I purchased this title because I'm a fan of the DM's Workshop, and I am not a fan of the new spellcasting style for statblocks. I don't need statblocks simplified for me, and I like spellcasting to work the same for player and enemy alike - indeed most of the rules for magic in 5E are built on that assumption. Statblocks should have non-combat spells - a statblock shouldn't just represent what an enemy looks like in an encounter. The new system makes it hard to swap spells in a statblock in a way that is fair, and of course the spell actions instead of damage spells is a disaster.

Then there's the fact that Iggwilv, as presented in her official statblock, is extremely underwhelming even just compared to how she is hyped up in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, not to mention her longer history in the game.

I may never use Iggwilv, but if I did? It would probably be this version.

Just picked up the Premium Hardcover edition of this and it is a BEAUT. The art is amazing, the book's production quality is astounding. A real treasure for anyone's bookshelf.

If you were disappointed that Fizban's Treasury of Dragons didn't include much lore or information ABOUT dragons, this is the book for you. How do dragons fly? What's the physiology of their breath weapon? Their wingspan? How long do dragon eggs take to hatch? What uses could a party make of parts harvested from a dragon? So much more.

Now, the rule system that the crunch parts of the book were designed for were 3.5. I think a DM determined to use things from here could adapt to 5E with some effort, but I'd check to see if the thing you want to use got updated to 5E in Fizban's. The true treasure here is the fluff, the lore, the art, all the questions you ever wanted to ask about dragons getting beautiful wonderful answers! This is THE Draconomicon.

If you're getting the POD, shell out for the Premium Hardcover. You won't regret it.

This is one of the best 5E products I've had the pleasure to buy. Not the best - many have pointed out typos, inconsistencies, and so forth. But damn is there a lot to love about what's here. UPDATED LORE. The character biographies and the hometowns give so much new juicy Forgotten Realms lore. From a careful reading, you can tell this book's lore is set after Descent into Avernus, which means some of it might provide some cool clues for Baldur's Gate 3, like this tiefling sorcerer trying to get elected as one of the dukes. Really cool inspiring stuff all around. TONS OF HOOKS. The Group Patrons all have great perks and mechanics that can inspire a lot of sessions. Contacts, villains, henchmen, cities, there are story hooks all over this thing. GREAT CRUNCH. Tables galore! Tons of great stuff in each city and group patron. Fences, magic item shops, item crafting, and more just plain old cool stuff. MONSTERS! There's a lot of great monster statblocks in here - and in the old-school style where monsters can cast spells! Love it! - but the one that made this a must-buy for me was the phaerimm. Just great Realms specific content all around. A perfect addition to the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and Baldur's Gate hardcovers. GORGEOUS ART. Every art piece in here is to die for. I want to use the characters and monsters in this book because the art of them is so evocative, attractive, terrifying, and beautiful.

I can't wait for my print copy to arrive! A top notch indispensible product for anyone running 5E games in the Forgotten Realms in the 1490s!

There's almost nothing here that hasn't been printed somewhere else. AND THAT'S THE POINT! 5E spreads a lot of mechanics and lore through a lot of different books and sources, so having it all in one place is invaluable! If you have a player who is joining one of the factions, don't skip this book so you can see all the lore, benefits, perks, ranks, renown, quests, items, spells, and contacts in one place! Drawn from official sources like Wizards' hardcovers and Adventurer's League material, and also top notch "unofficial" sources like Minsc & Boo and Darkhold, this book is basically essential if you don't want to be flipping through half a dozen documents to figure out what your Zhentarim player should get when they hit 10 renown. The fact that this product updates regularly with new additions - you caught that I just mentioned Minsc & Boo right? - makes it all the more worth the purchase. A must have!

So, Exploring Eberron is excellent. It's a must-have for fleshing out your Eberron campaign. And even if you have all the old 3.5 books in your library, this isn't just an expansion of Rising from the Last War, it's an expansion of Eberron. Material never really given its due gets plenty of coverage, and many ideas from Keith Baker finally see print here after only being alluded to or mentioned online. Lots of fluff, lots of crunch, plenty of great material for anyone looking to dive deeper into Eberron for their 5e game. It's a perfect expansion, and coming from the creator of the setting it's as canon as it gets.

I got the print-on-demand hardcover as well as the PDF, so let me share my impressions of the POD copy: it's fantastic. It's a little bigger than a standard 5E hardcover, but it is hugely appealing to me that it matches the 5E trade dress. It looks great on the shelf. Quality feels solid throughout. Paper is matte, so the book is light, but the print quality on the page is great: no blurriness or white margins. It is honestly the best quality POD book I've gotten from the DMs Guild yet, and that includes newer Wizards books like the Elemental Evil Player's Companion. Definitely worth the money if you want a print copy.

This is probably the most well researched and definitive collection of up to date to the present era (1490s DR) lore about the goddess of good drow, Eilistraee, that you're going to find. This document is dense. The mechanical options are neat, but the heart of this completely free release is the deep (and continually updated) lore document that really gives you all you need to know about the goddess.

Lots of good stuff here for people who want to play the "good hearted drow who broke free of Lolth's cult" archetype but don't want to play the "angst-ridden loner shunned by all" archetype. Poor Drizzt. If only you ever, y'know, went into a forest in your life, you'd find out that there's a whole bunch of your people just like you and they're hot too.

Anyways, this is a great fan project in the tradition of Brian R James and should be anyone's first stop for knowledge and gameplay if they're wanting to explore playing a devotee of Eilistraee in the modern Realms.

While this is available as a free PDF on Wizards' website, I decided to order the print edition once I saw it was available again on the DMs Guild, purely for the novelty of owning a physical copy to pull out at the table. I kind of wish these sorts of releases had become a more common part of the 5E release scheme, but I understand why they didn't. It's a cool supplement, however. While genasi got published in the Princes of the Apocalypse hardcover and deep gnomes are all over the place, notably in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and goliaths are in Volo's Guide to Monsters, I do believe this is still the only place you can find aarakocra as a player race. The new spells are also all in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. So for the most part this book could be seen as wholly unnecessary, it's a neat option for anyone who doesn't feel like looking for those other sources, or like me just wants to collect everything from 5E that Wizards has put out. That said, I will note that while it was thought the whole reason this was taken off the DMs Guild was to incorporate errata into the print edition, this print copy is still the "March 2015" printing and NOT the updated November 2017 edition. Your mileage may vary on how much this bothers you, but it certainly feels like an oversight.

There's so much lore here. If you're a glutton for Realmslore, and especially Thay, you have to do yourself a favour and get this. This is the kind of really zoomed in, hyperspecific, could-never-fit-in-a-sourcebook-in-5E, lore writing we just don't get anymore as Dragon+ is mostly for promotion and interviews than supplemental stuff like this. We don't get columns from Ed Greenwood or other Realmsperts there or on the Wizards website anymore. This reads a lot like one of those - plenty of intriguing in-depth reveals and yet still a lot left to mystery.

There are some big Realmslore secrets here - some which could be see as contradicting previously published lore but which the authors would say merely reveals that lore as the lies and misdirections they were. This is ancient history stuff - if you want to know what you need to know about Thay to run adventures and campaigns, this might be too specific for you... but there is some fascinating stuff in here as well, particularly some here-to-fore unrevealed secrets of Szass Tam.

I wish the DMs Guild, or Wizards, would provide some kind of outlet for this kind of writing, especially for Ed Greenwood and other longtime Realmslore guys like George Krashos, or Stephen Schend. I know Ed had stories up on here that got taken down, and other stories that only stayed up because they included some mechanical elements. I'm glad this is still up, although it is strictly just lore - there's no crunch to be found here.

I'd love to see more of this - edition-neutral lore material put out by those who know the Realms inside and out. Shame that there isn't really more of a place for that in 5E.

A collection of cool looking and well designed maps for the classic Vault of the Drow module. Good stuff!

This is a fun little adventure, meant as a kind of Christmas-themed cap-off to Curse of Strahd. I recommend it if your group has just finished that adventure, and didn't play it too seriously. This is ultimately a light-hearted, fun, semi-comic romp that ends with Mordenkainen in the roll of Santa Claus, for instance. There are statblocks for the Krampus and Mari Lwyd, which might not make a ton of sense but then when was D&D ever shy about mixing and matching mythologies? My only nitpick is that the adventure often uses bold text to introduce characters even if it's not pointing you to the Monster Manual or an appendix. Furthermore, it uses monsters from Curse of Strahd (which, fair play) but the adventure doesn't call this out or make it clear which bold text references are to the MM or to COS.

The lore for the Raven Queen has changed a lot from her introduction in 4e, to her inclusion on Critical Role to her 5e lore in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. This adventure is a tie-in to that book, so I strongly recommend having a copy if you're going to run it, but this is a fantastic adventure if your group has strong role-players, are interested in the elves of Dungeons & Dragons (Forgotten Realms, specifically), or the lore of the Raven Queen. I was impressed with the length, the depth, and the writing throughout. This mid-tier adventure takes you from moon elves to dark elves to shadar-kai to the depths of the Shadowfell, and is creative and entertaining throughout. A fantastic evening for strong role-players.

This is a cool one-shot for high-level characters, which is something we don't get enough of and could definitely use more of. It's DDAL legal and written in that style, and one part of that is that it's a little light on details. 19 pages is a little slim for what this adventure is doing, and I think to get the most out of it I would certainly recommend having a copy of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes to really have the background to flesh it out. That said, it's an M.T. Black adventure, so the quality level is high. One thing you won't find here is a stat-block for Vlaakith, the lich-queen. She wasn't in MTF either, but you can find her 5e statblock in issue 19 of Dragon+! Just a helpful tip. Meanwhile, this adventure is worth checking out!

Originally written before the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, this handsome supplement provides twelve encounters for use in the City of Towers. These are encounters in the 4E sense of the word, small episodes of about two pages each, which provide enough excitement for a short session of a couple hours each. So while you may purchase this thinking it will be alike to the excellent Waterdeep: City Encounters supplement, it's not a set of random encounters but rather a set of short episodes to be dropped into your campaign or inspire your storytelling. That said, it is still an excellently written and fun collection. These aren't DDAL legal, but they are nonetheless written in that style, but if you dislike things like adjustments based on APL and "playing the pillars" advice, it's easy to ignore them.

This is a fun little adventure, but honestly it's greatest value to me was the extra lore and depth it gives to the sentient greatsword Hazirawn found in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. For that alone the adventure is worth the price of purchase. It's always fantastic to find new Realmslore whereever it may lie.

A fantastic little addition to anyone's Baldur's Gate campaign. While the random encounter tables in the gazetteer in Descent Into Avernus are quite satisfactory, this product matches the format set out in the excellent Waterdeep: City Encounters product elsewhere on the DMs Guild, while also introducing the fantastic system for the five levels of tension in the city, which produce a feeling that ensures Baldur's Gate won't feel like any other city the adventurers may find themselves in. Excellent work.