D&D General What's The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons?

It wasn't in any previous announcements about 2023-2024's D&D release schedule, but now The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons has appeared on the slate!

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It's a 128-page hardcover, coming out on August 15th for $39.95, and it details dragon anatomy, society, language, hoards, magic, lairs, and more. This is a full-on 'lore' book, with no game rules in it.

The Practical Guide to Dragons came out in 2006, and was followed by A Practical Guide to Dragon Riding and A Practical Guide to Dragon Magic. This book is a compilation of the best parts of those three books. The originals were illustrated guides designed for younger readers, and featured a wizard called Sindri Suncatcher, the fictional 'author' of the works.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Huh. You're right. The fictional author, Sindri Suncatcher, is a kender. Since the first one came out in 2006, it is technically a 3.5e era book. It's the later two that came out during the 4e era.

They bridged the 3.5 and 4E eras. It's most noticeable in the wizard book (the best one, IMO), which tries to both include the 3.5 breakdown of wizard magic by school and also move to a post-nine schools framework for magic.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But what if those books were also based on the 3.5e Draconomicon? I've never read them, so I wouldn't know. Dragons had different lore (and there were different combos of dragons) in the 4e era. I would think a 5e era book, regardless of its audience, would stick to 5e lore (which is closer to 3.5e lore than 4e lore).

This is, of course, all speculation. I do like the cover. That's about all I can say for now.

The original three books matched the lore from the 3.5 era, although no one would confuse them with the Draconomicon.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, my kids may beg to differ.

I told my youngest that anything she remembered from a Practical Guide or Young Adventurers Guide she was allowed to use during a game. It's not metagaming if your dad is tricking you into doing more reading.

 

[Parmandur]

I had them all. It was not a reprinting of any of the 3E dragon lore (as I recall, these books predated the 4E dragon books), beyond the fact that the same things were true and not, lore-wise.

In many cases, these books made up new, largely harmless lore, like establishing Feywild geography or elements of vampire society or breaking down verbal components for wizard magic.

These are books squarely aimed at elementary age students, and skewed a least a year younger than the current Young Adventurers Guides.

This fits my purposes as the Father of Nerds....

 

[darjr]

This fits my purposes as the Father of Nerds....

What? Like all of us?

Can I borrow the car?

 

[Parmandur]

What? Like all of us?

Can I borrow the car?

Only if you pay for gas.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder if there will be reused content from Fizban?

No. This is not a rulebook. Look at the branding - it lacks the big red D&D logo that rulebooks have. Instead it has the same branding as the cookbooks and other tie-in fan merchandise.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It is a book for children, not for players. 100% fluff/lore/background, 0% crunch. Useful for all the editions.

 

[Corinnguard]

After seeing some people bringing up the 3.5 Draconomicon, I wish PF during it's PF1 days had come up with their own take on this book. PF1 had Chromatic, Metallic, Primal, Imperial, Esoteric, Planar and Outer (outer as in outer space) dragons.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

...and chocolate coated!