D&D's new Forgotten Realms books come with Astarion-themed digital DLC

The Forgotten Realms is the default setting of Dungeons & Dragons for a lot of players. It's the world that gave us Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, Drizzt and Elminster, and also one quite good DC comic from the early '90s that only I seem to remember. More recently it gave us Baldur's Gate 3 and Astarion, and that's a thirsty legacy Wizards of the Coast is planning to tap into with its upcoming releases.

In November we'll return to the Realms in two books, Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn and Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerûn. The first is a player-focused book with rules for subclasses like the bladesinger, as well as new spells, feats, backgrounds, equipment and so on. The second is aimed at DMs and full of adventures ("50+ ready-to-run adventures" they say, suggesting they're pretty short), monster stats, magic items, gazetteers for locations like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, and a starter scenario called Lost Library of Lethchauntos.

As they used to say on TV: "But wait, there's more!" Taking a tip from the world of videogames, the two books can also be purchased in an ultimate bundle that gives you physical and digital copies of both, plus three purely digital expansions. DLC, basically. One of the three is yet to be revealed, but the other two have been roughly outlined. There's an adventure involving time travel called Netheril's Fall, and then there's Astarion's Book of Hungers.

This vampire-themed supplement adds the option to play as a half-vampiric dhampir (rules for which were previously available in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft—presumably this version will be updated for the 2024 rulebooks). It's also got three vampiric backgrounds, 18 more feats, stats for devil-worshipping vampires, short adventures where players get to ally with Astarion, and "a fully detailed map and backstory for Astarion's favorite tavern from before the events of Baldur's Gate 3." As previous Forgotten Realms books have come with annotations and commentary from the setting's famous characters like Volo, this will apparently include "very flirty letters from Astarion."

I know some people on the internet hate the way Forgotten Realms books are dominated by its oversized heroes and villains, with Elminster shoehorning his way into basically everything, but at this point it's the setting's whole identity. You play Forgotten Realms games because you might bump into Minsc and Boo, or Alias and Dragonbait, or Astarion and Karlach. Without them, it's a fairly unremarkable fantasy world, so it's no surprise Wizards of the Coast is leaning into the one thing that gives it personality—the larger-than-life personality of its more famous inhabitants.