Wizards of the Coast has announced Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, a new dragon-themed sourcebook for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. The titular character from the popular Dragonlance novels, Fizban the Fabulous, provides point-of-view commentary throughout the book, as written by actor and D&D writer Amy Vorphal.
The new 224-page sourcebook will feature a large bestiary of new dragons and dragon-related creatures, including Fifth Edition statblocks for five types of gem dragons with unconventional breath weapons and psionic abilities. There are also Greatwyrms, which are more powerful than Ancient Dragons, and the book uses the Mythic monster rules introduced in Mythic Odyssey of Theros. Fizban's Treasury of Dragons will also feature tiny drakes, new age variants of dragon turtles and draconians from the Dragonlance novels.
While Fizban comes from the Dragonlance campaign setting, this isn't a Dragonlance campaign book. Lead designer of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons James Wyatt said that the book "wasn't just a book about dragons in any D&D world, it is a book about dragons in every D&D world," as well as homebrew worlds.
"There's an idea running through this book that every dragon has echos of itself on other worlds of the Material Plane," said James Wyatt, a game designer and veteran writer working on both Fizban's Treasury and the upcoming D&D and Magic: The Gathering crossover set, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. "They don't come from outside it, they were there when it was made...Dragons are an essential part of the world, which is why we named the game after them."
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Dungeon Masters will also be able to use the dragon lair maps and tables in the new sourcebook to customize their own dragon NPCs with unique personalities. "We tried to take a 'show, don't tell' approach when talking about dragons," Wyatt said. "Rather than talking to you for a while about the personalities of brass dragons, we give you a table of personality traits that you can randomly roll on or you can choose from as you're creating a brass dragon."
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons will contain official dragon lore explaining why dragons are so central to the world of D&D. Another concept the book explores is the idea that dragons are actually multiversal beings, with simultaneous echoes existing in various worlds on the Material Plane. However, Wyatt says that ultimately, the new book is about giving players and Dms alike more tools and content to play with in their own RPG worlds . "Even as we're in the final stages of getting it ready to go to the printer, I'm marking up printouts on one side and writing notes for my next campaign on the other."
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons is scheduled to release on October 19, 2021, and features a standard cover available at all bookstores and all online retailers, as well as an alternate cover available at your local game store.