Candlekeep Mysteries Unveiled! Everything We Know About the New D&D Book

Tags Candlekeep Candlekeep Mysteries Announcement

The first D&D book of 2021 is Candlekeep Mysteries, an anthology book featuring 17 new adventures for characters of 1st to 16th level! It’s available for preorder now in the D&D Beyond Marketplace, and you’ll gain access to all its contents when it’s released on March 16th, 2021. Here’s all the juicy details we’ve learned about this upcoming book!

It’s Super-Modular

This book contains 17 adventures that can be played in a single session or two with a theme of mystery tying them all together. These adventures aren’t meant to be played campaign style; though D&D’s Principal Story Designer Chris Perkins has said that there are Easter eggs that loosely connect each adventure together, there isn’t any huge, overarching story you should pay attention to. That’s a job for other big hardcover adventures, like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. Instead, this product harkens back to the days of short, modular adventures that Dungeon Masters can easily slip into their own ongoing campaigns, or use as inspiration for their own adventures.

Instead, these adventures can be peppered throughout your campaign for a change of tone. You could even use the great library of Candlekeep, seen recently in Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, as a hub location that your characters return to after grand adventures.

These adventures were written by many spectacular D&D authors, drawn from the ranks of the DMs Guild, top-tier D&D streams, and a few in-house writers at Wizards of the Coast. “I got my start in the gaming industry by writing short D&D adventures,” said Chris Perkins, Principal Story Designer for Dungeons & Dragons. “I'm grateful to be able to work on a product that gives other authors the same opportunity. The adventures in this anthology reflect the incredible creativity of the D&D community."

These authors include:

Authors Jen Kretchmer, Amy Vorpahl, and Taymoor Rehman have shared some details about their adventures with D&D Beyond. Keep an eye out for more information, coming soon!

Time to Hit the Books!

This adventure starts the characters in the great library of Candlekeep, a vast repository of information mundane and magical, weird and worrisome, dangerous and benign. It is the greatest source of knowledge in the entire Sword Coast—possibly even all of Faerûn. Each one of the 17 adventures found within the pages of Candlekeep Mysteries is tied to a different book found within the walls of Candlekeep itself. Discovering this book, learning about its mysteries, and going on a grand adventure are all part of the tale.

Some books will keep you entirely within Candlekeep, such as Amy Vorpahl’s wild and wooly adventure, “Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion”, whereas others will take you to lands yet unvisited in fifth edition D&D, such as Jen Kretchmer’s “The Canopic Being”, which takes adventurers to the shining beaches of Tashalar, just inland to the east of the jungles of Chult (as seen in 2017’s Tomb of Annihilation).

Candlekeep is a perfect “hub world” for all of these adventures. It’s a place where characters can rest, relax, gather information, and then seek out leads for their next adventures. Plus, if the DM wants to get them away from Candlekeep, it’s as simple as detailing a new book (or scroll, or scrap of ancient parchment) in the library’s seemingly infinite archives to guide the characters to their next adventure.

Easily Transplantable

Almost all Dungeon Masters have made their own game world to play D&D in at some point or another. Or, they play in a D&D world that isn’t the Forgotten Realms, like Eberron, Greyhawk, Exandria, or any of the dozens of other campaign settings that have been published over the years.

Chris Perkins assures players that the adventures told here are easily transportable away from the Forgotten Realms. Even certain aspects of Candlekeep itself can be molded to fit another setting. For an Eberron player, characters could be searching the libraries of Morgrave Unviersity. In the lands of Wildemount, characters could have gained special access to the Rexxentrum Archive of the Cobalt Soul.

No matter where you plan on playing, who you’re playing with, or what type of campaign you want to run, it seems certain that there’s something for you in Candlekeep Mysteries.

You can preorder Candlekeep Mysteries on the D&D Beyond Marketplace today! You’ll get special goodies for preording, and instantly get access to the book when it releases on March 16th, 2021.

  

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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.

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