2018 has been a great year for Dungeons & Dragons! Let’s look back on everything WotC-side that’s happened this year.

In May, we saw the release of Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. This book brought not only cool lore about the Blood War, elves, dwarves, gith, and other races, but also introduced a number of neat monsters and new subrace options! We got to read about the mysterious Raven Queen and her Fortress of Memories, the vibrant eladrin of the Feywild, and the ongoing conflict of the Lower Planes. The new tiefling subrace options are exciting (as all new tiefling content is), and I really enjoyed playing eladrin characters this year.

Shortly after Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes was the Stream of Many Eyes event! This event came after an in-depth ARG lead by an amnesiac Volothamp Geddarn who found himself in the real world. We watched tons of streamed games and got to see the elaborate Waterdeep set. Rivals of Waterdeep, Dice, Camera, Action, Sirens of the Realms, Dark and Dicey, among others, had live games centered around the search for the Stone of Golorr. There was also a LARP-esque session with various puzzles that played out on set, with each player in-costume as their character. The Stream of Many Eyes event was real fun to watch, and I’m looking forward to what WotC might do in 2019!

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist was announced at the Stream of Many Eyes event, along with Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, with the former’s release in September. The Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure is set in the titular city and gives the DM the ability to choose their villain, one for each season. Featuring a cast of vibrant NPCs, easy-to-run maps, and explosive events, Dragon Heist kicked off quite a few new campaigns.

In October, Art & Arcana: A Visual History launched! This book tells the tales of D&D past with paintings, sketches, and other various illustrations and ephemera from the game’s history. I’m really excited to get my hands on this book sometime!

Also in October, we were pleasantly surprised with Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron, a text bringing Eberron to 5th Edition. Available on the DM’s Guild and on D&D Beyond, this book shows us changelings, kalashtar, warforged, and shifters, alongside rules for dragonmarked characters and a variety of cool magic items! It also offers tips on how to start a campaign in this setting. WotC is looking at feedback for this Eberron content, and it seems like they’re going to be updating either this source or releasing another text some time in the future, we’ll see!

The follow-up to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist came out in November—Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which covers the depths of Undermountain and the Mad Mage himself, Halaster. I actually haven’t read this one (our DM wants to run it at some point), but this is 5e’s megadungeon! It spawned a lot of conversation about running dungeon crawls like this, and how a DM can make a story out of the details given to them.

Finally, we got Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica! This book meshes one of the most popular worlds of Magic: The Gathering with D&D. It presents the centaur, loxodon, minotaur, simic hybrid, and vedalken character race options, along with the Order domain for clerics and the Circle of Spores for druids. It also gives DMs several new magic items and monsters to use in addition to a sample adventure to introduce a party of low-level adventurers to Ravnica. The dive into the various guilds means that I finally understand them now! As someone who has played a bit of Magic and a lot more D&D, I really enjoyed this book.

What was your favorite D&D book this year? What do you think is coming next year?