Oof, that’s a big mouthful of book. Currently available as part of a new gift set, bundling Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and Xanathar’s, MP:MotM (Stand alone release May 17th) is the third and more interesting book of the three. There’s a huge buzz around D&D 5th at the moment, and honestly, when is there ever not? In that the system is due for some tweaks, changes, and a potential new but not new edition sometime in 2024…

See: Screenrant’s Excellent Article on the coming stuff for D&D in 2020 and beyond. It’ll be very interesting to see what changes WotC make, and if they pull in anything from the OGL third party community since other designers, like Dragon Turtle Games and the OGL Carbon 2185 have been tweaking the system, creating faster, better, rules-lite and interesting takes on it.

Level Up is another project which has pretty much beaten WotC to the punch.

Change is good though!

One of the books which heralds in some of the changes is the new Mordy book (hope he doesn’t turn me into a frog for that one). En World and Beth Rimmels have done a pretty solid review of the book and overall it sounds like one that GMs will really want to add to their collection, with lots of good stuff inside, and certainly a lot of options for players to take their characters to the next level. This book also addresses some of the more problematic elements of D&D’s design, stuff that’s been coded into monsters from an early iteration of the system.

‘Sparkling with the musings of the wizard Mordenkainen, this tome features a host of creatures for use in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Hailing from every corner of the multiverse, these creatures represent some of the most benevolent and malevolent forces that D&D heroes might face.

The book also gathers together fantastical peoples from many different worlds. Each of these peoples represents a race option when you create your D&D character, expanding on the choices in the Player’s Handbook.

Compiling and updating monsters that originally appeared in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, this book presents friends and foes for any D&D campaign, many of them accompanied by the comments of Mordenkainen. The wizard has faced many of these monsters and peoples on numerous wondrous adventures. Now it’s time for you to venture forth and face these creatures yourself!’

Monsters of the Multiverse holds a truly monstrous volume of options for D&D players and Dungeon Masters alike:

For Players

• Includes over 30 playable races. Monsters of the Multiverse brings all the game’s setting-agnostic races into one book and adds even more options for your next character created on D&D Beyond’s Character Builder.
• Updated format that makes playable races relevant for any class–on any world–in the multiverse.

For Dungeon Masters

• Includes over 250 monsters to challenge your players and use in the D&D Beyond Encounters tool. Updates to the monsters include making spellcasters easier for Dungeon Masters to run; giving many monsters more damage and resilience; and improving the organization of monster stats.
• A multiverse of lore. Includes updates to monster lore that refocuses the stories on the D&D multiverse, rather than on any particular world.

It’s good to see D&D taking step back from the problematic cliff’s edge, whilst the old guard of the hobby are plunging right into it again. We’re all for less racially coded language in the books, the removal of problematic elements and so on. Inclusion and diversity should be the watch word for everyone to be able to enjoy the game.

More books like this one would be welcome! Maybe ditch race as a descriptor too.