Let’s get this out of the way: I love Dragonlance. Love it! I read the novels in junior high and binged through as many of the series as I could. I must have read four or five dozen of them over three years. Good and bad. Memorable and forgettable and so awful they’re seared into my mind. It’s a big reason I play D&D at all, which is a massive part of my life and a primary Asperger’s obsession.
I love Dragonlance so much that when the DM for my regular game moved away and I took over, the first campaign for Pathfinder I chose to run was the original Dragonlance adventures. The first published campaign I ever chose to run after a lifetime of homebrew.
The authors allege that WotC is doing this because of numerous controversies that have played the game over the beginning of this year paired with numerous re-writes they were asked to do. The claims of rewrites makes sense: it’s not 1984 anymore and fantasy can’t get away with women having secondary roles and romance-dependant character arcs, while minority characters are expected. I can easily imagine a pair of 64 and 72-year-old authors having trouble innately incorporating modern representation. Struggling to meet the standards and requests for rewrites, before blaming “social justice” over the cancellation of the novel.
While we’ll never know for sure, personally, I blame a different culprit: Drizzt Do’Urden. The new Dragonlance books were cancelled in mid-August. The latest Drizzt book, Relentless, was released in late July, 2020. It’s quite possible the sales of the relaunched Forgotten Realms series were not up to Wizards of the Coast’s standards. That despite D&D being larger than ever before and having more new players and fans than any time in its history… people aren’t buying the novels. Which would mean a new Dragonlance trilogy, a book series dependent on having read six, seven, or even ten prior books might not be an easy sell and surefire hit. That if “R.A. Salvator” wasn’t moving enough books then “Weis & Hickman” (whose last collaboration was 2009’s Dragon’s of the Hourglass Mage for the Lost Chronicles trilogy, a book that was also almost not released) might sell even less.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Back in the late 1980s, when D&D novels became a hit, there wasn’t a lot of competition in the fantasy market, either for adults or youths. You had the perennial favourites like Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and David Eddings but not many other big names. Few people took fantasy seriously. Now we have George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, Terry Goodkind, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Robert Jordan for adults (plus numerous others). And for young adults, J.K Rowling kicked off a renaissance of authors, with Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer, Rick Riordan, Kathryn Lasky, John Flanagan, Tui T. Sutherland, Chris d’Lacey and so very many others penning books. D&D doesn’t offer much to young fantasy fans apart from a familiar name. As such, the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels are largely only going to appeal to their existing audiences, which have shrunk as the readers have grown up and moved on from that type of novel.
While I’m sad there won’t be more Dragonlance novels, I also know I wouldn’t have read them anymore than I read the Lost Chronicles series (which, according to ‘Lance fans, was pretty darn good). And while it makes me sad that new kids won’t discover Dragonlance through the novels and fall in love with the world, I also know that it’s not hard to find the original trilogy: there are used copies of Dragons of Autumn Twilight on Amazon for $3. Not that they will. They’re too busy planning games set in the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender, Critical Role, or Harry Potter.
Because Dragonlance isn’t the fantasy world of the average D&D player. It’s their parents and grandparents’ fantasy world.
The second hardcover campaign setting adapting a plane from Magic the Gathering to the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Mythical Adventures of Theros was released in July 2020. The physical release was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the digital release on DnDBeyond.com came a few weeks earlier, maintaining the original street date. Which was a nice way to satisfy anyone eagerly awaiting the book or had preordered the product.
Theros follows the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica as a physical 5e D&D book, although there were a number of other PDF releases prior that can still be found for free on the DMsGuild under the “Plane Shift” label, which adapt other MtG planes. Mixing the D&D chocolate with the MtG peanut butter. (The reverse will also happen in the summer of 2021 when the MtG Core Set is being replaced by a Forgotten Realms themed set. Which might be the first MtG cards I buy since 1997.)
Image Copyright WotC
What It Is
Mythical Adventures of Theros is a 256-page hardcover product with an alternate cover limited to game stores. (Or game stores with online stores like Miniature Market) Mythical Adventures of Theros describes the Ancient Greece-themed land of Theros. Like all 5th Edition D&D products, it’s full colour, although the trade dress of this product is fairly different and the whole product has a slightly different feel. Wizards is going to greater effort to make each of their products look distinct while still instantly being identifiable as 5e books. Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica it uses a heavy amount of art recycled from Magic cards; however, if you’re not a Magic player, you’d never know.
The new mechanic—because every new D&D hardcover has to have a brand new mechanical hook—is the supernatural gifts. There are nine gifts, each of which is kinda-sorta equivalent to a feat, as you can choose to have a feat in place of one. There is also the new Piety subsystem, which is a variant of the faction mechanic from Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Dragon Heist, which measures how much a god favours a particular hero. Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, this book assumes a specific tone for your campaigns: the adventuring party are the champions of a god—or number of gods—doing great tasks in their name(s).
Rounding out the book are five new (or reprinted) PC races, the centaur, leonid (lion-person), minotaur, satyr and triton; two new subclasses, the bard college of eloquence and the paladin oath of glory; and the athlete background. It ends with forty-odd new monsters plus three “Mythic” monsters that make use of the also brand new Mythic rules.
As mentioned, Theros is a setting based on Ancient Greece, or rather the Greece of the surviving myths and legends. As the gods play a significant role in the setting, Theros is less “ancient Greece” and more akin to the Disney take on Hercules. Or, dating myself, like the cheesy ’90s TV Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. Theros isn’t a true world. The land on the accompanying map is pretty much the entire world, as beyond the known region is a small unexplored wilderness that ends with a void. (Is this typical of Magic planes? Was Ravnica like that as well and it just not mentioned?)
The fifteen described deities most map nicely to the known Greek gods, or related mythological figures (such as Athreos, god of passage, being an analogue of the Charon, boatman of the river Styx). Presumably they also have some tie to the Magic the Gathering mana colours as well, but that’s not clear in this book and my MtG lore is too limited to make a decent guess—especially as how my guess on how the guilds of Ravnica mapped to the colours of mana was completely off. Possibly five high gods, each related to one colour and then ten blended gods? I’d have loved a “behind the curtain” sidebar on how that aspect of the lore.
The Good
Image Copyright WotC
The flavour of the book is excellent. Everyone knows Greek mythology to some degree. It’s familiar but a type of era that hasn’t been explored much in D&D prior. Mythical Adventures of Theros draws from the same archetypes, but presents a more fantastic and slightly sanitized version of Greek Mythology, while retaining some of the grey morality as any god could be either a patron or an antagonist. Because it is similar to but not literally magical Ancient Greece, this also allows it to surprise people who are deeply familiar with Greek mythology while also allows Dungeon Masters to tell their own adaptations of classic myths, perhaps with a twist. And it allows people to fudge historical details, and handwave those discrepancies away as being how Theros differs from actual Greece. Like how the statues and buildings are all clean white and not garishly painted; Theros is how we imagine Ancient Greece and not how Ancient Greece actually was.
The hook of playing larger-than-life heroic figures is appealing. D&D often has a power fantasy element, and being mythical heroes like Hercules, Achilles, Perseus, or Theseus is a very attractive idea. And the Grecian era works with this idea of mythical heroes more than many other settings and worlds. That said, the base mechanics of playing the champion of a god or a hero that is beyond mortal could easily be adapted to other settings. You could easily port it over to the Realms and use it for playing a Chosen of a god (as seen in the Sundering event). This means even if you don’t want the setting, the Piety rules and heroic boons can be borrowed.
The divine gifts are also easy to customize, as they’re basically feats. This was an excellent bar to set the power level of the boons, especially as many DMs let players start with a free feat, and because its a known quantity, it’s easy to homebrew. It also means you could just let someone boost one of ability scores, such as letting the Hercules wannabe double down on Strength.
Each of the racial entries includes how to calculate their height and weight in the racial traits, rather than a seperate section later in the book (which is occasionally forgotten with new races). This is minor but I like it enough to call it out.
Unsurprisingly, there’s lots of new monsters. With 50 pages of new critters, this doubles as a big book of monsters. This makes sense, as Magic the Gathering is known for having ample numbers of summoned foes, meaning there’s plenty of art for monsters that can be appropriated for this product. And given classic Greek mythology was used to inspire so much of the D&D bestiary there’s lots of neat variants for existing foes. This is very useful, as DMs often pick monsters for adventures or encounters based on their lore or how they fit into the narrative, and more variants means they can work at different level bands or have powers that surprise experienced players. It’s pretty handy to have a CR 12 hydra (in addition to the CR 8 in the Monster Manual) to give tough adventurers a familiar foe.
The monster section also gives information on incorporating some classic D&D monsters into the setting. These are mostly explaining the lore of Grecian monsters that don’t receive a new entry and stat block, like the basilisk or cyclops. But this is still good, as one of my complaints of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica was not knowing how many D&D monsters named in the world actually fit in or how they looked. Also in the book are eight new magic items. This includes the flying chariot and a helm of the gods. Classic, iconic stuff. Or molten bronze that covers your body like a second skin but functions as a breastplate. (Very timely, given I just finished reading Jim Butcher’s novel Battle Ground). Also in this section are five new artifacts. I love this! Artifacts are too often a forgotten element of the game, and godly magic items feel like a big part of the setting and idea of mythic adventures. These are pretty cool and have extra powers tied to a character’s piety score, so the more closely connected you are with your god the more badass your unique magic hammer becomes.
Image Copyright WotC
The Bad
This book just contains the framework of a setting. The big nations/ Poleis (read: city-states) each get around 3 pages. Other locations get less. Entire cities, like Neolantin, get one or two sentences. The entire gazetteer is just 25-pages. Like Ravnica, more effort and pages are put into how to tell adventures and story hooks—with each god getting a four-section complete with an adventure/ encounter location. The book gives you ample ideas for adventures and adventure hooks and then requires you to create a setting and locations for said hooks. Which is problematic for DMs who might be bursting with story ideas but have few ideas for interesting locations.
Image Copyright WotC
Like Ravnica the forced campaign tone grates on me. It’s not letting you make the setting your own, but instead it’s telling you how to use the setting, which I instinctively chafe at; I like to go through a list of different campaign ideas and find the one that excites me the most. The hook of playing mythical champions is a good campaign idea… once. But there’s so many other ideas for Ancient Greece. Hercules is all well and good, but what about the rest of the Argonauts who aren’t blessed? What about Odysseus who isn’t blessed by the gods but cursed? Or a Xena: Warrior Princess who flouts the gods and is a mortal champion.
The setting itself also feels small, as it is basically just Greece. There’s no nearby Italy or Egypt. No Troy to besiege or invading Persia allowing you to replicate the battle of Thermopylae. This applies both as locations for adventure as well as playing anyone from a non-Greek culture or ethnicity. You can’t play a Celt or Viking that travelled from far away, or even a nearby Egyptian from just across the sea. You can cram a lot of adventure into Greece, but people should know ahead of time this is a bubble setting.
While the idea of mythic monsters—unique monsters of legend that are a step beyond legendary creatures—are neat, the book only has three mythic creatures. There’s not a lot of examples to draw on or use to make your own mythic foes. I was quite excited to see what made these monsters special and it was a big draw of the book for me. But mythic monsters just have a single trait that basically lets them regain all their hp, and unlock a few new legendary actions. It’s basically just a two-stage video game boss fight. Inarguably useful, but not particularly innovative or requiring a new keyword or tag. (In Rime of the Frostmaiden, the goddess there is basically a three-stage boss fight and requires no new “mythic” keyword or sidebar.)
Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, which completely stole the thunder for a possible Planescape/ Sigil product, this book makes it slightly harder to design a Dragonlance product. The Tyranny of Dragons adventure already took some of Dragonlance’s thunder, but it still had the idea of mortal champions of the gods as a campaign through-line. Immortal conflict by proxy on the mortal world. But now that box has been checked.
The Ugly
Let’s get to what will undoubtedly be a controversial complaint: this book is pure cultural appropriation: people from outside a culture using or exploiting said culture to sell a product. Yes, there’s a “Cultural Consultant” listed but there’s no other Greek names in the credits.
There’s no good definition of when cultural appropriation applies. Informally this is when “whites people” borrow elements of “non-white” culture, but I’ve also seen it described as when colonial cultures use or benefit from colonized cultures. Both definitions would apply, as Greeks weren’t considered “white” or “Caucasian” until well into the middle decades of 20th century, and targeted by systemic discrimination by North America for much of the same period. And the Greeks spent much of modern history being the oppressed vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and subject to severe ethnic and religious persecution, with Greece only becoming an independent nation in 1830. Greeks were the oppressed victims of imperialization. Meanwhile, Greece is famous for having their culture stolen and robbed by other European explorers and archeologists. The most noteworthy example being the Elgin Marbles but the number of Greek statues, vases, and other historical artifacts held in overseas museums is staggering. But it feels different because everyone knows about Greek mythology and Greek philosophers, with the history of Ancient Greece often taught in schools. Mythical Adventures of Theros is a heck of a lot like doing a book on a fantastical East Indian-themed world with a focus on Hindu-esque mythology but having no Indian writers. (And after watching Baahubali I totally want to play in fantasy India and would buy that book, because that looked freakin’ awesome. But I never will because that’s not my culture and I have no right to use it as my playground.)
Image Copyright WotC
The Awesome
I love the art in this product. Specifically the star pattern on divine beings, which instantly identifies them as non-mortal while also just looking cool. It’s not particularly original, as anyone who reads Marvel comics will identify it as the Eternity look, but it’s still a great way to convey divine/ celestial power.
Each of the gods has a short half-page on their myths. These are brief little synopsis of the god’s tales, but they’re evocative and iconic in just the right way. And there’s lots of similar little myths and stories tucked away in sidebars throughout the book. This really helps capture the “mythic” tone of the book and the idea of a land filled with legends that are (probably) true.
Not all the monsters statblocks are generic variants. Some are individuals rather than a sub-type, like the harpy Aphemia or the surprising CR 19 Polukranos hydra. Which feels appropriate as so many Greek monsters weren’t actual species but individuals.
The sphinx entry has a handful of riddles. This is such a small addition that makes the monster that much more usable on the fly. I can think of five times I could have used this.
The chimera is designed to be customizable, so you can mix-and-match heads and other body parts. This is just cool.
It’s nice to see the return of nymphs. These are a classical monster who are fairly well known but have purposely been omitted from 5e to date. While not the traditional D&D nymphs with their particular idiosyncrasies (blinding beauty) these are more mythologically accurate, which feels more appropriate while also conveniently being less sexist.
Similarly, it’s nice to see the hippocamp again, which I’m surprised hadn’t shown up before. A very useful addition for aquatic campaigns.
Final Thoughts
I really wanted to enjoy Mythical Adventures of Theros. While it relies too heavily on the single hook and primary campaign concept for my tastes, that hook is different enough to be desirable while also filling a narrative gap otherwise present in the game. Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece is such a familiar and yet relatively underused setting for Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
But the content of the book just felt a little sparse. There are only three new mythic monsters. There are five holy artifacts: barely enough to fill a single party (and if you have a six player table, someone doesn’t get a cool magic toy). There’s not even one artifact per god! There are only two new subclasses and a couple races we haven’t seen before. There barely feels like enough world for the standard level 1 to 14 storyline adventure, let alone multiple tales. There are more than enough hooks to get you started and have a couple adventures assisting a god or two while opposing another few gods, but little to sustain you after. It feels less like a book for a campaign and more the book for an extended adventure. A mini-campaign.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if WotC hadn’t released Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount a few scant months before this product, which showed you can do a big expansive world guide while also having numerous plot hooks and multiple campaign threads.
Now, the limited scope isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It depends what you’re looking for out of the product. If you just want to do a quick visit to an Ancient Greece style world for a mini-campaign or quick adventure, then this product will work just fine. If you want help with a series of one-shots or short adventures to hook Magic the Gathering players into D&D then this will work as well. And if you’re a fan of Greek mythology and Ancient Greece already (or the aforementioned cheesy TV shows set in the era), you probably know enough already to fill out the gaps in the setting and flesh out its locations. In that regard, Theros is better than Ravnica as the source of inspiration is more accessible, and there are numerous books, websites, television shows, movies, and even video games that can be turned to for inspiration.
But if you want to spend a lengthy period in a Greco-Roman world with multiple campaigns then this product might not be your best option. You might be better served looking at Arkadia, which is also small but features a larger world. Or Odyssey of the Dragonlords, which has a variation on the Grecian theme and is also a much larger setting. This gives you more room to explore and more mortal factions to generate stories.
I don’t think Mythical Adventures of Theros is a bad book. And as a bonus book done primarily by the MtG team and freelancers rather than the D&D team, it’s a nice extra bit of D&D in the early part of the year. It’s good at what it does and you can easily buy this book and run a decently lengthed heroic campaign. But it also didn’t blow me away. It just compares unfavourably to other campaign settings I’ve seen, including the prior D&D book Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. And as the third of three official campaign setting books released in the last eight or so months, it is easily the weakest despite bringing so many new ideas to the table.
Shameless Plugs
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In a surprise move, Wizards of the Coast partnered with the streaming show Critical Role to release a campaign setting product detailing the continent of Widemount, the location of campaign 2 of the Critical Role live stream. While they had previously teased in Descent into Avernus that the world of Exandria was part of the D&D multiverse, this was still a bit of a twist as far as products go. Although not entirely unprecedented, as there were a number of licenced D&D products in 2019, including Acquisitions Incorporated, Rick & Morty, and Stranger Things.
For the unaware, Critical Role is the popular actual play livestream game where a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors get together to play Dungeons & Dragons. The cast spends much of its four-hour sessions speaking in-character and having extended in-character discussions or lengthy roleplaying scenes. At the time of this writing, campaign 2 just passed it’s 100th episode a few weeks back
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount is the second Critical Role campaign setting, following the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting, published by Green Ronin in 2017 (but as of a few months ago the licence expired and that book is no longer in print).
What It Is
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount is a 304-page hardcover book that acts as a gazetteer to the continent of Wildemount on the planet of Exandria. It’s the standard full colour WotC product with a poster map at the back.
Included in the book are a whopping twelve reprinted player characters races, four brand new new subraces (one elf, one halfling, two dragonborn), three new subclasses (one for fighters, two for wizards), sixteen new spells, thirty-odd magic items plus a few “artifacts”, a couple dozen new monster stat-blocks, and four small introductory adventures in the middle.
Each D&D book tends to have a new mechanic as a centrepiece, such as the patrons in Eberron: Rising from the Last War and factions in Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. In this product, the new addition is the Heroic Chronicle subsystem, which is a method of randomly generating a character’s origin: producing a number of allies and rivals, fateful moments, a prophecy, and your favourite food.
The book starts with a five-page introduction to the setting; 23-pages on history and the gods; 21 pages on factions—such as the various empires and other noteworthy groups—including the names and backgrounds of important NPCs in those factions; a gazetteer that fills a good hundred pages (!); 40-odd pages of character options; 50-pages of adventures; 15-pages of magic items; a bestiary covering 21-pags, and ending with a two-page glossary and a one-page index.
For the curious, this book was written around episode 50 and doesn’t contain any details of events that occur after that episode. But the book does have a few revelations that could be considered spoilers (such as the nature of the Traveller) and many, many other details that haven’t been revealed or occurred in the campaign.
The Good
The quality of a campaign setting product very much depends on how good the setting itself is. So the big question is “how is the setting of Wildemount?”
It’s… okay.
That may seem overly harsh, but WIldemount is pretty generic. A generic high fantasy kitchen sink homebrew campaign setting with a very minor twist. In this case, the twist is that the eastern “evil land of evil” dominated by drow, duergar, orcs, goblins and the like—which is slowly covering their land in an unnatural magical darkness—(spoilers) isn’t really all that evil. And the western “good kingdom of good” ruled by the wise human king is actually rather intolerant to other peoples and religions. It’s actually a rather slick bit of subverting tropes and expectations, while simultaneously countering complaints regarding evil races in D&D (which has been around for many decades, but has certainly come to the forefront of gamer’s minds in recent months).
In many ways, Wildemount is your generic high fantasy kitchen sink homebrew campaign setting done for the 21st Century, retaining much of the classic elements while jettisoning some of the inherent racial baggage of the 1970s. While other D&D fantasy words have had the “civilized kingdom of monsters”, such as Droaam in Eberron, the kingdom is still often presented as evil and negative. In this setting, the Kryn Dynasty is no more evil or good than the Dwendalian Empire, and the conflict between them isn’t one of Good versus Evil but a much more familiar clash of opposing cultural values and manipulation of outside interests.
Moving on, the book features both the actual names for the gods as well as their titles. The campaign uses the “Dawn Pantheon” from 4th Edition D&D with the addition of one god from Pathfinder. Previously, this meant Green Ronin’s Tal’Dorei book could only use titles for the gods and not the names. As this book includes both, you can easily find out who is who and compare the two. The book also includes Raei, the Everlight. Also known as “Sarenrae”, this god was pulled from the Pathfinder RPG (owned and published by Paizo) and thus needed a rebranding. The book also includes several lesser idols, which are basically warlock patrons, but can serve as cleric deities in a pinch. There are some nice nods to the past here, such as Vesh (who was the god of a guest star’s cleric in campaign 1).
The book features several city maps, which are an often forgotten part of campaign settings. There’s three maps of the major cities and a few smaller maps in the adventures. And while on the subject of the maps, this product returns to the full colour maps seen in past D&D products, and doesn’t make use of the simple monochromatic line-art maps we’ve seen in the last few D&D products. I much prefer the full colour maps.
As the land is divided into factions, it makes sense that each of these is given some extra attention. Each factions’ histories and goals are described, as well as their relationships with other factions. This is nice and it means the factions don’t just stand alone, but are connected in the world and have alliances and rivalries.
As you would expect from a 100-page chapter that occupies a full third of the book, the gazetteer includes lengthy descriptions of the regions and nations. This section is subdivided into the seven major regions of the continent, with descriptions of key features in each region along with settlements, city demographics, relevant local information, and occasional sidebars on small elements like types of wine or famed mercenary companies. Most large locations and cities have a couple adventure hooks provided, which are categorized as low, mid, or high level to give you an idea of where they should fit into a campaign. This is very similar to how this information was presented in the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting. The book tries to find the “goldilocks zone” between giving you endless details that serve no purpose and having too few details forcing you to invent large swaths of the world, all the while helping you tell stories and make campaigns. It doesn’t just try to be a guidebook of the world and is very aware this serves a game purpose. Even if you have zero interest in running a game in this world, the sheer amount of hooks will inspire you to some degree.
As a game product this book is rather useful. There are plenty of player races, including reprints of a dozen races from multiple different books. Wildemount is arguably the book to get for more PC races. Included in these reprints is the aarakocra (previously only found in the digital Elemental Evil Player’s Companion and tortles, from the digital product released for charity. Given tortles are a fan favourite, having a physical copy of them might be worth checking out the book.
The three subclasses are fine. The echo knight is by far the stand out, being a magical fighter subclass that allows you to teleport or attack from multiple spaces. It’s very unique, flavourful, and setting specific—but not so setting specific that you couldn’t justify having it in other worlds. (For example, it’d be effortless to reflavour the echo to be their shadow and call this the “shade knight.”) The wizard subclasses are chronurgy magic and graviturgy magic, both tied to dunomancy, the magic of possibility. Although how graviturgy connects is pretty tenuous at best. The chronurgy subclass has some neat ideas and should be balanced, but it’s not the best chronomancer I’ve seen. I didn’t walk away wanting to play one like the echo knight. Probably because by focusing on manipulating die rolls it feels a little too similar to the school of divination. The graviturgy subclass is more interesting in that it does more unique things, but being a “gravity mage” just feels like a subclass better suited to a science fantasy setting.
The product makes heavy use of artists from the Critical Role fan community. Because not all of these artists adhere firmly to the Wizards of the Coast house style, this can be a little uneven. But I never saw any bad pieces of art and there are some fantastic bits of art. Too many campaign setting books only show the world though it’s inhabitants, and that’s not the case here: there are many landscapes and illustrations of settlements or the terrain.
The presentation of NPCs in the book is also excellent. In the adventure, the antagonists have motivations and personalities, so they aren’t just nameless monsters. They have personality traits and quirks. Unsurprisingly, there’s a decent mix of genders in terms of NPCs and not all the people with authority are white cis males. In fact, there are multiple gender neutral NPCs who are just part of the world.
The Bad
While I praised the book for striking a balance between being a large guidebook and gaming supplement, I suppose this comment can be seen from the other perspective: for Critical Role fans who don’t play D&D this book will be an interesting guide to the world but will contain a fair amount of useless game text. It’s not just a big fantasy travelogue.
Like the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting, the blood hunter and gunslinger are not included. Also, the cobalt soul monk (from the no-longer available Tal’Dorei book) isn’t in here, despite that subclass having been revised since it was printed AND one of the characters of the campaign being a monk of that order. That feels like a more irritating exclusion.
The big new mechanic in the book is the Heroic Chronicle, which is so-so. This was hyped in a few places and I was excited to see what it offered, and was rather disappointed that it was just another random character generation method. It’s useful for randomly picking a background, home region, hometown, and the size of your family but it’s not very exciting. It’s simply not that different from the random background generation in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. There are too few fateful moments, making it easy to get doubles. And some of the benefits are much stronger than others, with some basically just being straight penalties.
The orc race is updated here, removing their intelligence penalty in an attempt to address complaints of racism. (Which is good.) The book mentions the “curse of ruin” which is rumoured to make orcs violent, but the text on page 178 makes it explicit that it doesn’t exist and orcs are no more prone to violence than humans. The curse of ruin is just a negative stereotype. But earlier phrases in the book imply the curse to be factual. This feels like a last minute revision. Meanwhile, four pages earlier, there’s a lengthy sidebar on the “curse of strife,” which affects goblinoids and is the reason they’re innately evil. Having a curse affect goblinoids rather than orcs isn’t any less problematic.
The Ugly
The following complaints are pretty much 100% pet peeves.
First, because it’s published by a different company, this book doesn’t match the Green Ronin version on my shelf. I like matching and consistency.
I’m also not sure why this book was published by Wizards of the Coast rather than Green Ronin. WotC has a wealth of classic settings they could have published that are just lying fallow. Settings only they can publish. Unlike this tome, which any book publisher could have handled. And WotC doesn’t need multiple generic kitchen sink fantasy worlds; this book means a new Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk book is much more unlikely. D&D didn’t need the Critical Role sales boost. But had they stuck with Green Ronin, they would have helped a small publisher make money in an industry when everyone but WotC and Paizo has trouble sustaining sales. Plus, by changing licence partners, the Tal’Dorei book was forced out of print and newcomers to the stream (or the forthcoming Adventures of Vox Machina animated series) won’t be able to purchase it now.
Here I’m going to trudge into the weeds of worldbuilding and get nit-picky here. (As I wrote a book on the subject this is something I care about and it’s hard for me not to notice the flaws; if you don’t care, please skip the rest of this section.)
Frankly, the nitty-gritty design of the world is a lot shakier in Wildemount than in Tal’Dorei
The continent is pretty damn small. This was a problem in the Tal’Dorei book as well, as that was really the “island” of Tal’Dorei. This book goes so far as to offer a stealth re-sizing, doubling Tal’Dorei’s size. However, at 1600 miles north-to-south, Wildemount is a little smaller than the continental United States of America. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if the southern region—the Menagerie Coast—wasn’t hot and tropical while the northern Greying Wildlands were cold tundra. (Ah yes, everyone is familiar with the lengthy stretches of permafrost covering Washington state.)
Rivers are a repeated problem in the book. Big cities tend to form by the coasts, or on rivers by the coast. Especially since large cities need a lot of water. Many of the big cities in this book (Zadash, Rexxentrum, Rosohna) are nowhere near water.
Meanwhile, there are several impossible rivers. No fewer than three rivers flow from one ocean to another (marked in yellow) and another river flows uphill through a mountain range before emptying in the ocean (marked in blue).
Apparently, the sea level to the southeast is much lower than the sea level in the north.
The Awesome
Did I mention the amount of world lore? Because there’s a lot. Arguably more than Eberron: Rising from the Last War and definitely more than Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. This setting book is probably more akin to the many campaign guides that came out in 2nd and 3rd Edition than the recent products by WotC. Which is probably necessary; while there is a whole library of sourcebooks on Eberron and a wiki and several novels for Ravnica, this might be the only book of lore Wildemount receives. It has to stand alone.
And it’s not just places where the campaign has gone. It’s not a who’s who of famous NPCs from the stream. There’s factions we’ve barely seen, important NPCs in the nations who have never come up, places that were ignored or circumvented, and so much more.
I’m really fond of a lot of the naming in the book. There’s a good mix of real world terms and fantasy made-up names. But the fantastic names all flow nicely. You can tell they were made to be spoken aloud and were written by someone who talks for a living. There’s no R.A. Salvatore gibberish names.
There are several Easter eggs and references to the campaign, but nothing in this book seemed to require viewing. You could easily come into this book not knowing anything about roles, critical or otherwise, and walk away with an understanding of the setting. In the book I saw five references to Vox Machina from campaign 1 (in largely unavoidable places), which averaged roughly one every 50-pages. Probably less than some famous groups in the Forgotten Realms. And I only saw a single reference to the Mighty Nein (the heroes of campaign 2), which isn’t very surprising as they were only level 8 during the timeline of the book
Speaking of the book’s timeline, it picked an excellent starting point. The book takes place when the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty have gone to war. An active conflict between two nations opens up a lot of stories for adventurers but wartime campaigns are rare. It instantly creates stories, character motivations, and tension. Even if the war is just in the background or the characters are neutral, having the main army of the kingdom occupied means fewer soldiers saving the day and leaves more room for adventurers.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a few custom monsters in the book that appeared in the stream. Gloomstalkers, the devil toad, and moorbounders aren’t surprises, but I love the addition of the gearkeeper construct. And the horizonback tortoise is just neat.
Final Thoughts
Wildemount isn’t the best campaign world, or the most interesting setting for 5e, but Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount is probably the best 5th Edition campaign setting product to come out of Wizards of the Coast. It’s a nice, generic setting that can easily serve as the foundation for many campaigns. It’s simple and classic, yet also modern. And most importantly it actually has a decent amount of information on the setting, rather than just giving each nation 2-3 pages, and it does so without losing the focus on adventure.
For people uninterested in the setting, it’s a useful book for character races. You can safely declare Volo’s Guide to Monsters a DM-only book and not take away much content from the players. It’s just a handy book to have on the shelf.
For Critical Role fans, this book is an interesting read that will give you a better grasp of the world, it’s history, and various locations in the world. Most of the book can be consumed with no knowledge of the game and with limited risk of being spoiled. And if you want to set your campaign in Exandria and have adventures off to the side of the Mighty Nein, then this book is just perfect. This and the Basic Rules or Essentials Kit would make for a great introduction to the game.
For non-Critters, the book serves as a decent campaign setting and a source for inspiration on plot hooks, characters, locations and more. You won’t be lost reading this book or feel you need to watch hours of content to understand the world. If you want a simple, classic fantasy world then this is an excellent choice. It doesn’t redesign the wheel or flip every trope on its head, but it makes enough changes to feel fresh and less culturally dated.
Shameless Plugs
If you liked this article, you can support me and encourage future reviews. My disposable income, which is necessary to buy RPG products, is entirely dependent on my sales.
Seriously. I’ve been unemployed for 3 months, in part due to Covid-19 and my ability to pay for and review books is dependant on sales. Plus, y’know, making rent and buying food.
Additionally, the revision of my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding is on DriveThurRPG, available for purchase as a PDF or Print on Demand! (And now in colour!) The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
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