If you’re just starting your adventure in the world of Dungeons & Dragons or know a younger reader looking to dive into the role-playing game, A Young Adventurer’s Guide series has you covered. These books are focused on breaking down complex game concepts and world building in a way that is easy to understand for new players and younger audiences.
The latest to teleport its way onto shelves is Places & Portals. This guidebook focuses on all the locations and cultures players can encounter on their adventures. But this isn’t just for the young players! Experienced adults can find plenty of use within these pages, as well.
Where to Explore
Places & Portals is broken into five main sections, each with multiple chapters that total to 103 pages.
Section One
The Forgotten Realms, will be the most familiar to players. It highlights major locations such as The Sword Coast and the fan-favorite Underdark. Those who enjoyed the Honor Among Thieves movie will like reading about Neverwinter. And the city highlighted in a groundbreaking video game, Baldur’s Gate, also has a section. If you’re looking to learn more about Faerûn as a whole and how your players can navigate it, this is for you.
Section Two
Traveling the Realms, breaks down methods of transportation, how to find your way when lost, vehicles, and waystations. These are especially useful for lower-level campaigns where players do most of their traveling on foot with little connections or knowledge. It also has an extremely handy section on survival tactics such as foraging and weather dangers.
Section Three
The Mirror Worlds, focuses on traveling the planes. It specifically details the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell. The book provides you with the start of an adventure you can have in the Feywild, which is handy for GM’s looking for new quest ideas.
Section Four
Spelljammer, which is a campaign setting derived from older publications. It’s much more sci-fi than other settings, focusing on traveling the Astral Sea that has an outer space vibe to it. This includes floating ships straight out of something you’d seen in Disney’s Treasure Planet.
Section Five
The final section is for the homebrewers. A Realm of Your Own teaches you how to build your own world. This is a great resource for GM’s wanting to get into homebrewing, but uncertain where to start. It gives instructions on how to build a map, how to build settlements, and how to populate your land with creatures and monsters.
Conclusion
Places & Portals is a handy, easy to read resource that is a manageable length for those that want to get right to the core of traveling worlds. It has things both new and veteran players can use. And it makes a great addition to the Young Adventurer’s Guide collection on your gaming shelf!
Places & Portals was provided by Wizards of the Coast. It is available now on Amazon.
