Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Predicting the Slate of D&D Books in 2022

 Currently, there's only one official D&D book (arguably 1 1/2) that has been announced and is yet to be released (specifically the Exandria-based Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep adventure book). Monsters of the Multiverse is going to be released in May on its own, but given that it is technically available if you get it with Xanathar's and Tasha's (if you didn't have them already or are willing to buy them again,) I'm only counting that for half.

The big thing to keep in mind with this year is that we're getting the sort of delayed effects of the pandemic now. The Rules Expansion Gift Set, after all, was intended to be available for the 2021 holiday season (I have to imagine the folks at WotC were pretty annoyed that it didn't make it out in time).

As such, I think it's prudent to adjust expectations for the 2022 release schedule.

As I see it, there are three major "genres" of D&D books to release (perhaps dividing one of those into two).

The first, most common, is published adventures. We tend to get a major one of these each year in the fall, though last year we got two - with Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos. The latter of these was a bit of a change for the MTG/D&D crossover content, as the previous ones have been campaign setting books.

Adventure books are the most consistent releases for D&D - indeed, it seems the intention is that play groups that don't go in for homebrew campaigns can essentially run one of these per year, and always have a new one to start the next year. I have no real theories as to what the next of these ought to be - they're usually tied to the Forgotten Realms setting (though Witchlight is pretty setting-agnostic, and can start in just about any Material Plane world). I might expect them to do another Forgotten Realms-set adventure, though I would not be heartbroken if we took an extended break from the Sword Coast.

On a normal schedule, we'd expect to see one of these books announced in the summer and released in the fall. I don't have much of a sense of how backed up the process is for such a thing, but I also think that they might prioritize this to ensure that that once-a-year schedule is kept up.

WotC has also been releasing a lot of adventure anthologies, with Candlekeep Mysteries being the latest. I wouldn't be shocked to see something like that announced as well, perhaps earlier in the year.

Next, we come to campaign settings.

WotC already confirmed that they were planning on revisiting classic D&D settings in 2022.

While a few years ago this would have seemed like a madman's ravings, the safe money is actually on Spelljammer, the science-fantasy "meta-setting" that I don't think has had an official release since the early 90s. The Travelers of the Multiverse UA that came out last year hinted strongly at this, and during last year's D&D Celebration, Chris Perkins shared an image of a sketch that frequent cover-artist Hydro74 was working on for an upcoming book, which depicted Boo, the miniature giant space hamster companion of beloved Ranger Minsc.

Now, there is some stuff to unpack here - Boo is referred to as a miniature giant space hamster, and while there are giant hamsters in the Spelljammer setting, I don't know if it's canonical that Boo is anything other than... just a normal hamster. Still, if we are to buy into this description, his presence could be another strong hint toward Spelljammer, which we're already expecting for other reasons anyway.

It's anyone's guess what the other classic setting will be. I've generally assumed it will be Dragonlance given the recent legal settlements with the Hickmans and its popularity as one of the most beloved old-school settings (that I know very little about). I also think it would make sense as a more traditional fantasy world in contrast with Spelljammer's over-the-top nature. Personally, I'd love a Planescape book, but I also recognize that A: it's even weirder than Spelljammer and B: if it focuses on Sigil, people might notice some really strange similarities between Sigil and Ravnica - to be fair, Sigil was established first.

The final "genre" of book is general rules-expansions or setting-agnostic sourcebooks. This includes Xanathar's and Tasha's, but also monster books like Volo's, Fizban's, and the new Monsters of the Multiverse.

In theory, Fizban's was kind of the third of the big "monster books" like Volo's and the first Mordenkainen's (I'm going to keep calling it that and refer to the other as Monsters of the Multiverse). But not only was Fizban's entirely focused on dragons, but it also broke with tradition a little in including magic items and subclasses, which are usually in the "of Everything" rules expansion books.

We also know that in 2024 we're going to get a new version of the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook (and DMG, though that's not really relevant to this point). Now, that is a whole two years away, of course, so maybe it wouldn't be that unreasonable to release a new big rules-expansion book. Even though I'll never be able to play every character concept I come up with, I'm always excited for new subclasses and such. Might a third "of Everything" book eventually come out?

So, this post is meant to be a slate of predictions. Let's get predicting.

I think if were were expecting a normal slate of releases, I'd expect us to get a Spelljammer campaign setting sourcebook in the spring - maybe April or May. I think we'd also get a big fall adventure some time around September - just to toss an idea out there, maybe some kind of thing involving aberrations around Neverwinter.

I think we'd get a second campaign setting book perhaps in October or so - possibly Dragonlance.

Finally, if we do get a rules expansion book, I'd guess we might get that in the summer. The most recent survey about Feats could possibly have something to do with that (though it could also just be research for the 2024 PHB).

Likely, if those predictions would have been correct in a non-plaguetime year, we're instead going to see a bit of a delay. Overall, maybe you could just push each release back a month or so.

I don't think we've gotten any big announcements since D&D Celebration, except perhaps the Call of the Netherdeep. I'm hoping we'll be hearing something from them soon.

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