Wildemount, Theros, and What Might Come With 5th Edition

D&D 5th Edition is now about 5 and a half years old. For a number of reasons, it has been D&D's most popular edition, likely due to its relatively simple rules system and the advent of "actual play" streaming shows like Critical Role (personally, it was Acquisitions Incorporated that got me to try it, which began to promote the then-new 4th Edition before transitioning to "D&D Next" which became 5th.)

As the number of 5E books grows, there are a few questions as to what we can expect to come in the future. Theoretically, there's a 6th Edition that will eventually come out, but I suspect they're going to be hesitant to push that too soon.

Historically, most D&D editions have lasted about a decade. First Edition is a little complicated given that there was D&D and AD&D (I'm given to understand the latter was the popular, definitive version of the game.) 2nd Edition launched in 1989, 15 years after the original D&D, and 12 after AD&D (looking through the history, it's AD&D when the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide became the core three books.)

3rd Edition came out in 2000, but was updated to 3.5 in 2003. Then, 4th Edition came out in 2008. Finally, 5E came out in 2014.

Which means that every edition has come out faster than the previous one did. If that trend were to continue, we'd need to see 6th Edition within the next 6 months or so, which I find very unlikely.

But given 5E's massive popularity, I suspect they'll be sticking with it for a while (sorry, Rangers.)

The 5E books that have come out over the past five and a half years can be broken down, I think, into four categories: Core Books, Supplement Books, Adventure Books, and Campaign Settings. Here's what we have so far, including announced but not-yet-released books (though tomorrow one of those will be out.)

Core Books:
Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide

Supplement Books:
Volo's Guide to Monsters
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

Adventure Books:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat (these two later published in a single volume as Tyranny of Dragons)
Curse of Strahd
Princes of the Apocalypse
Out of the Abyss
Storm King's Thunder
Tomb of Annihilation
Tales From the Yawning Portal
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus

Campaign Settings:
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica
Acquisitions Incorporated (sort of? It's in the Forgotten Realms but is a sort of different tonal setting.)
Eberron: Rising From the Last War
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
Mythic Odysseys of Theros

So, clearly, Adventure books have been their focus for much of the edition's lifespan so far. However, I find it very interesting that campaign settings are coming out much more frequently now. Of those five books, only one was published before 2018.

Personally, while I enjoyed playing Descent into Avernus, I'm always going to prefer a campaign tailored for the players and their characters, which makes the Supplement books the most exciting products for me. I also love the campaign setting books - while I am now running a Ravnica campaign (that is off to a shaky start thanks to a pandemic and we can stop talking about that now) I'm much more likely to pillage these books for things in my home setting - I've already started integrating elements of the Mournlands into my own setting's post-apocalyptic wasteland region.

I am curious to see what they do with campaign setting releases.

Perhaps to the chagrin of some older veterans, 5th Edition has only released setting books for two pre-established settings - the Sword Coast of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, and a book for Eberron, which was introduced in 3rd Edition.

Two of its setting books are imported from Magic: The Gathering. Now, the remaining one - Wildemount, which is part of the larger Exandria setting, feels like a great addition to the canon of D&D. Critical Role has been such a popular and popularizing element of the D&D global community that I think it makes sense as both a place people might be interested in playing in and part of the legend of D&D.

Now, as a nerd who really likes weird things, I'd love to see updated content for Planescape and Spelljammer. And I'm hoping that, as we see more campaign setting books being pushed, we'll see some of those oddballs. Remember, after SCAG, we went for a long time without any other campaign setting books. But between Eberron, Wildemount, and Theors, we're getting three within the space of a single year.

I'm also hoping for another broad character-option book with as many new subclasses (or at least a comparable number) as Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The campaign setting books have given us new class options (or in the case of Eberron, an entirely new class) but typically only two or three. (SCAG actually provided a fair number, but many were sort of unpopular, and the ones that were popular largely got reprinted in Xanathar's.)

I think we can expect new adventure books to come out at a regular rate. These are, after all, the most "consumable" of the 5E products. But homebrewer that I am, I'm really eager for more content I can remix for my own purposes.