Last week Wizards of the Coast hosted its first D&D Direct, a jam-packed show revealing everything coming to Dungeons & Dragons, from new books to video games and more. First off, the long-awaited tie-in movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, will hit theaters March 3, 2023. The next big news is Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is coming. It’s a collection of books that allow Dungeon Masters and players to explore Wildspace and the Astral Sea. Combining themes of nautical exploration with deep space, Spelljammer brings the wonder of science fiction to 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. With the help of magic, spelljammers can cross the oceans of Wildspace, ply the silvery void known as the Astral Sea, and hop between worlds of the D&D multiverse.
The set, available for pre-order now here at Amazon, contains everything a Dungeon Master needs to run adventures, as well as new options for players who want to create characters in this setting including:
Following up on the campaign book Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (reviewed here), next Tuesday the second Dungeons & Dragons tie-in adventure with the D&D live-action series Critical Role is heading your way. Call of the Netherdeep is the first major adventure set in the world of Exandria, taking players–and five NPC rival adventurers–from the wastelands of Xhorhas to the oasis city of Ank’Harel, then on to the ultimate confrontation at Netherdeep, a twisted realm of gloom, corruption, and despair that harbors a terrible secret. Available for pre-order now here at Amazon, Call of the Netherdeep will remind players things are rarely what they seem in “the world’s greatest roleplaying game.”
Our borgBest of 2021 list continues today with the Best Books of 2021. If you missed them, check out our reviews of the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2021here, the Best Movies of 2021 here, and the Best in TV 2021here. And we wrap-up the year with our additions to the borg Hall of Fame tomorrow. We reviewed more than 100 books that we recommended to our readers this year, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects only this year’s cream of the crop. So let’s get going!
Best Sci-Fi, Best Tie-In Novel – Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward (Gallery Books). An engaging read and fun-filled start to a new trilogy, full of great throwbacks to all the Star Trek series, with several surprise characters and incorporated events, and a great update to Wesley Crusher. Runner-up: Star Trek: Picard–Rogue Elements(Gallery Books), by John Jackson Miller, provided a great story for a newer character, pulling into the mix the future of some familiar characters including the classic villain Kivas Fajo.
The last D&D sourcebook of the year is coming next week. Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is and isn’t what you think. Yes, it’s the latest spin-off/mash-up of Magic: The Gathering following Mythic Odysseys of Theros and the Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica. Yes, it’s your chance to go to college–magic college. No, it’s not the D&D take on Hogwarts–that was a kids’ school, college is for adults. Interesting enough, Strixhaven is also not a college for the purpose of training you to be a wizard, warlock, or mage.
It’s less than two months until Christmas. It may seem a bit early, but with carrier services already delaying shipping it’s a good time to get squared away on holiday shopping, so we’re getting you started today with our Mega-Sized Dungeons & Dragons Holiday Gift Guide. This has been a stellar year for D&D players, with new adventures and sourcebooks for the “world’s greatest roleplaying game.” If you’ve been tracking the breadth and scope of the 5th Edition with us at borg, you know there is truly something for every fantasy fan in your realm. If you’ve ever wanted to start playing Dungeons & Dragons, but didn’t have anyone around that knew how to play, Wizards of the Coast released a boxed set with everything you need to get started. Expanding on its earlier D&D Starter Set, the D&D Essentials Kit includes all of the components to get started on an adventure out-of-the-box, with hours of adventuring for 2-6 players. That’s just the beginning… We have three new accessories to share, especially for anyone looking for the gamer who has everything: The Witchlight Carnival Dice and Miscellany set, Dungeon Master’s Screen: Dungeon Kit, and the yet-to-be-released book of adventures, Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos. If your gamer is hard to buy for, they probably don’t have these new releases yet. Let’s take a look at these and everything you need–or may have missed–from the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons:
Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, the latest Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook heading your way from Wizards of the Coast, is the closest of any 5th Edition volume to the original books from when I was a teenager in the 1980s. If you know even a little kid who is fascinated with dragons, this is the book to drop into their hands. They may not understand it all, but it’s stuffed full of wonderful dragon artwork and enough worldbuilding lore to open the eyes of any kid interested in fantasy. For D&D gamers already playing, it contains character-building tools to make your hero steeped in dragonkind, and for dungeon masters, it provides some fun options to incorporate more Dragons or dragons (they’re different) into your next adventure, whether you’re wandering into the Forgotten Realms, Oerth of the World of Greyhawk, Krynn of Dragonlance, Eberron, or pretty much anyplace else. You can pre-order Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons with the standard cover by Chris Rahn here at Amazon now, or order the alternate “soft-touch” edition by Anato Finnstark from your local game shop.
If you love Smaug, Puff, Norberta, Alduin, Elliott, Balthromaw, Spike, Falkor, Stanley Steamer, Stegoman, Gleep, Saphira, Porunga, H.R. Pufnstuf, or Lockheed, or you came to love dragons from Dragon’s Lair, Dragonslayer, or Dragonheart,How to Train Your Dragon or Game of Thrones, whether your favorite is Haku from Spirited Away, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, or the kaiju King Ghidorah, or you were reeled into the dragon realm from watching Mulan’s Mushu or Sisu from Raya and the Last Dragon, or you had your first encounter in Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or Pokémon,Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons provides all the lore and stunningly expansive details on everything you want to know about dragons.
The latest from Dungeons & Dragons following Candlekeep Mysteries and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft takes players back to Feywild and an adventure about a carnival that appears every 8 years. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is D&D’s next big adventure storyline that “brings the wicked whimsy of the Feywild” to the 5th Edition for the first time. Wizards of the Coast promised and delivered new characters, monsters, mechanics, and story hooks suitable for players of all ages and experience levels. It also allows a game without combat where you can use your wits to get to the end. It’s layered and complex with several tie-in components, and you can pre-order The Wild Beyond the Witchlight with the standard cover here at Amazon now, or order the alternate “soft-touch” edition from your local game shop.
IDW Publishing announced it will be returning to the Forgotten Realms with Dungeons & Dragons: Mindbreaker, a five-issue monthly comic book series that takes place before the events of Baldur’s Gate III, the highly-anticipated video game. IDW D&D writer Jim Zub is back, joining artist Eduardo Mello in a tale of familiar Dungeons & Dragons adventurers Krydle, Shandie, Delina, Nerys, Minsc, and Boo, as they discover that something insidious has taken root in their homeland. Dungeons & Dragons: Mindbreaker #1 will be available with multiple cover variants, including artwork by Max Dunbar (Legends of Baldur’s Gate, Infernal Tides), Max Davenport, and Celia Lowenthal. Continue reading →
