Wizards of the Coast announced changes to its review process for future Dungeons & Dragons publications and reprints in response to "problematic content published in the Spelljammer": in a D&D Beyond blog post (opens in new tab), "In Space Adventures" was announced.

The publisher has apologized and removed previous criticism that Spelljammer's description of Hadjie, the flying ape-man, bore similarities to racist stereotypes of black people. The first edition of Spelljammer: A Space Adventure contained two pieces of content that fans correctly pointed out were offensive: the first was an illustration of Hadzie's minstrelsy, similar to offensive minstrel material that racially depicted black people, among other things. The second is a paragraph about Hadzie that reinforces harmful real-world stereotypes. Future reprints will likely omit both the illustration and the offensive text.

Perkins explains that previous D&D books were reviewed for inclusion "only at the discretion of the product lead." For example, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, a collection of adventures based on settings inspired by non-European folklore, was written by authors with diverse backgrounds and credited multiple cultural consultants. The Curse of Strahd, which had to be revised after publication to remove racist passages, contained no such statements. As Perkins writes, "The studio's new process mandates that every word, illustration, and map be reviewed by several outside cultural consultants prior to publication."

The studio's new process requires that all words, illustrations, and maps be reviewed by a "cultural consultant.

Perkins elaborates on how the inclusion review takes place during text creation, art creation, and final product review, and explains that new content created in response to feedback from the cultural consultants also round, he explained. This process has already been applied to the Spelljammer: you can see the resulting changes in the digital version of D&D Beyond (opens in new tab), the reprinted physical copy, and the errata PDF (opens in new tab).

Looking through the errata, one can see that the description of the Melkane and dwarves, who were portrayed as races devoted to trading, has been revised. The Melkane, whose origins had previously remained ambiguous, are now described as celestial beings created by the gods of commerce, and the fey origins of the dwarves are emphasized. Meanwhile, the intelligent plants called Artuk are no longer motivated to follow the military gods, their priests have been renamed to the more evocative "Star Horror," and Rhaegar's "golem" ability has been renamed to "duplication."

In addition, one of the endings of Spelljammer's Light of Xaryxis campaign practically sent the player characters into genocide, although it always seemed out of place as the finale to Flash Gordon's adventure, modified to be a little less extreme.

"We are expanding our pool of cultural consultants to have the expertise needed to review the various materials we publish," Perkins concluded. And we will continue to listen to D&D fans who call attention to objectionable content." We will do our best to make this process as diligent, orderly, and universal as possible, and to better ensure that our products bring joy, not pain, to our fans."