Critical Role sourcebook Tal’Dorei Reborn re-introduces players to the D&D setting
Exandria Extra.
Revisit the world of Vox Machina with the new Critical Role sourcebook for Dungeons & Dragons, Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn.
An updated version of the original Tal’Dorei Campaign Guide released in 2017, Tal’Dorei Reborn offers fans of the actual play D&D show an opportunity to create and experience their own adventures in the world of Exandria. The sourcebook for D&D 5E will contain a compendium of the locales, creatures and important figures found throughout the continent of Exandria, alongside everything players need to know about creating characters to fit within the setting.
Set two decades after the conclusion of the first Critical Role campaign, Tal’Dorei Reborn provides players and Dungeon Masters with an outline of how Exandria has changed in that time and how these changes may have had an effect on the second campaign set within the neighbouring continent of Wildemount. With the sourcebook, players will be able to visit various locations that they might recognise from Campaign One, including the seat of the Tal’Dorei Council - Emon - and the city of Whitestone, which is now under the protection of the De Rolo family, as well as everything in between this.
During their adventures in Tal’Dorei, players could run afoul of a variety of monsters native to the region or even discover one of the legendary Vestiges of Divergence. Players will also be able to create characters using one of five potential backgrounds unique to the setting, before developing that character using one of the nine subclasses featured within the sourcebook. DMs could even include an appearance from the famous Vox Machina themselves, thanks to the lore and stat blocks attributed to each member that can be found in the book.
Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn was co-designed by Matthew Mercer - DM for Critical Role Season One and Two, Chief Creative Officer for Critical Role and an actor known for voicing Overwatch’s Mcree - Hannah Rose, a writer who has previously contributed to several Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks such as Mythic Odysseys of Theros and the upcoming The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and James J Haeck - who co-wrote the Critical Role themed D&D 5E Sourcebook, Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, with Mercer.
Darrington Press, a company that’s focused on releasing tabletop titles themed around Critical Role - including this year’s Uk’otoa, which I found to be a promising but messy debut in my review of the game - is the studio responsible for publishing the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn sourcebook.
Critical Role is an online show in which a group of actors play Dungeons & Dragons that was first aired in 2015 and has since seen the completion of its second campaign. Starring the aforementioned Matthew Mercer - as well as the likes of Ashley Johnson, known for her roles in The Last of Us video game series, and Laura Bailey, who co-starred alongside Johnson in The Last of Us II - the first campaign of Critical Role focused on the adventures of Vox Machina as they attempted to overcome various threats to Exandria, from chromatic dragons to undead lich lords.
Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn is set to be released either later this year or early in 2022 via Darrington Press Guild Stores and Critical Role online shops, before launching in other local hobby and gaming stores. A deluxe version of the sourcebook will be released via Beadle & Grimm, which will include in-world player handouts, battle maps and a DM screen.