D&D 5E The New D&D Book: Candlekeep Mysteries: 17 Mystery Adventures [UPDATED!]

The cover of the upcoming D&D book has been revealed! Candlekeep Mysteries is an anthology of 17 mystery-themed adventures for character levels 1-16.

The image has appeared on Penguin Random House's product page for the book.

---

UPDATE! Penguin's product page appears to have now vanished, but we now have the product description! Thanks to @Fezzwick for spotting that!

An anthology of seventeen mystery-themed adventures for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Candlekeep attracts scholars like a flame attracts moths. Historians, sages, and others who crave knowledge flock to this library fortress to peruse its vast collection of books, scribbled into which are the answers to the mysteries that bedevil them. Many of these books contain their own mysteries ̶—each one a doorway to adventure. Dare you cross that threshold?

· 17 mystery-themed D&D adventures, each tied to a book discovered in the famed library fortress of Candlekeep
· Easy to run as stand-alone mini adventures or to drop into your home campaign
· Adventures span play from levels 1 to 16
· Includes a full poster map of Candlekeep, plus detailed descriptions of the various locations, characters, and creatures that reside within it
· Introduces a variety of Dungeons & Dragons monsters, items, and non-player characters (NPCs)

Candlekeep Mysteries is a collection of seventeen short, stand-alone D&D adventures designed for characters of levels 1–16. Each adventure begins with the discovery of a book, and each book is the key to a door behind which danger and glory await. These adventures can be run as one-shot games, plugged into an existing Forgotten Realms campaign, or adapted for other campaign settings. This book also includes a poster map of the library fortress and detailed descriptions of Candlekeep and its inhabitants.

---

There have been mentions of an upcoming adventure anthology since 2019, with Kate Welch's name attached, along with other celebrity adventure writers including Critical Role's Marisha Ray, and actor Deborah Ann Woll. There were also suggestions that the authors might all be women. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow!

 

[billd91]

Well, I’m wrong. Confirmed in a couple places, they do all start in Candlekeep :/

Pretty much the least of my worries. Filing off the serial numbers is pretty easy.

 

[Faolyn]

Pretty much the least of my worries. Filing off the serial numbers is pretty easy.

One of my tablemates may end up buying it if the serial numbers are indeed easy to file off--he wants to set it in Morgrave U or Arcanix in Eberron.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

One of my tablemates may end up buying it if the serial numbers are indeed easy to file off--he wants to set it in Morgrave U or Arcanix in Eberron.

I was thinking the Library of Korranberg.

 

[TheSword]

One, adventures are spoilery. One of my tablemates is going to run Icewind Dale. If I bought that book for the rules on travel and harsh weather, or for the magic items, spells, and monsters that are in it, I'd be wasting a lot of money because except for the appendices, the entire book would be off-limits to me. I don't want to be spoiled and I want to avoid adventure-specific meta-knowledge.

One-point-five, a lot of information is player knowledge. A player doesn't need to know the specifics of what a blizzard is like beyond "wear heavy clothing." This is info that takes a few paragraphs, maybe an appendix. The DM is the only one who has to care about the exact rules. But if they decided to introduce psionics in a Dark Sun adventure? Not only would this require at least two chapters (basic rules and powers, and either a psionicist class and archetypes, or just psionic archetypes for other classes) but it's something that players would need to know, thus bringing in the spoiler-y bits from above.

Two, adventures don't go into that much world-building. I'm (slowly) doing Curse of Strahd. That provides very little actually interesting information about Barovia (in comparison to late 2e and 3e books) and none on the rest of the Land of Mists--to the point that someone who had never heard of Ravenloft before wouldn't realize that there's 50+ other domains to explore, each with their own flavor of horror. Likewise, Descent into Avernus, I imagine (haven't read it), does a decent job detailing Avernus, but I doubt it does more than touch on the other outer planes, if at all--or the inner planes, Sigil, planewalking, the factions, or all the other things you'd need for a Planescape adventure.

Why would you want a setting of an area your mate was going to be running the adventure for? Once you’ve played the game it’s fair game either way. Won’t they lend you the book after you’ve played for the spell/monster details? Seems a bit of a short sighted approach.

In fair Avernus is extremely well detailed, as is the Valley of Barovia and its environs, the Sumber Hills, The Northdark, Waterdeep, Baldurs Gate, Chult, etc etc. Why on earth would they waste pages on places that aren’t going to be featured.

If you really want setting details, you have a back catalogue of several hundred products available that will tell you who the High Lord of Wherever is and why he’s in conflict with the local Whatever Guild. The fact of the matter is that most people who now buying D&D material now aren’t obsessed with up to date lore, and just want to play a fun night session. In my experience anyway.

It was a long held belief that adventures wouldn’t sell - all through 3e and 3.5 anyway. Paizo proved that wrong and 5e is sensible to follow their approach.

 

[qstor]

I thought there was supposed to be a setting book? Sorry for chiming late.

 

[Crb31]

Now I'm moderately excited. I was really hoping for a setting book but-

 

[pukunui]

One of my tablemates may end up buying it if the serial numbers are indeed easy to file off--he wants to set it in Morgrave U or Arcanix in Eberron.

The serial numbers are almost always easy to file off on 5e adventures. I'm fairly certain it's a feature.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

16*16=256

So, if the book is about 256 pages, less than 16 pages per adventure. Might be more, though, we'll find out more details soon..

16 pages, or so, per adventure sounds good to me.

I had the biggest eye roll when I saw this reveal.

But what do I know? Me playing for over 2 decades and through 4.5 editions means nothing I guess. I guess I got nothing on the newbs running the D&D show or the veterans who do know better but are slaves to Hasbro Overseers who only care for the bottomline.

No one is a slave to hasbro. Get real. Adventures sell well because they are what, broadly speaking, people want. And no, you playing for 20 years doesn't mean anything more than the person who has been playing a year, or the kid for whom this will be the first set of adventures they ever buy and run.

Yeah, it looks more like "figure out the nature of this strange magical item or phenomenon" mysteries, not whodunnits.

Yep, which is exactly what I imagine when I see "[place name] Mysteries", not Agatha Christie murder mysteries.

The way you handle magic in D&D mysteries is to turn the players expectations about magic against them.

Say the players use Speak with Dead on the corpse and the corpse tells them exactly who killed them. They can track down the murderer only to find that he's dead too. So they cast speak with dead on the new corpse and he tells them the first victim killed him (because Disguise Self is a first level spell).

Of the deceased just...doesn't know. I would imagine that most victims who aren't killed by spouse or business partner don't.

Not particularly excited about this. I already have tons of premade adventures and can easily make my own. Just like I have more than enough monsters to run entire campaigns without the players encountering the same monster twice.
I really would love to see some other settings, though.

They are never going to not publish adventures every year, as long as those adventures keep selling very well, nor should they.

I love that alternate cover. If I buy this book (and the reason I wouldn't is if I plan to be a player rather than DM) I hope to get that alternative cover.

Yeah the alt cover is really good.

 

[Faolyn]

Why would you want a setting of an area your mate was going to be running the adventure for? Once you’ve played the game it’s fair game either way. Won’t they lend you the book after you’ve played for the spell/monster details? Seems a bit of a short sighted approach.

In large part, because I'm also a DM and worldbuilder. Info in those books that isn't the adventure might be important for me now, not however many years from now when the game is over. (FYI: my table rotates GMs, with one person running for a few weeks or months, then switching over to another person. And since we current have five active games, and another two are going to start soonish, it might be literally many months or even a year before a GM starts running again.)

Obviously, this isn't the case for a lot of tables, where there's only one, maybe two DMs, and the rest are always players, but for me, personally, not having access to certain info is annoying.

In fair Avernus is extremely well detailed, as is the Valley of Barovia and its environs, the Sumber Hills, The Northdark, Waterdeep, Baldurs Gate, Chult, etc etc. Why on earth would they waste pages on places that aren’t going to be featured.

Exactly the point.

I generally prefer writing my own adventure, or noodling a prewritten one to unrecognizability. If I want to write an RL adventure that doesn't take place in Barovia, then having CoS as my only RL source is pointless. Setting books give you that info. Adventures don't.

If you really want setting details, you have a back catalogue of several hundred products available that will tell you who the High Lord of Wherever is and why he’s in conflict with the local Whatever Guild. The fact of the matter is that most people who now buying D&D material now aren’t obsessed with up to date lore, and just want to play a fun night session. In my experience anyway.

While it's true that a lot of the lore is available online, it's useful to have it in a book along with updated stats and rules. I can go through all my old Ravenloft stuff--and I have, in order to make CoS actually interesting to me--but then I have to convert monsters, spells, magic items, etc. Fortunately, I actually really like converting things from one edition/system to another, but a lot of people don't.

And your experience isn't my experience. Even the youngest, newest player in our group, who started with 5e, has become obsessed with the lore for the Realms (even if he doesn't follow it exactly). You can't always get the books, and while many of them are available as pdfs, they're still expensive. And not everyone wants to pirate things. Online setting wikis are available, yes, but the settings have been living things. If I wanted to play an RL game that took place pre-Grand Conjunction, I know that I'd have a heck of a time sorting out the timeline of events using online resources, as opposed to just saying "OK, lore from this boxed set only."

Also, a lot of us are inspired by writing styles or artwork in the book that almost never show up in wikis and other online lore sources.

It was a long held belief that adventures wouldn’t sell - all through 3e and 3.5 anyway. Paizo proved that wrong and 5e is sensible to follow their approach.

Nobody is saying they can't publish adventures. I'm saying I prefer setting books.

 

[Dire Bare]

I thought there was supposed to be a setting book? Sorry for chiming late.

There was a lot of fan speculation that this release might be a setting book. But WotC at no point stated that the March release was going to be a setting book. Although, there is likely to be setting information on Candlekeep in the book, so YMMV.