Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Is every one anticipating the arrival of Ed Greenwood's latest work, a lushly illustrated guide to the Dalelands?
My self, I am hoping it will be available in print form on Amazon.
I will temper my wild speculations about the contents lest I provoke a wild squabble of opinion about this book.
I'm sure it will be a great lorebook. I have the book Volo's Guide to the Dalelands also designed by Ed Greenwood that i always like the serie and wonder how much different it will be.
I suspect there may a companion book at some point, "Volo's Guide to the Taverns and Pubs of the Dalelands", along with a companion book, "Elminster's List of the Taverns and Pubs that have repeatedly expelled Volo from their premises".
I had been looking forward to the release of the series - But personally I'm a bit frustrated by how the timeline has bloated as the first book in the four slated Dalelands books was initially promoted to be a Q1 release this year, with the 'Inn Sites of the Dalelands' aimed for Q2, 'Delves of the Dalelands' for the Q3 and the Adventures in the Dalelands book for for Q4.
Those latter books are now slated for '27 and '28, which suggests that there's been a major overestimation in their capabilities.
Or, there is an upper limit to how much Dale Lands lore Ed Greenword can produce in a set amount of time.
Mythmakers, the company producing the Realmsbound: Dalelands series, has far more people writing for them than just Ed. His name is attached to the product and he's definitely a major participant in the production, but the team consists of several writers from when the Forgotten Realms had regular novel releases - Erik Scott de Bie, Brian R. James and Steven E. Schend among them, to just point out some familiar names.
Either way - They've blown far passed their initial production slate and we can only speculate as to why. It could be scope drift, it could be major production issues, or it could be project costs unexpectedly bloating. The only visible and definitive thing that one can see is that the timeline for the releases changed drastically.
I'd love to see the finished products - I hope things go well, but I definitely feel a little wariness could be warranted.
Or.....we could blame the delay on that impish scamp of the Realms......Volo.
On EN World is a post about the book saying The print proofs have been created for the upcoming Forgotten Realms book "Ed Greenwood Presents: Guide to the Dalelands", so it shouldn't be much longer before it is released.
https://www.enworld.org/threads/cover-correction-on-forgotten-realms-guide-to-the-dalelands-book-nearing-completion.721194/
If they're at the proofing stage, you're still looking at months, depending on the printer's schedule and likely sea shipping time.
Is this book even coming out anymore? First it was Q1 this year, then got pushed back to Q3. Now were in Q4 and still no word on when it's coming out.
I am on the Realms Bound news letter (chain/news feed/what ever you want to call it) and for the past year, I have received tantalizing tidbits of what the finished product will be like. It has often been frustrating to wait but I am hoping that the finished product will be worth it.
As for which commercial outlet will handle the sales and such, I have no idea.
I'm curious:Will this book affect the games?
Because this sounds like a lore dump & art book w/zero mechanical impact on the game...
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Yes, this does appear to be more of a travelogue than an expansion of the rules as well as a possible fare thee well from Greenwood's alter ego, Elminster.
I think legally it has to be a DM's Guild product and won't be available anywhere else because WotC own the IP and that's the only place Greenwood and co can use it
So Greenwood can't write FR canon anymore, but Salvatore can?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Pretty certain Salvatore isn't writing stuff off his own back back doing it for WotC under license, that's the difference. What Greenwood is doing is similar to Keith Baker's last few Eberron books, he doesn't own the setting rights so has to publish through DM's Guild where anyone can use the setting and WotC take a cut
EDIT: Also a very quick Google and all the news coverage when Dalelands was announced say it'll be a DM's Guild release
So does that mean Greenwood & Salvatore are not the supreme source of FR canon people said they are?
Because that means a crapton of feedback on & backlash towards dragon-riding PDK was invalid, & that people lied to WotC in that regard? So a do-over of the OG UA take on PDK is in order/the correct version, valid feedback-wise, should be instated?
How much hopium do I need to breathe here?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
It's up to you which version of the setting you prefer, all I can say is that WotC own the Forgotten Realms setting and whilst it was created by Greenwood he no longer controls it legally. Whether that means you ignore what he writes or ignore what WotC writes, or use a frankenstein of the two, is entirely a matter for you and your table.
I'm much more familiar with Eberron lore than FR so I'll use them as an example. In Eberron fan circles there's canon (what WotC write) Kanon (what Keith Baker writes) and IME (In My Eberron, what the players write for their own games) and most tables run a mishmash of the three depending on what makes the best story for them. I'm not sure if Forgotten Realms fans draw a similar set of lines but I wouldn't be surprised
Given the length of time they've been publishing FR, and the fact that they apocalyptically remake it every edition, sometimes with time skips, I expect that there are 3-5 generally accepted versions of the official canon, depending on when you noped out.
Of course, in reality, there a different version of the world for every table playing in it.