All DnD 5e books in order of release

Every single Dungeons and Dragons player needs access to the DnD Player’s Handbook. Whether you’re a player creating your first character or a Dungeon Master reminding yourself of a rule, this is the tome at the tabletop RPG’s core. It may have been outmoded somewhat by the new 2024 Player’s Handbook, but plenty of tables are still playing with the 2014 rules.

The DnD Monster Manual is basically the ABC of DnD monsters. From the Aboleth to the Zombie, and everything in between, you’re bound to find a vicious and/or surprising stat block to throw at your players. It’s an enjoyable bit of worldbuilding to read, and it can inspire a host of possible adventures for your players.

The first DnD Dungeon Master’s Guide for 5e aimed to be a complete companion to the person running the campaign. It offers extensive advice on building your own dungeons and worlds to play in, and its optional rules can help you tweak the complexity of a game as much as you like.

This was the aim, but the 2014 DMG failed to deliver in the eyes of many. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide features a lot of the same content, but it’s organized in a far more logical, beginner-friendly way.

Lost Mines of Phandelver offers new D&D players everything they need to learn the system – simplified rules and a short adventure that manages to be intriguing and exciting despite its lack of originality. Several starter sets have been released since this 2014 title, but for total beginners, there’s still some value to be found here.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen was fifth edition’s first campaign book, and it suffers from some teething problems as a result. It begins as a fairly punchy adventure across the Forgotten Realms’ Sword Coast as your party attempts to thwart a powerful dragon cult. However, the pacing quickly falls apart toward the end, and the overly challenging encounters will only appeal to classic dungeon-crawl fans who love to optimize their way over hurdles.

The Rise of Tiamat is a direct sequel to Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and it continues the story of a villainous dragon cult’s attempts to resurrect Tiamat. The book as-is is difficult for a DM to navigate and run a game with, but a veteran can tweak and homebrew this campaign into an exciting high-level adventure that’s very much worth playing.

Early fifth edition really liked throwing cultists at players, and Princes of the Apocalypse is another example of this. Four prophets have formed cults to serve evil elemental princes and construct lethal temples in their honor. The players must traverse these temples to discover the prophets’ weaknesses and thwart their world-threatening plans.

There are plenty of exciting fights and unique places to explore in this campaign, but its sandbox structure and a long cycle of same-y dungeons mean many parties miss out on a lot of side content.

Out of the Abyss is a challenging fight for survival that takes place in the Underdark, a cavernous world below the usual adventuring haunts of D&D players. The place is made even more dangerous than usual by a band of demons who are using it to further some evil plans – ones you might have a chance to thwart by the adventure’s end.

Balance issues and a large amount of moving pieces to manage make this a challenging game to run for newer DMs. However, the story and setting are worth exploring if you have the skills.

Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide acts as a gazetteer for D&D’s standard setting, the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. New DMs can expand their knowledge of the DnD setting before running a campaign, and players get new backgrounds and subclasses to play with – though the only ones worth their salt were later reprinted in better books like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.

A few campaigns are in the running for ‘best adventure of all time’, but we think that the gothic horror module Curse of Strahd takes the cake. Its story, setting, and characters are so memorable that they’ve been revived in multiple editions of D&D.

The adventure is a game of cat and mouse between you and the module’s titular villain, the vampire Strahd von Zarovich. You’ll explore his sandbox domain of Barovia, gathering allies and weapons to fight against him. By the end, you’ll determine whether you or Strahd is the killer cat or the preyed-upon mouse.

Storm King’s Thunder begins with the god of giants disbanding The Ordning, a societal structure that decides where giants stand in the pecking order. Chaos naturally ensues, and many powerful beings (giant and not) seek to take advantage of this – with potentially world-altering consequences.

Players first see the effects of this grand affair on the small towns of the Sword Coast, but they’re soon traveling across the land to intervene in a political affair of epic, magical proportions. The side quests and plot hooks aren’t always interesting or worth pursuing, but the overall product is one of D&D’s better pre-written modules.

Volo’s Guide to Monsters added 120 new monsters to a Dungeon Masters repertoire, and it introduced some fun and flavorful new races for players. The Aasimar and Goliath proved popular enough to become core character options in their own right some years later, and the Tabaxi, Firbolg, and Kenku are still firm favorites for many.

Monsters of the Multiverse, a later sourcebook, outmodes this content by updating the stats for many of the creatures in this book. However, Volo’s Guide offers far more extensive lore for its entries.

If your player group loves traditional dungeon crawls, Tales from the Yawning Portal offers a variety of one shots that are guaranteed to satisfy. Every adventure in this book is a re-tooled version of a classic D&D adventure, and pretty much all of them offer an engaging challenge. This book will be less interesting to players who prefer more modern roleplay and exploration, but for the right audience, this is an excellent buy.

Tomb of Annihilation ties together two old-school adventures with an overarching setting and story. Admittedly, the story is a little underdeveloped, but the gameplay itself is excellent.

The first section of the book sees you exploring the remote jungle island of Chult. You’re searching for the titular Tomb, but you don’t want to get there too soon. Inside is a brutal crawl that’ll TPK all but the most cunning (and appropriately leveled) adventurers.

Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is a perfect expansion to the Player’s Handbook. With additional subclass options and class features, this helps players build more unique characters, allowing a huge array of new and different DnD character builds.

Some of our favorite DnD subclasses can be found here, including the Celestial Warlock, the Divine Soul Sorcerer, and the Gloomstalker Rogue. For Dungeon Masters, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything also expands on simpler mechanics like sleeping, falling, and tool proficiencies.

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes is one part lore dump, one part gameplay advice, and one part bestiary. Dungeon Masters will get the most out of its worldbuilding and monster stat blocks, but players can also learn a lot from the deep dives into different races, monsters, and planes. Sadly, though, this excellent book is now considered a ‘legacy’ title, with some of its content reworked in the later release, Monsters of the Multiverse.

In Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, the players are part of a race to uncover a monumental hoard of gold, stashed away somewhere in the famous city of Waterdeep. Also joining the race are several iconic and intimidating factions, one of which becomes the key rival of your adventurers. This campaign sets up a great premise in an excellent urban setting, but the adventure-as-written is so messy and illogical that DMs will need to put a lot of work in for it to live up to its potential.

You don’t have to be an MTG fan to appreciate Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, but it helps. The high-magic city-planet of Ravnica comes from the TCG, but it’s been expanded for roleplayers – meaning that players get some interesting new classes and races options, while DMs can appreciate the fleshed-out setting, monsters, and magic items.

Most of the character options here have been reprinted in books like Monsters of the Multiverse and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. This means we’d only recommend this book if you plan to run a campaign set in Ravnica – if so, this is an excellent resource.

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage is a mega-dungeon in every sense of the word. From levels five to 20, players will explore Undermountain, a sprawling dungeon complex with 23 levels. There’s very little plot motivation for players to enter this dungeon, but as long as players know to expect a classic dungeoneering experience, there’s plenty of variety and fun to be found.

The Stranger Things Dungeons and Dragons boxed set is definitely aimed at people who saw the hit TV show and decided to try the tabletop game. With this goal in mind, it’s a pretty successful starter set, providing a basic introduction to D&D and a short adventure to test your skills. The short one shot and its minimal writing won’t impress veterans, but newbies might appreciate the simplicity – and the Demogorgon minis.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh revamps seven sea-based adventures from older editions and ties them together with the coastal Saltmarsh setting. While some of the sea-faring rules provided can be a bit fiddly at first, they fill a much-needed gap in D&D’s core rules. The adventures are unique and engaging, too. Play them as standalones or, with a bit of writing between the lines, turn them into a seamless nautical campaign.

Acquisitions Incorporated brings the office-style humor of Penny Arcade’s actual play series to Dungeons and Dragons. It offers rules for turning your adventuring party into a franchise, where every member has a different role to perform and a colorful background inspired by late-stage capitalism.

After that, you’ll get a decent six-episode adventure to play out. This is a book that cares much more about roleplay and downtime than crunchy combat, but if you fit the job description, you’ll find a lot to love here.

Dragon of Icespire Peak is a starter adventure that comes in the ‘D&D Essentials Kit’. This is basically an expanded starter set, with more rules explanations and DM tools than the 2014 starter set.

It provides a sandbox-style adventure for parties (even small ones, thanks to sidekick rules) to explore. The threads that tie each encounter together are thin and rather uninteresting, but the added value of the extra rules still make this a decent way to learn D&D.

Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus sends players to literal, actual Hell, where they must rescue a city that’s been teleported to the devilish plane thanks to a pact with the archdevil Zariel. The setting is unique, and there are plenty of good ideas throughout – including infernal war machine combat and Big Bad bosses that can be dealt with in multiple ways. However, the writing and design that brings these ideas together is thin, illogical, and not a lot of fun without some serious reworking.

Eberron: Rising from the Last War is full of quirky treats, like airships and unique weapons. It also gave D&D the wonderful Artificer 5e class and the robotic Warforged race. With a setting-specific take on character creation, a location gazetteer, and advice on running Eberron adventures, you’ll have everything you need to get started. This setting feels unlike any other, and provides so many brilliant additions to any campaign.

Dungeons and Dragons vs. Rick and Morty offers a streamlined version of the D&D rules and a short dungeon-crawling adventure where Rick forces his family to take part in a shenanigans-filled Dungeons and Dragons game.

The upside here is that the set does a solid job recreating the show’s humor. The downside is that the adventure design isn’t strong enough to entice non-fans, and some of the humorous quips in the rules guide are actually pretty bad advice for beginners.

Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has tons of stat blocks and character concepts directly from Critical Role. The quality here is hit-and-miss, with reprinted races and encounters that cater a little too much to people who’ve never played D&D. However, the hits hit hard. Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount features some of the most broken subclasses we’ve ever seen, the flying Aarakocra, and some excellent magic items.

Mythic Odysseys of Theros recreates the MTG plane of the same name, but even if you haven’t played the trading card game, it’s an excellent setting to explore. It takes a lot of inspiration from Greek mythology, and a large portion of the book focuses on handling DnD gods in-game (which is useful advice in any setting). There’s also some neat character options and plenty of monsters to populate your world with.

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden takes place in a snowy, unforgiving tundra – which is made even more brutal by the goddess who curses the sun to keep from rising. It’s a sandbox-style survival horror where the bitter cold is as much your enemy as the heap of stat blocks in the book’s bestiary.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything brings a lot more flavor to character creation. The subclass options really blur the lines between martial and spellcaster classes – so, if you get a kick from being both a caster and a DnD Fighter, you’re going to love the versatility that Tasha’s Cauldron brews up for you.

With feats that encourage you to dip into other classes and custom origin rules that allow you to switch the stats of base D&D races, Tasha offers a lot to players who value customization. There’s also some handy advice for DMs who want to improve their puzzles, NPCs, and session zeroes.

If you and your pals love a one-off adventure, then Candlekeep Mysteries is an essential book to add to your tabletop RPG shelf. It’s a great little anthology of 17 standalone adventure modules, all centering on Candlekeep: the Forgotten Realms’ foremost enclave of magical learning and the setting‘s biggest, most famous, most mysterious library.

Every module begins with the party finding a strange book that kicks off a quest with its own distinct story and theme, running the gamut from light-hearted romps to one of the best horror one shots ever written. We won’t spoil any of them, but there’s a huge amount of fun to be had here, as well as some of modern DnD’s best steps forward in diversity and representation.

Read our Candlekeep Mysteries review here.

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft offers a broad overview of several spooky Domains of Dread, each complete with their own Dread Lord adversary that runs the demiplane. Because D&D books don’t often do horror, this one is filled with advice on running darker campaigns. There’s also some extremely thematic player options, such as a Warlock that serves the Undead, a Bard that can talk to spirits, and lineages that add a horror-themed twist to D&D races.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight grants you a rare chance to visit the Feywild, a whimsical plane of Fairy pacts and magical Hags. While every fairy tale has a dark edge, this campaign is mostly lighthearted. It comes with a vibrant cast, a carnival, and something else that makes it stand out from the crowd – the option to play out an entire campaign without fighting.

Read our The Wild Beyond the Witchlight review here.

Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is a bestiary, lore resource, DM’s guide, and subclass source where all the content is themed around dragons. Players get a handful of new subclasses, feats, and spells to play with, while Dungeon Masters get a far more expanded section on running dragons in their campaigns. It’s a shorter D&D book with a fairly narrow scope, but it’s mostly successful at what it tries to achieve.

Yet another MTG setting book, Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos turns a famous magical school from Wizards of the Coast’s other favorite IP into a place to play D&D. This includes a lore dump, some small example adventures, and a few particularly overpowered player options to bring your cozy academia campaign to life. It’s a super unique concept, but the book tries to do too much at once, meaning the content feels thin overall.

Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep presents a full campaign (levels three to 12) in Matt Mercer’s own Exandria. Your party’s story starts with a bit of harmless competition, but soon you and a band of unique rivals have a date with destiny (and perhaps a demigod). The weak points in the story mean that the adventure often railroads a little too hard, but the strong character writing and dungeon design certainly redeem the overall product.

Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse combines races and monsters found in two previous books (Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes). While most of this D&D book’s content has been seen before, many of the stat blocks saw tweaks and re-balancing that made them feel different.

If you don’t already own the other two books, there’s great value for money here for both players and DMs. If you do own the other books, you may be less impressed by the changes – and all the worldbuilding that was stripped out.

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel offers an entire landscape of colorful and unique settings to explore. Each adventure is written by a BIPOC D&D writer who uses their real culture as inspiration. The stories these adventures tell have range and depth, and they’ll stick in your memory for a long time to come. As a fan of one shots, we love to see more options in this department.

Read our Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel review here.

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is the adventure printed in Wizards of the Coast’s 2022 starter set. The box contains everything you need to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, and the materials are top-quality.

Pre-written characters come with motivations that make them feel like part of the world, and a streamlined rulebook eases you into the mechanics. The adventure itself is filled with intriguing characters and locations, which showcase what a well-written campaign can look like. It manages all that without overwhelming the DM with too much information.

Read our Dragons of Stormwreck Isle review here.

The three-book box set Spelljammer: Adventures in Space returns to the space-pirate setting of Wildspace, where characters can sail space vessels among the stars. Such an out-of-the-box concept opens a door to some wacky and wonderful monster and character options, but the rules for navigating space are significantly worse than they were in earlier editions, and the pre-written adventure provided is nothing to write home about.

Learn more in our Spelljammer: Adventures in Space review.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen is a high fantasy war epic that returns to a classic D&D setting, with approachable lore and strong storytelling that’ll win over a new generation of Dragonlance fans. This campaign takes place during the War of the Lance, an earth-shaking political event in the nation of Solamnia.

You’ll play your part by attempting to defeat Lord Soth, a death knight in thrall to Tiamat. While there’s a few lulls along the way, the story of this campaign is excellent overall, offering a nuanced but still-epic war story that’s sure to satisfy fantasy fans of all ilks.

Read our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen review here.

Keys from the Golden Vault is an anthology of one shots themed around heists. Whether you’re doing so for noble or selfish reasons, you’ll break into a host of colorful locations, from underground casinos to high-security prisons to moving trains. There’s a lot of good ideas and memorable moments in this anthology, but the heists themselves need more fleshing out.

Learn more in our Keys from the Golden Vault review.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is themed entirely around Giants. It expands on their rather rich lore, and it offers Dungeon Masters a host of new stat blocks, dungeons, and magic items to help stage some high-level encounters with these iconic monsters. A new Barbarian subclass and some interesting feats offer players some value here too – but the narrow scope of the book means it’s not an insta-buy for everyone.

Learn more in our Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants review.

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk republishes an updated version of 5e’s original starter adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver. However, this version also comes with a fresh campaign to complete after re-treading such familiar ground.

Strange sightings of psionic goblins and odd mutations plague the once-idyllic town of Phandalin after you return from the mines. The campaign’s trope-y, newbie-friendly beginning quickly (and a little messily) descends into chaotic cosmic horror with an exciting but brutal finale.

Learn more in our Phandelver and Below review.