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.

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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.

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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!

 

[Azzy]

This sounds cool, but I prefer to make my own adventures. I'll eventually get it, but it'sa farly low priority.

 

[TheSword]

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.



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.


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.



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

Unfortunately, what you’re asking for is a niche product that’s largely already been done to death... an overview of Ravenloft along with its domains and dreadlords is old hat. It simply wouldn’t sell enough. That’s been recognized since the end of AD&D when they licensed it out for 3e. Same goes for most settings at the detail level you’re looking for. It’s a pipe dream.

 

[Faolyn]

Unfortunately, what you’re asking for is a niche product that’s largely already been done to death... an overview of Ravenloft along with its domains and dreadlords is old hat. It simply wouldn’t sell enough. That’s been recognized since the end of AD&D when they licensed it out for 3e. Same goes for most settings at the detail level you’re looking for. It’s a pipe dream.

Except for all the new people who don't know Ravenloft beyond what's in CoS. Especially in such a worldbook includes new rules of some sort, new archetypes, new races, new monsters, and/or new spells.

And even if it's not Ravenloft, TSR produced a zillion worlds. Take a look at Eberron: Rising from the Last War. It had all sorts of world info, plenty of character options, and a chapter-long adventure. Now imagine that for Dragonlance, or Planescape, or yes, Ravenloft--or any of the other settings they produced. Yes, gone are the days when you're going to get a metric ton of books for a setting with details like that of the S&S Ravenloft Gazetteers, but since WotC has already said they're producing three classic setting books between '21 and '22, it stands to reason that we'll get books along the lines of ERftLW for at least those three settings, and perhaps more in later years.

As an example: Dark Sun. You could just do a DS adventure, but you'd need that chapter for psionics, another chapter for the races (off the top of my head, they'd need at least muls, half-giants, and thri-kreen, and that's without the setting-specific sub-races), another for setting-specific archetypes, and yet another for the Dark Sun-specific monsters, since there's actually not a lot of overlap between those monsters and the ones in the MM. It makes more sense for them to produce a setting book like ERftLW with an introductory adventure than it does for them to create one of their massive levels 1-15 adventures with a prologue that explains the world. The same is true for Planescape and Spelljammer--there's too much in those settings to be reduced to a short prologue in front of an adventure.

I don't understand why you're so adamant that there shouldn't be setting books, when they've clearly already produced Sword Coast, Ravnica, Theros, and Wildemont, all of which are setting books.

 

[dwayne]

I have found that 90% or more of the mystery or story depends on the DM and the players interest in what the DM is selling. I have seen many good adventures, but if ran badly don''t work at all, even a bad adventure written horrible, can be ran by a DM who knows what he is doing and can make it work in an interesting way. I have only bought a few adventure in my time, and have never ran any of them straight from the book, as i have always added my own panache to them, like all good DMs do. But it might be good to take a look at and see if it is useful for concept or story, but i doubt i will buy it, I like making my own.

 

[Wepwawet]

This new book sounds very interesting, I'm excited at having a library of one shots to use whenever/wherever I want.

I'm liking WotC's focus on providing different adventure styles and environments, rather than providing a lot of different campaign settings.

 

[TheSword]

Except for all the new people who don't know Ravenloft beyond what's in CoS. Especially in such a worldbook includes new rules of some sort, new archetypes, new races, new monsters, and/or new spells.

And even if it's not Ravenloft, TSR produced a zillion worlds. Take a look at Eberron: Rising from the Last War. It had all sorts of world info, plenty of character options, and a chapter-long adventure. Now imagine that for Dragonlance, or Planescape, or yes, Ravenloft--or any of the other settings they produced. Yes, gone are the days when you're going to get a metric ton of books for a setting with details like that of the S&S Ravenloft Gazetteers, but since WotC has already said they're producing three classic setting books between '21 and '22, it stands to reason that we'll get books along the lines of ERftLW for at least those three settings, and perhaps more in later years.

As an example: Dark Sun. You could just do a DS adventure, but you'd need that chapter for psionics, another chapter for the races (off the top of my head, they'd need at least muls, half-giants, and thri-kreen, and that's without the setting-specific sub-races), another for setting-specific archetypes, and yet another for the Dark Sun-specific monsters, since there's actually not a lot of overlap between those monsters and the ones in the MM. It makes more sense for them to produce a setting book like ERftLW with an introductory adventure than it does for them to create one of their massive levels 1-15 adventures with a prologue that explains the world. The same is true for Planescape and Spelljammer--there's too much in those settings to be reduced to a short prologue in front of an adventure.

I don't understand why you're so adamant that there shouldn't be setting books, when they've clearly already produced Sword Coast, Ravnica, Theros, and Wildemont, all of which are setting books.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t bring them out. I’m saying they’re more likely to come along as part of an adventure. I would love a Dark Sun book but Tomb of Annihilation had dozens of monsters, psionics are not going to be an entirely new system of casting, just an extra class/subclass and some extra spells, and again Defiler/preserver is a subclass. More than possible to fit into an appendix.

I’m not saying they won’t release campaign settings. But let’s be clear with the exception of SCAG (not like the kind of Campaign setting most people would expect or want) the settings you mentioned are all brand new, and crossovers with other franchises. They just aren’t reprinting earlier editions campaign settings like that.

 

[dave2008]

I think he's supposed to have dreads and two of those razor cuts through the side just above them that I don't know the name for but weirdly the cuts extend to the forehead. Google seems to think the term is a line-up or edge-up

Yes, I am familiar, but to me it looks like the dreads are hanging down, not pulled back at that point. Perhaps it is just my perception of unclear rendering. I'm guessing the intent is as you suggest and than hanging dreads occur just below the "scar," but that is not how it looks to me.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, I am familiar, but to me it looks like the dreads are hanging down, not pulled back at that point. Perhaps it is just my perception of unclear rendering. I'm guessing the intent is as you suggest and than hanging dreads occur just below the "scar," but that is not how it looks to me.

no you aren't wrong about it looking off somehow if you've ever seen someone with dreads in person

 

[embee]

no you aren't wrong about it looking off somehow if you've ever seen someone with dreads in person

Is it possible that he his going for cornrows just on that side of his head?

Another possibility is that it's like the lines that Vanilla Ice had shaved in the side of his 'do, which means that this character is clearly meant to be chaotic evil.

 

[That other guy]

I wonder why some have and some don't?

Storm King's Thunder has it.