Unearthed Arcana

It isn't Unleashed Arcana.

It's Unearthed Arcana.

Yes.

Again.

Yeah, and now we're into the season of

Arcana.

You know what's hilarious about this? So we reviewed the past Unearthed Arcana, then we did Arcana Unleashed, and now we're doing the Unearthed Arcana.

So many Arcanas, and I'm just like, D&D, please come up with a different name, please.

Dang it.

Um, The new D&D Unearthed Arcana has been talked about with insights for the Underdark, which I think is actually really, really interesting.

The Underdark is actually something that really fell out of favor for a while in D&D and then came back mostly because of Baldur's Gate 3.

And they noticed.

And so now you have Underdark options in the latest Unearthed Arcana that which does stuff like the Path of Unlight, the House Agent, which is a rogue specialization, the MSG Arcanist, a subclass of wizard that allows you to basically be a deep-dwelling wizard that does all the weird, creepy, janky things that dark wizards do.

And I really like that it's getting attention.

And it also has an updated... whole thing on seromorphosis which if you are not familiar with this concept it is the process in which an infected individual gets turned into a mind flayer and that whole process takes quite a while and is not exactly pleasant and And if you played through Baldur's Gate 3, you kind of got a...

Well, let me rephrase that.

We are having the Modern Manual.

which is just a resource that was online derived from the D&D rules that were the Unearthed Arcana that were then expanded for a modern D&D setting.

So we're going to be playing in the city of Sharn, and I will get into Sharn in a moment.

But first, again, I'm Cade Backus, and I am joined by the players to my left.

I'm going to do the classic joke that you can't read or don't read, Dale.

Have you read The Unearthed Arcana?

You know what? The joke's on you today.

Just for you, Jess, I read The Unearthed Arcana.

Start to finish.

Halfway through, I found myself looking up some other thing, something about sponges.

So, Ben, that means that I'm Dale's favorite, in case that was

unclear.

Next up, my next piece of news.

Again, I don't often cover like Unearthed Arcana releases from D&D.

I say this every time.

I've done it like three times, I think.

They release these all the time, but like every time I have to preface it with this.

But I did want to talk about this one only because this one is like the Underdark 2 Unearthed Arcana.

Clearly, there's a big Underdark book coming.

And the fascinating thing to me here was speaking of playing weirdos and given our recent episode on, you know, the weirdest creatures, right? One of the most, uh, so this one is let you play a bunch of different, highly unusual under dark races.

So, unearth Arcana.

Or Arcana Unleashed.

Not my bad.

Yeah, got it.

Yeah, that threw me so many times.

All right.

Tonight, we're talking about Arcana Unleashed for D&D 5.5.

It comes out in two days as of when we're recording this.

And I also, with a group of people, play first edition D&D rules as written.

I'm literally standing next to a bookshelf with the Fiend Folio, the Monster Manual, the Unearthed Arcana, the Dungeon Master's Guide, all that stuff from the 70s and early 80s.

And Both of those systems and all the ones in between have a lot of surface complexity that drives a lot of people away.

And really, the secret to D&D is only one person in the group has to master the rules, right? And everybody else can just kind of play along and be told, this is what you can do here, and this is how it works, and here's the math, roll these dice.