D&D 5E March's D&D Book To Be Announced On January 9th

A mysterious entry has appeared on Amazon! With a product title of "Dungeons & Dragons March Release Book (Title announced January 9th)" and a release date of March 17th, 2020, this $49.95 hardcover release will be revealed in under a week!

The description reads "Your first look at the next D&D title comes on January 9th! Keep an eye on wherever you get your D&D news for a preview of the book."

Could there be a clue in the dice being released on the same day? Laeral Silverhand's Explorer's Kit is described as "Dice and miscellany for the world's greatest roleplaying game" for $29.99. We'll find out on Thursday!

Who's Laeral Silverhand? She's a prolific creator of magic items from Waterdeep, and one of the most powerful wizards in the Forgotten Realms. She's one of the Seven Sisters, introduced in 1987's Forgotten Realms boxed set, although Laeral herself wasn't described in that product. Ed Greenwood'sThe Seven Sisters supplement fully detailed them in 1995. Laeral and Khlben 'Blackstaff' Arunsun led a group called the Moonstars. In 5th edition, she appears in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

 

[vpuigdoller]

I

It's not just locals, it's NPCs, and other stuff. Also I mean not everything in the book needs to be reflected in this pack.

And I still don't believe it's just a boring set of mini adventures, especially at it's large size.

I do wish is more like a setting type book like Eberron but with Forgotten Realms other locales rather than Adventures but I guess will know soon.

 

[Fenris-77]

Details of some of the Realms' more famous locales, each with it's own set of NPCs, adventure hooks and even actual mini adventures would not be a bad way to do a setting book for FR. More interesting than just non-linked mini adventures anyway.

 

[Parmandur]

It's not just locals, it's NPCs, and other stuff. Also I mean not everything in the book needs to be reflected in this pack.

And I still don't believe it's just a boring set of mini adventures, especially at it's large size.

No reason to suspect they will be boring, but that seems to be the gist of what we're getting, yup.

 

[Parmandur]

Kate Welch I'm sure can head many projects. She headed the Rick and Morty Box Set.

If she has a book coming out in March, it is what she would have been working on in August. Dollars to donuts it is the same project.

 

[gyor]

The size here is completely unimportant. The biggest book as we know is the Monster Manual, so if we are going by what the size than we would guess it is another monster book. But it can be literally any type of book, how big it is doesn't hint at anything.

Back to why the maps are important; if I'm tying a new dice set to a new book, I'm not going to be putting in materials that are newer unless I have no choice. The Descent dice set includes material entirely new to that book, including the Avernus map and the concept art of the devils/demons.

If this book was a guide to the rest of FR, it would include maps to other regions, and those maps would be in this dice set. Instead, they are using the map of the Sword Coast and Waterdeep, which are at least a full year old. This is evidence that there are no new regional maps in the book, which would be extremely strange (and a complete ripoff) if it was a setting guide to the Forgotten Realms beyond the Sword Coast.

The name itself is weird. Based on previous books, all we know for sure is that this book is set in the Forgotten Realms. But it also has Laeral Silverhand in the title, similar to books like Xanathar's, Volo's, and Mordenkainen's. The naming convention does not perfectly align any specific book type, and parallels several very different books.

The absence of new maps in this dice set nearly confirms that this is not a setting book. What it actually is I'm not sure, but if I were to put money on it, I'd say it is the collection of adventures, plus new monster statblocks, plus maybe some new lore, maybe even player options if we're lucky.

As you say, the book is big so can fit all of this material within it.

Anyone who told you that size doesn't matter lied to you. You don't count the MM, PHB, and DMG because they are core books WotC has said will not get a sequel, so for the purpose of looking at release patterns, you ignore the core, they stand alone. No AP has ever been close to this big, not even close to it, there is no reason to make on this big. Only one type of book that is none core has this kind of size requirement and that is Campaign Settings. WotC doesn't make it's APs and Player/DM Options books that big, and there really no need from their perpective to do so, as there is no preset minimum for lore like a Campaign Setting Book does. WotC doesn't like it's books being any bigger then it has to be to fulfill it's function. There is no advantage to making an AP that big when they others sold well and it's not required for it's function.

A Campaign Setting Guide however has hundreds of locations if not thousands to cover, key NPCs, game rules unique to the setting, religions of basic setting details, and because WotC isn't just targetting DMs Player rules.

I mean WotC was able to create a full adventure and the Baldur's Gate Gazzetteer in one book using much less space then 330 to 345 pages.

As for maps, WotC has repeated use the Swordcoast map a crazy amount of times, it means nothing at all. "Across the Forgotten Realms", not across the Swordcoast, this is the key most important sentance in the description.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

If she has a book coming out in March, it is what she would have been working on in August. Dollars to donuts it is the same project.

Not only that, but I've also noticed that Dan Dillon and Hannah Rose commented on the initial leak on Twitter. Rose specifically admitted she worked on it, said something like "Amazon better not leak the title again!"

She worked on Descent into Avernus, so I'm suspecting again that she wrote an adventure in this "module collection."

 

[Parmandur]

Anyone who told you that size doesn't matter lied to you. You don't count the MM, PHB, and DMG because they are core books WotC has said will not get a sequel, so for the purpose of looking at release patterns, you ignore the core, they stand alone. No AP has ever been close to this big, not even close to it, there is no reason to make on this big. Only one type of book that is none core has this kind of size requirement and that is Campaign Settings. WotC doesn't make it's APs and Player/DM Options books that big, and there really no need from their perpective to do so, as there is no preset minimum for lore like a Campaign Setting Book does. WotC doesn't like it's books being any bigger then it has to be to fulfill it's function. There is no advantage to making an AP that big when they others sold well and it's not required for it's function.

A Campaign Setting Guide however has hundreds of locations if not thousands to cover, key NPCs, game rules unique to the setting, religions of basic setting details, and because WotC isn't just targetting DMs Player rules.

I mean WotC was able to create a full adventure and the Baldur's Gate Gazzetteer in one book using much less space then 330 to 345 pages.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage was huge.

 

[Parmandur]

Not only that, but I've also noticed that Dan Dillon and Hannah Rose commented on the initial leak on Twitter. Rose specifically admitted she worked on it, said something like "Amazon better not leak the title again!"

She worked on Descent into Avernus, so I'm suspecting again that she wrote an adventure in this "module collection."

It's the smart money, yup.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Unrelated, here's the full gem dragon art from the sapphire dice page.

View attachment 117241

D&D Beyond posted earlier today to Twitter that the full stats and info for this Sapphire dragon are now available there and the cost to buy it there goes to Extra Life. Oh, and they describe it specifically as psionic.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Anyone who told you that size doesn't matter lied to you. You don't count the MM, PHB, and DMG because they are core books WotC has said will not get a sequel, so for the purpose of looking at release patterns, you ignore the core, they stand alone. No AP has ever been close to this big, not even close to it, there is no reason to make on this big. Only one type of book that is none core has this kind of size requirement and that is Campaign Settings. WotC doesn't make it's APs and Player/DM Options books that big, and there really no need from their perpective to do so, as there is no preset minimum for lore like a Campaign Setting Book does. WotC doesn't like it's books being any bigger then it has to be to fulfill it's function. There is no advantage to making an AP that big when they others sold well and it's not required for it's function.

A Campaign Setting Guide however has hundreds of locations if not thousands to cover, key NPCs, game rules unique to the setting, religions of basic setting details, and because WotC isn't just targetting DMs Player rules.

I mean WotC was able to create a full adventure and the Baldur's Gate Gazzetteer in one book using much less space then 330 to 345 pages.

As for maps, WotC has repeated use the Swordcoast map a crazy amount of times, it means nothing at all. "Across the Forgotten Realms", not across the Swordcoast, this is the key most important sentance in the description.

Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it !

But seriously, you're cherry picking what pieces you like to justify your own POV. I personally would prefer more Setting books, even one for FR, instead of a collection of modules, but I'm not going to ignore the obvious. If this was a setting book, it'd have new maps, and new maps would go into this dice set. Since that's not happening, this isn't a setting book.

Back to the size thing... you know how you can make a book this big with a collection of modules? Have more modules. This is not hard to do, especially if you're having several writers writing different adventures. The idea that this book can't be a module collection because it's too big is ridiculous. I'm sure it's big because they got a lot of writers, who made a lot of good submissions, and Welch had issues with cutting good material. So they kept a lot of it in.