Explorer's Guide to Wildemount

• 1. Introduction

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  Explorer's Guide to Wildemount reached number one on Amazon's overall bestseller list before a single copy had shipped. The announcement came on the 13th of January 2020. An unauthorized Amazon product listing had leaked its existence the day before. Wizards of the Coast's Greg Tito confirmed the title had taken the top spot by that Monday afternoon. Pre-orders alone drove it past New York Times bestsellers and every other title on the platform.

  For a 304-page game supplement tied to a web series, that was an unexpected result. The book offered players an officially published version of the continent of Wildemount, drawn from the Critical Role web series. Matthew Mercer, who created that world, described the book as designed for both longtime fans of the show and for people who had never watched a single episode. For newcomers, he said, it offered a complete new world for an entire campaign. Three questions sit at the heart of what follows. What kind of world is Wildemount? What new tools does it give players? And what changes when a home-crafted world becomes official Dungeons and Dragons canon?

• 2. Four Territories, One War

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  King Bertrand Dwendal rules western Wildemount with the backing of the Cerberus Assembly, a council of powerful archmages who advise his house. That region, the Dwendalian Empire, was modeled on 15th-century Russia and Prussia. The Ashkeeper Peaks mountain range marks its eastern border, separating the Empire from the Kryn Dynasty. Xhorhas, the Dynasty's territory, occupies the continent's eastern side. Its ruler is the Bright Queen Leylas Kryn. The region is primarily home to drow and peoples the Empire regards as monstrous. Xhorhas was designed with 13th-century Romania as a reference point. By the time the sourcebook opens its story, tensions between the two powers are very high and open war appears imminent.

  The Menagerie Coast sits along the southwestern shoreline, beside the Lucidian Ocean. It is governed by the Clovis Concord, a coalition of eight city-states that includes Nicodranas and Port Damali. In the far north, the Greying Wildlands cover a harsh tundra left sparsely populated compared to other regions. Eiselcross, a frozen continent, lies north of Wildemount's shore. Each of the four main regions comes with a starter adventure designed to carry characters from level 1 through level 3.

• 3. Dunamancy and New Mechanics

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  Fifteen new spells arrived with dunamancy, a school of magic that had never appeared in any official D&D release before. The school plays with forces of time, gravity, and fate. Corey Plante, writing for Inverse, observed that dunamancy "acknowledges the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics" with its premise of infinite branching timelines. The top five most-chosen spells on D&D Beyond were Magnify Gravity, Fortune's Favor, Pulse Wave, Gift of Alacrity, and Gravity Sinkhole.

  In April 2020, D&D Beyond released data on player choices from the book. Of the 28 million characters created using Explorer's Guide to Wildemount on that platform, 49% had chosen the Echo Knight, a new fighter subclass. The Chronurgy Magic Wizard, one of two new wizard subclasses, came second at 30%. The Graviturgy Magic Wizard placed third at 21%.

  Richard Jansen-Parkes, writing for the UK print magazine Tabletop Gaming, called dunamancy "the coolest" part of the book. Alex Meehan of Dicebreaker praised the Heroic Chronicle, a character creation tool in the sourcebook, as "far superior to the shallow backgrounds available" in the standard Player's Handbook from 2014. Jeremy Crawford, lead rules designer for Dungeons and Dragons, confirmed the rules had been tested by players, developed by the D&D team, and vetted by him personally.

• 4. Born from a Livestream

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  Matthew Mercer created Exandria as the setting for Critical Role, an American web series in which professional voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons. Wildemount first entered the story in the show's first campaign, named as the homeland of antagonists Delilah and Sylas Briarwood. It later appeared as the home continent of Taryon Darrington, a character voiced by Sam Riegel. The continent became the main setting of the second campaign.

  Explorer's Guide to Wildemount captures canon up through Campaign Two Episode 50. Haeck put it plainly: "right at the beginning of the book, we make it very clear that this book is set in a very specific point of time and that your canon will diverge wildly from that of Critical Role."

  About half of the art in the book came from the Critical Role community, Mercer said. Most of those artists had never previously worked for Wizards of the Coast. Chris Perkins, Wizards of the Coast's internal lead on the project, described what made the publication unusual: "This is a universe born out of one man's imagination, for the most part. And, it is also born out a livestream game. This is kind of a first for official D&D campaign settings." In 2017, the Critical Role team had released a Tal'Dorei sourcebook with Green Ronin Publishing. That book used the Open Game License and was not considered official D&D material. The edges of the Wildemount continent, beyond its four main regions, were designed with 14th-century Spain as a reference point.

• 5. Bestseller in Two Weeks

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  Publishers Weekly's chart for the week ending the 21st of March 2020 placed Explorer's Guide to Wildemount first in Hardcover Nonfiction and fourth overall. The book sold 26,589 units in that period. Publishers Weekly noted the title "captured the East North Central region's attention." The following week's chart moved it to ninth in Hardcover Nonfiction.

  The release date of the 17th of March 2020 fell during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roll20 responded by making the Frozen Sick adventure and the Palebank Village section available for free on that same day. The giveaway was part of the platform's "Stay at Home, Play at Home" initiative. The book also launched simultaneously on D&D Beyond and Fantasy Grounds.

  Inverse reported that the book continued a trend of Wizards of the Coast publishing material rooted in live-play series. The 2019 Acquisitions Incorporated sourcebook drew from its namesake show. Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, also from 2019, incorporated Joe Manganiello's character Arkhan. According to ComicBook, Wizards of the Coast releases about three books per year. Collaborations like Explorer's Guide to Wildemount were added to that schedule on top of existing slots. Both Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and the later module Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep were adapted for D&D Adventurers League play in March 2022.

• 6. What Critics Said

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  Charlie Hall, writing for Polygon, described Explorer's Guide to Wildemount as "written with a warmth and care uncommon in these sorts of things." Hall suggested it "may be the best example of its type yet created for the role-playing game's 5th edition" and wrote that Wildemount "feels more fresh and current than anything that has come before." Alex Meehan of Dicebreaker found the sourcebook most successful when it moved away from standard fantasy trappings and toward stranger territory. Meehan's overall verdict: the book was "the most worthwhile Dungeons and Dragons 5E sourcebook Wizards of the Coast has released since the original Player's Handbook."

  Richard Jansen-Parkes, in the UK print magazine Tabletop Gaming, viewed the book's restraint as a strength. He wrote that it "doesn't concern itself with trying to shake-up the classic D&D formula too much" and found that most locations "feel worthy of hosting an adventure." Dan Arndt of The Fandomentals found the setting felt like a rearrangement of familiar 5E material. Arndt noted that the book would serve players seeking war campaigns: Wildemount's setup of "two roughly equal powers vying for control" is unusual in the 5E lineup. Gavin Sheehan of Bleeding Cool singled out the dunamancy-themed subclasses as "the really awesome stuff."

  Academic Emma French, in Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture from 2023, used the book as a case study. French described Wizards of the Coast as "directly" acknowledging Critical Role through the publication. She concluded that live streams can work "not simply to promote, but also to alter the game product with which it is engaging."

• 7. The Kryn and the Drow

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  James Grebey, writing for Syfy Wire, noted that Explorer's Guide to Wildemount "adds some nuance to one of the most harmful tropes in D&D." That trope is the longstanding portrayal of drow as inherently evil. The Kryn Dynasty, which governs Xhorhas, breaks from that pattern. Grebey wrote that bad actors among the Kryn "aren't evil solely because of their race. Traditionally, that hasn't been the case for D&D."

  Academics Lisa Horton and David Beard, writing in The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities, described the Kryn Dynasty as "a departure and significant extension of D&D lore surrounding drow." They noted the dynasty's religion centers on the Luxon, a physical manifestation of light, and on a pursuit of immortality. ComicBook's Christian Hoffer observed that the book adopted revised Orc statistics from the 2019 sourcebook Eberron: Rising From the Last War, not from the older Volo's Guide to Monsters. The revision removed an intelligence penalty and the "Menacing" trait. Hoffer described it as "an important step in specifying that no race of intelligent creatures is inherently evil."

  Dan Arndt of The Fandomentals pushed back. He argued the Wildemount drow were still "religious nutjobs with suicidal tendencies" and that the revision was not "the biggest step up" the setting might have offered. Wildemount's story continued beyond the page: in January 2023, Amazon Prime Video announced an animated adaptation of Critical Role's second campaign titled The Mighty Nein. Tasha Huo, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham are among its executive producers. Metapigeon, Amazon Studios, and Titmouse serve as production companies. The first season premiered on the 19th of November 2025.