Explorer's Guide to Wildemount

The next official D&D 5E release from Wizards of the Coast is Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.

Like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica and Eberron: Rising From the Last War (and, I guess, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide,) this is a campaign setting book, which introduces a new world in which to set adventures and campaigns.

Wildemount is a major continent on the world of Exandria, which is the world in which the beloved and popular streamed D&D show Critical Role takes place. The setting of Critical Role's current campaign (its second,) Wildemount is a continent on the brink of a massive war between the predominantly human Dwendalian Empire - a stable but oppressive regime that, for instance, only allows the worship of certain gods - and the largely drow-led coalition of "monstrous" races known as the Kryn Dynasty, which rules over the cursed and blasted lands of Xhorhas and is united in worship of a mysterious entity or perhaps even cosmic force known as the Luxon, which the Kryn have turned to after rejecting the evil "betrayer gods."

Critical Role fans will recognize locations like Rexxentrom, Nicodranas, Rosonna, Zidash (and there's a very good chance I'm getting the spelling of all these wrong, as my familiarity with them is primarily from hearing Matt Mercer say the names.)

Additionally, there are three new subclasses - the Echo Knight, the Chronurgist, and the Graviturgist - which presumably are all based in the Xhorasian magic known as dunamancy. As of yet, I don't actually know which classes these go with, but I'd suspect maybe Fighter and two Wizard ones? (If Chronurgist is a time-manipulaiton-based Wizard subclass I might have to make my Eldritch Knight multiclass given that his backstory involves some kind of time-travel manipulations.)

There will also be a guide to dunamantic magic, complete with new spells (some of which Liam O'Brien's character Caleb Widogast has used.)

Like Eberron, it looks like this book is going to be a real tome, with over 300 pages, including a number of monsters.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see Critical Role get added to the canon of D&D. They've earned a place there!

As a side note: I know some people are disappointed, much as they were when the Ravnica book was released, that there's no official 5th Edition release of an older setting like Planescape or Dragonlance. To me, however, I'm encouraged by the fact that WotC seems to be doing more of these setting releases - with Ravnica, Eberron, and Exandria all coming out within a span of two years, I suspect that there will be a greater focus on these releases.

Some people, and to be honest, myself included, probably wanted to see something more like Xanathar's Guide to Everything - just a big expansion of character options and rules systems. I don't know that WotC has a strict quota of books it can release per year - I know they've emphasized quality over quantity in 5th Edition, but I could also imagine that if they have good things to put out, they'll do it (a lot of us will happily fork over the 50 bucks for each book they release.)

Matt Mercer made a really eloquent statement on Reddit that addressed some of these concerns (as always reinforcing my sense that he's a really kind and thoughtful person) and pointed out that this book can be mined for content in others' homebrew settings. I know some have disparaged his homebrewing abilities for mechanics, which I can't comment too intelligently on, but given that this is an official 5E release, I'm sure it's getting the playtesting and editorial review that will help balance things - rather than just the ideas that a very busy voice actor who's also now helping to run the Critical Role company is trying to find time to work on for what is essentially just his home game that has a lot of people following it.

I'm excited for this, and I'm about 98% sure I'll have pre-ordered it by the end of the day.