Undead Patron and College of Spirits: For Tasha's, or For a Ravenloft Campaign Setting?

 I got very, very excited when, a few weeks ago, and Unearthed Arcana post went out detailing two subclasses that really tickled my gothic sensibilities. The College of Spirits gives us a Bard that can essentially be like a 19th Century spiritualist medium. Meanwhile, the Undead Patron admittedly steps on the toes of the Undying patron, though it really doubles down on the notion of some ancient lich, death knight, or vampire as a spooky, gothic patron.

Notice a theme?

I'd really love to see these subclasses show up in the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but I'll confess that there's a hitch: these were just released, and it's only a couple months before Tasha's is out.

It would still be great to see it in there, especially if I ever get back to playing Adventurer's League after the pandemic is over.

But I have my doubts.

However - all that being said, there's a potential silver lining should the subclasses not make it into Tasha's.

Given the deeply gothic nature of both subclasses, I suspect this could mean a Ravenloft Campaign Setting book.

So far, in 5th Edition, there have been five Campaign Setting books - Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Every one of these has brought new subclasses (Eberron gave us only subclasses to its brand new class, but that still counts!)

In fact, the only books apart from these to do so were the Player's Handbook and Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is clearly going to be a sort of sequel to Xanathar's (perhaps establishing an "Everything" convention, though I don't know how many more we're likely to get in 5th Edition.)

But while SCAG had several subclasses (that it seems very few people play,) generally, the convention has seemed to be two or three subclasses per book.

Add that to the fact that those two subclasses are both dripping with Gothic flavor, and you're already on the right track.

Next, consider that Ravneloft is one of the most popular D&D settings - Curse of Strahd (something we just had a session of tonight) is probably the most popular published adventure for 5th Edition. I think that WotC can be confident that a setting book for Ravenloft would be a big hit.

So this all adds up to make me feel relatively confident that a Ravenloft book could be the next big campaign setting we get, probably some time in the middle of 2021.

I'd love to get more direction on the lands beyond Barovia, as well as some details about the Dark Powers (maybe not enough details to make them lose their mystique, but enough to weave a broader mythos around the setting.)

Another thing setting books come with are monsters, and boy howdy am I always happy to have more spooky monsters.