The next sourcebook for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition will take players to Wildemount, the setting of the popular roleplaying show Critical Role. Recent crossovers have mashed up Dungeons and Dragons with Magic: The Gathering, the Acquisitions Incorporated actual play show, and even Rick and Morty.
Starting as an actual play show in 2015, Critical Role has grown over the years into a massively successful enterprise with a devoted legion of fans who call themselves Critters. Last year, Critical Role ran a Kickstarter to fund an animated adaptation of its first campaign called The Legend of Vox Machina, which reached its $750,000 funding goal on the first day. Critical Role’s success largely comes down to its cast, a crew of actors with dozens of credits across live action shows, cartoons, and video games including The Last of Us, Resident Evil, and Overwatch.
With the release of the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, Critical Role will become an official part of D&D. The guidebook will include four adventures, each set in a different region of the new campaign setting, Wildemount. To help flesh out the setting, the book contains descriptions of the major factions and, according to Wizards of the Coast, secrets and details about Wildemount that have never been revealed in the Critical Role show. It will also introduce plenty of options usable even in campaigns not set in Wildemount, such as spells, magic items, and the Echo Knight subclass. The book is written by Critical Role’s dungeon master, Matthew Mercer, who previously developed the unofficial Blood Hunter subclass available on D&D Beyond.
In addition to the new tabletop sourcebook, Wizards of the Coast is invested in expanding the Dungeons & Dragons video game universe. Last year, the publisher acquired developer Tuque Games to work on a new Dark Alliance game set in the D&D universe, and Divinity: Original Sin developer Larian Studios is currently working on a follow-up to the beloved Baldur’s Gate cRPG series. According to Wizards of the Coast, “seven or eight” D&D video games are in the works, so even players who never want to roll a d20 in their life will soon have their fill of the franchise.
Along with podcasts like Friends at the Table and The Adventure Zone, Critical Role was one of the first actual play shows to gain wide attention, bringing tabletop RPGs to a wider audience. With the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, countless new Dungeons and Dragons players will be able to explore the setting of the show that got them into the hobby in the first place.
Next: Dark Alliance Has Single-Player, But It Will Be Difficult
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount will be available March 17, 2020.
Source: Wizards of the Coast
