Candlekeep Mysteries review: A D&D book that belongs in every Dungeon Master’s bookshelf

For the past few years, Dungeons & Dragons have been bordering on formula. There is a lot of narrative or regular content on the front, then some appendices full of monsters, spells and magic on the back. It’s definitely a winning formula that elevates the original role-playing game to newfound heights. But it has also become a bit outdated.

Candlekeep Mysteries is completely different. Inside you will find 17 new adventures from 20 different authors, each of which can serve as a starting point for a homemade campaign or an interlude between published adventures. But perhaps more than any other book in D & D’s 5th edition, Candlestick Secrets make room for dream. It’s a set of one – shots – adventures that can be performed in a single session – but it’s also a set of tools and tricks that you can place in virtually any environment. This makes it a resource that every Dungeon Master (DM) should have on their bookshelf.

The arrogance behind Candlekeep Mysteries is that it is a book filled with other books, each taken from the shelves of a fictional library in the Forgotten Realms, the most important institution for this issue of D&D. It begins with a solid preface describing the layout and uses of the title Candlekeep. There is also a beautiful map of the poster size at the back of the book. But exactly where these books are hidden in the world is not really important. Publisher Wizards of the Coast encourages DMs to place the library and / or its collection anywhere – including in the world of Exandria, home to the popular new environment created by Matt Mercer for Critical Role , but also Eberron and Greyhawk.

Each of the chapters in Candlekeep Mysteries is named after the title of an in-fiction book, and each contains all the new content you need to run a single two- to four-hour game with your friends. Of course, you need the three other fundamental D&D books to carry out these adventures – the Player Manual, the Sample Manual, and the Dungeon Master Guide.

The titles of the books in Candlekeep Mysteries alone is enough to cultivate your imagination, including gems such as Mazfroth’s Mighty Digressions, Lore of Lurue, The book of inner alchemy, en The joy of extra-dimensional spaces. But it is not just books that are taken off the shelf and devoured with the roll of a single dice. Many are intricate magical artifacts with which player characters will communicate during the adventure. Some are even mechanical or physical in nature, and figuring out how to read them in the first place is often a mystery in itself.

Although these books have a story inside, each one is treated as an object with its own history. This makes each book a different character in the adventure. Each one gets a written description and an illustration, excellent news for anyone investing in making props for their campaigns. I feel there are a few that can even have a good life as handmade products on Etsy – especially one that includes multiple cylinders that need to be rolled on top of wet clay to get the narrative moving.

The adventures themselves are amazing and contain some of the best writing of this generation of D&D. The complications they present are a pleasure, including a sketchy book system with an even more sketchy collection of employees; an abandoned mining town with a sinister secret; a haunted house trapped in an alternative dimension; and an earworm that is so poisonous that it forces players to quarantine. The latter adventure, in which the earworm is involved, is actually very clever. The book that is the center of the encounter is actually an elaborate chime, the complexity of which is reflected by the elaborate social interactions of the adventure. There is almost no fighting. Instead, it forces the DM to take on the role of multiple NPCs. It’s up to the player characters to bother things, mostly through dialogue.

One chapter, entitled “Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion” by Amy Vorpahl, made me laugh out loud as I read it. It’s absolutely ridiculous, to go so far as to introduce technologies, even if the powerful magic in the Forgotten Realms is at stake, it’s going to be game-breaking if they’s released. Of course, the DM is always in control in D&D. From that perspective, an adventure that unleashes the whole hell is a feature, not a mistake.

In addition to writing, the art direction is in Candlekeep Mysteries is extraordinarily strong. Chapters contain works by different artists, each giving a different look and feel. In contrast, the cards presented in the book are simple, almost decorated. This is clear by design because it makes it easy to highlight a whole different environment and re-theme. This also makes this book an excellent resource for DMs that went digital during the pandemic.

For bookworms of a different kind, i.e. people who like to buy and read RPG books like others are a novel, there is another pleasure. A series of subtle nods to previous fifth edition campaigns, including, spread through this series of adventures Storm King’s Thunder and Curse of Strahd. Even if new narrative breaks Candlekeep Mysteries can not help but blink and nod for the rest of the 5th edition canon.

Although structurally an outlier, Candlekeep Mysteries fits in well with the rest of the 5th edition material. I’m excited to see where players go from here.

Candlestick Secrets arrives on March 16th. A special alternative art cover designed by Simen Meyer is only available at your friendly local game store and on Amazon. Digital versions of the material are also available for the D&D Beyond toolkit, for Fantasy Grounds and on the Roll20 platform.

---

Candlekeep Mysteries was revised with a copy of the books made available by Wizards of the Coast. Vox Media has affiliated partnerships. It does not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.