Welcome to Wildemount! The world of Critical Role is opened to you, so the only question now is: where do you start? Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount describes the continent, its nations, gods, peoples, monsters, and artifacts in detail—but all that information can be overwhelming! If you want to run or play in a Wildemount campaign, you don’t need to memorize every last detail of the setting; you just need to know enough to get started. The rest will come as you play.

This introduction to Wildemount is for players and Dungeon Masters alike, highlighting which parts of the book are best for creating a character that feels perfectly at home in Wildemount, and which parts you need to start a new campaign or even just a one-shot adventure in Wildemount. Finally, this article concludes with a brief summary of the main regions of Wildemount described within the book, giving you an overview of the entire continent.

Player Tips: Start with the Heroic Chronicle!

As a player, your journey in Wildemount starts with the Heroic Chronicle found in chapter 4: Character Options. This tool helps you and your Dungeon Master work together to create a character as deep as the heroes of Critical Role. Even if you don’t know the first thing about Wildemount, you will learn enough to start playing, and discover a backstory filled with rivals, allies, and fateful moments. These elements give your Dungeon Master tools that they can use to link the story of the campaign to your character’s backstory.

After using the Heroic Chronicle to create your own backstory (and any optional elements you wish, like favorite food or mysterious secrets), you can work with your DM to create a prophecy for your character. This prophecy might have been made about your character in-world, or it can be a metagame element that you and your DM use to create gentle guidelines for your character arc. As you achieve the goals you and your DM laid out in the prophecy, you gain rewards that propel your character forward, like inspiration, a bonus against being frightened, and so on. And, if the campaign moves forward and you feel like the prophecy you created at the start of the campaign doesn’t suit your character anymore, it’s easy to revise it or create a new one.

Now that you’ve created a backstory and have a loose plan for your character’s future, you can create your character! The Heroic Chronicle has already helped you choose a race and a background, so all that’s left is to choose a class (and the elements linked to your class, like equipment and possibly spells). As usual, all of the options in the Player’s Handbook are available to you, but chapter 4 of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has a few additional options that you can use with your DM’s permission. If the magic of dunamancy is allowed in your campaign, wizards trained in this esoteric art can cast a bevy of new spells. These spells are exclusive the Graviturgist and Chronurgist arcane traditions found in this book—unless your spellcaster has had special training, such as through the Magic Initiate (from the Player's Handbook) feat or by copying a dunamancy spell into your spellbook.

Voila! Your character is all ready to go on a grand adventure in Wildemount!

Dungeon Master Tips: Start with an Adventure!

A setting book is an intimidating thing, and with over 300 pages of content, you’re looking at a lot of reading and rereading required to fully digest this book. Now, if you’re reading this in March 2020, the onset of COVID-19 and the advent of social distancing or quarantine policies may have suddenly given you a lot of spare time. If you don’t have the time to read the entire book cover-to-cover (and let’s be honest, most people don’t), the best way to get into a setting is by reading an adventure.

One great way to start a Wildemount campaign is to run a single published adventure to kick off your campaign, and then spiral off into your own custom adventures once your group has a feel for the game. Reading a published adventure is useful even if you’re planning your own custom campaign set in Wildemount. Doing so will give you an idea of the locations, tones, and situations commonly found in this setting, making it easier for you to create your own custom content.

To help, here are a list of all of the official Wildemount adventures released so far.

Adventures in Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount

This book has four adventures already contained within it, all of which start at 1st level and take a party of characters to 3rd level! The adventures are found in chapter 5: Adventures in Wildemount, and are set in the four main regions of Wildemount: Western Wynandir, Eastern Wynandir (Xhorhas), the Menagerie Coast, and the Greying Wildlands. They are:

• Tide of Retribution. Set on the Menagerie Coast, this seafaring adventure pits you against pirates, the law, and monstrous sahuagin with a dark and watery power at their command.
• Dangerous Designs. Set in the Dwendalian Empire in the city of industry known as Hupperdook, a dangerous war criminal is freed from imprisonment and runs amok. The character must infiltrate his evil “James Bond-style” evil lair and defeat him before he turns his creations upon the world.
• Frozen Sick. Set in the Greying Wildlands, a mysterious sickness has swept across the snowfields. Where did it come from, and is it… natural? A journey into the unknown north is the only way to discover a cure.
• Unwelcome Spirits. Set on the wastes of Xhorhas, an elder goblin warlock has been kidnapped by imperial soldiers! These soldiers know not the forces they tamper with, and their thoughtless actions may spell magical doom for imperial and dynasty forces alike.

Adventures on D&D Beyond

Did you know? There are nine single-session adventures set in Wildemount available for free on D&D Beyond? These special installments of the Encounter of the Week series are great building blocks for you to use in your Wildemount campaigns. All are low-level, but most start above 1st level. This could be good for you if you want to start your campaign at a slightly higher level, or if you want more content to play through after playing through one of the adventures in the hardcover. These short adventures are based off of a small handful of the 100+ adventure hooks found in chapter 3: Wildemount Gazetteer. They're a perfect example of how you could turn a one-paragraph-long plot hook into a fully fleshed-out adventure for your players. Choose your favorites and go from there!

• Feeling Crabby. This adventure is suitable for 1st-level characters, and involves uncovering a crime being conducted right under imperial officials’ noses! Assassins, crabs, and one desperate man. By Makenzie de Armas.
• Spy of the Kryn Dynasty. This adventure is suitable for 2nd-level characters, and involves rooting out a Kryn spy in the imperial farming settlement of Felderwin. By James Haeck.
• Snowed In. This adventure is suitable for 2nd-level characters, and involves surviving a terrible storm and a monstrous beast in the frigid Dwendalian fishing village of Icehaven. By James Haeck.
• Storm Celebration. This adventure is suitable for 2nd-to-3rd-level characters, and involves having fun at an orcish storm festival in the Xhorhasian town of Boroftkrah—but a bloodthirsty cultist causes the festival to take a dangerous turn. By LaTia Jacquise.
• Vine Shine. This adventure is suitable for 2nd-to-3rd-level characters, and requires characters to explore the Mother’s Lighthouse in Nicodranas and root out an evil cult. By Makenzie de Armas.
• An Early Dawn. This adventure is suitable for 3rd-level characters, and involves chasing a pair of star-crossed lovers through the Xhorhasian capital of Rohsona before they’re apprehended for magical crimes. By Makenzie de Armas.
• Mimics in the Mine. This adventure is suitable for 4th-level characters, and involves clearing out the dwarven mines of Grimgolir of a mimic infestation. Nothing is as it seems! By LaTia Jacquise.
• Battle of the Braggarts. This adventure is suitable for 4th-level characters, and involves settling a dispute between orcs and goblins in the Xhorhasian village of Jigow before the argument gets rowdy. By James Haeck.
• Cackles in the Dark. This adventure is suitable for 5th-level characters, and tasks the characters with recovering the daughter of a crime lord in Shadycreek Run from evil fey. By LaTia Jacquise.

The Regions of Wildemount

The continent of Wildemount is vast, with an icy south and tropical north, separated by imposing mountains and bleak valleys swept by cruel winds and frigid rain. There are six major regions in Wildemount, all of which are described in Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. If you’re planning on creating your own adventure set in Wildemount, consider where you want to set it. Or, if you’re creating a character, think about where they might be from!

Western Wynandir. The center of Wildemount, separated from its coasts by the Cyrios Mountains in the west and the Penumbra Range in the east, is a vast plain known as the Wynandir. The Wynandir is itself split into east and west by the Ashkeeper Peaks, and two great civilizations arose on either side of the Ashkeepers. Western Wynandir is a land of vast fields, dark forests, and craggy hills, and is controlled by the starostas and lawmasters of the Dwendalian Empire. The empire, ruled by King Bertrand Dwendal, is currently embroiled in a war with the Kryn Dynasty, its geopolitical rival in Eastern Wynandir. Western Wynandir is itself composed of two sub-regions, the rural Marrow Valley and the more densely populated Zemni Fields.

Xhorhas. Eastern Wynandir is better known as Xhorhas, a scabland scarred by the ancient wars of gods and mortals and populated by gargantuan beasts. The Kryn Dynasty rules the eastern wastes. This great nation is home to many creatures that the Dwendalian Empire considers to be monsters, such as dark elves, goblinkin, orcs, and minotaurs, though folk like humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings are not entirely unheard of. A mysterious power known as the Luxon was the catalyst for the dynasty’s drow founders to escape the evil power of Lolth the Spider Queen and form a new civilization on the surface of the world—and as a source for dunamancy, a magical power that turns potentiality itself into a weapon.

Though Wildemount’s eastern region contains other pockets of civilization, such as the ruins of the floating city of Draconia and the hidden civilization of the Lotusden halflings, the Kryn Dynasty is the only true political power in the region.

Menagerie Coast. Seemingly worlds away from the rainy plains and blasted wastelands of the Wynandir, the west coast of Wildemount is a tropical paradise untouched by wars of conquest. Ruled by a coalition of city-states known as the Clovis Concord, the Menagerie Coast is a vibrant and diverse land of sand, jungles, and ocean that thrives on trade with its neighbors across the shimmering Lucidian Ocean. However, despite its pristine beauty, not everything is perfect in paradise. Political corruption and cutthroat criminal activity is rife within the cities of the Concord, and occult evil lurks within the hearts of the jungles and at the depths of the ocean—and that’s to say nothing of the pirates that prowl the seas.

Greying Wildlands. North of both the empire and the dynasty are the Greying Wildlands. No government holds sway over this icy wilderness, but pockets of civilization can be found hidden beneath the snow. Ruthless gangs and crime families rule the town of Shadycreek Run, where criminals on the run from imperial or dynasty law congregate. Farther north, beyond the haunted Savaliirwood, are the forgotten ruins of Mosaelmyr and the grand diarchy of Uthodurn, a subterranean city where elven refugees and dwarven kings founded a city-state where all could live in peace.

Eiselcross. Even further north than the most isolated tip of the Greying Wildlands are the islands of Eiselcross. The very existence of these islands is a carefully guarded secret. Even captains of fishing boats in the north only know of Eiselcross as a lifeless hunk of ice—but the secret arcane researchers of the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty know the truth. Terrible magical secrets lay buried within the ice, hidden there by the gods in an age long past. And now, the race is on to claim them.

Blightshore. More properly known as the Miskath Strand, the easternmost reaches of Wildemount are filled with unsettling echoes of the Calamity. Beyond the farthest grasp of civilization, no one comes to Blightshore unless they are desperate to never, ever be found. It is as if the very seams of reality have torn away in this place, allowing untold horrors and physical anomalies to run rampant.  

This is all we can say about Wildemount for now, without starting to really spoil the book! If you liked what you saw here you can get Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount on the D&D Beyond Marketplace and start your own Wildemount campaign now! You can also keep up with the adventures across Wildemount in Critical Role, every Thursday at 7:00 pm PST on www.twitch.tv/CriticalRole.

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.