Hello all,

I'm a huge Critical Role fan and have been considering running a homebrew campaign in the near future so you can imagine my excitement when I found out about Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a comprehensive and well-received breakdown of a complete campaign setting to run adventures in. New additions such as Heroic Chronicles, subclasses, magic etc. sound excellent but as someone who has not read the book, I am not sure if it would be necessary for the players to also purchase it to fully enjoy the character features (especially the heroic chronicles system).

Are there any DMs out there who have run a Wildemount campaign or read the book and would be able to advise on this? I'd love to run a campaign here but I'm not sure that I want to push the entire party to make this purchase in order to fully enjoy it.

Thanks in advance!

If you buy the book, are a subscriber to DDB at the right subscription level, create a campaign in DDB, and turn on content sharing, your players can add a character to the campaign via the link and then access the character creation options available in EGtW.

Ah I would have liked to get the physical copy but thanks for letting me know about this option; me and my group are pretty new and have never used DDB so will have to check and see if this is something to go for.

I mean, if you get a physical copy there's nothing stopping you from lending it to your friends so they can create their characters on paper. But if they want to create digitally on DDB, you'll need content sharing or each one to buy the digital copy.

Another less elegant solution if you do not want to subscribe is to buy the book on here...create the characters for them then share the PDFs or links for the character.  

At least then  you would have all the stuff needed for running a game. 

Honestly I think subscribing and buying the books on here has been well worth it but at least you have options if you do not want to go that route. 

I am currently running a Wildemount campaign, and that is entirely up to your players and how much energy they want to put into character creation. The mechanical bits of the heroic chronicle are tables to be rolled (and then rerolled and rerolled until you like your result) and the other bits are "how many siblings do I have?" and "where did I grow up?" 

I have one player that went all out on backstory--I sent her the information that I had in the books of the place/culture her character grew up in, and the other two pick places they thought were cool based on the brief descriptions I gave them. If your players want to be that through, it's more of a hassle for you as a dm to summarize and share the information, but also your group doesn' t have to shell out money on additional books or a high tier subscription here. 

It also depends on how they're keeping track of their characters--if it's here and they are a part of the exclusive subclasses or get an exclusive item, here, they will have to pay for the book or the individual items.

Personally, it would be less effort for me as a dm if everyone had their own books. But it's certainly not necessary.

So just to clarify, if I purchased the digital book here on DDB and subscribed at the Master tier then that would be enough to share the relevant content with my players right? Sorry I've never done this before.

With lockdowns not appearing to end any time soon and with us already running our campaigns online, may just end up going this route (and maybe purchase the pretty physical copy down the line to stare at admiringly).

Thank you, the clarification is much appreciated!