Catching up with DMs Guild and D&D Community Creators

February 1, 2020

My collection of content from Dungeon Masters Guild continues to grow! There are so many amazing creators in the D&D community and keeping up with all the fantastic new material is challenging to say the least. Thankfully the DMs Guild newsletter delivers a great summary of new content along with special deals to save you money on great new content for your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games. In addition I appreciate whenever creators reach out to share news about their own new and upcoming material for 5E D&D available through the DMs Guild. Also, how about a shout out for Lysa Penrose, recently named brand manager for DMs Guild! Congratulations to Lysa, she is a tireless advocate for great gaming and positive D&D community building. (She’s also a guest creator for our Out of the Box book, and her Crones and their Cravings encounter is one of my favorites of the 55 encounters.)

DMs Guild roundup

First up I’ve got Eberronicon: A Pocket Guide to the World. This is a 54 page book designed as a quick reference for Dungeon Masters, players and creators meant as a indispensable overview of the Eberron campaign setting. The team behind this DMs Guild book scrubbed through 15 years of Eberron material like sourcebooks from earlier editions of D&D, articles and more. What I really dig about this book is the references in the text to where the info comes from. For example, my favorite thing about Eberron is Xen’drik and Stormreach. So in Eberronicon the synopsis of these places includes a reference to the Player’s Guide to Eberron where I can find more. An appendix in the back even includes links to reference material available through DMs Guild. Neat!

Absorbing an entire campaign setting can be daunting for players and DMs alike, so having this quick reference guide is super useful. Check it out here.

“It’s not really a summary of [Eberron: Rising from the Last War], though there’s a lot of content overlap merely because Rising is largely a summary of previous editions. Rather, it’s a summary of highlights from all the editions, so you’ll find topics covered that aren’t even mentioned in Rising (e.g. the Scholarship section overviews several institutions that aren’t mentioned in Rising, and same with the Druidism section on various druidic sects, so anyone relying solely on Rising for world-building wouldn’t know they exist).” — Laura Hirsbrunner, Eberronicon project manager

Next there’s Amarune’s Almanac and I’ve got two titles in this series to share. The first in the series is Forests of the Realms, a 50 page book detailing each of the biomes of Faerun. The book also includes a map of Faerun. There is plenty of useful lore, prose and non-crunchy stuff to inspire DMs and players and help really immerse themselves in the Forgotten Realms setting. But don’t worry there’s new subclasses, items, spells, beasts, downtime rules, flora and more. Druid and ranger enthusiasts can explore the Circle of the Grove and Sylvan Sentinel subclasses and cast some of the new Forest Spells inside. Check out Amarune’s Almanac: Forests of the Realms here.

Then there’s Amarune’s Almanac: The Underdark. I am a huge fan of subterranean cultures and adventures in D&D so this 67 page book is particularly interesting to me. First up I adore the map of the Underdark included with the book. Like Forests of the Realms this is a great mix of lore and mechanical content, and the creator of the Forgotten Realms himself, Ed Greenwood, acted as a consultant on the project. Also like Forests of the Realms there’s a new subclasses for druids and rangers. All I needed to read is Circle of the Dark druids channel faerzress and I was sold. There’s also a lengthy section on the Glimmersea, another Underdark favorite of mine. Squee! Check out Amarune’s Almanac: The Underdark here.

Last up for this go around there’s Monsters of the Underworld. This is also part of a series, and what I dig about these monster books is the bits of story and lore woven right into the monster entries. Like the 5E D&D Monster Manual there are narrative hooks and adventure ideas, but these books take an extra step and integrate an internal lore shared by many of the creatures inside. This book also contains some stuff for players — new druid and ranger subclasses. Whenever I look through this book I’m ready to start yet another new campaign and delve into the darkness. On a related note our friends at Cawood Publishing are right now crowdfunding the next title in this series — Monsters of the City. Check out Monsters of the Underworld here.

Before heading out, one last thing to mention is something I just noticed over at DMs Guild. Like, just a second ago literally. There are many classic D&D products back in print, including the DL series of modules from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. These modules follow one possible adventure series through the Dragonlance Chronicles story, which was my introduction to fantasy literature and gaming back in the mid-1980s. If you are looking for an epic campaign involving dragons, I highly recommend picking these up. They’re not adapted for 5E D&D but you could definitely still make fantastic use of them. There’s a lot of these modules, and if you only want one I recommend DLC3: Dragonlance Classics Volume III (2e) if only for DL 14 Dragons of Triumph is included in this bunch. That classic was a little different if I recall correct. It is tied to the story and adventures but it was also a sort of war game using Battlesystem rules and the player characters cross a land of smoke and fire to reach the capital of the Dragon Empire and confront the Dragon Queen for the final battle between good and evil. I am not 100% sure if the DMs Guild title comes with the tokens representing the armies. We played this one so many times and it was always a point of contention who’d play the forces of evil because they got Lord Soth on their side and everyone wanted to play the iconic death knight. You can find all the Dragonlance print products and check them out here.