A new Dungeons & Dragons supplement contains nearly fifty pages of material focused on forest exploration. Amarune’s Almanac: Forests of the Realm is a new DMs Guild supplement written and designed by a group of creators led by Steve Fidler. The supplement serves as a mini-sourcebook of sorts, detailing some of the major forests of the Forgotten Realms and providing Dungeons & Dragons players with a variety of new spells, subclasses, and other playing-facing content. The book also provides summaries of several of the Forgotten Realms’ biggest forests, sourced mostly from older sourcebooks that have long been out of print. The lore is all written from the perspective of Amarune Whitewave, a distant descendant of the wizard Elminster.
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The biggest innovation in Forests of the Realm is the addition of a new spellcasting component – the environment. Several spells require players to be in a certain kind of environment (usually a forest) to cast, which makes sense as ths supplement is a forest guide. To help players get around this limitation, one of the new subclasses – the Circle of the Grove Druid – allows players to instantly create a grove (at the cost of a Wild Shape use) that satisfies this environment component, thus allowing the spells to have use outside of forest exploration.
Of course, there are also a handful of new monsters and magical items, all of which fit with the forest theme. Players can face off against the hangman’s tree or befriend a cooshie, creatures that haven’t yet appeared in any Fifth Edition book. They might also be interested in items like the Flute of Turlang, which can shape plant life, or the Rootshape Guantlets, which allow players to draw wooden weapons from any tree. I loved how innovative the magic items were and how they all fit the forest theme very well.
Amarune’s Almanac: Forests of the Realm reminds me of the sourcebooks released with much more frequently during D&D’s 3.5 days. With a mix of lore and player facing information, it’s both an enjoyable read and a useful supplement. The guide is available on the DMs Guild for $9.95.
