Critical Role The New D&D Book Is 'The Explorer's Guide to [Critical Role's] Wildemount!' By Matt Mercer

It looks like Amazon has leaked the title and description of the new D&D book a day early (unless it's all a fake-out by WotC) -- and it's a new D&D setting book called The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount; it's the Critical Role campaign setting, penned by Matt Mercer!

image from Critical Role wiki​

There's no cover image yet, so we're stuck with the "Coming Soon" image.

This book appeared without a title on Amazon last week, and a 'reveal' date of January 9th, which was then later delayed until January 13th. Amazon appears to have jumped the gun a day early.

Here's some information about Wildemount, which is a continent in the same world as Critical Role's other setting, Tal'Dorei. It is described by the official wiki has having "real-world Eastern European influence.... The Dwendalian Empire takes inspiration from 15th century Russia as well as Germanic nations in Central Europe (e.g., Prussia). Xhorhas has a more 13th-century Romanian flair. Outside of Wynandir, on the edges of the Dwendalian Empire, the cultures and peoples of those regions display a distinctly 14th-century Spanish flavor."

HOW DO YOU WANT TO DO THIS?

A war brews on a continent that has withstood more than its fair share of conflict. The Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty are carving up the lands around them, and only the greatest heroes would dare stand between them. Somewhere in the far corners of this war-torn landscape are secrets that could end this conflict and usher in a new age of peace—or burn the world to a cinder.

Create a band of heroes and embark on a journey across the continent of Wildemount, the setting for Campaign 2 of the hit Dungeons & Dragons series Critical Role. Within this book, you’ll find new character options, a heroic chronicle to help you craft your character’s backstory, four different starting adventures, and everything a Dungeon Master needs to breathe life into a Wildemount-based D&D campaign…

• Delve through the first Dungeons & Dragons book to let players experience the game as played within the world of Critical Role, the world’s most popular livestreaming D&D show.
• Uncover a trove of options usable in any D&D game, featuring subclasses, spells, magic items, monsters, and more, rooted in the adventures of Exandria—such as Vestiges of Divergence and the possibility manipulating magic of Dunamancy.
• Start a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in any of Wildemount’s regions using a variety of introductory adventures, dozens of regional plot seeds, and the heroic chronicle system—a way to create character backstories rooted in Wildemount.

Explore every corner of Wildemount and discover mysteries revealed for the first time by Critical Role Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer.

Critical Role's other setting, Tal'Dorei, was published a couple of years ago by Green Ronin. This brings the list of settings in official D&D books to five: Forgotten Realms, Ravnica, Ravenloft, Eberron, and Wildemount.

UPDATE! Barnes & Noble has the cover (but not the title or description).

 

[gyor]

I've not been excited by the majority of the 5e books at all. I didn't play 4e, but I did buy quite a few of the different campaign setting books - especially the Dark Sun books.

From the beginning that thrust of 5e, players have been asking for the old settings to be given the 5e treatment. Only Ebberon had been shown some love. Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, while containing some setting info, didn't get the job done for me.

I really feel this year that is going to change and later this year we will get some setting books, like E: RftLW but for other settings.

 

[gyor]

If it makes no sense to rely on nostalgia, then why bother trying to keep things backwards-convertible? Why not completely ignore older players and not worry about making each successive generation of rules at least vaguely similar to previous editions?

When they went to 3e, why did they bother with Greyhawk or FR? Why didn't they publish nothing but new campaign settings exclusively? Likewise 4e and 5e?

This is an excellent point, heck the SCAG drew heavily upon nostalgia. One of the explicit design goals of 5e was to unite the base as much as it can be, so of course older players are part of the target audience, they just aren't the biggest part anymore. So they hit where they think the biggest money is going to be, the AI and CR books first.

But they've used up all of their best Cross over stuff, AI, CR, Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, ect... (Except Big Bang maybe), and so you now that means turning to their own traditional IPs and figuring out how to sell them to a new generation as well as old.

My idea is to get more members of CR to freelance on some them, in addition to say more traditional writers and WotC's design team.

 

[dave2008]

Speaking of this, do we know anything about the 4e "if Essentials hadn't happened" setting future? I know a Nentir Vale book was a casualty, but I've never heard anything else. I can't imagine a Planescape book was a possiblity.

Not that I know of, but you might ask @Garthanos

 

[Acolyte of Zothique]

Th

@Reynard you could be correct regarding the Dark Sun brand being esoteric with a younger generation of players but then so was Eberron for many. For example, Eberron is still a young setting to me but in my gaming group we have a player who is 22 years old. She would probably have just been barely walking when Eberron was released so to to her this is a shiny new book and guess what? She loves it with the steam (er dungeonpunk) feel and new races, etcetera. So, the idea of not publishing a campaign world because a lot of new players don't know about it does not hold up to me or they would never have released Eberron. I think WOTC's model currently is to release campaign worlds that are distinctly different from FR which is they made the flagship world for 5E and is more a generic setting.

I started playing in 2E and didn't really know about worlds like Mystara and Greyhawk yet when then TSR released From the Ashes for Greyhawk and Karameikos: Kingdom of adventure for Mystara I was happy and excited to learn about them because it was a fresh setting to explore. Likewise when Dark Sun was released it had a smaller footprint than now as it was brand new yet many people found it exciting. I imagine how some people may feel about Wildemount now.

For me, I must admit I am highly disappointed and feel let down by WOTC that they are not releasing some classics full campaign settings that I am fond of like Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, or even Ravenloft (I mean a full world book not CoS). I think if WOTC was still an independent RPG/gaming company these worlds would have been out already and we would have more splat books which I like because I like options, but WOTC is owned by Hasbro and like them or not Hasbro handles business like an efficient corporation. The Wildemounte book while a huge let down to me makes sense to 1) tap into the podcast fanbase and release a book that is pretty much guaranteed to be a huge seller and 2) potentially expand some new players into the fold. Plus, the book will have some stuff for non-CR fans. For example, Dunamancy seems like a cool school of magic and from the interviews I have seen on D&D Beyond it seems like Dunamancy is brings a lot of 4E control elements (pushes, pulls, and slides) to the game and this is something from 4E that I miss. So that is cool.

I wish that there was a way to satisfy both the existing/older customer base who helped propel D&D to popularity and the fresh blood that is vital to carrying to the torch forward. @3catcircus is correct in business school they do teach that while expansion is vital existing customers are the crux of your sales vs new customers who often will buy sporadically (if in big chunks) but not consistently buy and support a product and there are examples in business of abandoning existing customers being a bad model. I don't really know if WOTC is doing this here though BUT I will say I can understand people being upset that worlds like Ravnica (which I purchased and thought "Oh this is all about political intrigue between existing houses/factions and is a mix of fantasy adventure and hard-boiled detective but all confined to this giant city so it is a more restrictive version of Eberron) and now Wildmounte have settings while even distinctive classic campaign worlds like Planescape, Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun don't yet. I also don't understand the logic of people who say just use the campaign material out from 2E or 1E or whatever. To me this argument seems highly disengenous; people like shiny new books with new (and recycled art) for their favorite worlds and minor updates on world happenings, etcetera. Hence, why Eberron got an update.

So, yeah I can understand both sides of the argument. I plan on purchasing Wildemount though I honestly feel little excitement over it because it does have something to mine. Honestly, as a solution maybe WOTC/Hasbro should license out the brands they have no intention of selling. Via licensing agreement even with a competitor company like Paizo both sides when depending on how the agreement is detailed. This way an RPG company can put out official WOTC branded materials for worlds many existing fans love and that I think new players would love too judging by Eberron and past history while at the same time WOTC can just release worlds based on podcasts products and highly popular mass appeal brands. To me that model seems like a win/win for everyone.

P.S. As a quick addendum for worlds like Greyhawk which I absolutely love but are not distinctive enough from generic fantasy worlds like FR and are less likely to see a world release from WOTC anytime soon, I think WOTC should consider some kind of Print on Demand model perhaps. I mean, with Greyhawk I have the Living Greyhawk Gazetter from 3E and I do not imagine much has changed. WOTC could literally just port most of the text over verbatim and add a vague plot hook for new developments for some of the major land and use mostly recycled art with a few new pieces thrown in and advertise it as a new sitting but the book is printed on demand when ordered. I think despite this philosophy of the old guard dying these books would be popular. I also think this could be a way for settings that were super niche even in 2E when TSR was releasing campaign worlds faster than hotcakes to get a release. I am looking at settings like Karameikos, Red Steel (more of a subcampaign that one), etcetera to see the light of day in 5E.

There's a distinct difference in design principles between Eberron and Dark Sun. The principal behind Eberron is that everything in the core books exists in the setting. This makes Eberron an ideal candidate for a 5e release; you can use everything if you want to; it's a type of more modern magitech setting which makes it different from vanilla D&D; and it's a popular setting.

Dark Sun in contrast is actually quite limiting in it's concept - yes it's distinctiveness makes it way outside the D&D norm and the apocalyptic scope is very appealing to a segment of the D&D audience. However, the setting would limit the material you could use with it and the scope of adventures would also be limited in contrast to Eberron. Dark Sun is therefore more 'niche' than Eberron, especially as you need an additional subset of rules - psionics - to do it justice. I would like to see 5e Dark Sun as well but I can see that Eberron is the smarter choice.

 

[3catcircus]

The idea that Greyhawk might be too similar to FR to be exciting to fans who aren't already fans is probably a cogent objection. Dark Sun doesn't have that problem, which is why I'd expect to see it done for 5e before Greyhawk. I don't say that because I personally don't like Greyhawk either - both Castle Greyhawk and Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure are personal favorites of mine.

I think that the idea that Greyhawk is to similar is because WotC have not done the setting any justice. FR had had several RSEs over the years which naturally allowed people to segregate canon and a return to previous canon as pertains to the setting.
Greyhawk's only RSE has really been the Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes and not a lot of of content after that to try and tie it all to previous canon or explain the current canon. Had they provided a 3e Gazetteer that did a good job of explaining before and after, it might have provided impetus to continue to develop products in 3e and 4e. You'll recall that GH was the default in 3e yet they produced mostly FR and Eberron setting content. Why did they make GH the default and not support it? The only love shown to the other campaign settings was a set of articles in Dragon. While I love FR for high fantasy and have grown to like Eberron, WotC's inability to support a cleaned-up low magic GH, Spelljammer, Mystara, planescape, or Ravenloft led to me supporting other publishers in the 3e era - Kalamar and the World of Aereth being two campaign settings I heavily invested in at the time, as well as dabbling in the Midnight campaign setting for some of the darker campaign ideas.

Yes, I get that want to avoid saturation like in previous editions, but putting out one really good whole of setting book for each of their main older settings should have been the priority to then compare to survey results to gauge what their customer base who actually purchases to use in their home campaigns actually want vs what the portion of customers who replied to surveys and may or may not actually use (or even play at all) say they want. I'd love to see the comparison of survey results vs booked sales to see how well that they match up - it would not surprise me if the results were similar to political exit polls vs actual voting results.

 

[3catcircus]

Th
There's a distinct difference in design principles between Eberron and Dark Sun. The principal behind Eberron is that everything in the core books exists in the setting. This makes Eberron an ideal candidate for a 5e release; you can use everything if you want to; it's a type of more modern magitech setting which makes it different from vanilla D&D; and it's a popular setting.

Dark Sun in contrast is actually quite limiting in it's concept - yes it's distinctiveness makes it way outside the D&D norm and the apocalyptic scope is very appealing to a segment of the D&D audience. However, the setting would limit the material you could use with it and the scope of adventures would also be limited in contrast to Eberron. Dark Sun is therefore more 'niche' than Eberron, especially as you need an additional subset of rules - psionics - to do it justice. I would like to see 5e Dark Sun as well but I can see that Eberron is the smarter choice.

Is it really limiting, or is it rather just differently-engaging of the core rules? 5e feats are optional in the core. Skills are optional in the core. Different classes are optional in the core. Spell lists would need to be identified for defilers and preservers - no different than any other classes in that regard. 5e psionics already exist.

The setting itself (blasted post-nuclearesque wasteland) may be niche, but then again there is nothing that says you couldn't do the same for any other setting (Anauroch, Sea of Dust, Mournland).

My point is that every setting has it's own flavor and feel and the core rules have always had to be modified/adapted/limited to implement the desired feel.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, I think it's pretty clear that WotC is going to publish what they think people will buy. Obviously Greyhawk isn't far enough up the list to warrant deisgn work yet, at least by their standards. It's fine to say that you think there's a secret majority of people that really want the same thing you do, but there's no evidence that's the case. It's also fine that you believe that WotC is making a category mistake and ignoring the bulk of their fan base, but again, the evidence is against that theory since D&D is selling as well as it is. To which I shrug and say whatevs. With no actual evidence for and a bunch of circumstantial evidence against, so I don't think your position is going to get any more convincing. You do you though, I'm not here to tell you what you think, I'm just telling you why I'm not convinced that you're correct.

 

[jmucchiello]

Never played Champions (and no idea what it is, assuming that is a shortened name)

Kids today. Sadly, Champions, in print since 1982 or so, is only barely still in print.

Champions and HERO are extremely granular in character generation but not especially complex in regular play. I mean, they aren't "lite" games for sure, and there's some tracking, but the complexity really shows up in character design. I just feel like we should make that distinction.

The speed chart is not complex in play? I've played with gamers who played champions for a decade and they still needed help to figure out who goes next on the speed chart.

And the complexity of D&D is also in character gen: Just because the complexity of chargen is more "ongoing" in D&D doesn't change the idea that spell selection is just a facet of chargen.

That sentence sucks.... In Champions, you generally build a complete (superhero) character from scratch and rarely improve it in any significant manner afterward. In D&D terms, the start out at level 10 or 12 or so and you might gain a level or two after a game of a few years time. D&D spreads that chargen activity over levels so you learn all you can do over time, growing organically. That makes it, IMO, much simpler than the Champion style since you have nigh-infinite choice (it's a point buy system for everything all at once). Wrapping one's head around 200 pages of choice to spend 400+ "points" is not easy to explain quickly.

 

[Mistwell]

Maybe this is true, but in this case I wonder why those people are not represented in this forum... I mean: why so many complains about this new book if "the majority of the fun base is enthusiast about it"? The only logic answer I find is that that majority doesn't stay in this forum. And this conclusion seems to me a little bit odd and denied by facts.
So it must exist another answer. But I cannot find it. Ideas?

I mean, Mike Mearls outright said that is the case years ago. That the people on the forums that post about D&D rules tend to be not very representative of those who play the game, and the surveys were consistently showing that.

I love this forum. It's my home away from home on the Internet. But message board forums went out of style many years ago. Most conversations moved to social media platforms long ago. The population here is disproportionately represented by older fans who were here before the shift to social media happened and stayed here.

 

[Acolyte of Zothique]

Is it really limiting, or is it rather just differently-engaging of the core rules? 5e feats are optional in the core. Skills are optional in the core. Different classes are optional in the core. Spell lists would need to be identified for defilers and preservers - no different than any other classes in that regard. 5e psionics already exist.

The setting itself (blasted post-nuclearesque wasteland) may be niche, but then again there is nothing that says you couldn't do the same for any other setting (Anauroch, Sea of Dust, Mournland).

My point is that every setting has it's own flavor and feel and the core rules have always had to be modified/adapted/limited to implement the desired feel.

Nope, it is limiting because if you want 5e Dark Sun to be similar to 2e Dark Sun, you won't be able to use all the core rules.

Bringing up areas in FR - the Anauroch desert for instance - isn't a good example because those desert environments are only part of FR. You have the option of desert related FR adventures but you can do so much more within FR due to the variety of terrain and climate. With Dark Sun you just have...blasted wilderness.

 

[Reynard]

Kids today. Sadly, Champions, in print since 1982 or so, is only barely still in print.


The speed chart is not complex in play? I've played with gamers who played champions for a decade and they still needed help to figure out who goes next on the speed chart.

And the complexity of D&D is also in character gen: Just because the complexity of chargen is more "ongoing" in D&D doesn't change the idea that spell selection is just a facet of chargen.

That sentence sucks.... In Champions, you generally build a complete (superhero) character from scratch and rarely improve it in any significant manner afterward. In D&D terms, the start out at level 10 or 12 or so and you might gain a level or two after a game of a few years time. D&D spreads that chargen activity over levels so you learn all you can do over time, growing organically. That makes it, IMO, much simpler than the Champion style since you have nigh-infinite choice (it's a point buy system for everything all at once). Wrapping one's head around 200 pages of choice to spend 400+ "points" is not easy to explain quickly.

I think the complexity in D&D is in its exception based design principles, which HERO explicitly does not utilize.

But yeah, that speed chart can be a bear.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I didn't bold that section of my post, that was done by another poster replying to me. So thanks for reigning in the sarcasm; it was neither needed nor warranted.

I am only discussing 5e in this tangent to the thread. Not boardgames, not Dread, not any other game. Yes there are simpler RPGs and I run those too - I particularly enjoy Beyond The Wall - but when it comes to my experience teaching 5e to both newbies AND veterans then I can say it has been easy for both types of players.

Not to say that some new players don't find 5e complicated, I'm sure they do. This is why WoTC have produced an Essentials Kit to make starting 5e as easy as possible.

I'm the one who bolded it.

And, I am very curious how you plan to consider the complexity of the game if you never compare it to any other RPG.

I mean, the entire point of the discussion has seemed to be that DnD 5e is complex compared to other simpler RPGs, which you denied because it is simpler than more complex RPGs.... which no one disagreed with, but that didn't negate the point that in terms of relative complexity, 5e is a complex game.

That has been the entire point. DnD 5e is relatively complex. Not the most complex, but certainly not simple either. And, if your argument stems from "players from 3.5 seem to find it simple) your argument is invalid, because they are coming from a far more complex game.

Maybe this is true, but in this case I wonder why those people are not represented in this forum... I mean: why so many complains about this new book if "the majority of the fun base is enthusiast about it"? The only logic answer I find is that that majority doesn't stay in this forum. And this conclusion seems to me a little bit odd and denied by facts.
So it must exist another answer. But I cannot find it. Ideas?

Which facts do you think deny it? I've seen maybe 2 dozen posters in this thread. There might be a few hundred people on the site at any one time.

DnD has sold tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of books.

We are a sliver.

 

[JeffB]

Th
There's a distinct difference in design principles between Eberron and Dark Sun. The principal behind Eberron is that everything in the core books exists in the setting. This makes Eberron an ideal candidate for a 5e release; you can use everything if you want to; it's a type of more modern magitech setting which makes it different from vanilla D&D; and it's a popular setting.

Dark Sun in contrast is actually quite limiting in it's concept - yes it's distinctiveness makes it way outside the D&D norm and the apocalyptic scope is very appealing to a segment of the D&D audience. However, the setting would limit the material you could use with it and the scope of adventures would also be limited in contrast to Eberron. Dark Sun is therefore more 'niche' than Eberron, especially as you need an additional subset of rules - psionics - to do it justice. I would like to see 5e Dark Sun as well but I can see that Eberron is the smarter choice.

All true. Sadly- after WOTC's buyout of TSR* there was a decided shift to the Rules informing the Game World, instead of The Game World informing the Rules- which just gives us a whole lot of samey-settings because we wouldn't want to anger any players whose character race/class desire doesn't fit in with an old setting. Can't have any of that

*Sure we can say that it happened with the ToT in FR and all it's dumb changes because of 2E. But all the settings that came after in 2E were highly specialized and had a great many core elements removed/eliminated/not available in order to make the setting unique RL, BR, DS, SJ, PS, etc. 3E backpedaled, and so did 4E- and now with 5E , gotta make everything in the PHB canon for every bit of WOTC IP- it's all a part of the " shared experience"

Boring.

 

[3catcircus]

All true. Sadly- after WOTC's buyout of TSR* there was a decided shift to the Rules informing the Game World, instead of The Game World informing the Rules- which just gives us a whole lot of samey-settings because we wouldn't want to anger any players whose character race/class desire doesn't fit in with an old setting. Can't have any of that

*Sure we can say that it happened with the ToT in FR and all it's dumb changes because of 2E. But all the settings that came after in 2E were highly specialized and had a great many core elements removed/eliminated/not available in order to make the setting unique RL, BR, DS, SJ, PS, etc. 3E backpedaled, and so did 4E- and now with 5E , gotta make everything in the PHB canon for every bit of WOTC IP- it's all a part of the " shared experience"

Boring.

And I consider "the rules informing the game world" to definitely be a problem. In previous editions, they tried and failed to link all of the different settings together - it isn't hard to understand the idea that each campaign setting (Oerth, Faerun, Eberron, Krynn, Athas) could all be handled together using Spelljammer within a single universe while Planescape could tie them all across. The problem was that they just produced way too much content rather than a single all-in-one setting book - even during the 3e days when WotC was smarter about market research than TSR. Part of the problem is trying to bolt-on different rules in different campaign settings rather than expanding or modifying the existing rules. But that isn't the fault of the campaign setting - it's the fault of a core that doesn't particular work all that well to begin with - its always been primarily designed to work in an idealized western european medieval fantasy setting with very well-define PC and NPC "roles." At its basis, it can't actually even emulate a high-fantasy Lord of the Rings. For example, going back to the earliest iterations of D&D there is no way you could emulate Gandalf wielding Glamdring and it wasn't until 5e that you can come close to doing it. Just about any class-less skill-based RPG rules can emulate this easily.

So - in every D&D edition, when they try to use the rules to force the campaign setting they're going to be fairly unsuccessful. 2e was a little easier in this regard because of the large emphasis on story rather than rules, but 3e and 4e are exceptionally bad - everything gets bolted on in an ever-increasing set of rules. 5e has (rules-wise) been a breath of fresh air, going back to a streamlined set of rules that allows a DM to hand-wave or make up a rule on the spot to emulate a particular effect.

 

[dave2008]

Maybe this is true, but in this case I wonder why those people are not represented in this forum... I mean: why so many complains about this new book if "the majority of the fun base is enthusiast about it"? The only logic answer I find is that that majority doesn't stay in this forum. And this conclusion seems to me a little bit odd and denied by facts.
So it must exist another answer. But I cannot find it. Ideas?

Not really, just about every poll of the forum users here at EnWorld differs, often significantly from the polls / surveys of the General D&D playing populace. Just check out the recent surveys and forum polls on high level play. A lot more people on these forums play into high levels than what the global surveys / stats indicate.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I love this forum. It's my home away from home on the Internet. But message board forums went out of style many years ago. Most conversations moved to social media platforms long ago. The population here is disproportionately represented by older fans who were here before the shift to social media happened and stayed here.

Heh... yeah, come August I will be hitting Year 18 in my membership here on the boards. Started while Eric Noah was still previewing the run-up to 3E and have now remained through 3.5, 4E, and now 5E.

 

[generic]

Heh... yeah, come August I will be hitting Year 18 in my membership here on the boards. Started while Eric Noah was still previewing the run-up to 3E and have now remained through 3.5, 4E, and now 5E.

Completely off-topic, but has anyone ever told you that you have an excellent username?

 

[JeffB]

Started while Eric Noah was still previewing the run-up to 3E and have now remained through 3.5, 4E, and now 5E.

Same.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Completely off-topic, but has anyone ever told you that you have an excellent username?

Here? No. But I used it as my tag team name back when I did message board fantasy pro wrestling back in the early 2000s and people said they liked it then. But thank you! D.E.F. are my initials, so the word 'Defcon' has held a particular soft-spot in my heart since seeing in the movie Wargames.

And yes, Def Leppard is one of my favorite bands of all time too. LOL. Mos Def? Not so much though.

 

[gyor]

Wildemount at 304 pages is almost as big as E: RftLW which had 310 pages, even though Wildemount having only four major regions, no artificer class. This compares to E: RftLW which had feats, 8 races, 5 human kingdom, a Dwarf kingdom, halfling lands, Elf lands, a group of city states, and a Kingdom of monsters, and a Tiefling city state, its own set of special planes, other continents, Dragon Marked houses, Party Patrons, ect...

So I find myself wondering what is going to be in this book to fill up the difference. Dunamancy is unlikely to take up more space then all the Artificer stuff. The Heriic Background system is unlikely to be bigger then Party Patrons. Both have magic items. Cosmology is mentioned, but its mostly Exandia corner of the regular 5e cosmology.