Dungeons and Dragons has had a resurgence in recent years. This was due, in no small part, to a group of streamers who just decided to broadcast their games. The selling point? All of the people involved were experienced and successful actors and all of them brought their skills to their portrayals of their characters. The Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer, created a custom world for the group to roam around in called Wildemount. Their popularity grew to such a point that it was enough for Wizards of the Coast to take notice and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount was born. However, can this newcomer hold its own against the tried and true classics or is it just a fad? Does it have the flavor, crunch and portions of other settings? Dig in and see.

Wildemount boasts four major sections of their world to play in. Each one presents a vastly different selection of gameplay elements than the others. The northern Shadycreek Run is a wintery wasteland hiding a secret of devastating magical power. The Menagerie Coast sports your typical seafaring adventures. Then there are the two warring civilizations: The Dwendalian Empire and the Krynn Dynasty of Xhorhas. The Dwendalian Empire is closer to a more traditional fantasy kingdom with hints of political intrigue. Adventuring in Xhorhas will feel like the script has been flipped as what were usually villainous races have come to the surface to live in their own place, albeit a corrupted wasteland. Most any sort of adventure is easily supported in the wider world of Wildemount, or so it seems.

With a flavor leaning towards Neapolitan, that is to say a bit of everything, does the crunch give it any real substance? Many of the races presented are reprints of races found in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. This is due in part for more organized play that Wizards hosts, but also because many of those races were very prevalent in the streams. Goliaths, for example, made quite an impression from one of the characters named Grog who was a goliath. The races that aren’t reprints are intriguing subraces and variants of existing races. It includes a new halfling subrace, elf subraces, and two dragonborn variants that do not breath fire, but promote other aspects of draconic power. These are excellent additions, but the main course of player content is the selection of new spells and the new subclasses. One of the most intriguing bits of Wildemount is what it calls Dunamancy. Dunamancy is a pseudoschool of magic, a category related to potential, time, and space. Revolving around those themes are new spells and three separate subclasses: one for the fighter, the Echo Knight, and two for the wizard, Chronomancy and the Graviturgist. The Echo Knight makes temporary duplicates of himself pulled from another timeline. The Chronomancy Wizard tampers with time in small ways and the Graviturgist makes things heavier or lighter to different benefits. All three are potent all by themselves and well worth their weight. Unfortunately, however, the spells are bittersweet. Dunamancy is stated to be very rare. So rare, in fact, that not only is it not open to spellcasters in general, but restricted to Dunamancy themed subclasses, the Chronomancer and the Graviturgist. Even then, their choices of this special magic must cleave to the theme of their subclass. A Graviturgist can’t take a spell noted as being for a Chronomancer and vice versa. Being so heavily tied to the setting and even more heavily tied to its rarity, the spells might as well be new magic items rather than real spells. As such, it is nearly impossible to find these spells (and by extension, their subclasses) outside of playing in this specific setting. While it goes a long way for the flavor of this setting, as they are now, these options might as well not even exist otherwise.

With solid crunch, albeit a bit stale, all that remains is the portions. What does this book offer a campaign as a whole? Quite a bit, actually. The majority of the book is four whole 1st level adventures, set in one of each major area, and the distinctive monsters for creating adventures throughout the level ranges. These are the foundations of four whole campaigns, meaning hours and hours of gameplay and storytelling. The finer details may seem scarce, but part of that is due to avoiding spoiling the adventures themselves.

Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has most, if not everything, a fan of Critical Role could want. The locations, the creatures, the adventures, all align nicely with the world seen on streaming. Non-Critical Role fans, however, may chaff at the restrictiveness of the spells. Why buy the book if a player can’t use it’s biggest selling points in other places? It is for these reasons that the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount remains a bit of a disappointment. The lack of more universal uses restricts it to Critical Role fans and Dungeon Masters willing to run in the setting, which many may not on principle of avoiding drama related to Critical Role fans. B-.

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