Jason Tondro started at Wizards of the Coast as a Senior Designer on D&D this month. What do you think they could be working on?
It’s possible that the 1989 sci-fi setting of Spelljammer created by Jeff Grubb is one. It’s undoubtedly a popular request.
Wizards of the Coast playtested Spelljammer races in October 2021 with Unearthed Arcana. Until this week, that was the most recent playtest too. This week, Wizards have moved on to the Heroes of Krynn and an open Dragonlance test. WotC didn’t really make much of the Spelljammer connection in October playtest, but the alien races had connections to the setting.
We don’t know what Jason Tondro’s project at Dungeons & Dragons will be. Neither does the designer, but it seems like Jason is also imagining that Spelljammer is a possibility. In a tweet they say;
I don’t know what my first project at WotC will be, but if I were looking for someone to bring back Spelljammer, hiring a guy who made adventures and wrote for both Pathfinder and Starfinder would seem like a smart play.
Taken a face value, Jason doesn’t know but feels safe to speculate. Is that the likely scenario, though? Has the senior designer really not been given a clue?
If Spelljammer is a topic that Wizards of the Coast and fellow D&D teammates talked about during the recruitment process, would it be one that Jason felt appropriate to mention in a tweet? It might be that the tweet is as likely a bluff as it is a clue.
However, Tondro is right. Hiring a designer who knows high-fantasy and space opera would be a good Spelljammer move.
Spelljammer was a campaign setting for the 2nd edition of AD&D and named after the magic sailing ships that travelled through space from world to world. It was high fantasy in the spirit of Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms in space with floating cities, ship-to-ship combat and celestial mechanics.
Creative Commons credit: Immgram ‘Dignity’ video teaser A by RedkidOne.
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