I have been waiting for Wizards of the Coast to bring Spelljammer back to D&D since I got back into D&D. When I was younger I would pretty much grab any AD&D book I thought would fit into my campaign and looked cool, and I remember one week my FLGS had a bunch of older stuff on consignment, I remember taking what birthday money I had left (I think this was around 1995), and splurging it on this stuff which included a AD&D Monster Manual Binder that was heavy enough to kill someone, and also a ton of Spelljammer material.
My understanding at the time was that Spelljammer never took off enough to keep publishing material for it, but I remember falling hard for it (not as much as Ravenloft, but it was close), and until I got the Planescapes Campaign setting box, I sort of used Spelljammer as a conduit between campaigns (not between planes mind you), but as a way to break up tones between a Forgotten Realms adventure, and another Ravenloft one.
It is 2022, and Wizards has seen kindly to bring out a 3 book box called “Spelljammer’s Adventures’s in Space”. This is a truly fantastic set that includes everything a DM will need to run a campaign in the Spelljammer setting, and also everything a player would need to create a character to play in this world. In addition to the books there is also a Spelljammer setting DM screen included.
The first book in the set is the Astral Adventurer’s Guide. This is a handy-dandy guide book to the setting itself how it works, the new character options include 6 new races including Plasmoids, Thri-Keen, Hadozee, Giff, Autognomes, and Astral Elves. In addition there are 2 newly included background options in the book Wildspacer, and Astral Drifter. After the book gets this out of the way there is a ton of detail on how to handle the mechanics of “spelljamming” (piloting ships in space) and the various types of ships available in this universe, and the details of them. As far as things to do, Spelljamming itself isn’t an extremely complex process, so if you’re looking for a more in depth space faring experience, you’re probably looking for “Traveller”. This is just a fun way to have a wild space romp.
The 2nd book is Boo’s Astral Menagerie, a 64 page book that contains descriptions for the monstrous denizens of the Spelljammer universe. This amounts to 39 monsters, but since they have variants I think the total available is 72. There is a solid blend of creatures here from cute to creepy to all-out cosmic horror.
The third book is an 11 chapter campaign called “Light of Xaryxis” This campaign is meant for levels 5-8 and makes a good way to follow up any of the starter level campaigns with a wild twist. One thing that needs to be said is this is not a sandbox adventure, players will get to interact with NPC’s and have a lot of action and excitement, but it has to be played in 3 parts of 4 chapters each in exact order. Some groups will like it, some will feel they are being railroaded. Think about this before trying to run it. Each chapter does end with a cliffhanger to make it feel like an old sci-fi serial, and add a compelling end to each section.
Overall, I love this set. I love this new 3 book format, and I’m excited to hear that Planescapes will be getting the same treatment next year. Spelljammer is a long favorite setting and I am glad it got first class treatment. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!