D&D: Mystery Book – Delayed Announcement, New Clues
The D&D mystery book’s revelation has been delayed until Monday–but a few more clues have surfaced that hint at what’s coming.
Turns out that not even Amazon is right a hundred percent of the time. Defying the predictions of the Amazon database, Wizards of the Coast has recently announced that they’ll be delaying the announcement of the D&D Mystery Book until the beginning of next week. It’s currently slated for unveiling Monday the 13th.
Get the quasits out of our office! Our plan to make a #DnD book announcement on Thursday has been changed. Adventurers, mark your calendars for Monday, January 13.
— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) January 7, 2020
But, be that as it may, we’ve uncovered a few more clues as to what is and isn’t in the D&D Mystery Book. Let’s take a look.
Right now, folks are looking forward to seeing how or if the new Unearthed Arcana class feature variants might be incorporated into the full game. However, going from a recent question and answer session with Lead Rules Designer Jeremy Crawford on D&D’s twitch page, it sounds like they’re not quite done baking those into the rules yet. Crawford fielded audience questions, and indicated that Sorcerers would likely see some version of a Metamagic Versatility (allowing sorcerers to switch out their metamagic options at the end of a long rest instead of at each level). Crawford also commented that psionics weren’t quite done either, talking about the difficulty of “threading the needle” between what previous generations of gamers expect (hey let’s make psionics a separate system that adds nothing but complexity and nostalgia to the game) and the newer ways they’ve tried that are as functional as they are elegant.
Whatever the case, it sounds like we won’t be seeing much of these. Right now, we’re speculating that Laeral Silverhand and exploration of the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms are both a big part of the new book, taking a cue from the other big product that has already been revealed: Laeral Silerhand’s Explorer’s Kit. This image looks an awful lot like it could be found on the cover of a gorgeous new book.
For our final clue, let’s turn back to August of last year, when WotC designer Kate Welch teased an upcoming anthology of adventures featuring authors like Marisha Ray and Deborah Ann Woll, as well as hinting that DM’s Guild Adepts Ashley Warren and the newly minted Hannah Rose might be contributing as well:
i don't want to say too much about it just yet, but i'm working with a crop of amazing writers on a series of short adventures… including @Marisha_Ray AND @DeborahAnnWoll 😱😱😱😱😱😱
Advertisement— kate welch (@katewelchhhh) August 3, 2019
Welch’s first big project was the Ghosts of Saltmarsh, my personal favorite D&D book of last year, which was itself an anthology of short adventures. That and Tales from the Yawning Portal are a great preview of what we might be seeing in this next book. I could easily see an Explorer’s Guide to the Sword Coast/Waterdeep, especially since there’s a map of the Sword Coast in the new box, as well as cards that describe key characters, lore, and locations such as Neverwinter and Icewind Dale. I could easily see an anthology book that has a bunch of adventures that take place across Faerun (with guides for locating them in other worlds like Greyhawk or Eberron) that features work by the authors mentioned above (plus a few extra).
For more clues, we can turn to the new cards teased in the Explorer’s Kit. The closest parallel we have to them are the Avernus miscellany cards, which featured art on one side, and some ‘insights’ from Volo on the other as seen here:
Or they had some tables and other prompts you could use to prompt further adventures in Avernus:
And if that’s what’s in the Explorer’s Kit, which is probably meant to be a companion to the book itself, I’d say expect to see a lot more of the Forgotten Realms.
We’ll know for sure come Monday, but until then, Happy Adventuring!
