought, and a kaleidoscope of colours, of going between states/world barriers.
The one thing I don't like about this change is that I was really into the idea of Spelljammer taking place entirely on the Prime Material Plane, which turns out to be a really weird place. But I liked the Astral Sea in 4th Edition so I'll learn to love this.
A good change overall. But if you are going to gut the Material Plane like that (it is more a collection of material planes now) at least let it count Wildspace as a material region. 😛
I hate this what is the point in getting invested in dnd lore or get exited over old settings if they just going to change it.
I still think they have lost the enormity of the prime material plane. The travel to other planes is planescape, it takes more powerful magics to travel there.
also this makes the prime material plain actually finite unlike all older editions.
@@brianzmek7272 Wildspace systems are finite but there could be an infinite number of them.
@@Millstone1985 in 2e each crystal sphere which is the corollary of a 5e wildspace system is also finite but all the spheres are imbedded in the phlogiston which is part of the material plain and is infinite. 5e demotes every prime material plain to the status of overgrown demiplain
This sounds like they’re doing away with Crystal Spheres.
So, infinite disjointed material planes separated by the Astral fish tank. What about the Outer Planes? Are they other material planes (planets) now? What is Oceanus, or the Styx here now another fish tank between planets (outer planes)? Doesn't this transform the Multiverse into a Universe?
Not really. The Astral Plane never really factored into Planescape. The Outer Planes were all linked to the Outlands.
@@BusCrashBoy that is nonsense there was a lot of transitions through the ethereal and astral to get between the inner and outer plains not to mention any interaction with the githyanki especially there cities. Plus there is the A Guide to the Astral Plane source book and the adventure dead gods which both focus on the astral and i am sure there are others.
It was always one universe. In fact this makes it more of a multiverse. In the past all planes and the phlogistron were in the same material plane
Still exist as Astral Dominions probably?
Everytime I see Chris in a video I point at the screen and say "Chris Perkins" (only Parks&Recs fans will get this)...
The change from the phlogiston to the astral sea was jarring, but really neat. I am totally up for this.
I'm not a fan of this. I don't care for making the Astral Plane physically accessible by just flying to it. I'm keeping the crystal spheres in my game.
They are still there, but are just a fuzzy transition from Wildspace to the Astral Sea as shown at 0:59.
Only good D&D was Legacy D&D which was 1e-3e R.I.P.
@@steveaustin2686 so not still there then.
@@DimT670 Still look like spheres on the image shown. YMMV and evidently does.
So I'm guessing there is no flow or flogiston
BRING BACK LARGE LUIGI!!!!
What happens if you fall off the ship?
In old SJ, the ship has an atmosphere envelope so if you fall off you're still carried along bobbing up and down on the ship's gravity plane you're not just immediately left miles and miles behind. Should also note that if you leave the bubble you still have a small personal bubble around you for a time so if you leave the ship's envelope you still don't immediately die. Not sure in 5E :)
E o Phogiston? Acabaram com ele?
Can someone please help me with the difference between the ethereal plane and the astral plane?? As a relatively new D&D fan, I get confused...
the ethereal plane is basically a weird reflection of the real world. you can see things on the material plane but theyre all foggy and you cant touch them. closest example, if you've ever watched lord of the rings, the world frodo goes to when he puts on the ring is pretty close to the ethereal plane.
the astral plane is empty and time moves funky. thats all. its the dimension between dimensions.
@@hmad898 is correct also the ethereal plain connects to the elemental plains and not the outer plains where as the astral is the other way round the negative and positive material Plaines are inner in 3.5 and before and outer in 5e 4e broke the distinction more or less totally. in older editions the plane of shadow (basically the shadowfell was not connected properly to either and was mostly only accessible on the prime and the old implicit fea realm was similar though that was not codified until 4e and is one of the few good things they did in that edition imo)
I hope Todd grabbed The Plane Above on DMsGuild!
So they burned down the phlogiston ground the spheres to mist and put the prime into the outer plains with no boundary smashing planescape into spelljammer. On the plus side this dose on some level help justify speljamming as opposed to plane hooping as inter prime travel but id dose it by making them the same thing.
The simplification of 5e is understandable but I will miss the old lore and with most likely hybrid it into my games.
It’s only understandable from a profit motivation. D&D needs to go back to the days where they cared more about making an expansive and deeply immersive game and not just care about the money
@@razzelmire2008 strangely, the company that produces these products does, in fact, do it for money. Nothing’s stopping you from making all of the sense, crunchy lore that you want. Have at it.
@@razzelmire2008 you do realise the literal reason they were making so many expansions in like the 80s was to sell em for money?
There is no pure era, this is simply a decision some of us don't like. I dont like them getting rid of crystal soheres either but i dont pretend that makes em creatively bankrupt
So it's basically like homestuck now?
Hmpf... I really like this idea of wild space, exploring with my players... but seriously, 3 books? Of course all of them needed to run that game properly? 64 pages per book and a price of 70 euro? I mean come on! DnD has been growing so much in the last years - is it really neccessary to let us bleed out our money, for the excuse of a little bit more (truly really goog) artwork? In total not even 200 pages, but nearly double the price of a rormal book? Don't know if I want to support that shitty price politics!
So really itl be 32 page books with lots of illustrations?
so we ditched the phlogiston and it's just wild space now? I mean the astral sea is now described how i've always imagined it for 5e anyway.
Wow the guy completely confuse wildspace and astral sea , 2 totally different things Not even mentioning the phlogiston. Next time better interview someone understanding the Dnd lore.
He didn't confuse them. Phlogiston has been scrapped on purpose.
This is the new D&D lore.
Even worst
@@PixelsPirate I mean, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but there were many people who were frustrated with Phlogiston rules.
@@SMiki55 as you say, thats your opinion. Don't @ me anymore
Y’all, if you miss the crystal spheres and the phlogiston so much just add it back in!
But why shoudl i have to? By this logic we don't need this if you like spelljammer just make it yourself
Not to mention this ruins the old lore with thoughtless retcons that don't fit and makes people have to do extra work
first again my guys
Spelljammer is wAaaaaay too Sci fi. It also kinda takes away the fantasy and makes both the Feywild and Shadowfell kinda redundant. Can I just say that spelljamming doesn’t exist in my game
It takes a special kind to see it. Our games always had it as soon as it hit years ago. In our games Spelljammer ships docked in Waterdeep. Mostly though we used a Mirror of Mental Prowess to travel from our villa in Waterdeep to our small fleet. Sorry is that too much? Think Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek and Steampunk. It's a big D&D universe so don't be afraid.
Wild space is "rainbowic"...
That was definitely a new word for me!
@@dereknolin5986 facts!
I made a mistake. I looked at the old lore and spoiled myself, imagining the crystal spheres and the phlogiston and how I might use them. Won't make that mistake again
The old lore is great my guy, not a mistake at all.
@@serjoerickii3262 I got excited for the old lore then they removed a lot of stuff I was excited over. If I do it again, they'll do the same thing. I'm sure 2e dragonlance was great(never looked into it and now I never will), but its probably gonna look nothing like 5e dragonlance will
Astral Sea/Flogiston = Nebula. Crystal Sphere = Dyson Sphere. The next question is... which Nebula is the D&D multiverse in? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's the Horse Head nebula, because that nebula is cool!